Patiently waiting the arrival of JR, any body got any ideas on building Vinto? He seems the least straight forward of the three. My thoughts were Pinpoint shot, then Shot on the run, then Rapid Fire, then Merciless, and if you get 12 points then Sharpshooter. Thoughts?

Pinpoint shot is not worth delaying Rapid Fire for (or getting once you have it); they do much the same thing but Rapid Fire does it better and does more stuff on top of it. Aside from RtH i think you're better going with Dead on of Battlefield Expertise instead of Sharpshooter. I think the core of the build is good though.

Pinpoint shot and Offhand Blaster arent worth it. Basically, the other skills are better.

To me he has 2 builds, depending on whether you get Merciless or not.

Rapid Fire, Merciless, [shot on the Run & Dead On OR Sharpshooter & Battlefield Expertise]

Rapid Fire, Shot on the Run, Dead On, Sharpshooter, Battlefield Expertise

Build 1 with merciless allows you to deal with higher health enemies whereas build 2 doubles down on the strength of dealing with multiple lower health enemies and is generally more versatile. If you can get 13 xp tho, Build 1 is far superior.

Sharpshooter is a surprisingly good skill, the extra range on boltslinger and rapid fire is very useful. 2 endurance and a reroll for 2 xp is a bargain, and Dead On allows you to kill a 4 HP unit when combined with boltslinger and Rapid Fire, opposed to a 3 HP unit without.

I'm not sure how to interpret "Merciless". The skill states: "Exhaust this card while attacking a figure who has suffered [damage]. Apply +3 [damage] to the attack results."

At first, I thought this meant that if your attack causes at least 1 damage, then you can add on +3. But then I saw Norgrath's comment in another thread about Merciless where he states: "The fact that anything Vinto can shoot probably already has a single point of damage on it makes it good." So I'm taking that to mean that the +3 damage is applied in any case when the figure already has at least one damage before the attack is declared.

So my question is: in the following two scenarios, which ones will trigger Merciless?

(1) A figure that has no damage when the attack is declared but is damaged during the attack

(2) A figure that already has damage when the attack is declared but is not damaged during the attack

Also, as a side comment to this thread, I'm surprised to see that Rapid Fire is favored over Merciless. They both seem really good, but Rapid Fire seems more situational. Merciless can almost always be used for 3 damage, whereas Rapid Fire requires you to have at least 3 hostile figures within 3 spaces to get 3 damage. (But of course the rerolls also add a lot of value to Rapid Fire too.) We're playing against an IM using the Mercenaries deck, so we're expecting a lot of high HP targets, which makes me lean towards Merciless over Rapid Fire as the first 4 XP choice.

22 minutes ago, Rimpy said:

I'm not sure how to interpret "Merciless". The skill states: "Exhaust this card while attacking a figure who has suffered [damage]. Apply +3 [damage] to the attack results."

At first, I thought this meant that if your attack causes at least 1 damage, then you can add on +3. But then I saw Norgrath's comment in another thread about Merciless where he states: "The fact that anything Vinto can shoot probably already has a single point of damage on it makes it good." So I'm taking that to mean that the +3 damage is applied in any case when the figure already has at least one damage before the attack is declared.

So my question is: in the following two scenarios, which ones will trigger Merciless?

(1) A figure that has no damage when the attack is declared but is damaged during the attack

(2) A figure that already has damage when the attack is declared but is not damaged during the attack

Also, as a side comment to this thread, I'm surprised to see that Rapid Fire is favored over Merciless. They both seem really good, but Rapid Fire seems more situational. Merciless can almost always be used for 3 damage, whereas Rapid Fire requires you to have at least 3 hostile figures within 3 spaces to get 3 damage. (But of course the rerolls also add a lot of value to Rapid Fire too.) We're playing against an IM using the Mercenaries deck, so we're expecting a lot of high HP targets, which makes me lean towards Merciless over Rapid Fire as the first 4 XP choice.

If you look closely to the 7-steps of attack (found in RRG pg. 5), you'll see "apply modifiers" happen in step 4 but "apply damage" is resolved at the very end. So the figure must have already suffered at least 1 damage for you to trigger Merciless

Merciless is good against a "big bad wolf", and "Rapid Fire" is good against "many small minions". I can't count how many times my rHeavy survived and managed to shoot once because Rebels only did 5 damage, or having 2/3 of my rStorm at 2 damage (they only have 3HP each)

I got the Desperado reward card for Vinto and he has Combat Coat too. Turning a 4 wound hit into 0 when rolling a blank result... feels good man. The Imperial player is disgusted and can't wait to play the new "broken" heroes, lol.

