Useless support classes

[*juggleblood*]

Since we're just riffing on the classes, here's my fantasy suggestions for each class:

Wa: broadside only knock you down when u use it on too big a mob or on a critical fail. not on a normal fail.
high level warrior weapons that supercede valor

Ma: gets a mirror at level 1
gets a selective dispel skill, advanced aura management, or some such, ava 1 or something

Cl: make lowbie/mid-level combat supps auto assist, reduce order lag

Ne: same, for necropets
also improve infuse soul a bit to make it the dominate healing strategy for necros

Ba: add creative success messages similar to the high armor proficiency message
the "who i'm singing to" list wouldn't foul up when moving from room to room
make oghams give a boost to grip/stab/strike/ etc... (success rate, not damage)
rethink all the instruments. increase variety and specialization.

Th: add fail messages that indicate the stab would have been successful if the mob had not seen the player,
i.e. something like, X sees you coming and engages you! ..to give us a feel for how sneak, invis is helping us.
eliminate circle dam altogether, just apply stabdam as +mod to the circle (not multiplied).

Dr: apply many more minor abilities to the forms, such as giving many of them infravision or darksight

Mo: reduce the number of actions which can be performed while gripping drastically
add prime monk forges/quests comparable to the hand dam gear in drachma shop
increase the amount of dam reduction gear in game

[Hung]

JB, those all are great ideas.
However I think that proposed skills(and maybe existing ones) should somehow scale with the class order position.
As I think a solution should be found to the problem when newbies making shoddy class orders and regret about their decisions half year later when they gain the game mechanics knowledge.

[*teker*]

Along the lines of Hung's last post, I feel like classes like bard or thief would show up more often 2-4 if the class slots were setup like this:
1: Primary Class gets all skills at 100% damage/usefulness + prime skills
2: Secondary Class gets all skills at 80% damage/usefulness
3: Tertiary gets all skills at 70/%
4: 60%
5: 40%
6: 30%
7: 20%
8: 10%

Caps would scale similarly. This would be a major deviation from where we are now and would probably nerf a bunch of currently players.

[*juggleblood*]

I don't think that's the direction to go in. That would accomodate people like Hung who appreciate the game on a fine level and create all these specialized mid-level characters, but it would dissuade people from progressing on thru 9x40. If the further you get in levels, the more useless all your skills become, that's not driving you to go forward. I'm already irritated at the inherent futility installed into some of my skills, for example the short duration of frenzy combined with long lag (even long lag on failed frenzy) and the frequent fails of counterattack...it get's to a point where players just won't use stuff and that's not the goal.

[Teron]

Caps do the work fine as it is, imho.

For example, I'm a mage 7th, so:
- I have a spell bonus cap of 45, which I got to 78% in my stab mode without buying a lot of drachma sb gear or avatar shop bonus. Especially that the amount of sb gear for non-mage primes is abysmally low.
- I fill half of my -saves cap with runes

All this means that my blasts are far inferior to the blasts of those with mage in 1-4 position (let alone mana amount).

I have monk 5th, so my dam reduction cap is -16. I can fill it with my innate bonus, sanctity, 1 rune and avatar shop bonus. wa secondary has a cap of 23, which is a farcry from my cap - and which is why I'm rebirthing into a wa/mo.

My 8 thief means that I've already capped stab bonus with runes and a clasp, so I can't improve it by buying more clasps and avatar bonus. That being said, stab bonus is probably not that powerful, compared between 4 and 8 classes. I also don't see a huge diff between stabbing in stab mode and ac mode, apart from hitroll.

So the limits are there, they are not known to the newbies.

Drastically reducing skill effectiveness at 6-8x40 would remove any motivation to level them, like JB said.

I like previous JB's post, assuming the skills he's talking about are non-prime. However, from the experience in another multi-class MUD with 7 classes, people choose them by unique major skills that are worth leveling for, mostly - and maybe by 1-2 utility skills, which are similar in 2-3 classes.

So perhaps a few major skills would tilt the favor in underappreciated classes.

