is it mages turn ?!

[Driven]

[quote:bn2blrmt]
Mirrors usually absorb one or two attacks in one combat round.
It is exactly what parry does and warriors hps absorb 2nd/3rd attacks.
But we dont want to forbid warriors stab with parry enabled.
[/quote:bn2blrmt]

You can't ignore the physical limitations of D&D. Backstabbing with mirrors up is just plain silly from a D&D standpoint. How do you sneak up on someone when their peripheral vision is filled with images of you? They would turn around instantly at least to say hello. Backstabbing and then parrying however is perfectly legitimate. You can't look it from just a balance standpoint. No one ever said warriors and mages need to be able to solo equally as well. Mages are profoundly effective and strong in groups, whereas warriors are not (beyond the need for 1.tank of course). It has always been known that mages and clerics are generally difficult characters to solo with, but play a much larger role in groups.

[quote:bn2blrmt]
Mages can have only 4 mirrors up and recasting mirrors costs 80 mana.
Allowing stabbing with mirrors would make running thief-type mobs
more safe, but it would not be free xp.

Sloth has enough areas with mage-type mobs where most mages
do thier solo free xp runs - wind wind, mirrors stop all damage.
[/quote:bn2blrmt]

If you have mage-style mobs where you can gain nice free xp then why are you complaining about not also being able to do thief-type mobs? From a balance standpoint you already have mobs that can give you great free solo xp, which are unavailable to all other classes. You can effectively kill mobs that warriors and thieves cannot. I'll turn this back around on you... how can you justify being able to kill thief-type mobs safer/easier than a thief can?

[quote:bn2blrmt]
I just want penalties would be reconsidered and not tied with other
classes abilities. Mirrors penalty sems to be kinda outdated imho.
[/quote:bn2blrmt]

Why do you consider it unrealistic to tie mirrors in with other class abilities? It is done because it makes sense from a D&D standpoint, and you can't arbitrarily say "Oh, mirrors shouldn't affect backstab because they are two different class abilities". To me that is silly because you're ingoring the "reality" of D&D (yes, I realize that is an oxymoron.)

[quote:bn2blrmt]
Look at the current ( just copy/pasted ) who list and count mages prime.
After that look at how many mages prime have thief in classo -
only old old Merlin
[/quote:bn2blrmt]

One who-list does not prove anything. A ma/wa/cl/th or ma/mo/cl/th character would be a god with -10 +22 and maxed-out spelldamage. Mirrors or no mirrors.

And this needs to be said... these comments are my own, my own personal opinions, and in no way reflect the opinions of the admin or any other immortal on Sloth.

[Falsra]

To Driven:

i am not complaining.
i lived all my sloth-life being unable to stab with mirrors up
and i can live with it further. in fact i even do no need xp.

i do not take part in discussions about spectral shield, wraithform,
shapeshifting, etc.. because i have no decent experience playing
these classes. seems you have solid experience playing mage prime
with thief in classo, do you ?

i just pointed that may be it is time to reconsider mirrors penalty.
i see no good reasons to keep this penalty tied with other class skill.
but i see a negative affect that choosing mage as prime class
almost definitely eliminate thief from classo.
those newcomers who picked mage as prime class with thief in classo
feel selves little cheated and, as few of them told me, they would 100%
replace thief with monk or bard if were aware of the penalty.

[Driven]

We will simply have to agree to disagree. The true newbies who are complaining do not understand overall game balance, and I doubt they chose mage prime with thief in their classorder with the distinct expectation that they will be stabbing thief-mobs with mirrors up. I also don't think it is necessary to have played a prime class to understand the ramifications of changes associated with it. Do you really think all our admin have personally played all 8 classes with significant levels? Simple common sense tells you what will happen to game balance when a change occurs. Mage primes doing thief-type mobs with very little danger removes the very essence of that thief-type mob. I do enjoy spirited debates, which is why I tend to open my mouth more than I should. Perhaps "complaining" was too harsh a word.

[Alberich]

little risk? have you ever played a mage? (on sloth - this is sloth, not d&d, you do realize, right?)

