New Defensive Skills Feedback

[Zen]

Just did fireplane. Tankage vs Imix rocked. Against a single mob, warriors are now quite buff, but hitting is suffering. It's disheartening to see a zone group with 5 melee types and they all land at best, 2 hits around. Miss rate is very high, as is mob dodge.

-Zen

[Dhurn]

First of all, let me just say that I am not a fan of the new system as it is currently set up. While it may be great for doing single mob fights, where you have an entire group of 15 ppl behind you healing you, stoning you, etc. I cannot for the life of me understand how players are ever going to survive thru say the second gatehouse in Jot during invasion without tons of area damage.....

But I am even finding that as a solo warrior, I am now being nickel and dimed to death by mobs that I previously could solo without problems due in large part to the new defense system. This is due to the codes inability to check beyond a single partial shieldblock to the next tier of skill use. So as the code is currently written....once one of yer skills is even partially successful..it stops checking to see if you COULD have possible fully parried or dodged the blow. To me this is very very wrong. So i have just partially deflected the blow with my shield and now...I am just going to stand there and take half damage (or whatever partial damage is) without ever attempting to parry or dodge the blow further.

To test this theory, I played with my troll in HP for the past couple of days. In a fight with the secretary, I partially blocked and parried a couple of hundred times....taking hundreds upon hundreds of hp of damage....but only dodged two to four times per combat. Now I am not saying that dodge isnt working ....it is...but you have to first get your shieldb and parry degraded to the point of uselessness first in order to get it to kick in and I guess my question is ....WHY? Why is it that my troll warrior (who has his highest agil notch) cannot manage to dodge a partially parried blow. As a matter of fact I only really got my dodge to kick in when i went after multiple warrior mobs in the same room....which wasnt a good thing for me because then i was bashed a fair amt.

As for mobs dodging, I agree it is too high. I was getting dodged by about 50 % of my attacks......until I gave the mobs a weapon....suddenly they were only getting partial deflections and were now taking damage a lot more...until they fumbled them and went back to dodging about 50 %. Something about this seems wrong to me too, mobs shouldnt take more damage because they can now access another skill....anymore than players should.

But for now, I think I am gonna continue to test this system out a bit more and leave the adventuring to others.....after all what fun will it be to get sent to my grave by a partially shieldblocked blow from the dracolich.

Btw, of course Rampager got owned....one mob against how many?.....he never stood a chance.


I'm sorry if this sounds like a flamefest, but I really have spent a fair amt of time solo ptesting this and if I am wrong on any of these points, I would like to know about them. I am tired of having somebody say "So what do you think of the new changes?" and shortly thereafter go invis on me or ignore me. I have been a warrior around these parts for an awfully long time and was overjoyed back when we got made into primary tanks again.....but I do not look forward to hitting a avernus deathsquad now with their ability to summon reinforcements or to try BC anytime soon or even Jot second gatehouse without a lotta firepower behind us or massive amts of tanks beside me.

- Dhurn Shadowforge -=THUG=-
- Dargur da AntiDorf

[Pheten]

Everything dhurn just said!
No one I know better to consult on the matter than the dorf, and from my own testing with mounted combat everything he said holds true.
-The dismounted rider.

[Nokie]

This is what it feels like fighting higher-level mobs now!



(for the uninitiated, they dodge so much it reminds me of the 'agents' from Matrix dodging bullets.)

[Sarell]

Been playing around with hitting a bit. Agree with nokie, the mobs dodging rate is absurd. I hit less than half of my attacks with an awesome hitroll. Also, the mobs riposting off my circles and crits has really got to stop. They also seem to crit so much that my hasted rogue requires more healing than the tank *peer*. Mobs defense needs a slight tune down, hitters, not tanks, are far worse off than before.

Now for tanking, agree Dhurn. I think the tapering off of warriors defense skills is too fast. While taking one or two tanks into a zone isn't the ideal where slaughter is concerned it should be doable with the best tanks.

[Shevarash]

All feedback much appreciated. Lots of updates and fixes coming soon. :)

[Hyldryn]

2 things:

1) I have yet to learn something new about the Defense skill.

2) The new tanking reduces displace significantly, because before successful parry/dodges/sb wouldnt chip at the displace duration. Now, displace is constantly chipped due to the reordered defense code.

[Treladian]

I've definately seen defense notching on my little anti. It's the other defensive skills that aren't notching right now with the new code.

[Dlur]

In 7 levels for my paladin I've had the defense skill notch numerous times, but other than that have only had parry notch once. I've yet to notch mounted combat since the changes went in other than by practicing it in my guild.

