Damage/Knives/Thieves

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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Driven » Thu Jan 09, 2020 6:44 pm

Oh, and for the record, I *do not* think the classes are properly balanced. I just don't think the arena, as it stands today, is the proper ruler to measure that by. My bigger problem is that I don't really know how to balance all of the classes with just eq. How do you make a cleric prime as powerful as a thief, monk, or mage? I struggle with that, because the class itself is built around healing, not offense. You will never make a cleric a better backstabber, gripper, or blaster than a thief, monk, or mage, which are the raw materials to battle. Because the game allows for retreating/fleeing out of battle, healing can quickly be relegated to that thing you do when you aren't in battle, if you so choose to do.

Thieves may need a bump, I have already stated that, so we'll have to wait and see when we get a fair comparison. I also have my eye on mages, to see how a 9x40 rebirth does. Bards and necros are insanely powerful in ways that the arena cannot display, and druids are bonkers powerful. Really in my mind the targets are thief, cleric, and mage, and I'm open to suggestions.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Gorka » Thu Jan 09, 2020 7:13 pm

Seems at least 16 has been added, since EU went in, of which your 4 went in after you had the knowledge that at least 6 had already been recently added. Thieves got 2? by that time? Where is this well established 2:1 ratio? How do you explain the death proc gaunts that had to do 5,000+ damage and a weapon that removed a drachma shield from the mages, to bring them up to a mark that monks and warriors operate at, that procs 300+ free damage after a player drama which partially stated the same point that I am continuing to make. Or the fact your areas like sub palace has a mob that gives probably the most coins in the game, or necrop at least double the xp of 95% of areas in the entire game. Where is the consistency? Where is the balance? How did you forge the new damage boots you added, before me, when the forge was broken when I tried? So many questions... I don't think I am full of nonsense at all... certainly short some proper answers though.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Bandit » Thu Jan 09, 2020 8:17 pm

Some thoughts I've had on the thief class that may increase their power, of course these require code changes instead of just creating gear with more stats.

Dual wield: Offhand must be a piercing weapon. Works with second, third, avatar attack, and haste to get additional attacks with the offhand weapon just like the main hand. This could help provide more hit/dam stats for the offhand/shield slot for a thief and eliminates the need for weapon damage or stab damage to be applied to a pierce. It would basically boost their sustained damage in a way more relevant to the class while still having the "risk" of not landing.

Reduce the number of no-stab enemies? There are certainly areas that are nice exp and can be gripped, but can not be stabbed. It would seem that if it can be gripped that it could be stabbed? Also the nogrip things can be striked, but the no-stab things can't be circled. Not sure all the reasoning behind all of this, but areas like Shadow Keep where half the skeletons are stabbable and the other half are not is more annoying than useful.

Enhanced tumbling defense (avatar thief prime): Tumble more, reduced move cost. Right now 40 moves is a good chunk to eat up for a skill that offers a little protection, I've heard Sochi say it amounted to about 1 damage reduction overall? The skill is usable by everyone right now, but most classes don't have to deal with moves being their main resource to deal damage. Compared to Monk's counter attack. 0 move cost, completely stops an attack, deals damage back.

Assassinate (avatar thief prime): Currently everything around stab seems to be available to all classes. Monks have deathtouch which separates their grip from non monk primes. Maybe something that enhances a thief's stab in some way that other classes can't do would give them more of an edge on stabbing.

Just trying to think of things that a thief could get in avatar levels that separates them. We do get sleight of hand, but that just decreases lag from apply poison. At least, that's all it seems to do even though the help file seems to say it does so many amazing things for a thief, but unless we get some specifics on the code I don't think we'd ever really know what it does. Even crippling strike seemed to do nothing? Maybe it does, but the perception I had it when I first got it was "what's this even do?", I didn't see an increase to my damage and haven't seen an increase after gaining 20 avatar levels with the same gear.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby 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.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Gorka » Fri Jan 10, 2020 5:20 am

Through accident or through conspiracy... or from whomever is to blame, the monk class has done extraordinarily well since your return and influence, or since EU was introduced...

Midnight Kasaya of the Enlightened + 3 HD
Midnight greaves of black ice + 1 HD
Shifting Cowl of the Darkest Night + 1 HD
A mass of quivering tentacles + 1 HD
Scriptures of Disciplined Wrath + 2 HD
a trapped soul + 1 HD
a trapped soul + 1 HD
the seal of asmodeus + 2 HD
Rebirth Shop + 6 HD
Rebirth Shop + 3 DAM
Ability for 25 MAX_STR +1 DAM (?)
Perm Counterattack Clasp
Midnight Kasaya of the Enlightened + 2 Reduce Dam
Midnight greaves of black ice + 1 Reduce Dam
Shifting Cowl of the Darkest Night + 2 Reduce Dam
Scriptures of Disciplined Wrath + 1 Reduce Dam
Redsteel Legplates of Hades + 2 Reduce Dam
a crystal goblet of fiery nightmares + 2 Reduce Dam (Plus ability for 40k hp Chop mob followers)
Diamond Ring of the Master Bard + 1 Reduce Dam
Diamond Ring of the Master Bard + 1 Reduce Dam
the gem of souls + 1 Reduce Dam

Your attempt to justify the small amounts of dam that was added to thieves, is only insulting. If the other classes want to post what they have gotten since EU went in (and your changes), I have little doubt the list would be also nice but considerably shorter.

