What's wrong with thieves?

[Ender]

I've been away for a while, but I'm noticing a recurring theme on the boards. Especially the posts regarding the autoquest equipment.

For starters, everyone seems to pity thieves. I have no idea why. I've been playing one very happily since Sloth I. He's pretty much the same character I built way back in Sloth I with more skills. He's built to explore and survive. Sometimes I'm successful, that's life for any class. Thieves are built for stealth and mobility. In most games, they also like money and items... a LOT. Some kind of identify or lore skill would be nice (or even better, something to increase pop rates), but is hardly required. Even a barter skill would have limited advantage. Only complaint that I've ever had is that I can't restab or inflict extra damage on a circle when facing a blinded mob.

Warriors want AC. Go figure. They're designed to do the most damage hand to hand of any class in the mud and stand toe to toe with mobs. Slow and steady wins the race. With weapon damage and +damage, quad attack and a good THAC0, that's a lot of damage potential a round, no work required. If anything, this class should be begging for +hit weapons so they can take advantage of their automatic damage. Or perhaps specialization... which in D&D essentially grants +hit and a +1 damage. Instead of specializing every possible weapon in the game, or even blast, whip, slice, whatever, you could simply add a 'weapon specialization' skill to warriors primes. This class isn't exciting, it stands there with recall scroll in hand and hopes it does more damage than the mob. No frills. Never has been. Short of re-implementing wrist worn weapons (stilletos) there's not a lot of room for improvement. Best idea I can think of at the moment would be some kind of grapple skill (perhaps this would be better for monks?) that supresses 2 or 3 enemy attacks... this would perhaps make warriors more useful in a supportive/non-tank role.

Wizards. Last I looked these are basically artillery pieces. Attack a mob, blast out, hope you don't die, regen, repeat. Preferably hide behind a warrior or suitable tank type. Can sometimes solo if extreme caution is excercised. Fast fingers and aliases a must, know what you're getting into because surprises eat those precious hps quick. Welcome addition to most groups. I think more spell ideas could be explored in the area of illusion, but this class is fairly straightforward.

Cleric. Tank's lifeblood. Not a great solo character by itself, unless you like watching battles take all day. Everyone's best friend. Always welcome in any group as long as it has at least one non-cleric (preferably warrior) in it. Short of making the cleric class a spare hp battery for tanks, creating a spell that calls down angels from heaven to bring you the bodies of fallen comrades, or endowing them with an aura of protection/healing/whatever, there's not a lot you can do to make this class more exciting. Short of resurrecting the harm spell, there's not much you can do to make this an offensive class.

New classes are the new classes... haven't played then, won't comment.

Point being - every class has something wrong with it. If they didn't, everyone would play the "perfect" class. It is quite literally a matter of picking your poison. Balance of classes, skills and items is incredibly important and should be the highest priority of any admin type. However, this in itself is also a very difficult task unless you take every change to committee, which makes implementing surprises incredibly difficult.

With all this in mind, what is wrong with thieves? Or any class for that matter? Do you think you could do better? How? What do you suggest? Why is this a good idea?

Ender the Untitled

[Shadis]

There is no doubt a thief prime is pretty nice from lvl 1 to 2x40 or even 3x40 depending on classo

but with all the balance issues of the past and other things thieves really suffer until they hit mid to high avatar levels

lets face it your stab stays the same from the time you hit 1x40 until level 9? avatar ..thats a long time

now add in changes like no stab mobs and xp bonus for that


for example i play a thief mage
i can solo 1-2 mil mobs on a 2x stab but 2x wiff or just bad luck in timing i die very easily ..and worse once a mob hates me i am done because i can never stab it again

i can solo 1-2 mage style mob MUCH more safely and if i f'up i can just regen and try again

it is very agrivating to me to have all this damage and stab dam and cinq, suposedly the brest stab multiplyer and i make more xp on average killing mage mobs

also think on this

take a mob stabable its worth 1 mil
make it no stab now its worth 1.5 (not sure on the formula just quessing)
now a pure mage was not going to stab it anyways gets an extra .5 mil for killing a mob the same way he would of if it was stabable

thieves get the immage of getting all the massive xp
fact is sure if i could hit 10 2x stabs with poison all letting me wind at least once before the mobs hit me blah blah i could solo 20 mil in 4 tics without batting an eye lash

of course i could 2x wiff on the first mob get killed, corpse since i am soloing and no one knows im dead and loose 30 mil just like that


and trust me, the second happens a lot mroe then the first ..do the math

[Ender]

Being the experienced thief you are, I appreciate your reply. Perhaps I've simply remained too small to notice the disadvantages of thieves. On the other hand, I rarely stab. To be brutally honest, I often find that leading with a curse works much more to my advantage (then again, I am a Wa secondary).