So much for having decent skills. I think with the way it is now I'd have a better time of trying to master bandage than get any of my defensive skills up to a decent level for my level.

[Dlur]

From the perspective of a level 36 paladin the new changes made great headway with fixing the major problems that the new defensive code created. I'm not sure how this all affects high level characters fighting groups of mobs like 2nd gatehouse or a manscorp squad yet, but for doing exp it seems much better.

The only problem I still see is with the skill gains. In the time I tested I learned 2h slashing twice, 1h slashing 3x, offense 1x, and double attack 1x. During all the time I learned parry 1x, and no other defensive skills, not even defense, nor mounted combat, which at the time is one of my lowest skills (even lower than rescue) but I have been using it an awful lot, I just seem totally unable to learn the skill other than at my guild.

[Shevarash]

Thanks for the feedback Dlur, I'll look into the skill gains some more.

Is anyone else having this problem? Anyone else have feedback? You tank types sure are quiet! :)

[thanuk]

Anyone else have feedback? You tank types sure are quiet! :)

Well shev, im still having the same problems i had in my previous post. Mage mobs are kicking the shit out of me. The black magician in the tower often hits me for 100-250 damage per attack, not including vamp touch at the beginning, while i have -100 ac and armor on top of that. I mean seriously, he cons lucky punk so he's what like level 52, and is a straight mage mob, and yet he hits just as hard as the warrior mobs at the same level and casts on top of that. It eats away at our defensive skills, but again our PC mages have no such effect on mobs that are tanking, even if they are engaged. Since most of the discussions about warrior skills and such always end up in "Well if you get it the mobs get it to", so then i gotta ask, if our mages can't hit a damn thing, and do almost 0 damage when they do rarely land an attack, why is it that mage mobs that are not multiclassed hit for 100's of damage, and land attacks on -100 ac on a regular basis?

I don't know, maybe they should hit that hard. But they definately shouldn't hit warriors that hard, as we should abuse mages in hand to hand combat, and they shouldn't really be able to hit us at all. That is their trade off for getting all those narsty spells and such. It's also eating away our defensive skills when fighting multiple mobs and some of them are mages, they are wasting defensive skill checks that get exhausted before the mob melee even gets a chance to attack. Maybe you could look into lowering the rate at which our skills degrade, and also mage and cleric classed mobs hitroll? Im still liking the changes, although i can't really say i consider them an upgrade at this point, because im getting hit more often, harder, and am landing less attacks, but i guess since other non-warrior types can't really tank at all anymore, its an upgrade by default.

You still rule tho, shev:)

[Dlur]

Here are my skill gains from non-stop killing of mobs that con Lucky Punk while solo, mounted, and wielding an ebony longsword with -100 AC.

Dranthar learned 1h slashing at 10:12 am
Dranthar learned double attack at 10:22 am
Dranthar learned 1h slashing at 10:39 am
***Slight break in action due to being at work
Dranthar learned 1h slashing at 10:54 am
Dranthar learned parry at 11:10 am
Dranthar learned double attack at 11:17 am
Dranthar learned parry at 11:32 am
Dranthar learned 1h slashing at 11:39 am
Dranthar learned 1h slashing at 11:48 am
Dranthar learned offense at 11:58 am
Dranthar learned 1h slashing at 12:12 pm


Notice I learned only 2 defensive skills that entire time, and they were parry both times, even though I am fighting while mounted. My mounted combat skill is pathetic atm, at a 46 skill level, while my parry is already at 70.

I think what's happening here, at least for paladins/antis is that parry is always being checked before mounted combat, even though mounted combat is a skill more in tune with these two classes and perhaps should be checked against first. I mean sure it's cool that parry checks first, because that increases the chance of riposte, but in all reality it'd be better if mounted combat were checked against first.

I can say that the checking of full blocking first before checking for partial blocks is working much better. Also with the last changes I'm able to hit mobs more and don't seem to be getting dodged nearly as often. Haven't tested this in high level zones though.

Also what Thanuk says seems to be true, I think cleric/mage mobs are hitting more often and seemingly harder now as well. That's fine if it's a multi-class mob, then it should hit like a truck, but a straight cleric or mage mob shouldn't be able to even touch a warrior that's at -100 AC except on the odd crit or really lucky roll. They also shouldn't do insane amounts of damage per hit like warriors do either.

I'll keep updating with more skill gains as I have time to smite stuff.

