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Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 2:47 pm
by joss
Elestir wrote:
joss wrote:So, 29 pracs on flee is reasonable imho, if you compare it to escape.
Everyone needs to flee efficiently. Therefore every sane player would max this skill on all his characters, making the need to learn this skill just an annoying waste of time. The only positive on this would be that you would see your knowledge of fleeing skill in the guild.
I was merely comparing escape to flee. But you do agree that flee is overpowered when compared to escape? And that this makes making escape obligatory for thieves rediculous? Its like beating some1 up and then expect gratitude when you stop.

Im an oldtimer that havent played for 5 years or so until a few weeks ago (i tend to decay my chars when staying away so starting over). It seems that sneak is a more efficient quick-hide than i remember so maybe sneak is more overpowered now, i remember entering room of sneaker as autoreveal.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 4:07 pm
by alma
I think Ugurz is overpowered and scouts should be nerfed

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:11 pm
by wiseman
Just fight him in water.

Or is that another orc scout im thinking about?

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:30 pm
by AndrĂ³g
alma wrote:I think Ugurz is overpowered and scouts should be nerfed
All lvl80+ characters are overpowered compared to the regular char. Nothing new in that. And it's certainly not unique to scouts. A mage of Ugurz' level is just as scary. They've put weeks or months of playtime in a character, of course they get one scary beast in return!

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 3:30 pm
by Elestir
joss wrote:I was merely comparing escape to flee. But you do agree that flee is overpowered when compared to escape?
Ok, lets compare flee and escape. Flee is very powerful yes, mostly because it's fast and because it doesn't prevent other commands to be used while fleeing. On the other hand escape is powerful too, because you can specify the direction and you can even escape without leaving a room, which gives you means to escape from noflee rooms. Escape also affects your delay when you are rescued and improves the chance for your bodyguard to intercept the attacks against you. And of course unlike flee, escape preserves your ability to sneak.
joss wrote:And that this makes making escape obligatory for thieves rediculous? Its like beating some1 up and then expect gratitude when you stop.
How does this make escape obligatory for thieves? I can perfectly imagine playing thief even without escape. Yet escape will make thief's life bit easier (especially when exping or pking against less dangerous enemies). In other words, introduction of nosneak changed flee from super-offensive and super-defensive weapon of thief into mostly defensive (no longer super-defensive, because flee now usually removes the possibility to use sneak defensively for couple of seconds; flee+sneak was simply super-overpowered before) and escape allows thief to avoid nosneak, but only against less dangerous enemies, as the risk can be too high otherwise. (maybe little improvement of escape could be added in this respect; something like chances to dodge bash being twice as high while escaping)
joss wrote:It seems that sneak is a more efficient quick-hide than i remember so maybe sneak is more overpowered now, i remember entering room of sneaker as autoreveal.
Sneak always was super-quick hide (in next room), but entering room of sneaker doesn't always result in autoreveal. Sneak %, level of the sneaker and lack of perceptions of the enemy can make him stay unseen even when his room is entered.

One of the solutions could be to slower sneak (harder to sneak through flush) and make it bit more effective (harder to sense/auto-reveal by entry) which would improve its offensive part and reduce defensive part. At the same time impact of PB/DB on actual defense should be improved (to improve thief's chances to fight in melee even without being heavily armored). Nowadays absorb is the key, and it is also one of the reasons why thieves were struck by nosneak this hard, as thieves can't rely on defense as much as they could before anymore, and therefore have to almost always rely on defense provided by sneak.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:40 pm
by Jahara
Elestir wrote:(maybe little improvement of escape could be added in this respect; something like chances to dodge bash being twice as high while escaping)
It would be cool if escape would let you have a higher chance to dodge bashes but still let you hit while you escaped. This would give thieves much more utility rather than being forced to practice bash.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:45 pm
by joss
Hm, started leveling a scout after this discussion. And, quite frankly, this noflee aint too bad. Had escape praced but decayed it, wont get it again since its pretty useless.
The good thing with this change is that it gives me an excuse to only stab and venom and never enter closables. Which is a good thing since it will save me reeq.

Oh, and thanx elestir for taking the time to answer my questions. I still think escape is way too expensive for what value it gives. Ill rely on good old flee which is way better even in its nerfed state. And free!

And no, i dont think escape will ever let you escape from a noflee room in PK at least since every1 will be spamming Kill *orc*. Might save a mobdeath or two thou when exploring. It would be more tactically useful if escape made thief last-entered in the room since this could potentially turn a fight.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:08 pm
by Jahara
Another idea to improve escape is that while escaping your dodge bonus goes up drastically so you avoid more hits as well.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 11:40 am
by bralg
(i posted as joss before)
Well, Bralg mobripped once to bleeding nosneak, in bhsb orc-caves. Actually, wouldnt nosneak work just as well to prevent flee-shoot in pk even if it was even shorter? Now its like 4 or 5 seconds, why not limit it to 2 sec? or 1 even? (I have come to realise that something like nosneak is necessary to prevent overpowered sneak-flee in closables. But wouldnt no-hit/no-off-spell have been more fair since it would affect all classes equally?)
Also, decided to get escape after all (grrrr). It makes xp alot easier and sometimes you just cant afford to lose sneak. Also, allows for some trapping i want to do once i get to pk-level.

