kannot
Clueless newb
Posts: 126
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Post by kannot on May 19, 2019 4:58:26 GMT -5
I haven't played since before they made that change where there's always some chance to dodge no matter what. If that has upset the system, I can't account for that. Prior to that, it was very black and white: if someone in your clan had really high defense, sparring was a fantastic way to raise skills. If noone did, which was usually the case once you got to journeyman weapon skills, sparring was nearly worthless and you would have been better served with the freedom to seek out what few NPCs in the world can still provide training at that point. I don't think they ever changed what off/def actually does, but two years ago or something like that, they made it so that your offense needs to be within a certain range of the target's defense, and vice versa, in order to have a chance to increase off/def, weapon skills and two handed (but dual wield was apparently excempt). Also, some of the new classes start with higher offense than the old guilds did. I know at least enforcer starts higher than warrior did, and raider probably has more than ranger did. They also now start at apprentice weapon skills instead of novice. I was unable to ever surpass journeyman weapons on enforcer. Tried for ages and it just didn't happen. Right out of the gate, I could barely get a miss off anything you can realistically go and fight. By the time I'd trained up parry and defense to the point where I could take on things like gith, tarantulas and mantis, those could no longer dodge me. Well, I could eke out maybe one miss per three tarantulas, but at that point I wasn't even sure I could still gain from them anyway even when I did occasionally miss. I tried joining the Byn, but nobody there could dodge me either and the clan was pretty cucked at the time so I gave up on that as well. On the other hand, I've raised weapons to advanced on miscreants with laughable ease using basic 'rinth NPCs and things like that. Things my enforcers and raiders couldn't even hope to miss at low journeyman. Offense goes up at a rate that depends on how close your class is to "heavy combat," and it just seems that the heavies are at serious risk of getting screwed over by their own offense. You can only bypass this problem if you have someone with really high defense to spar with, and you usually don't. There usually aren't any such characters in the clans that spar. Now that there's always a chance to miss, things may be better or they may not. Depends how lenient the off vs def calculations are; if you're at the point where something can no longer dodge you the normal way, will the "always a small chance" type of dodge even help or will your offense already be too high against their defense to qualify for gains anyway? Couldn't say, but I suspect this feature probably doesn't do much to solve the problem. To really make meaningful progress, you have to miss 5+ times per fight. Also, unless you're heavily exaggerating, the way you described the difficulty of raising skills makes me feel that with the new classes there isn't much of a point to going heavy combat other than for disarm/bash or a variety of multiple weapon skills? Are both of the latter mentioned things super important or are the heavy classes just a pipe dream of starry eyed players hoping they make it long enough to be master weapon skill legends?
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Post by lechuck on May 19, 2019 5:28:56 GMT -5
First off, fuck is with this forum lol nothing is posted here for days and sometimes weeks then suddenly one thread pops up and all the shadowboarders blip in out of nowhere! It's because most of us don't really play actively. Was a time when people thought things would change, but when Nyr and Nergal were dethroned and the in-game situation stayed mostly the same, shadowboarders started to drop off one by one. Now some just glance at the forum once a week, and if there's anything to talk about, they'll chime in for a couple of days and then it's done. Don't know if you were around here a few years ago, but things are nothing like that anymore. Game's pretty much settled at its level and those who aren't at peace with that have fucked off by now. There's more to it than that. For one thing, parry (and shield use, if employed) plays a huge part in combat and having master is a big deal. No classes but the heavies get to master the core combat skills. Brokkr has also revealed that the heavies gain off/def faster, which matches my experience in-game. This ends up being a pretty big deal, because while your weapon skills may get stuck along the way, you can almost always increase offense and defense just by fighting unarmed. Your character may very well end up in a situation where this is the only thing you can do to improve. Disarm and bash are very good to have but can be covered by a 0-karma subclass, so that's not a big concern. Multiple weapon skills is overrated--it helps a bit to have them all, but how many characters get to raise all of them to the point where it matters? It's hard enough to train one, let alone four. In reality, 90% of PvP is done with bludgeoning and piercing weapons, and all the classes that ever have reason to care get both of those at advanced. Dudes with swords aren't the ones who are gonna get you unless you end up in a situation where you're fucked no matter what. I'm quite