1 - mirrors don't always block hits (i have had 4 mirrors up and taken full damage from a mob before)

2 - th prime stab at avatar is 24-25 dam, add in poison and th prime multiplier and th prime stabdam eq and you are looking at insanely high damage. 20 dam or so for a mage at high avatar levels is pretty good, plus no poisons and weaker stab and no stabdam and etc - you really think mirrors are gonna last all that long considering we are fighting same mob for at least 1 extra round? it just balances out the thieves much higher hps

3 - I'm all for game balance - adding a totally unrelated penalty to the only usefull prime skill of a class does not do anything for game balance, in my opinion

you seem to be highly overrating mirrors. they are nice, but do not give you 'free xp' by any means - spelldam does, sure, but if i am running mage xp mob (say chickling), if i do not kill in 1 firewind, i lose 2-3 mirrors and 1-200 hps. i then spend 40-60 mana to recast those mirrors, every single time. how is that free? and in the times i kill mobs with firewinds, that is spelldam and av bonuses giving me free xp - mob would die with or without mirrors, they just enable to run at +5 ac and survive

[Driven]

I have never played a mage prime, but I'm quite intimate with running a caster prime and stabbing (last player agox - I run him at -10 +22). Sure, mirrors don't always block hits... but most of the time they do. I was not saying you remove all risk, but for the great majority of time your risk is gone. I'm sure you could get nailed, but for that to happen, three things need to occur--
1) Your fail your double stab.
2) You get hit through -10 ac
3) Your mirrors fail.

How often would that happen? If you're a non-thief-prime trying to stab at anything less than -10 ac, then you get what you deserve. In my opinion, non-thief-primes should not be able to even get close to effectively killing thief-type mobs unless they are at a really nice armor class.

And again, caster primes should not be able to kill thief-type mobs as well as thieves do. In my opinion, there should be no balance.

[Shadis]

Driven said

Mage primes doing thief-type mobs with very little danger removes the very essence of that thief-type mob.


well i am a t/m and i can kill mage style mobs .. and much to my dismay make mor exp safely doing it


So by your own statement i'd have to agree with Hotara

Think of it this way ..i can stab with poison and still use winds
Backstab is not a prime skill

you have to have mage class to cast wind
you have to have thief class to stab

you can parry and wind
you can flail and wind
you can circle and then wind
you cna poison then wind
(ditto all above with restore instead of wind)
you can stab and parry ( i think)
you can stab anf flail

[Driven]

Seems I have put myself on the hotseat here. Very well.

You seem to be getting away from the subject of this post, which is whether mages should be able to do thief-style mobs easier. Regardless, we can talk about it from a thief's perspective if you want. I guarantee that mages do mage-style mobs a heck of a lot better than Shadis can.

The fact that you can get more xp/hour doing mage-style mobs as opposed to thief-style mobs means you're (1) either trying to kill thief-style mobs that are too difficult for your level/stats/eq, (2) you're at a specific level where an area doesn't exist that has the right kind of thief-type mobs that match your abilities, or (3) mage-style mobs are too easy for non-mage primes. I'm guessing it's a combination of all of these.

To a certain degree, not all classes have a "type" of mob they can kill... there is no warrior-type mob or a cleric-type mob (at high levels), so mage-style mobs were given to everyone basically to even it out. Still, mages can and will do better on mage-style mobs than everyone else, so it's ok.

[Alberich]

i thought the point of the thread was - "it's silly mages cannot stab while mirrored'
personally, i don't run stab mobs with alberich (and yes he runs -10), nor do i want to - i do just as well if not better on mage xp mobs, which are generally etheral or nostab.
that said - on a big mob, it really, really sucks having to make the choice of "do i stab this mob for the extra damage, hope i can disengage/damn it in time to make up for having ridiculously low hps, or do i mirror and hope i can blast hard enough to make up for not stabbing it". That's not on thief-type xp mobs at all - I would imagine even if that penalty was removed, the one regarding re-casting mirrors after a stab would still hold, as it does for monks, so that would help you on maybe 1-2 stab mobs per run at the absolute most (how many stab mobs have 5-6x attacks that hit thru -10? and how many mirrors do we get? hrmm...)

[Driven]

Big mobs... like 5 mil mobs that are stab 8x wind and do 200 hps per round kind of thing? You're obviously not killing this type of mob for xp, but you would be killing it for equipment... right? If you're killing it for equipment, then you do what you have to do to make that mob die. You don't need mirrors during stab to ensure that this type of mob dies.