Still, though, if we are digging in the class choosing process, we need to inform newbies of the nuances of their choice: right now there's little info during the whole process about how best to do it.

[Hung]

Agree with JB & Taron. Such radical change wont fix things.
I think the solution lies in another area.
If we compare "good" classes with "bad" then we'll see that every "good" class has cool ability that scales with the order position:
necromancer - pets
mage - spell_saves cap & huge mana bonus
druid - outdoors mana regen bonus
monk - innate damage reduction
cleric - supplications (though I think they are useless after eudaemon)

"Bad" classes can't offer anything close to the above (that scales with the order position). Especially bard and thief.
So I think the solution is to add something to the underappreciated classes. So putting bard second would become equally justified as druid.

[Zlodiak]

10% spell/skill efficiency means 8th cleric will heal 18hp with restoration.
I think it's not what we want to get
I guess most old class bonuses works for first 2 positions only. New ones, like caps, works fine.
What about remaking them to something like this:
Warrior, to hit bonus
Position bonus
1st --- +5 to hit
2nd --- +4 to hit
3rd --- +3 to hit
4th --- +2 to hit
5th --- +1 to hit
6th --- no bonus
7th --- -1 to hit
8th --- -2 to hit

Warrior, AC bonus
Position bonus
1st --- -0.3
2nd --- -0.2
3rd --- -0.1
4th --- -0.1
5th --- no bonus
6th --- no bonus
7th --- +0.1
8th --- +0.2

Thief, damage bonus
Position bonus
1st --- +2 dam
2nd --- +2 dam
3rd --- +1 dam
4th --- +1 dam
5th --- no bonus
6th --- no bonus
7th --- -1 dam
8th --- -1 dam

Thief, to hit bonus
Position bonus
1st --- +3 to hit
2nd --- +3 to hit
3rd --- +2 to hit
4th --- +1 to hit
5th --- no bonus
6th --- -1 to hit
7th --- -2 to hit
8th --- -3 to hit

and so on...

[alris]

I can see what you are coming from with your original post. Yes, most classes in class order wont end up as what you expected them to be. And that wont change much even with reworking classes, or adding more explanation of class in-working for newbies. Even experienced players probably wont understand hundred percent what they are getting into when creating new character. I don't know how much of joke it was - but Katie said that 4xnc char was created as class order with less incentive to play as possible. Yet it worked in the end.

Now about the classes. Prime thief is very different from non prime thief. I understand why it goes low in classo, I got it 7th myself (darn, had to check hall of fame as i did not remember if its 7th or 8th!). I used backstab a lot, made quite good damage set, even bought golden dagger from drachma shop. Even so, adjusting stab damage wont do a thing for me. Aside from thief primes, secondary to eight thieves do not care about stab damage that much; sure there some points here and there, but not to the point of hard calculating whole eq set. I would suggest breaking stab multi according to thief position in class order, but that might have too much implications on game play i dont want to consider.

Again, warrior is too damn awesome as prime compared to all other positions in classo. But that done with by a single skill - second wind. It is only my not very humble opinion, but that skill is one very powerful and very cool even after nerf from s3. As for non-prime warriors, there are plenty of benefits for having it high (second for example) and not low. It is not only about some healing/spell caps after all. For end game you might consider your max_str cap, for mid-low game, you will have some equipment easier to use if you have warrior in second or third. It is not as problem as there are alternatives for other non-casters, yet there are still some nice pieces for warriors.

I agree with the sentiment that supplication need some reworking. If you are not cleric prime, the healing cap probably is not an issue for you to worry about. So its mostly supplications to consider when you position your cleric in classo, and aside from mare/rabbit, even fighting supps are not worth it. If its about picking 20+ more mana regen / or potential swordwraithes at 40 av versus extra 20 heal bonus / thunderbird, then I would pick druid or necro over cleric for secondary. But even then it still makes good third or quad class.

