The spots left and right of the treasure room should have red room outlines. There's nothing blocking it in the long room, the treasure room or the sacrifice room. I haven't blown up anything previously blocking it either. Secret rooms already found. What am I missing?
Provocative title maybe? Idk, I think people who praise this card look at it abstractly, whereas it looks less impressive in real game situations.
Point Blank Shot: when attacking adjacent figure with pistol, get +1 pierce and replace a die with a red die. Pierce is like +0.83 dmg vs black die, unless you're also getting pierce from elsewhere. Replacing the die is like getting another 3/6 to 5/6 attack symbols on the result. So it's like +1.33 to +1.67 attack symbols.
Not great value if you're doing 1 attack per round. Are you doing several? Sometimes, but you need to get adjacent and you need to rest off strain from Close Quarters. You only use Combat Momentum after you start killing adjacent things, but maybe previous use of it got you enough movement to make do without a move action now. K'Tara can help you move, but it's 2xp and only 1 of that "move 2" actually helps you get adjacent. It's also not very compatible with Combat Mastery.
So with that we can at best consider the movement problem solved. You're gonna need a lot of support to also pull off not resting, unless you're failing to get any Close Quarters off. One way to get multiple attacks off per round is to rest+attack, then get adjacent to exhausted enemies (or readied enemies Imp won't prefer to activate next), then get told to attack by Gideon, Murne, CT or Leia. But... does PBS make you good enough to prefer giving these extra attacks to you instead of anyone else? Depends on what you're carrying. If we find that PBS combos best with tier 1 pistols, then probably not. So let's take a look...
Disruptor Pistol + Tactical Display is the best-value tier 3 ranged weapon. If you keep the green die, you can fairly reliably get the +3 dmg off on two attacks per round. With two red, you're gonna need support for extra surges if you're doing multiple attacks. And replacing a green with a red isn't that impressive. I guess it's good enough with 2+ attacks per round if you didn't need that support surge for something else.
Sporting Blaster? With Spread Barrel and 1 attack per round, it's almost as good as Disruptor, but more expensive. With Disruption Cell and 2 attacks per round, it's almost as good as Disruptor but way more expensive. You do get to use PBS on a blue or yellow die... but you're also making it much rarer to get to use Pierce 2 for 2 dmg.
Deathhammer? Idk how you can look at this combo and not be pissed off that it doesn't work because you lack range. POINT BLANK Shot is obviously not supposed to be hindered by a lack of range. Devs forgot to give the card +1 acc. Disruptor is still a better and better-value weapon, but this is tier 2 so it's pretty good if you wanna house rule it...
DL-44 maybe. Replacing the blue die, it's only 1/6 that you get 0 acc without 2 surge. The best multi-attack attachments (Plasma, Disruption) are not great here. I guess pick 2 out of Tactical, Spread Barrel, Charged Ammo Pack.
DH-17 maybe, although the surge is devalued by already having Pierce 1. If you need cheap, this might be better value than DL-44.
TL;DR of the above: you can make PBS good in certain situations, but you're gonna have to work for it and it's not clear that you should try.
What about DDC Defender? It's the weakest one per individual attack, so someone else should ideally be getting any extra attacks from "command abilities" at least in tier 3. But if you have the support to both move you around and make you recover, getting that triple attack off somewhat consistently is gonna make PBS really pay off. Plasma Cell vs black die is like +0.5 dmg, so a bit better than the exhausts. So this fully kicks in in tier 2, with the main part of it after just 3-4 xp. It might not be better than something like Disruptor+Tactical+Gaffi+HIG with Combat Mastery, but other heroes can provide the late game scaling while you carry the group until then.
To the other options I say: eh. Consider it among your lower-priority options late in the campaign if you end up with a pistol. DDC is the one you might consider making a build around, and even building a team around.
What should the team be? Movement help can come from Fenn, Drokkatta, Ko-Tun, Diala, Tress, but you don't need anything else if you have CT. He can move you next to something and then kill it to trigger Close Quarters, or just move you to set you up for your next activation. With Plastoid in tier 3, he gets really efficient move actions. With Strafing Run, he gets a bunch of extra movement points to deal out. He can make do without Wild Fire until tier 3 because that's when his extra attacks really take off. (Oh, and I assume you're not playing with un-nerfed Pin Them Down; otherwise you might wanna prioritize that.)
