You’ll need to go a lot deeper into the glass-cannon territory to make the musket at least viable.
Something along the lines of 300 dex + 100 int is probably the minimum. Although if I wanted to even try musket, I would just dump all I have into damage (proportion dex/int optimally for max damage).
Bows are extremely strong and also getting a bit more popular lately. Bows use light armor. Muskets can technically kill bows easier from long range. So you could say musket has it’s tiny niche in pvp atm for killing bows.
(Although so far I died only once to a musket (out of maybe 60 OR runs), but that’s mostly because all the muskets I meet are playing some peashooter builds with no kick at all).
Bow plays mid-close range, so bow doesn’t play full glass-cannon. Musket plays mid-extreme ranges, so musket should always play full damage and no defense (I would say it still turns out underpowered, but at least it’s playable that way).
P.S. 300 dex + 200 int (the absolute max damage you could get with a musket) is 30.8% more damage than 300 dex + 5 int; it’s also ~6% more damage than 595 dex and 5 int (well that’s the damage you’d have to sacrifice if you play dex-only secondary weapon and want to maximize it’s damage too, I guess).
A more realistic scenario with 22’s on armors and jewelry, 27 weapons and 30 food (so -40 total from max) would give 300 dex + 160 int, ~4% lower damage than the max 300/200, but still a +25% over 300/5.
I’ve been hit hard by muskets before, around 2k a shot. If I were to build musket myself based on what I’ve seen. Dump all your points into dex. You could probably boost intelligence to 100 for more crit damage but idk. Just get increased crit damage onto gear and and snipe. If anyone gets near you, just run. Maybe use ice gauntlets as this helps your escape when caught off guard.
I’m soon thinking of switching back to musket so I don’t have any concrete advice that would help. Personally I feel as though it needs a slight buff overall. But who knows when it’s completely min/maxed.
Musket can serve one very important role in OR, stealing Baron.
Last night in an OR I singlehandedly stole it from them. My whole team was ignoring Baron and staying in mid, typical PuG stuff, so I ran up the vine and on top of the cliff that overlooks the Baron area and laid down out of view behind some rocks and popped up and snagged the killing blow with a musket shot.
For shenanigans like that musket is top tier. The instant damage makes pulling that off much easier. I wonder if the best strat is to just ignore Baron and send a couple rifleman up on the cliffs to steal it, if you coordinated 2-3 shots at the same time it’d be pretty easy to pull off consistently.
Don’t ever use musket in war or outpost rush lol, fire staff will just fire charge at you, same as ga/gh users will charge at you then gravity pull and you are dead meat even how far you are, you are useless when capturing fort cause you have to be on top which is short range, everybody can kill you while you are trying to aim and throw dodgeable sticky mines
Well a counter to that would be a bow (splinter shot or just a normal heavy crit) or GA execute holding and waiting for the final blow (from the team that is actually killing it). It hits much harder than a musket, so technically musket would not be able to steal it from them, if they time it right.
As for multiple muskets, they’d probably just mess each other up more than anything. The idea is to hit exactly when it’s low enough to 1-shot. If some1 hits too early, then the other ones won’t have a window to fix that anyway (assuming there’s multiple ppl hitting baron, dot’s on it and so on - it would be dead pretty much instantly once the 1st musket leaves it a sliver of health).
It’s definitely great vs ppl who are not counterplaying it for sure, but I’d say it’s a 1-man job.
Every hit staggers. It might be not much (and it shouldn’t be more, it’s already pretty severe), but once a GA is breathing down your neck, you most definitely feel that mini stagger when a musket hits you and the GA is suddenly in bloodlust range.
Yeah it’d take perfect coordination among the musket kill stealers. But imagine, assuming it’s a coordinated OR on coms and stuff, 2-3 guys aiming and doing a 3-2-1 countdown and all shooting at the same time. While yes musket hits for way less than alot of other weapons, with multiple shots coordinated could work.
It’d be a very high risk high reward strat. You mess up the timing, or your musketeers get spotted and taken out you just give the enemy a free Baron essentially. But if you can pull it off you get Baron and your main group can push another control point. You’re right if they are aware of this strat they could play around it by having their own people hold big attacks till he’s almost dead too. At that point it’s just a timing game, could be an interesting dynamic.
Don’t see any risk in it. Assuming you were not going to/couldn’t realistically fight for that baron anyway.
Still a GA execute (assuming anyone specced for it, lul) would hit almost as 3 muskets. As for timing multiple muskets, you’d need to be milisecond perfect for it to work (well at least if there’s a lot of enemies hitting the baron at the same time); leave even a tiniest window and one of the tons of random attacks on the enemy side will finish the job. And since you would attempt this at higher health than you would do it with a solo musket (so basically, if it fails, it fails, you won’t get another chance to try at 1-musket health range), I’m not sure, I’d say a solo musket would have a higher chance for success (vs many enemies).
If enemies are doing something like a solo or 3-man baron though, then 3man musket team steal? Ez.
Musket players are needed in outpost rush to clear objectives. If you’re looking to be the top score player on the roaster get different weapon.
You’re a glass cannon high range DPS, you go 300 DEX / 150 INT for the perks and the weapon dmg. You make sure to have crippling powder burn and keenly jagged or/and enhanced on your weapon.
Once you’ve got that basis, you clear out light/medium armor targets, delay the enemy from getting brutes/upgrades and steal baroness from a range. You also put pressure on key figures in fights. Don’t give a crap about kills, just knock the people down to 0 HP.
Yeah I mean intentionally choosing not to push with the team and hoping your guys can steal it. Of course if you’re team is a bunch of potatoes and will ignore Baron anyway there’s no risk then. I am talking about this strat within the concept of a coordinated team.
OH yeah it’d be a tricky thing to time correctly if they knew what you were trying to do.
Dunno might be a terrible strat that only works in PuGs, was just an idea I had after stealing Baron last night. Thought it could be an interesting twist on the standard OR strat.
Those steals happen often enough (at least 1 in 10 barons, if not more) in random OR’s that it really should not be scoffed at as a strat. It’s always 1 musket, but if you make a musket squad work, be sure to tell the story Xd.
The problem with that skill and shooter stance if that it seems like the critical reload shot just goes of on its own, so you get a double shot, but the critical reload shot rarely hits anything.