Nothing to comment about bard. Again, and similarly to other classes, what works for main class focus when its prime, like caps on something, is not that much of issue when its not prime. You just learn(and you do it all the way to 40 av!) to play with what you have, and whine sometimes, about how everything is unfair.

For Jb infuse soul idea - make infuse souls heal undeads (yes, pets included) and also add some incentive to necromancer to become undead. We have undead visage already, we have vampirism disease, why not actual turning into undead? That could make for interesting benefits/penalties for a player.

Supplication/undead pets. I dont have much of idea how to improve those, but let me remark on smth once again: it always struck me odd that we have a lot of pets type spread on levels which are fastest to pass(level) up. So if later pets are intended to be better than earlier ones, we are to use some type of pet for about 10 levels, quickest ones at that, only to never use again. And later we get new pets only on very grand occasions such as new 40 level.
All the necro pets are plain fighter ones with small quirks of their own, and that - being fighters - could be adapted for cleric supplications for most of them.

Alris is out!

[Josiah]

There was a rumor at some point that excruciating blow chance was affected by thief position. I never tested it though.

Getting the prime skill(s) of a secondary class would add some nice drama to the selection of classos.

Thief second might be attractive if it comes with Poison. I could see some mages going warrior second, sucking up the huge mana and regen penalty to get second wind, parry, and a nice warcry. Why turn into a piasa when you can cast mirror image and turn into six piasa with reflection! Would love to see a warrior cleric tearing into ethereal mobs with a dark mace and a pet pit fiend, or a necromancer walking around playing the bagpipes for his minions.

Warrior/Necro might be a better tank than warrior/monk though, which might be awkward... but the warrior monks would have focus, prediction, and wraithtouch.

[*Splork*]

I would assume that is a good possibility, as much of the stuff I coded was affected by class order...

[Gorka]

I too had been musing with the idea of learning another classes prime skill as a remort.

What I like about the idea is it opens up amazing combinations... it extends the game for players... but I admit the idea is a slippery slope, and once again waters down the concept of primes which I am kind of fond of. I also note that it's proponents are "power players" whose thirst for awesomeness will never be quenched.

[*juggleblood*]

Hung part of your suggestion already exists. Your 2nd class choice affects your innate hitroll. The highest being warrior, then thief and monk. I know you don't see it, but it's there. I keep trying to tell people this, that th/wa and wa/th make some sense for this reason. Perhaps it should not be invisible.

[Hung]

Thanks everyone for sharing their opinions.
Well, I agree probably someone may see it is worth putting warrior to 2-4 class order slot. Because of hp bonus, invisible hitroll and max_str cap. However personally I would never do it. As trading order position for 100 more mana seems much better investment for me.

Anyway the question persists for at least thief and bard. As almost everyone agreed that there's no point of spending high class order positions on it unless it is prime.

About the bard - I really liked the JB's suggestion to make the whole gods of war damage go into grip/stab. Moreover the proportion of gods of war damage going there could be tied to the bard class order. Like 10/8/7/6/5/4/3/3. It'll make the bard class order matter. And will fix the problem of new guys making wa/ba and realizing it was a crappy choice half-year later.
Yes, it'll add +6(as lion chorus is +4 already) damage to the prime bard's grip/stab. And it seems to be overpower and balance breaker. However, right now, bard is exceptionally weak in terms of solo. Much weaker than even cleric. So it wont break balance.

[*juggleblood*]

Well to me the thing that makes it not overpowered is that the bard is expending almost as much mana as a blast to give this damage and if they are doing stab, then they are probably blasting on top of it and breaking song. If they sacrifice blasting in favor of singing, then they deserve to enjoy a good size damage boost. It's not like there's that many bards, and when we do get invited to stab with someone, it's to blast, not sing. Would be nice if people actually wanted us to sing for them during stab/grip runs.

[Josiah]

I love having bards on my grip xp runs! I can never keep my own songs going. And I want you singing and striking, not blasting.

The only problem is that 1x40 bards are amazing and 8x40 bards are... identical. All things equal, I want the one that doesn't take all the xps.