The recovery part is trickier, especially with you flying all over the place with Combat Momentum. Absolutely prioritize the side quest if you draw it. Gideon shouldn't get his recovery card until 10xp, although you can play him less OP by nerfing/removing/ignoring Masterstroke. Murne can get her recovery card at 7xp and can help you recover when she's attacked, but both those require you to be within 3 spaces. MHD-19 needs you to be within 2 spaces for Bacta Radiator, or adjacent to give you med cards. There's Bacta Pump, maybe Cybernetic Arm and Enviro to make your rests count... other than that, I guess use surges? For that, there's help from Gideon, Murne (3 spaces), MHD-19 (2 spaces), Ko-Tun (initial loadout, then 2 spaces), tier 3 Power Charger and Supply Pack... and Tactical Display while letting CT have Plasma Cell?
We're nearing the end. Weapons for XP is the (accidental) theme in this one. Can you guess which two heroes remain?
Davith has the best non-support extra attack card in the game, and a side quest reward that can let him double up on that (only if he does 2 attack actions, so being commanded to attack by Gideon/Murne/CT is very helpful). So just follow this guide and give him all your money. But, for the same reason we don't always pick the best heroes or imp class, we can go for an alternative hero build.
How do we make the 3xp weapon work? Depending on move/rest need and whether we get the side quest card, we have 2-4 attacks, and we have a great surge hunger and two attachment slots to fill:
As for equipment we'd love Power Charger, and Supply Pack is very helpful for a good start. Okay, it's not looking so cheap now... but again (see the first post preamble), these two are great pickups for any group and you're just allocating them to the guy who can make the best use of them...
Sources of surge for 2-4 attacks:
Surge need for 2-4 attacks:
That adds up to a 6-12 need with HIG if every attack needs maximum output, and a 4.5-7.17 gain without support and Balanced Hilt. Meaning with 4 attacks, we are almost fully surged without HIG. Tbf, HIG only needs to help on two attacks to be better than Weighted Head or Shock Emitter, and having the reach on 2-4 attacks is very nice - even though you'd love that one "while attacking" surge, which is especially helpful in any round you don't start hidden or don't have a power token. Not an easy call. Depends on what support you have. And on whether anyone else would be pissed that you're hogging both of the non-exhaust melee mods.
After the 9xp for swoop + weapon + yellow die, the other 4xp is a nice allrounder but I don't think the combined benefits really exceed the cost so you'll be fine without it. Blindside (2xp) is a better value for xp card (and the best Radiant Holocron fallback option) at 2.17 dmg for 2 xp, at the cost of 0-2 movement depending on where the enemy is and where you wanna go, and the 1xp cards are fine, and forget about the other 3xp card.
Is B too low? The side mission (Reclassified) is very Imp favoured so it's hard to get the quad attack, and the base kit is not very strong on its own, but even with the xp weapon I think the rest of his xp cards are strong enough to almost justify an A. The problem is that the xp weapon pushes back all his other cards later in the campaign, leaving him with just his base kit and a weapon for a long time. I think 11 xp is the absolute max you can get in each campaign except core, Hoth and Jabba? Meaning you often won't even get to Blindside if you're not dominating the campaign.
If you insist on ravaging the purse, you can put the 2xp attachment and Under-Barrel on the sniper and be an absolute monster, but the 3xp weapon is the main way to play this. One of the top killers and all you need to pay for is 1 attachment? Hell yes. Oh, and you'd love to get the Power Charger and Supply Pack too... and we're pretty strain-heavy so...
Other xp cards:
Sources of surge for 2 attacks:
Surge need:
That's 6.5 out of 7 without support or side quest reward! What can we do with support, then? Hello Under-Barrel. Now we have 5.5 out of 9... but we can accomplish 6 blast + 2 hyperblast + 1 area dmg from Demolish + 1 extra dmg each on two Demolish targets. That's two elite Royal Guards going down without taking a single shot. You thought your evade protected you from my explosions? Ha ha ha!!!