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Marksman
From Hellgatewiki.com
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Marksman Description
Marksmen are the big gun, fast moving, kill or be killed type of Hunter. Unlike the Engineer and his robots, the Marksman fights alone, using a dizzying variety of gun, grenade, and tactical strike skills to slaughter demons quickly. Marksmen have to be quick, since they have no minions to hide behind, and must survive with skill and guile.
Marksmen play much like Cabalist Evokers. Both classes have huge destructive power, but as "glass cannons" they have to move quickly to use it, since they can not take much damage and have no minions to "tank" for them, they are no "pet classes". Both classes improves their damage by standing still and increasing their accuracy with weapons, though remaining stationary is a much larger part of playing a Marksman, thanks to the Tactical Stance skills. For a Marksman, finding a good gun and knowing how to use it won't be enough. A successful Marksman will need a variety of weapons for different situations, and must coordinate numerous skills to maximize his destructive power; tossing grenades, using various gun skills, marking targets for higher damage, crouching down whenever possible to boost his killing power, etc. Reflexes, skill, and nerve will define the Marksman, perhaps more than any other class in Hellgate: London.
Playing an expert Marksman takes steely nerves and the ability to quickly and precisely estimate damage. The Marksmen's best attack skills require her to stand still or crouch down; she delivers far more damage in those poses, but she can't run away either, and with his defence lowered while in his Tactical Stances, she's got to commit to locking down and blowing away the target, or she's got to run and shoot while retreating and hope his movement will keep her out of range long enough to kill the charging hordes of hell.
Also keep in mind that as a member of the Hunter faction, a Marksman must aim accurately. Cabalists and Templars have soft aim, but Hunters have FPS-style hard aim, and must point their targeting reticle right at the target to hit it. See the combat page for much more detail on the physics of that issue.
Starting Equipment
New Marksmen starts out in default light clothing that offers no defence, and equipped with a standard M51 Cadet Rifle. The rifle is effective the first few levels, against all sorts of demons, and has enough range to kill almost any solo target before it reaches the Marksman, even without using special shooting skills, but needs replacement sooner rather than later.
Marksman Skills
Marksmen have a lot of shooting skills, as you'd expect given the name of the class. Many of these are best used while in one of the Tactical Stances, but some can not be used in combination with the stances. Of the Marksman's 26 skills, far more are offensive than defensive, concentrated on taking down enemies with ranged weapons and are roughly divided into four Skill Groups: Boost, Tactical, Combat, Grenade and Precision Strike. Skills in related groups are sometimes, but not necessarily, connected by dependency lines and have each other as prerequisites. Much of the skills require precision as well as knowledge on when and how to use them.
- See the Marksman Skills page for detailed information about the skills that belongs to the Marksman Class, and the statistics.
- See the Skills page for details about skill caps, levels, synergies, level ups, and more.
- See the Hunter Skills page for the evolution of the Hunter's skills, and various unused Hunter skills. More of a Beta progression article.
Skill Builds
Please put only the main ideas of a build and avoid putting disputable information such as exact allocation of skill points. Also, avoid non-essential builds such as hybrid and generalist builds or at least avoid dedicating a whole section to them. These are not guides, guides belong to the guide section in the hellgate.incgamers.com forum.
One-Hit-Wonder/The Sharpshooter: By combining a good sniper rifle with the damage bonus of Beacon, phasing effect from Phase Grenade, damage bonus of Sniper mode, and 3x damage of multishot a marksman can produce a terrifying amount of damage in one hit. Due to the low firing rate, the total amount of damage done overtime may not be higher than other skill combo, but the extremely powerful opening shot can often slay players or rare and even some legendary bosses in one hit (especially wonderful against regenerating or warping targets). Fortunately, Sniper mode works with any weapon (even melee), so a marksman can still do moderately well against enemy swarms by switching to a fast weapon like machine gun. Weapons with constant firing rate such as zeus rifle are not recommended due to the fact that sniper mode causes the energy meter (seen next to the aiming crosshair) to drain at twice the speed and easily causing the overall damage output to fall far below non-sniper mode level.
The Demolition/Artillery Expert: Utilizing the facts that escape works 100% of the time, and that grenades do not share the same cooldown timer, it is possible to create a marksman subtype that focus solely on throwing grenades at the enemy. After figuring out the fuse time and behaviors of each grenade (some bounces, some sticks to walls, etc.) and monster (some scatter, some warps), a skilled demolition expert can orchestrate the timely explosion of his charade of firework to blast the hell spawns into tiny bits with minimal kiting involved. Some may argue that wacky character builds such as this are what the Diablo II spirit is all about. In any case, because the grenade damage do not scale with weapon damage (only player level and skill level), the effectiveness in endgame (at the level cap, where progression depends mostly on items and not gaining levels) of this build remain to be seen.
Flexible Commando/Mobile Perforator: By focusing on passive critical damage and ricochet-like skills, beacon and multishot, you have formidible damaging power and excellent mobility. This build is ideal for those who like to snipe some times, like to rapid-fire sometimes, and like to avoid getting hit - which also makes this build ideal for tougher difficulties and hardcore. Because you are building a Marksman that is not reliant on any single stance, you don't have to be standing still to dish out some serious damage. Invest heavily in Beacon, Deadeye, and Hollow Points. Invest a decent amount across the ricochet skills (depending on your preference), Multishot and Elemental Beacon. Finally, depending on your play style, invest some in either sniper, escape, tactical stance, or put some more in the rapid fire skills. What this build lacks in terms of damage (relative to the two above builds) it makes up for in mobility and flexibility to adapt to different map types, different mob types and different parties.
Marksman Equipment
Marksman and her sniper rifle.
Further Reading
General Class Information
Factions
Character Overview
- Cabalist Faction (pics)
- Hunter Faction (pics)
- Templar Faction (pics)
- Marksman Forum
- Marksman Gallery
Categories: Marksman | Hunter | Classes