certain that stat bonuses have changed as well. I've made two enforcers, meaning four total statrolls on the class, and three had AI strength. That tells me they get +2 strength while the old warrior got +1. I cannot overstate how much a point of strength matters; there are several discussions about it around here. I haven't experimented much with raiders or fighters so I don't know what stat adjustments they might have. I'd take a wild guess and say raider gets +1 strength and agility while fighter gets +1 strength and endurance. Neither would hold a candle to +2 strength. Two of the heavies get a pretty solid skill lineup now. Gone are the days where warriors pretty much just got combat skills. Enforcer's master sap/backstab is seriously powerful, and they get climb and okay stealth. Raiders get master archery and most of the necessary wilderness skills. While the light-combat and mixed classes get these higher, a lot of them are perfectly serviceable at advanced. Utility skills in Armageddon pretty much fall into two categories: good enough at advanced (e.g. skinning, hunt, ride) and only good at master (scan, steal, hide). The heavies only really lack the latter. I don't think fighter is worth playing at all, but enforcer and raider are both solid choices if you want to play in their associated environments with an emphasis on raw combat over utility. With the right subclass you can get most of what you need and not miss out on very much, it's mostly gonna come down to specific things like stealth and scan or the non-violent crime skills. A full-fledged warrior with master backstab or archery is a seriously powerful character, especially if you have people to help you with things like poisons. At the end of the day, playing a heavy combat class mostly just means opting out of the stealth meta. You won't get master sneak/hide/scan/steal, but you can cover all the other things that matter and you get to raise combat skills to master. When you really look at the various class skillsets, it all comes down to a small handful of specific ones. If you're comfortable excluding yourself from the stealth game, which is really not as big of a deal as it seems unless you're trying to play some kind of assassin, the heavies come out way ahead of the lights in terms the remaining skill categories.
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Post by shakes on May 19, 2019 17:00:28 GMT -5
I'm always a little disappointed in raider. I don't know what it is about them. I just feel like they ought to be better than they play, based on my paper theorycrafting.
Enforcers have a good niche, but that branching ... ugh ... POORLY thought out.
I've tried a fighter a few times. They seem okay but I have a hard time fitting one into a concept. None of my character ideas are every just 'pure combat'.
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Post by lechuck on May 19, 2019 18:12:57 GMT -5
It's because most of the raider utility skills can be obtained easily via subclasses. Middling hide, sneak, ride, hunt, scan, etc. Not very high in the skill economy. Raider is best paired with a magick subclass for that reason, otherwise you might as well play an enforcer/outdoorsman or something like that.
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Post by shakes on May 19, 2019 18:37:55 GMT -5
That makes sense.
I like my utility/crafters a lot, but the occasion does come around when I want to play a badass.
What's wrong with infiltrator? Your opinion on that one?
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,028
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Post by jkarr on May 19, 2019 19:49:12 GMT -5
I swear I remember something about a recent change where they smoothed it out or something, to address the issue of some kind of false cap. that small chance to miss he mentioned was the new thing added where before it wasnt there and ppl couldnt raise off or def under the new system at all after a certain pt
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Post by lechuck on May 19, 2019 20:04:28 GMT -5
Infiltrator is okay I guess but feels like trash compared to assassin, so it's not very tempting to play one if you've already played succesful assassins in the past. The class masters almost nothing and really doesn't offer much besides the (presumably) highest backstab in the game, which isn't that great when another class can also master it and probably isn't capped far below. With only advanced stealth, you can't afford a sub-optimal agility roll like you could with assassin, so that means you rely on three stats and probably don't get much in the way of bonuses. A backstabber really wants high strength, and it's very uncomfortable to do dangerous things with anything less than very good endurance on a light-combat class, so it's hard to get a satisfying statroll on an infiltrator.
I'm pretty sure infiltrator gets 75 in hide and sneak, which is quite close to master but still underwhelming. Let's say you rolled 17 (EG) agility, that's +15 to stealth. That puts you at 90, which is what an assassin or burglar with average agility would have had. That's pretty unimpressive for a class that's designed wholly around stealth. This isn't scout with its good riding and archery and whatnot, this is a class whose only reason to exist at all is to have the biggest backstab on the block. It feels a bit shitty to play along with that when you can't have total faith in your stealth reliability.