Typically I faerie fire, lead with a curse, web, and then follow with a steady stream of circle/trip/bash. Refresh is handy if I run low on moves. I agree that I'm not a big fan of nostab mobs, but I think that my character has a far more useful role in groups now than he had in the past. Of course, I'm also more prepared to sanc myself and dig in for a long battle if I have to.

I appreciate your concern when it comes to mobs hating you and I'm well aware the dangers of soloing against difficult mobs. I've had to give up many an area when the wrong mob started hating me. I don't find that to be unique to thieves though. I am surprised though that I hadn't realised that the backstab multiplier doesn't increase for all the levels from 1x 40 to 4x 40.

Any ideas on how to compensate for that?

[Weasel]

Many classos can hit -10AC, including thieves. Thieves have better solo power than anyone up to whatever level you said back there ..3x40 was it? ..and then little increase until level 9av.. well hell that's a big bonus imho. I have no idea why thieves have always moaned that they're somehow disadvantaged, and even more surprisingly they get improvements given as a result. Personally I think they appear to be quite fine as they are. If anyone wants to make them more powerful between 3x40 and level 9av, then take some of their power away in the lower levels to keep them balanced.

WA primes in general don't tend to moan much for some reason, but parry is the only really good thing they have; their AC can be matched by many other classos even though it should logically be that WA primes can get higher AC than anyone else, but that aint the case. Berserk was added recently, but you drop 2.0ac to use it which basically rules it out entirely for solo play, and you certainly wouldn't use it while tanking because of the AC drop. Flail damage.. heh well I won't say any more about that.. what else is there.. hmm.. nothing. Depending on the size of the mobs, parry can be almost ineffective.. big-ass mobs still hit hard regardless, and with smaller mobs (say 1mil) ..well I've run a few areas and didn't even realize I had parry off until I noticed it when I typed score. It's a good skill, but it's not the overwhelming bonus that some people seem to think it is. I really don't know what can be done to make WA primes better, they are slow to solo at lower levels... So I've gone off topic. My point is, imho and from what I've seen, thieves are quite fine as they are!

[Ender]

I don't find a lot wrong with thieves myself, I'm just trying to understand the overwhelming amount of pity they attract. As far as thieves reaching -10 ac, I'm not surprised... after all their prime stat is Dex. With all the +dex eq in the game though, it's incredibly common for a player to have 18 dex.

Warrior primes have parry, yes, but I don't think that's the only good thing they have. Most warriors also have 18/100 str, which has some good +dam bonuses, as well as the AC, HPs, multiple attacks and very large weapons needed to give mobs a very bad day. They're not exciting characters, no, but if you lose link in the middle of a battle, you have the least chance of corpsing. Regenning is slow, granted, but mages tend to suffer the same disadvantage after battle. Clerics and thieves for that matter. The biggest disadvantage you can really give a warrior is that all of his special abilitys are more or less automatic and don't require a player sitting at the keyboard to necessarily be awake to come out on top. Very boring. However, if you ask how to make warriors better, the first thing mentioned (yourself included) is AC... which doesn't add much excitement to battle. This is usually followed closely by more HP or more attacks... both of which are equally exciting.

I am interested though, Shadis says leveling gets very slow between 2x40 and 9 av. How would you describe the warrior leveling progression?

Ender the Untitled

[Alberich]

well.. I play an avatar mage prime, and a th/ma who's close to tri40.. and really, they are both fine solo char, just for very different areas.
As Shadis mentioned - if I get lucky with stabs, my 2x40 th/ma can solo almost as much xp per run as my avatar mage, simply because it's easier to splork a 1.5mil mob for a total cost of 20mvs and some poison than it is to blast a 1.5mil nostab mob, use 50-75 mana on winds, and another 80 to remirror - granted, there is a difference of almost 200 mana between them (in solo gear - obviously much higher when the mage is in regen gear), but that gets used up fast. My mage runs -10 ac, so he is much more suited to thick mob - stab, dam, blind, and blasting out, he can kill much bigger mobs than my thief, who has not-so-good ac, due to his much higher damage.
As to your point about 18 dex - anyone who runs anything without 18 dex, either with eq or nat, is insane and 18/100 str is even more important for thieves than any other classo - stabbing without that is just kind of silly, thieves live and die by their stab, so the bigger the better, except perhaps on valk, where you can not get as high damage, and have no doublestab.
What class you play to solo depends greatly on the areas you want to run - no char is going to be perfectly suited to everything, and really, there is a good enough selection of areas in the mud that I think most classes can find stuff to kill at most levels - yes, some classes do level much faster much earlier on; there is absolutly no comparison between my ma/wa when he was 2x40, and my th/ma now, in terms of total xp or coins they can make in a run - but my thief has been running pretty much the same stuff since around 1x40, and will probably keep running them until he makes avatar, whereas with my mage whole new worlds opened up at 3x40 in terms of interesting things to do.
Never played any of the other classes even to 40 prime, so I'll keep my mouth shut about them

