Post by lechuck on Jul 10, 2020 13:53:52 GMT -5
In a thread about the stealth meta on the GDB, Triste said:
Lastly forreal, note that the stat bonus for scan in the code comes from wisdom. Y'all joke about dumping wis as a stat and complain about scan being broken at the same time? SMH
The reason people joke about wisdom is because its perception bonus is pathetic compared to agility's stealth bonus. Here are the ranges for humans:
So a human needs 16 wisdom, the upper end of very good, to hit the first perception bonus of +5. They need exceptional wisdom to get +10. Dwarves and (contrary to popular belief) half-elves have even worse wisdom, basically two points lower than humans, so they need extremely good wisdom to get +5 and AI to get +10 perception. Meanwhile, every miscreant and stalker who prioritizes agility is practically guaranteed +25 to stealth. An elf gets +40 to stealth with the same level of agility, and while they also get higher wisdom than humans - my guess is 2 or 3 more points - they probably also cap out on +10 because it takes 22 wisdom to hit +15 which is probably exceptional for elves, and rolling exceptional wisdom is nowhere near as trivial as agility since classes get bonuses to that stat.
Knowing these numbers, it's pretty easy to see why people have given up on trying to use wisdom to counter stealth. While I've already explained this in another thread, I might as well reiterate the mechanics that go into stealth detection:
Whenever you hide, you have a 'hide power' of your hide skill plus your agility bonus plus +hide equipment if any. Hide is very easy to max out and caps at 90 for miscreant/stalker, 75 for scout/infiltrator, and 60 for raider/enforcer. As such, even without any +hide items, a human miscreant with 19 agility has a hide power of 115. If it's an elf, it's 130. Things like crowd/foliage don't give a bonus to hide power, they only affect your chance to succesfully hide.
When you have scan active, every roll of scan (when you look or try to target a shadow/blur) has a 'scan power' of your scan skill plus your wisdom bonus plus a random value between -20 and +20. Scan seems to cap at the same levels as hide for the same classes, i.e. 90/75/60. A human miscreant with extremely good wisdom has a scan power of up to 115 at the very top end of that roll (90+5+20), which happens 1 in 40 times, i.e. when the random roll between -20 and +20 comes out +20. He has a 2.5% chance to spot his agile counterpart. If the hidden party is an elf, 0% chance. If the hidden human miscreant has just +1 to hide from equipment, his hide power becomes 116 and the scanner with extremely good wisdom no longer has a chance to spot him at all.
Meanwhile, wisdom imparts its first penalty to perception at... 6. I think only half-giants can get it that low, human poor is 7 and dwarf poor is 8 (their ceiling is lower and their floor is higher) so using wisdom as your dump stat costs you practically nothing. It'll make your skill timers long as fuck, but since the only skills that are difficult to raise are combat ones and they're bottlenecked not by time but by access to failures, this is of little consequence once you get to the plateau point around journeyman. You would need on-demand all-day access to a very skilled sparring partner in order for your skill timers to be relevant. It really doesn't matter whether your combat timer is 1 or 3 hours if you're lucky to get one weapon skillgain per RL day, which is the situation practically all combat characters end up at around the halfway point.
As such, wisdom is a borderline worthless stat unless you can get 19+ of it. Since the classes with master scan presumably don't get a bonus to wisdom, it isn't even worth trying to prioritize the stat. Getting +5 to perception is kind of nice, but a 2.5% chance to spot human stalkers and miscreants is not worth saddling yourself with garbage stats by prioritizing wisdom. If you happen to land 16 wisdom as your third priority, hey, neat. Never go out of your way to get it. Back when merchants got master scan and had no real use for physical stats, they could prioritize wisdom and get something out of it. Would you really prioritize wisdom on a stalker and end up with very good agility, above average strength and average endurance? Does that sound like a worthwhile tradeoff for a tiny chance to spot stalkers/miscreants who aren't wearing stealth gear? I certainly wouldn't go for that.
The new classes are very formulaic in their skillcaps. Most of them follow a 90/75/60 scheme, with a few notable exceptions that don't include the stealth skills. A human enforcer, even if he should roll 19 agility, has a hide power of 85. He will be easy to spot with master scan, and with the classes whose advanced scan is 75. A raider scanning for an enforcer faces the exact same issue as the stalker scanning for a miscreant. This means that even crossing the class spectrum, wisdom doesn't really help. If we take an infiltrator with 75 in scan, he will easily spot raiders and enforcers regardless of wisdom, but will never spot a miscreant/stalker.
Here are the natural caps of hide power for classes assuming 19 agility for humans and 25 for elves (both exceptional):
Human enforcer/raider: 85
Human infiltrator/scout: 100
Human miscreant/stalker: 115
Elf enforcer/raider: 100
Elf infiltrator/scout: 115
Elf miscreant/stalker: 130
Scan power at 0, +5 and +10 perception:
Raider: 40-80 / 45-85 / 50-90
Infiltrator/scout: 55-95 / 60-100 / 65-105
Stalker/miscreant: 70-110 / 75-115 / 80-120
I have no idea about the relative stealth/scan caps of classes like adventurer and pilferer, or the subclasses. They don't really matter, who cares if an adventurer spots you? Are you going to rely on stealth with your fighter/rogue? These aren't really part of the "stealth meta."