Infiltrator really should have gotten some of the utility skill bonanza that was heaped onto miscreant. It should at the very least be the one that masters hunt, pick and pickmaking. Mastery of the entire criminal sphere shouldn't have been the sole domain of a single class, it should be spread out more so infiltrator didn't feel as lacking. It's a stealthy criminal class that can master literally nothing but a few combat skills while there's another stealthy criminal class that masters literally everything but the combat skills.
Unless you're lusting obsessively after OHK backstabs, infiltrator just hasn't got enough raw value. Look at its wilderness counterpart, the scout:
May prepare a campsite in the wilderness.
Fair recovery from exertion.
Can hitch two mounts at once.
May eventually tame mounts.
...as well as a more readily usable master combat specialization in archery. Even then, scout is a mediocre class as well. The light-combats really lost out in the class revamp, being objectively inferior versions of assassin and ranger whereas all the other new classes got something better than what their old counterparts did. Infiltrator wastes too much of its skill budget on worthless shit like search, peek without steal, and fucking advanced sap which absolutely no infiltrator will ever use under any conceivable circumstances even if the game runs for another twenty years. They couldn't even give the class master sap.
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Post by shakes on May 19, 2019 20:25:48 GMT -5
You have to roll an EG in agility to even have semi-decent stealth?? That's awful.
If you can do so without outing yourself ... can you tell about your favorite guild/subguild combos under the new class system and why you like them? Even if it's just theorycrafting.
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kannot
Clueless newb
Posts: 126
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Post by kannot on May 20, 2019 0:13:05 GMT -5
I swear I remember something about a recent change where they smoothed it out or something, to address the issue of some kind of false cap. that small chance to miss he mentioned was the new thing added where before it wasnt there and ppl couldnt raise off or def under the new system at all after a certain pt Yeah you're right, that's what he was talking about, that clicks.
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Post by lechuck on May 20, 2019 8:30:49 GMT -5
You have to roll an EG in agility to even have semi-decent stealth?? That's awful. Kinda depends how you look at it. In the past when assassins and burglars got 90 hide, how satisfied were people with average agility on those classes? Not very, I can say that much. Nobody with any kind of competition in mind would feel good about putting serious time into an assassin with no agility bonus because it means everyone with master scan will spot you. The stealth of an infiltrator with EG agility is the same as an assassin with average agility. I think it's just barely enough to feel confident that your stealth skills won't fail outright, but if you're playing a class that revolves entirely around backstab (why the hell else would one play infiltrator over miscreant?), the difference between "noone can detect me" and "all miscreants and stalkers can detect me" is fucking enormous. Like it's night and day. You're really unlikely to be able to play out an assassin concept with any lasting success when probably every aide, noble and criminal in the city can spot you with scan because they're all miscreants these days, as are at least one or two soldiers at any given time. "Semi-decent stealth" has no real definition, but to me it means that you feel confident that your stealth skills don't have a chance to fail beyond the omnipresent 1/500 chance. In my experience, that happens around 90. With a class cap of 75 (according to my tests), that puts EG agility (+15) as the minimum. You can then perhaps bump your stealth level up above where master scan with a wisdom penalty will no longer spot you, but then you have to prioritize agility first, making it extremely difficult to get serviceable strength and endurance on a class that presumably has no bonuses to these. Assassin always had the same issue, it was notoriously difficult to get a great statroll with the class, but you weren't quite so desperate to land a top agility roll because your stealth skills capped naturally at 90. In terms of how this compares to other related factors, it's like a class giving +3 agility. Like that's how big the drop is from assassin/burglar to infiltrator. It's like playing an assassin with a permanent -3 agility effect. Still, sometimes nobody in the room hast master scan and then your stealth level doesn't matter as long as you don't fail outright and reveal yourself. Sometimes you can do some impressive shit without optimal skills and stats. It's not that you must have x in hide and sneak in order to be able to do things with an infiltrator, but the drab reality is that if you're playing the character in a way where the stealth skills are really important to your well-being and you don't have optimized stealth, your character has an expiration date. You won't live to see 50 days playing an assassin that can be detected by dozens of PCs in the city. You could probably get off one or two cool kills, but then there'll be people for whom killing you has become a goal, and it's a matter of time until having sub-optimal stealth means you simply die.