would also like to point out that this is a game, played (theoretically at least) just for fun - stats, numbers, total xp, total coins, yadayada aside, I think thiefs are about the most fun class to play - sure you die alot, and sure your runs end rather abruptly if you doublewhiff, but very few things in Sloth give me more joy than a damned good run through Infernite mines or something with my thief

[Weasel]

[quote="Ender":3perabrh]I am interested though, Shadis says leveling gets very slow between 2x40 and 9 av [for thieves]. How would you describe the warrior leveling progression?[/quote:3perabrh]

Based mainly on other prime's reports and the speed I've seen players gain levels relative to the time spent ingame, I'd describe WA prime levelling progression as slow at any level, particularly if you prefer to solo. You can do alright grouping of course, but that applies to anyone regardless of classo.

As others mentioned, you probably don't die as often as a WA prime in comparison to Thieves (for example) when soloing, so that is somewhat a balancing influence, but then again if you group then you're going to be tank (or somewhere near the top), and as a result you're the first to die, so that offsets it again..

I better add that this opinion (and indeed any prime class performance opinion) varies a bit depending on overall class order, so when speaking about prime 'abilities' as far as levelling speed etc, it's somewhat generalized if ya know what I mean...

[Avatar]

I'll add a bit concerning warrior solo ability...which rather applies to most soloing. You're not going all the way to 1x40 with no other classes, you'll have ~20 levels in a second class. That's going to sway your type of soloing in a certain direction. Someone who's a Wa/Th is going to go for stab mobs, being a thicker thief who doesn't have to rely quite so much on a powerful stab. The same happens at 2x40 and 3x40 ... a 2x40 Wa/Ma does not want to stab, he's going after the ethereal mobs with his -9 AC and winds.

I was a 3x40+38 (wa/th/cl/ma) to get to min winds, and it made a distinct improvement to how I could solo. That changed the character from hack - slash to someone with -9 plus a very nice stab and winds.

Charles

[Ender]

In Sloth I, 18 dex was insanely easy to accomplish. Shield of the Rainmaster was +3 dex all by itself, not to mention quickling bracers and a host of other +dex items that littered the mud. As for +con items... you could count them on your fingers. There were 6, and everyone knew them by heart.

1. Marble Helmet
2. Silver Leg Plates
3. Basalt Amulet
4. Shield of Blessing
5. Pearl of the Rising Tide
6. Sharkskin boots (?)

If I remember correctly, Sharkskin boots were +str +con and spiked boots were -int. Black chainmail was quite the sensation for quite some time as well.

Naturally, thief was everyone's last class, except for the mega tanks like Cxwq and Ultimus who were wa/th and players like Red who were just really annoying pthieves. th/ma and ma/th didn't become popular until the advent of firewind, which started a whole new trend toward the thief class.

Did you really want to know that? No. But it explains my frustration with how easy it is to run 18 dex, even for quad mage classos. Percentile strength, on the other hand, almost has to be rolled because it's simply too difficult to make up the difference with items. It's also the deciding factor behind my th/wa classo. I have an adversion to wasting weeks worth of time collecting tokens. I currently run 18/82 13 12 18 18 with eq and -7 ac and that's plenty good enough for me. (Who says I need to be smart?)

Again, you didn't want to know that, but it leads me into my next question... Is everyone in the game running 18/100 18 18 18 18? What stats are people settling for if they're not? I have the suspicion that that fighter types sacrifice int/wis and mage types sacrifice str. How close am I?

[Alberich]

for str, it depends on what balance of ac you are settling for - my mage runs 18/40 18 16 18 18 in his -10 mode, my thief runs 18/100 18 11 18 17, but I do give up quite a bit of ac to manage 18/100 str with him (+13 dam +23 stab_dam at -6, specifically) - however, as I said, a thief gets his xp by splorking big mobs, so in a good run, ac isn't as big a deal for a thief, as you don't get hit if you splork your mob (and stab mobs have such high hit/dam rolls that it doesn't really matter anyways). Neither of those chars have particularly good stats, btw - my mage does not even have 2x18 nats.
I understand that this may have been different in sloth1, but... this is sloth3

[Weasel]

[quote="Ender":137xi7pt]Is everyone in the game running 18/100 18 18 18 18? What stats are people settling for if they're not? I have the suspicion that that fighter types sacrifice int/wis and mage types sacrifice str. How close am I?[/quote:137xi7pt]

As far as I'm concerned you're right on the money. Much as I'd like to, I don't run with perfect stats, but I do run with Str, Dex and Con at max (with eq). Int & Wis are secondary to the other three since I'm a WA prime.