[Gontak]

I don't think the defense skill is notching as it should. I would assume that the max defense skill for warrs is 99. Mine is 84 - where it was set when the changes went in. I have done almost an entire level of exp (lvls 46-47) since the changes - with me as the tank the entire time - and I haven't seen my defense skill notch once. My offense skill and other offensive skills notched.. but defensive skills have not.

bash, double attack, parry, shieldblock all 93
offense, 1hblud, 1hslash all 94
riposte 91
defense 84 ?

I assumed that for warriors the defense skill would keep pace with the offense skill. Is that the case?

[Hyldryn]

max defense appears to be 90

[thanuk]

The defense skill was set to the maximum for your level when it was implemented. I got it at 90 because im level 50, if you were level 49 you got it at 87 or so, etc etc. You got it at 84 because that is the cap for your level, so it wont be able to notch until you have leveled.

[Dlur]

Finally notched mounted combat from 46 to 47 after fighting nearly non-stop from 9am this morning until 1:45pm. This is the 2nd time I've notched this skill since the defensive changes went in. I've notched parry numerous times, along with the defense skill itself.

[Jegzed]

I notice that soloing-exp as a troll warrior is much much harder now...

Just cause I simply can't keep up with damaging the mobs anymore.

[thanuk]

After adventuring into avernus twice in the passed week, it has changed my perspective of these new changes greatly. I am getting my ass kicked out there, and i mean a serious beatdown. Here's some of the reasons i think that is so:

1. Defensive skill degrading over the round has lowered the effectiveness of defensive skills more than the other changes have raised them.

-- The number of attacks i block from defensive skills has gone down a ton. My problem is that i can't tell if you wanted this to happen or not. I think that you did, but i dont think you understand how much less our defensive skills are checking. After 5 or 6 attacks check, i hardly ever see another one. So thats 2 uses of each defensive skill each round, and alot of those have become partial blocks instead of full blocks, nickel and diming my hps away from me. I easily hit twice that mark pre-changes, and still took significant damage when checking 12 attacks completely, with better defensive spells. Tanks are dropping like flies...theres no time to share the workload because the original tank goes to pretty hurt the round after he enters, rescuing him is going to kill him by lagging him a round.

2. The lowered effectiveness of defensive spells has not been compensated enough by skill usage.

--Very related to #1. Pre-changes, you went in spelled up, didn't get hit until displace/blur fell, and then you got the shit kicked out of you. Now, you enter with full spells, get the shit kicked out of you, and when the spells fall, you get the shit kicked out of you even worse. The changes that were supposed to make melee hit mobs better arent effective, because it requires so many melee attacks to make a difference that it cancels itself out. All mobs, unlike PCs, attack a target and land their attacks with amazing effectiveness, so the only melee damage that got upgraded was mob melee. I attribute alot of this to how powerful melee attacks are from mage classed mobs, but it also stems from the fact that mobs move in big groups now, and often have more melee attackers with them then PC groups do. In the particular case of Avernus, you get demons that summon lesser demons, so the attacks really pile up. You waste all your defensive skills checking against the 3 level 40 lesser demons attacking you, so by the time the greater demon gets around to swinging at you, your defensive skills are exhausted and he lands every shot. This equals swift death.

3. Warriors are now more dependent on spellcasters than ever.

--Because the lowered effectiveness of spells isn't compensated enough by skill usage, we take more damage with full protection spells, and eat through protection spells faster. Mobs land more attacks through blur and displace, our defensive skills are exhausted earlier, stone/scale gets chipped away faster. We need to be healed and re-spelled more often, and still take a load of damage when spells are all up. If they all drop at the same time, you die. This is what I was hoping to get away from.

Nobody likes a Negative Nancy. I have noticed some very positive effects of the changes as well, i'll list them so we can keep perspective.

1. Bash is no longer instant death. You don't get slaughtered the second you get bashed, you will still get hurt, but you will live long enough to stand up again.

2. Casters tank like shit now. A cleric is no longer an acceptable substitute for a warrior tanking, which is the way it should be.

3. Warrior PCs dont get slaughtered by warrior mobs of the same level as quickly. I can fight a level 50 warrior one on one without spells, and get him to small wounds before i have to flee instead of few scratches.