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,028
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Post by jkarr on May 20, 2019 9:56:57 GMT -5
You have to roll an EG in agility to even have semi-decent stealth?? That's awful. Kinda depends how you look at it. In the past when assassins and burglars got 90 hide, how satisfied were people with average agility on those classes? Not very, I can say that much. Nobody with any kind of competition in mind would feel good about putting serious time into an assassin with no agility bonus because it means everyone with master scan will spot you. The stealth of an infiltrator with EG agility is the same as an assassin with average agility. I think it's just barely enough to feel confident that your stealth skills won't fail outright, but if you're playing a class that revolves entirely around backstab (why the hell else would one play infiltrator over miscreant?), the difference between "noone can detect me" and "all miscreants and stalkers can detect me" is fucking enormous. Like it's night and day. You're really unlikely to be able to play out an assassin concept with any lasting success when probably every aide, noble and criminal in the city can spot you with scan because they're all miscreants these days, as are at least one or two soldiers at any given time. "Semi-decent stealth" has no real definition, but to me it means that you feel confident that your stealth skills don't have a chance to fail beyond the omnipresent 1/500 chance. In my experience, that happens around 90. With a class cap of 75 (according to my tests), that puts EG agility (+15) as the minimum. You can then perhaps bump your stealth level up above where master scan with a wisdom penalty will no longer spot you, but then you have to prioritize agility first, making it extremely difficult to get serviceable strength and endurance on a class that presumably has no bonuses to these. Assassin always had the same issue, it was notoriously difficult to get a great statroll with the class, but you weren't quite so desperate to land a top agility roll because your stealth skills capped naturally at 90. In terms of how this compares to other related factors, it's like a class giving +3 agility. Like that's how big the drop is from assassin/burglar to infiltrator. It's like playing an assassin with a permanent -3 agility effect. Still, sometimes nobody in the room hast master scan and then your stealth level doesn't matter as long as you don't fail outright and reveal yourself. Sometimes you can do some impressive shit without optimal skills and stats. It's not that you must have x in hide and sneak in order to be able to do things with an infiltrator, but the drab reality is that if you're playing the character in a way where the stealth skills are really important to your well-being and you don't have optimized stealth, your character has an expiration date. You won't live to see 50 days playing an assassin that can be detected by dozens of PCs in the city. You could probably get off one or two cool kills, but then there'll be people for whom killing you has become a goal, and it's a matter of time until having sub-optimal stealth means you simply die. yeah but who gives a fuck if this is all before stealth eq is factored in
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Post by lechuck on May 20, 2019 10:49:50 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure people overrate how much you get out of stealth gear. Since most of it is armor and armor gives penalties to stealth, I don't think it does much more than counteract those penalties. You're a dick if you play a city-based assassin in desert camos, so unless you can get your hands on the veined Guild set, you're pretty much down to the inky black Salarr leathers which are such awful armor that you're basically naked, and doesn't appear to give much +hide anyway. I had a character whose stealth level was just below no-fail so I could move about 20 rooms on average before breaking stealth. I tested it pretty thoroughly. I then got the full inky set and wore it with a 'rinth cloak and footpads, and it made no noticeable difference. Odds are that the whole setup provided maybe +5 at best.
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jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,028
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Post by jkarr on May 20, 2019 11:26:27 GMT -5
Since most of it is armor and armor gives penalties to stealth, I don't think it does much more than counteract those penalties. penalties sure like weight but are u also saying negative mods to specific items the same way they add positive bonuses to stealth gear
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Post by shakes on May 20, 2019 13:19:56 GMT -5
Yeah, I suppose that's the real issue. If you're playing an antagonist where your only safety is the stealth metagame and there's a large subset of people who are codedly able to get better at it than you can ... your days are numbered. You have a good grasp of both the code and the realistic player-based issues going on in the game. In my experience, most of the impressive shit you can pull off falls into the equation of "time spent looking for opportunity + luck". But if you've come up on someone else's radar as a potential target (which is hard not to do in a world where all the coded killers are bored as fuck and looking for a chance to do something) then that equation works against you too. Your time spent becomes exposure to risk.