Another thing i learned is that warrior-actions reveal you when sneaking these days. This sucks bigtime, imho. Makes for fewer playstyles. But maybe sneak-bash was too powerful? I dont know but i really dont like it. Also, sneak-bash would have been one small way to redeem bears? Oh, well, guess i can live with empty ingrove, just seems such a shame since bears and ingrove are so well made and fit so nicely into game, just that bears are too weak.

Well, it just confirms me in my choice to make a mega-coward backstabbing poisonwhore. Thats obviously what management want us scouts to be so thats what i will do. Also, didnt bother to spend more than 5 pracs or so in dodge, parry, pierce respectively. Will give me the pracs i need for escape, envenom and track. And seriously, what would be the point in getting them high? Management destroyed scout fighting-abilities with new ultralame defence system where any non-abs char is just not viable. Fortunately, i can still stab and poison just as well :D

Also, I notice that hide is seriously nerfed. This scout-hatred is getting rather silly. Better hurry up and level Bralg so i can enjoy backstab before they remove that too.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 8:53 pm
by Timodeus
Jahara wrote:Another idea to improve escape is that while escaping your dodge bonus goes up drastically so you avoid more hits as well.
Seems a better incentive than crippling flee, I think. Shave off some 30% from the max-no-sneak delay + let escape have some impact on dodge...

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:45 pm
by Jahara
Timodeus wrote:
Jahara wrote:Another idea to improve escape is that while escaping your dodge bonus goes up drastically so you avoid more hits as well.
Seems a better incentive than crippling flee, I think. Shave off some 30% from the max-no-sneak delay + let escape have some impact on dodge...
Even shaving off 25% of the downtime from no-sneak would be a huge improvement for pure thieves! Couple that along with say, perhaps a 25db increase while escaping, and we would have some pretty well defended thieves who ought to be able to dodge most bashes and hits.

However, if we do allow the dodge bonus to go up drastically, what effects would that have on multi-classed characters such as defense warriors? If they then practice escape and then constantly use the skill to only cancel at the last second they would then rarely get hit (but also never do any damage). Then again, if they do manage to escape then they aren't a very good tank since their squishies would get hit :twisted:

Another concept that I just came up with is allowing thieves to continue attacking while they are escaping. Essentially a form of hit-flee, but now hit-escape. This would allow thieves to do their sneak+attack tactic that they used to do before the sneak changes.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 3:33 pm
by Timodeus
Jahara wrote:and we would have some pretty well defended thieves who ought to be able to dodge most bashes and hits.
Urks... do we want that? ;)
Another concept that I just came up with is allowing thieves to continue attacking while they are escaping. Essentially a form of hit-flee, but now hit-escape. This would allow thieves to do their sneak+attack tactic that they used to do before the sneak changes.
You know, that idea would "fix" thieves, but I think it might unbalance them in the other direction - which also is not good.

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 6:17 pm
by Elestir
I think we will all agree that thieves need an improvement in skills that matter for the actual combat. On the other hand from my recent experience, there are still thieves who will simply sneak through your spam flush, which is simply wrong.

So how about:
  • improve missile (make it actually work well even without sneak, maybe reinstate the defense while shooting to some extent)
  • improve escape (make it change room order, for more details, search for the earlier post of mine about it)
  • improve search/reveal/flush vs sneaking (and vs not well hidden) targets
  • use dynamic sneak delay based on terrain and number of (aggressive?/all?) mobiles (and/or their awareness levels) in room (making it harder to sneak out of crowded room unnoticed)

Re: Scout changes - ideas

Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 1:44 pm
by bralg
Elestir wrote:I think we will all agree that thieves need an improvement in skills that matter for the actual combat.
I guess, just I stopped playing thieves as a melee-class. I play thieves as casters with just 2 spells (stab and shoot) and 2 inherent abilities (sneak and envenom). So, dodge, parry and pierce come very far down on my list of priorities. I love pierce and attack but would only use it seriously on a warrior, not a thief.
On the other hand from my recent experience, there are still thieves who will simply sneak through your spam flush, which is simply wrong.
I believe you and agree.
So how about:
  • improve missile (make it actually work well even without sneak, maybe reinstate the defense while shooting to some extent)
Dont know, i always found it odd that some1 could shoot a warrior down while he is charging with a huge melee weapon. Shoot has an impossibly fast cooldown. Which is necessary for making it useful but if thieves could dodge at the same time, well, might break mume combat, no? Still, makes sense maybe with the new non-absolute defence-system?
[*]improve escape (make it change room order, for more details, search for the earlier post of mine about it)
Yes, I agree and it would have been megacool before the flee-nosneak change since you could have pracced escape on the sly as it were and surprised some1 who thought he had you trapped with mobs :) But not sure it is enough now when escape is very common to have pracced. Its rather rare that changed roomorder gives advantage.
[*]improve search/reveal/flush vs sneaking (and vs not well hidden) targets
In my very limited experience with Bralg, hide is completely nerfed. Any fool mage can kill thoro hide amazingly quickly without spending more than 1 prac in search. Silly, imho.
[*]use dynamic sneak delay based on terrain and number of (aggressive?/all?) mobiles (and/or their awareness levels) in room (making it harder to sneak out of crowded room unnoticed)[/list]
Seems alot of work for uncertain result. Must be a simpler way to make spamflush dependable. And that is not such a huge hassle to thieves who are not being flushed. You know that management hates thieves, give them a complicated task like that and they gonna break the class once and for all just by general racism and bias.