I hope this doesn't come off like bitching, although to some people it inevitably will. I know your doing alot of work on this Shev, and us melee types appreciate your effort to try and bring us up to par with the casters, so thanks for putting in the time. I hope this gives you some insight as to the effects of the recent changes, because the more I tank the more i start to think that the benefits of these changes are all showing up on the mob side of the fight, and the negative impact of them is showing up on the PC side of the fight. Or is that what was supposed to happen? If so, it worked:)

[Dlur]

Actually had a chance to test the changes in a group last night. We did ET. Strond (50 dwarf warrior) and myself (43 barb warrior) were the tanks. Strond was main tank and I was backup. On the guard fights where there are 4-6 warrior mobs, and 3 caster mobs we were getting owned. This is mainly due to Strond having to stay reduced in order to not get bashed, and therefore we lost a basher so were having to rely on stuns and ranger bash (eep!) in order to keep all 3 casters some-what down. This meant that since I was bashing, I was unable to keep mobs off casters, and Strond was left to tank, for the majority of fights, all the mobs. As soon as dragonscales dropped Strond was getting owned for close to 800hps per round due to amount of mobs he was tanking.

Basically nothing's changed in the high level game, if anything it's harder now for warriors to tank a room full of mobs, even if you have multiple warriors trying to split the tanking load, you're still getting owned. The only good effect I've seen from these changes in groups so far is that casters can't tank effectively anymore at all. Basically now warriors are tanking about as well as clerics were before the changes.

Displace, with its now lowered duration, is dropping faster than an illusionist's chant time on it, so it's next to impossible for 1 illusionist to keep two tanks displaced, much less the group.

Also now in any zone where there are multiple mobs to be tanked, and that group of mobs includes casters to be bashed or shield-punched (hahaahahahahaha), you're going to need a basher for each caster, and 1 tank for every 4-5 mobs. In a room like scorps king you're going to need to have about 4 tanks now to do the fight effectively.

All said I do like some things about the changes, but overall I think they still need a lot of work. Keep how casters can't tank for nothing now(even if that means more casters will die), and keep partial deflections (even if they do eat us up nearly as bad as regular hits). Seriously rethink how few hits it takes to wear down a PC's defenses, seriously rethink how often mobs dodge, adjust how many mobs 1 tank can be tanking without getting totally owned, and please take a look at how slowly defensive skills notch now (especially since going to skeletons is worthless now for defensive skills).

[rylan]

Personally I don't like how clerics dodge defensive skill means nothing now. I can certainyl understand how mages and stuff should tank really poorly, but I thought there was a lot of effort to try to show that clerics could at least hold their own in hand to hand combat, hence the higher dodge skill, bludgeon, and addition of offense that other casters and even druids/shaman don't get.

[Snurgt]

Is it my imagination or is melee damage even more downgraded than before these changes?

I dun get it.

[rylan]

It is inadvertently lower because mob dodge/defensive rate still looks too high.

[Jegzed]

In a room like scorps king you're going to need to have about 4 tanks now to do the fight effectively.

This saturday, we did Manscorps King fight and Dracolich in MD nodeaths all one run-fights with just two tanks.

[Kifle]

< 690h/690H 112v/113V >
< P: std >
backstab noble
An effreeti noble partially deflect Koromar's lunge at him.
Koromar barely slashes an effreeti noble.

< 690h/690H 112v/113V >
< P: std >
Fotex completes his spell...
Fotex utters the words, 'gruuibax sahhzfi'
Fotex creates a swirling rainbow pattern in front of an effreeti noble, who is oblivious!
Salira starts casting an offensive spell.

< 690h/690H 112v/113V >
< P: std > An effreeti noble deflects your blow, and strikes back at YOU!
An effreeti noble misses you with his pierce.
You barely pierce an effreeti noble.

< 690h/690H 112v/113V >
< T: Kifle TC: excellent E: effreeti EC: few scratches P: std >
Seln assists Kroth heroically.
Soroth starts casting an offensive spell.

< 690h/690H 113v/113V >
< T: Kifle TC: excellent E: effreeti EC: few scratches P: std >



Ok, I understand the logic behind some of the defense skill tweaks, but riposting a backstab? come on now. I didn't land a single backstab the entire brass trip. Tack this on to mobs dodging procs, and you have an even more useless group of classes than before. Get back to your cage and fix this, old man.

[Kifle]

Oh, forgot to mention something that has bugged me forever...make it to where morted mobs and mobs that have been para'd !fail backstab and !fail hit...or at least !defense skills. There is no way in hell a mob will be able to dodge my 50th lvl masterd backstab when it can't move.

[Crumar]

Did ET last night, took 3 tanks including myself which was a total of 4. Hildibble, Vahok, Mitharx and myself thats 4 50 level warriors right there. We did decently at all the fights, no deaths except for when I lured once. Anyway we get into last grid where there was tons of elementals, and fully spelt I got stomped on. I think nine or so large elementals walked in on us and maybe two small ones. Even with the tanks rescuing me like mad we all noticed that we were getting our butts kicked and a few times two tanks were at pretty hurt in almost a round of fighting.