Lastly forreal, note that the stat bonus for scan in the code comes from wisdom. Y'all joke about dumping wis as a stat and complain about scan being broken at the same time? SMH
The reason people joke about wisdom is because its perception bonus is pathetic compared to agility's stealth bonus. Here are the ranges for humans:
Agility Level Stealth bonus
13 A. Avg +5
14 Good +5
15 Good +5
16 V. Good +10
17 E. Good +15
18 Excep +20
19 Excep +25
20 A. Incred +25
Wisdom Level Perception bonus
13 A. Avg +0
14 Good +0
15 V. Good +0
16 V. Good +5
17 E. Good +5
18 E. Good +5
19 Excep +10
20 Excep +10
21 A. Incred +10
So a human needs 16 wisdom, the upper end of very good, to hit the first perception bonus of +5. They need exceptional wisdom to get +10. Dwarves and (contrary to popular belief) half-elves have even worse wisdom, basically two points lower than humans, so they need extremely good wisdom to get +5 and AI to get +10 perception. Meanwhile, every miscreant and stalker who prioritizes agility is practically guaranteed +25 to stealth. An elf gets +40 to stealth with the same level of agility, and while they also get higher wisdom than humans - my guess is 2 or 3 more points - they probably also cap out on +10 because it takes 22 wisdom to hit +15 which is probably exceptional for elves, and rolling exceptional wisdom is nowhere near as trivial as agility since classes get bonuses to that stat.
Knowing these numbers, it's pretty easy to see why people have given up on trying to use wisdom to counter stealth. While I've already explained this in another thread, I might as well reiterate the mechanics that go into stealth detection:
Whenever you hide, you have a 'hide power' of your hide skill plus your agility bonus plus +hide equipment if any. Hide is very easy to max out and caps at 90 for miscreant/stalker, 75 for scout/infiltrator, and 60 for raider/enforcer. As such, even without any +hide items, a human miscreant with 19 agility has a hide power of 115. If it's an elf, it's 130. Things like crowd/foliage don't give a bonus to hide power, they only affect your chance to succesfully hide.
When you have scan active, every roll of scan (when you look or try to target a shadow/blur) has a 'scan power' of your scan skill plus your wisdom bonus plus a random value between -20 and +20. Scan seems to cap at the same levels as hide for the same classes, i.e. 90/75/60. A human miscreant with extremely good wisdom has a scan power of up to 115 at the very top end of that roll (90+5+20), which happens 1 in 40 times, i.e. when the random roll between -20 and +20 comes out +20. He has a 2.5% chance to spot his agile counterpart. If the hidden party is an elf, 0% chance. If the hidden human miscreant has just +1 to hide from equipment, his hide power becomes 116 and the scanner with extremely good wisdom no longer has a chance to spot him at all.
Meanwhile, wisdom imparts its first penalty to perception at... 6. I think only half-giants can get it that low, human poor is 7 and dwarf poor is 8 (their ceiling is lower and their floor is higher) so using wisdom as your dump stat costs you practically nothing. It'll make your skill timers long as fuck, but since the only skills that are difficult to raise are combat ones and they're bottlenecked not by time but by access to failures, this is of little consequence once you get to the plateau point around journeyman. You would need on-demand all-day access to a very skilled sparring partner in order for your skill timers to be relevant. It really doesn't matter whether your combat timer is 1 or 3 hours if you're lucky to get one weapon skillgain per RL day, which is the situation practically all combat characters end up at around the halfway point.
As such, wisdom is a borderline worthless stat unless you can get 19+ of it. Since the classes with master scan presumably don't get a bonus to wisdom, it isn't even worth trying to prioritize the stat. Getting +5 to perception is kind of nice, but a 2.5% chance to spot human stalkers and miscreants is not worth saddling yourself with garbage stats by prioritizing wisdom. If you happen to land 16 wisdom as your third priority, hey, neat. Never go out of your way to get it. Back when merchants got master scan and had no real use for physical stats, they could prioritize wisdom and get something out of it. Would you really prioritize wisdom on a stalker and end up with very good agility, above average strength and average endurance? Does that sound like a worthwhile tradeoff for a tiny chance to spot stalkers/miscreants who aren't wearing stealth gear? I certainly wouldn't go for that.
The new classes are very formulaic in their skillcaps. Most of them follow a 90/75/60 scheme, with a few notable exceptions that don't include the stealth skills. A human enforcer, even if he should roll 19 agility, has a hide power of 85. He will be easy to spot with master scan, and with the classes whose advanced scan is 75. A raider scanning for an enforcer faces the exact same issue as the stalker scanning for a miscreant. This means that even crossing the class spectrum, wisdom doesn't really help. If we take an infiltrator with 75 in scan, he will easily spot raiders and enforcers regardless of wisdom, but will never spot a miscreant/stalker.
Here are the natural caps of hide power for classes assuming 19 agility for humans and 25 for elves (both exceptional):
Human enforcer/raider: 85
Human infiltrator/scout: 100
Human miscreant/stalker: 115
Elf enforcer/raider: 100
Elf infiltrator/scout: 115
Elf miscreant/stalker: 130
Scan power at 0, +5 and +10 perception:
Raider: 40-80 / 45-85 / 50-90
Infiltrator/scout: 55-95 / 60-100 / 65-105
Stalker/miscreant: 70-110 / 75-115 / 80-120
I have no idea about the relative stealth/scan caps of classes like adventurer and pilferer, or the subclasses. They don't really matter, who cares if an adventurer spots you? Are you going to rely on stealth with your fighter/rogue? These aren't really part of the "stealth meta."