Honestly I have no idea why combat coat says "one or more". It really should only convert 1 evade to a block. Desperado plus combat coat is broken imo. It likely never came up in playtesting. I get that it can be played around, but a mission reward should not be so powerful that it forces the imperial player to drastically change how they play.

Loku can also get an extra evade from Mon Cala Special Forces and he doesn't need to win a mission for it.

Shyla can get one too, as can Verena. Those are black dice though, so less likely to see multiple evades.

16 hours ago, Deadwolf said:

Honestly I have no idea why combat coat says "one or more". It really should only convert 1 evade to a block. Desperado plus combat coat is broken imo. It likely never came up in playtesting. I get that it can be played around, but a mission reward should not be so powerful that it forces the imperial player to drastically change how they play.

I doubt it never came up in playtesting; it's a pretty obvious combo for that card. But you can only use it for defending against one attack, and if you are around that many enemies you're going to need to defend against multiple attacks. Basically, you can put yourself in a really bad situation (a squishy figure being surrounded by a lot of enemies) and block 1 big attack.

If Vinto buys RapidFire, he gets rerolls on all attacks right? Even when the card is exahusted and even when not using Rapid Fire but normal attacks too?

Rapid Fire allows Vinto to reroll all attack and defense dice on any attack performed with a ranged weapon.

Note that if he chooses to use the bottom ability of Rapid Fire, he must reroll all attack and defense dice that have not yet been rerolled during the same attack.

Because the bottom ability does not have an exhaust cost, it is available even when the card is exhausted.

On 1/11/2017 at 11:15 AM, Deadwolf said:

Pinpoint shot and Offhand Blaster arent worth it. Basically, the other skills are better.

To me he has 2 builds, depending on whether you get Merciless or not.

Rapid Fire, Merciless, [shot on the Run & Dead On OR Sharpshooter & Battlefield Expertise]

Rapid Fire, Shot on the Run, Dead On, Sharpshooter, Battlefield Expertise

Build 1 with merciless allows you to deal with higher health enemies whereas build 2 doubles down on the strength of dealing with multiple lower health enemies and is generally more versatile. If you can get 13 xp tho, Build 1 is far superior.

Sharpshooter is a surprisingly good skill, the extra range on boltslinger and rapid fire is very useful. 2 endurance and a reroll for 2 xp is a bargain, and Dead On allows you to kill a 4 HP unit when combined with boltslinger and Rapid Fire, opposed to a 3 HP unit without.

I am a fairly green player (Mak once in a mini-campaign). About to play Vinto in a full campaign.

I certainly see the value of Shot, Rapid, and Merciless. Perhaps Dead On as well. I feel like there is something to be said for the Off-hand Blaster vs Sharpshooter/Battlefield. Blaster is very likely going to result in at least 1 damage triggering Boltslinger (plus Shot allows a double move move/heal and three distributed damage for 1 strain). Rapid and Merciless on top = bringing the pain for two strain. Not to mention the damage an attack with a decent weapon would do on top of this. The action economy of that strain attack is attractive.

Am I missing anything here? Looking for help thinking through a build strategy for him.

P.S. I think Battlefield only gives +1 Endurance.

Offhand blaster is terrible by itself, you have to pair it with pinpoint shot.

That is 4 xp, which I think is a lot for what you get. But damage is damage.

Rapid Fire, Shot on the Fire, Dead-on, Offhand Blaster, Pinpoint Shot.

The build deals a ton of chip damage, at the expense of the utility of Sharpshooter and Battlefield Experience. It is a viable option.

I appreciate the response Deadwolf. Always good to get other perspectives on things. One mission in so far. Picked up shot on the run and some armor. 1xp still in the bank. Rapid Fire is on the short term event horizon. Hopefully a better weapon soon as well. We'll see how it goes after that. Fun character to play so far! Thanks.

