by Driven » Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:31 pm
Your order of events are wrong. By the time I updated the 3x40 gear (where I added 2 damage points for thief primes and 2 hand damage for monk primes), no EU gear existed yet that added to the elite endgame. The monk prime shoulder guards were redundant with the drachma guards, so that added no additional hand damage to the game. So after I added the 3x40 gear, thieves were given comparatively more damage than monks (1:1 ratio instead of 2:1). When I added the drachma gear, I then added +2 more hand damage for monks, but you forget what I also added.
- +10 stab damage on the titanium lock pick
- +8 stab damage on the midnight armor of crisscrossed knives
- +10 stab damage on 2x interwoven rings of shadow and pain
- +5 bonus stab damage on the 8x40 dagger
That's +33 stab damage, which is equivalent to 3 damage points on a stab. If a thief really can't take advantage of the +28 stab damage (the part that is non-bonus) because of caps, then we need to look at converting some of that stab damage to bonus stab damage, because providing EQ that in all practicality can't be used is meaningless. Either that or just raise the caps on stab bonus. For those of us who have chosen thief deep within the classorder, I have little pity on our low caps and our inherent inability to take advantage of these bonuses. Having spent some time thinking further about this, I think that stab damage should receive the reverse multiplier when being applied to regular attacks on stabbers (divided by 10), so a stab bonus of 135 will add +13 damage per attack.
Drachma eq updates were added in January of 2019, and the EU expansion went in February of 2019. It's hard to believe that was less than a year ago.
+2 (total) from trapped souls
+2 from seal of asmodeus
Shoulder guards in EU were redundant with drachma eq. Seal needs to be fixed so that only one can be worn. I can probably do that with MUDL if Teker doesn't have time to fix it. Driven is only using one despite the fact that I know I can wear two, because I know Neptune's intent was to only have one worn. So by the time it was all said and done, before the rebirth shop went in, monks got 8 hand damage and thieves got 2 hand damage and 33 stab damage, which is roughly 5 damage for a stab, but, as we're pointing out, is only 2 damage on actual attacks, whereas monks got 8 damage on regular attacks. I do think this is the crux of the matter.
The rest of the damage came from the rebirth shop. Monks got +9 damage (3 regular, 6 hand), whereas thieves got +3 damage and +60 bonus stab damage. This means that thieves got 93-to-96 damage adder *per stab*, which comes out to 186-192 on 2x stab. Monks got 9*15 (135 damage) on deathtouch. Monks got 9 damage added per attack, whereas thieves only got 3 damage added per attack. Again, I think this is the crux of the matter.
As for the rest of your message, I will say this. Sling enough crap and people might start mistaking you for an orangutan. But to settle your mind, since you can't seem to let things rest...
- Necrop was made in Sloth 2, not sloth 3. In terms of mob make-up, it's no different than CK. Pretty much every mob was a clone of other mobs in the game, with a few updates to make them unique and different. The primary difference from necropolis and the rest of the mud, though, is that I actually went through the effort to make unique mob names and descriptions, which took me forever. You won't find a single mob duplicated in the entire area. What this means is that you will never experience kill history there within a given run, and so your xp will be a lot higher. You're welcome. I think the fault is not mine, but the builders who do not spend the time to make their area truly unique--I greatly applaud Idjit for his Raku area, as it's one of the most unique areas in the entire mud.
- The sub palace mob, Azzenon, which you are so fond of referencing, was never intended to be solo'ed, and afaik this stayed true for all of Sloth 2 when the area was built. Flight and Annie managed to 2-man him, but that was it, and I was pretty irritated with them at the time. I have since learned that people will find ways of soloing mobs if it suits them, and there's very little way to prevent it. I am perfectly content to lower his coins if it bothers you this much.
- The balance issues with proc weapons is something that took time to learn, obviously, and you were tremendously helpful in ironing those out. You act like I went into it intending to create this absurd disbalance, though. Rather, it was simple ignorance of the issues at play. Ignorance strikes us all at times. I think that the Sphairai has in fact made life for mages tremendously better in groups, especially 20 minutes into a run and they no longer have any mana. They no longer feel like newbs tagging along for the ride, but productive members of the offense in which their gear actually matters. This was an important step forward in a mage's life which you have never acknowledged. As I said, ignorance strikes us all at times.
- I realize you still question the mage artifact, but I think you have missed the point of the item altogether. The item is constructed such that it has very little impact on solo of xp mobs under 10mil xp. In other words, in terms of changing the amount of xp someone solos per hour, it fails to move the needle outside of the item's actual stats. The item shines in groups and on epics, in particular, as that is how I designed it. Again, the entire point here is to give mages something that really helps them feel awesome in groups, as sitting back and watching monks, warriors, and thieves pump out damage from melee attacks 20 minutes into a 60-minute run is beyond lame. You like to take the 5k damage # and divide it by the casts it took to get there, and then adding that damage to the average damage per cast to highlight the disbalance. That comparison only makes sense if the disbalance translates to solo xp, which it does not. You've missed the point entirely.
- KVP procs for forges are easy to typo as you're copying and pasting hundreds and hundreds of lines of code to the mud. All it takes is failing to highlight a single character in your item #, or accidentally hitting backspace when you don't realize it. This happens when your client only allows the pasting of a certain amount of text, and so you have to stitch in multiple pastes to get all of the KVP proc in there. When I originally set up Tylvaen, I had her forge correct, and so I made the boots within the first week. As I made updates to other items, her forge for the boots got horked up one way or another and I had to fix it when you went in to forge.
Happy mudding, I have work to do.