If it wasnt for four tanks and some decent healers in the group we probably would have spanked. The mobs were very hard to kill melee wise, we kept missing a lot, and the casters had to mem out at least a dozen times. After I died it took them another 5 min before every elemental died in that room. That was a total of about 10 min non stop fighting. Lucky it was only myself that died, and this was in part because most of the mobs were on me and my spells started to drop. Dunno if you guys intended for us leaders to bring 4 tanks to every zone now. I think its safe to say that 3 at least is needed to minimize the risk of group spank even on a fairly easy zone like ET.

As others like Thanuk and Dlur stated, things are much harder now and we must rely on casters heavily in order to tank multiple mobs. My skills hardly go off anymore, repost never hits, shieldblock is decent but not like where it used to be, and I have skills fully notched. As Kavik and I discussed this, if it remains as is now, all the new warriors that create charaters will not be on par with the older characters that were created before this system was put in. A level 50 warrior in the new system will not compare to a level 40 warrior who created way back. It will take them way longer to notch skills now. The notches are not happening fast enough for them so they get stuck with crapy skills as they get higher level.

I think that this system is a good idea overall, it just needs to be tweaked a bit. I like the fact that warriors have to share a bit of the workload. But we should be able to survive at least a few rounds when tanking a lot of mobs so that we could get healed and or flee if we have to. I wish I had logged the above fight. I swear I went from 1200 hp to 200 in one round before I finally died the next round as my spells fell. Just doesn't seem right. At least before I would have known I was about to die and act accordingly. After I blinked I knew I was dead. As I saw my hp drop I just sat back and watched the sojourn death screen flash me a few times. Because I knew no matter what I did in that split second nothing would have happend. No healing, no spells would have saved me. Hope this helps you a bit. If you need more imput just send me a tell in game as I tend not to look at BBS to often, thanks.

Crumar.

[Hyldryn]

I still think that skills should be checked first and then AC. This would help address some of the issues we're having.

1) It will help with skill notching. Skills dont fire often at all because the hit must first go past AC. Dodge which happens after AC, parry, AND, shieldblock is particularly difficult to notch. And ripostes are a pain to notch as well. I shudder at the thought of leveling a new tank under these current conditions.

2) Riposte. I know this is not an important skill, but it WAS one of those minor things that made a tank class enjoyable. PCs pretty much never riposte if they are tanking to survive (meaning high AC w/ blur). Even without blur and good AC ripostes happen infrequently.

Note: This point has a possibly unintentional side issue. This has helped casters become a little bit safer/more lazy. Riposte frequency on casters who are not decked out with +Hit has dropped to a negligible frequency. No casters can assist away. Hitters on the other hand still face a similar to pre-change riposte frequency. But overall in terms of riposte, pc tanks took a big downgrade while mobs took a small downgrade.

By calculating AC after skills, riposte can be brought up to close to what it was before, assuming that successful parry chance hasn't dropped.

3) Crits. Under the current system they can be defended through skills or at least partially evaded. Tanking dracolich is a joke. Crits are no longer to be feared under the current system. The current system determines critical hits at the point of calculating whether the hit goes past AC, then procedes through the skill defense code. I'm positive that I've seen my own crits on mobs at least partially defended.

Note: This nerfing of crits cheapens the crit reduction bonus given to high agility races.

4) Displace. I don't think it was the intention to place a HUGE downgrade on displace, but rather a tweak in its max effectiveness. However, displace still gets chewed up because attacks "miss" first before being defended. Before, good defensive skills could help prolong displace. Now, defensive skills play no role in whether it gets chewed up.

True that displace doesn't degrade when you execute a defensive skill. However, in the current system that means the hit went through. So, the only way for displace to last more than 3 rounds is for hits to go through. That sure is counter to what the spell if for right?

5) Common sense. Think of how combat is working now. A mob swings at you. You armor failed to stop his blow. Oh wait! You somehow parried the swing that went through your armor! (I suppose we could all be walking around naked inside huge bubble suits or armor)

So my position is that we place the AC hit calculation after the skills. Of course I realise there are reasons for the current system. It may be a bit of work to rework partial defense with post skill AC calculation. Also the new "defense" skill will need a bit of tweaking if all attacks are to be defended first.

-Hyldryn 50pal
-Hildippie 50war
-Hildibble 50war