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kannot
Clueless newb
Posts: 126
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Post by kannot on May 20, 2019 14:31:50 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure people overrate how much you get out of stealth gear. Since most of it is armor and armor gives penalties to stealth, I don't think it does much more than counteract those penalties. You're a dick if you play a city-based assassin in desert camos, so unless you can get your hands on the veined Guild set, you're pretty much down to the inky black Salarr leathers which are such awful armor that you're basically naked, and doesn't appear to give much +hide anyway. I had a character whose stealth level was just below no-fail so I could move about 20 rooms on average before breaking stealth. I tested it pretty thoroughly. I then got the full inky set and wore it with a 'rinth cloak and footpads, and it made no noticeable difference. Odds are that the whole setup provided maybe +5 at best. Was very confused until you said that. DICK IT UP BOYS. Just make sure your character isn't a super-pure "I DIE IN THESE WALLS" types. Idk have him be a celf that gets high off smelling spiders or something (shite, I'd roll that if I didn't just post it). Afaik based on the old items list, something like a black cape (which might not be available now??) gets +10, I assume our other standard cloaks do the same (it pisses me off that there seem to be literally two choices, the dark, hooded one and inky-black one, rinthis gotta start funding custom crafters, someone roll a celf with some glam already fuuck) so with all the camo gear, that is some srs bonus, as far as I can intuit (hard, black, shirt has +5 as far as I can remember). Hopefully this evidently obvious, flaw, requires too much code-dicking for staff to give a shit. Not to mention most people are too decent to wear camos in the city lmao thanksnewbs. I mean, not like I got any karma doing that shite, but they didn't ban me so w/e. Something else to understand is that these bonuses go from having "meh" returns to having "damnnn" returns when you cross the visibility threshold (I like to call this the cunt-elf horizon), there is a pretty kinked curve in the returns to the total hide scores, if you're a sneakeysneak. You're either: 1) Below the hide (max scan)+(max realistic wisbonus)+(random -20,20) roll threshold for SOMEONE to have a CHANCE of seeing you, which means you eventually, definitely, die. Good game, fuck shit up while you can if this is you. Btw I think this roll threshold comes up to 90+5+20=115 2) Above or equal the threshold with your (hide skill)+(bonus)+(stealth_manip/agility bonus) score, congratulations, you're basically invisible, this means that (given that you get unseen bonuses) if you're stealing afair there's a 1/101% times 1/101% (.0098 PERCENT) chance you get DISCOVERED stealing, let's hope you're a funny enough breed to get off the hook when that happens (as rarely as it possibly can). The thing is, in situation 1), compared to 2), the chance of losing that sexy,sexy,sexy +30 unseen bonus to stealing, go from ZERO, to say, one in fourty (if you're at 114 invisibility score, JUST below the elf-cunt horizon, your hide only gets "temporarily overruled" if the random roll is 20)., that's a 1/40 chance you don't get the bonus, let's say BEFORE you were at like a steal chance of [(steal skill=say 90)+(unseen bonus=30, since you're unseen, zero otherwise)+(crowded bonus=25)]*(indoor penalty=.75) amounting to 108, you're rolling 1/101 times 1/101 as before to get DISCOVERED (afair it's just 1/101 for the harmless soft-fail) NOW, being just below the cutoff, there's a 39/40 chance you get the same discovered chance as before, but a 1/40 chance your discovered roll goes 14/101 times 14/101, i.e. 2%, this becomes about .06% In other towards even at the ABSOLUTE MARGIN, that is, going from having 115 to 114 hide+clothingbonus+apparelbonus, increases your probability of HARD-failing in a tavern steal against a max scanner by a factor of .06/.0098 =6.122, You're SIX TIMES as likely to get fucked, just for having ONE point less than the cunt-elf horizon (this specific calc works assuming there's some max-scanner in the room you're fucking with, which is a good bet given those shiney noble daggers you definitely want, or you accidentally fuck with some max-scan stalker, if not this then the kink in returns happens at some different threshold, depending on their scan values, point being the returns to hide bonuses are NOT first differentiable/smooth, every point can count big-time till 115) (Note also that this depends on assuming that there is only one character visibility check before both the soft-fail and hard-fail checks for steals, else the factor would be less than 6)Also, I might have done something wrong tbh because this calc surprised even me, take everything above with a grain of salt because my lucidness is not too giod rn.
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