When I switch to -11AC for tanking in groups, I drop more Int & Wis and some of my +dam and +hit to keep my HP high along with my AC.

I don't know if there's many people in the game running at fully maxed stats, or if there are, they're likely having to sacrifice things like AC eq to do so (or they got one of those rarest of things on sloth; a really good reroll accross all their classes).

Fortunately at 5x40 avatar status you can start buying stats since there's no more levels to gain, but they ain't cheap: 10billion exp & 15mil coin for 1 stat point I think. At least it means that having perfect stats is not entirely impossible anyway.

[Ender]

I personnally think warriors have a distinct advantage in maxxing stats since they can achieve a high percentile strength easier. Biased? Perhaps, but its far easier to wear better AC/+hit/+dam/+whatever eq when you're not as concerned with how to integrate +stat eq. Not to mention that getting from 17 str to 18/100 takes about 11 items, which is enough to bring a 7 to an 18 for any other stat. I don't think anyone in the game has settled for a 7 in their stats unless it's surrounded by about 3 or 4 18s. This isn't perhaps a noticable advantage, but it works to make the warriors overall style of play simpler.

Obviously we don't want everyone maxxing stats, so I'm not whining that I'd like there to be a lot more -AC +str items. This is something to consider though. My amazement is that blaster types are walking around with such low AC. This somehow seems counter-intuitive... I guess by traditional thinking, you can't cast through armor (at least metal armor). Perhaps everyone thinks the mage class is so great because it doesn't suffer from that handycap. Not that I know what you'd do to remedy that... the only thing that comes immediately to mind is to inflict a magic damage penalty to AC... and I don't think the players would go for that too quickly, but it would be funny to watch all the mages flee back into their regen gear and hidng behind tanks

[Calim]

Me: I run at 18/100 14 14 18 18 as a wa/th/ma/cl. Nats 18/69 14 14 18 15. People told me that it was going to be tough to play since those 3 con would be VERY hard to get with max ac eq. I scoffed thinking nah, it shouldn't be hard, I've seen plenty of con eq. Oops. There is one item that has max ac and +con, no - modifiers. Darksteel shoulder guards. Not an easy autoquest. I get my other 2 con from a light, excellent source for that and one from a 3x40 item that is -0.1 ac off the max for that slot. That one tradeoff bothered me, I had to sacrifice a +15 hp held low, to get that -0.1 ac back.

Now, I've never whined about the wa class. I was able to nearly solo this char to 2x 40, joining only a few groups, which actually bumped my levels up pretty fast. After 2x 40, there is the long climb to 3x which for most chars is a slow climb, not just thieves.

[Shadis]

just a few notes

its not jsut getting to -10 ac ..any character can see -10 ac at 2x40 with the right eq and avaerage stats

but its getting -10 with with max dam which includes to things
dam eq with lower ac
getting 18/100 str

as said before Warrior have a decided advatage rolling str first
it is kind of an oxymoron

warrior main theme is ac yet roll str first
thief is dam yet roll dex

however mage is mana roll int
cleric regen rolls wis ..

so for a th.ma to have decent stats he almost has to roll 3x18 (only way to have % str)

it used to be you could play a thief with lousy ac as long as you had high damage (same could be said about casters classes too)
but AC has become essential

i have 18/07 18 10 18 17 stats
i run at 18/100 18 10 18 17 -8 ac +14 dam +17 stab_dam
i could run -9 and 13 dam or -7 and 15 dam (this is all pre avatar)
With Iron Skin and Vigor i will just barely be able to get -10 ac max dam -1(body)

i myself wil never play a warrior prime ..i find warrior extremely boring to play ..i've more recently played mage primes whom i think make up the best prime class overall


anyways one last statement


ever notice that the poeple who most argue thieves are fine
do not play thieves? heh

[Avatar]

Warriors do have that nice str, which does make choosing eq a little simpler. On the other hand, mages and clerics have it pretty easy too if you mostly group. My smaller cleric has like +6 ac, makes it easy to find a spot for +stat gear. If you don't solo much, it's a waste of time to collect that AC gear.