I would say you don't need Dead On for a poke build as that card is 1 Net damage for 3xp. Offhand blaster is 2 damage with pinpoint and boltslinger for sure, possibly more if you roll decently or have other modifiers (like recon token)

this setup will be more strain heavy so I would keep battlefield experience. You want to rapid fire and Offhand every activation, that's 2 strain a turn. (Probably 3 with thread the needle)

the good thing about this build is that it is incredibly cheap. In fact you can run it without any weapon upgrade and be more objective oriented player

Thanks for the input frotes. Good point about the trade offs between Dead On vs Offhand/Pinpoint.

I had been wondering about the value of the extra strain (not to mention healing and reroll) of Battlefield given the strain expense of Rapid and Offhand (possibly Thread as well). It may depend on how my teammates decide to build Murne and MHD in this particular case, but with strain heavy Gaarkan to manage it may be better for me to be more self sufficient.

Hadn't thought about the possibility of going without a weapon upgrade. Intriguing. Maybe an attachment...Under Barrel came up in the draw last time. Surge for Blast 1 was very tempting. Even more poking power!

I also struggle a bit with order of purchase. So far I have Shot on the Run. Thinking save up for Rapid Fire, then the question is Battlefield before or after Offhand/Pinpoint? Leaning toward Battlefield first. That's 11 xp. Depending on how things go probably Sharpshooter to polish things off, maybe Dead On if the xp are there. This all leaves Merciless out in the cold, but something has to give, right?

Again, thanks for all the great feedback.

Underbarrel could work but it won't happen during pinpoint shots since surge is removed. You could do the whole build without pinpoint tho

I would probably go Shot on the Run -> Rapid Fire -> Offhand -> Pinpoint/Battlefield/Sharpshooter. Or pick up Pinpoint early if not getting weapon upgrade. Interesting thing about Pinpoint is you can use it after rolls and rerolls so you can just keep the shot if it is good. But it probably works best when you have Offhand around for that extra ping or a good initial ping for damage and weaken

Merciless is +3 damage a turn. Offhand & Pinpoint is +2 damage a turn in most situations, sometimes 1 if no other targets or more if you get a good offhand roll (since you can reroll the blue, you might hit +2 and it has pierce 1). The damage is more comparable than you might first think. Especially considering you can go for a low econ setup or heavily save for T2/3 weapons which will save you some credits when you don't have to sell a T1. Or you prioritize the other 2 damage dealers and still do respectable damage

Honestly this just says Vinto has many builds he can go for. The design on this character is great

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis and advice. I agree, Vinto is a very fun design for a character. I'll try to keep this conversation updated as we move through the campaign. Only playing biweekly until June, then I hope we'll pick up the pace.

Quick update. Played the rancor egg side mission a few days ago. Lost pretty bad. Still lots of fun tho! Not looking forward to that imperial reward coming back to bite us later.

Looking again at Merciless as a counter to higher health targets, but maybe just need to wait for a T2/3 weapon. Don't want to make a brash decision about spending xp based on one mission. Plus Gaarkan on the team is maybe more suited to handle high health targets? It doesn't really seem to be what Vinto is designed to do.

Rapid and Offhand is his most strain intensive build but with Battlefield Exp to help, and MHD and Murne on the team, it shouldn't be hard to manage. Not to mention we picked up the bacta pump this time around.

Envisioning him doing a lot of running and interacting with objectives while straining and what not to lay down damage as he goes. Maybe a shot here and there with his main weapon as needed.

Four missions in now. Picked up the Hand Cannon after the third mission. Packs a good punch. Added the mod that gives +1D, effectively giving it a range of 3 without penalty or even more damage at point blank. (Technically I have to do damage first before I can add the extra, right?) Rapid Fire will be in play for the next mission as well.

Still debating the order for Offhand vs Battlefield with 7 missions left in the campaign. Sharpshooter is looking a bit more attractive as well...We'll see how Rapid Fire plays for a few missions and go from there.

Which mod? Spread Barrel: Exhaust to add +1dmg if target is within 3 spaces?

+1dmg is added to the attack pool and does not differ from the dice results, and can be blocked.

2 minutes ago, a1bert said:

Static +1dmg is added to the attack pool and does not differ from the dice results, and can be blocked.

? Thanks for the clarification!

On 5/27/2017 at 8:59 AM, a1bert said:

Which mod? Spread Barrel: Exhaust to add +1dmg if target is within 3 spaces?

+1dmg is added to the attack pool and does not differ from the dice results, and can be blocked.

Yes. Spread Barrel sounds right.