Ah ha... so if you prevent mirrors from being recast the same way aerial servant is prevented after stabs, then you would only be able to use mirrors on one, maybe two mobs. I think that is a lot more reasonable from a game balance standpoint. But it still doesn't make sense from a D&D standpoint

[12345]

You can use any arguement you want, I don't think mages are going to be beating down the doors to attack thief mobs. There are far safer ways to make a living than hoping a big pissed off mob doesn't live through a weak stab and make a mess of your limited hps, mirrors or no.

As far as D&D.. I'm all for following the game, but there's a lot that is taken for granted in mud that has nothing to do with it. For example show me anywhere in D&D where:

sanctuary reduces damage.
stone skin decreases AC.
fireball hits a single target.
thieves get two attacks.
you can be all four classes and level any you like whenever you like.
mages can cast through armor.
you use mana.
thieves have more hps than clerics.
etc.

Having 5 copies of someone sneaking around? Silly? Yes. Unbalanced? If you think so, play a mage and go make a splork mob mad. Get back to me.

[*Splork*]

Just to add more fuel to the fire, you can't use mirrors with deathtouch either

Splork

[Falsra]

[quote="Splork":1emdf0zs]Just to add more fuel to the fire, you can't use mirrors with deathtouch either [/quote:1emdf0zs]

no stab with mirrors up,
no deathtouch with mirrors up,
wait ... why can we still use firewind with mirrors up ?!

mages are so powerful with mirrors up!
you should forbid mages to harm mobs in any way with mirrors up!
it would turn all mages into pacifists!



PS:
if seriously, i am glad Driven agreed that preventing mirrors from being recast the same way aerial servant is prevented after stabs is enough penalty!

i wish immorts agree with that either...

[Mustang]

how is parry the "best prime-only skill"?
sure it lets u take less damage in the battle, but does taking less damage actually help you kill the mob faster? it's a great WARRIOR skill, but that does not make it the best prime-only skill. For me, the best prime-only skill is the skill that works best when solo-ing, because when grouped, beyond tank and gripper/stabber (and bard primes), classo means very little other than how much mana you have. I use parry at times when solo-ing, but even then there are rounds where because of parry and my sucky triple attack %, I do not even land a single hit on the mob. Sure, parry lets me last a little longer and maybe have a higher chance of killing a mob, but it's just a skill that gives me a chance of killing it using OTHER Skills/spells that I have. compare this with other prime skills like poison and juju. I find it kinda hilarious that thieves are whinning about having to spend 5k a pop on poisons....when they could use 1 vial and splork a few gold mobs and more than get the coins back.

I do, however have a few suggestions regarding stabbing through mirrors.
I agree, that it is incredibly hard to be sneaky when there are 5 (or 6) of you surrounding a mob. But the argument that it would then also make it harder for the mob to figure out which one of you would be stabbing. Maybe there could be a new skill for mages called "distract", where one of your mirrors would distract the mob while you try to stab it? Imagine "Demogorgon is momentarily distracted as a mirror image of Slipknot flashes his boobs" hehe...maybe that wouldn't work since mirrors are mirror images of what u are doing at the moment. I would suggest putting in a real small % of stabbing working, but take out double-backstab %. since there's a 1/5 chance of the mob figuring out which one of it is u, maybe put in an additional 20% failure rate? And if it succeeds, maybe put in a 20% chance of one of your mirrors falling? Since when the mob sees one of your mirror trying to stab, it would attack that mirror.

just my 2 cents

[Zam]

i wonder , where did alb find 24-35 dam

[Blastem]

Hrmmm since mirrors are a exact duplicate of the mage wouldn't they be sneaking and invis when the mage was.. As far as it being a problem to sneak up on a mob with 5 of you there... wouldn't ya think the mob would notice a thief walking in to a dark room with a light and sanc glowing maybe even a spell shield. I don't have thief in the classo so it doesn't affect me one way or another but I do think a delay on remirror after stab would be effective way to stop people from exploiting mirrors. As for mages stealing thief mobs .... how many monks you see in mage areas lately it's all part of the game and I think the more ways you can play your char the more fun you'll have and continue to play the char

just my input
Blastem