Stab dam is one of the worst forms of damage in the game that only applies to the opening move on specific mobs. To pretend that all the new stab dam is actually +3 DAM is intellectually dishonest.

Hand Dam to a bare handed monk is no different to dam... and it acts as a multiplier to there grip/touch, wraithtouch, strike... and all of these attacks are very powerful with the multiplier and are among the cheapest damage forms in the game. Regular attacks and the flurry is also increased, and the effect of the warrior class to monk will also increase there crit hits as a result, further multiplying damage.

Hand Dam, is the second most valuable damage type in the game! No other dam such as weapon dam, circle dam, flail dam, circle dam, spell dam can match it.

It's all gotten a bit out of control, this and proc weapons, and although us players greedily take all we can get, I lament the lack of oversight for the sake of the game... because what happens is unbalances and upset players... and now we've seen both. If a player playing a pure monk style can do the same as a warrior using triple stab, exec blows, maxed firewinds, proc weapons and second wind just by touching and striking with his bare hands - and no question is to be raised about the absurdity of that fact, clearly I am playing the wrong game. I'm done with this thread as well.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Belrath » Fri Jan 10, 2020 9:19 pm

Hello!

Since ppl seem to talk about me and my coli score I felt like puttin my 2 cents in, even I dont like to write on forums, since my english sucks and I get misunderstood etc blaablaa, but lets see...

Indeed I am one of the strongest monks out there and I do things differently than any other monk. Only deathtouch/grip + strike. I dont blast, ever. That said when I mached Gorka in coli scores I used prediction, flurry, haste,gods etc... but trying to do the max score I also died several times. How many times have you in coli, Gorka?

That supports the high risk-dam thing Driven posted earlier. Oh, and also when I do coli, I do it with major house, witch gives (according to Josiah) +10 dam.

Not quite sure what I'm trying to say here. Perhaps that I dont feel like power can be measured from coli perspective only, witch gorka seems to got upset. And why would not a superior-monk be stronger in coli than warrior. Perhaps I'm stupid but you all know that.

I'm just trying to have fun in the game and help ppl to have fun. Real life is so stupidly painful atleast for me. Love you all. Lets have more fun.

-Belrath-
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Bandit » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:21 pm

I've been tracking stab rates for a while now and they always seem to be about the same, or within some range. I wanted to see if being 9x40 made a difference, which it didn't, and then I wanted to see if having 25 str and 25 dex would make a difference. Sadly, it made no difference.

I quaffed a few potions to get max stats, had 37 or so hit roll, 26 dam roll and lead a group around for an hour while stabbing. At the end of the hour my stab accuracy for the third stab remained at 20%. This is the same as when I solo with lower stats.

When I watch Gorka stab he tends to have 90%+ accuracy on the third stab and I've been trying to figure out what would be so different about him that I don't have. I know he has sneak or stealth, maybe both, in the shop so that's one thing I don't have, however I use both skills and keep them up. He is reborn, which I am not, so it's unknown if that may be the secret to some hidden stat that helps out a lot? We don't have any reborn thieves yet, but maybe in a few months I'll rebirth.

I kept Brothers in Valor up the entire time too. It was suggested that restiveness or frenzy may help, but I asked Gorka and he said he didn't use them. I didn't either in any of these tests.

Skill wise a thief has 90% backstab while Gorka has a cap of 85%. I believe double stab and excruciating blow are both the same cap. The other difference is that I am a thief prime, while Gorka has thief as his 7th class.

Is there anything else that I may be missing that Gorka may have that is causing such a statistical difference between the accuracy of our third stab?
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Gorka » Sun Jan 19, 2020 5:05 am

>Is there anything else that I may be missing...

* The Spear of Pestilence. It apparently doesn't have any procs, but maybe the +5 hit adds something.
* I have a maxed warcry with 40,000+ kills.
* Warrior THACO.
* A reborn bonus.
* A hairy mole and sexy avatar.
* 104 years, 15 months, and 5 days of experience. :lol:
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Bandit » Sun Jan 19, 2020 10:09 am

8x40 thief dagger also has +5 hit, and the same base damage as the spear. Overall the dagger is a better weapon based on everything we can see.

Even under the influence of someone's Warcry it doesn't change anything for me.

I don't have warrior THACO and I'm not reborn.

Age is 50, not that it should matter, and for the most part a thief would want to keep it around 35 so we're not losing move regen.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Driven » Sun Jan 19, 2020 12:16 pm

I have seen the same high trip stab rate with both Sam and Taron, so it would appear to be a warrior thing. It needs to be root caused and the disparity needs to be fixed. I think all of us agree that thief primes should be better stabbers than all other classes, yet that does not appear to be the case.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Bandit » Wed Jan 22, 2020 9:37 pm

I purchased circle damage in the avatar shop and it is NOT bonus circle damage. There's lots of circle damage on gear and for the most part I've been at or near cap for most of my leveling. It would seem that converting the avatar shop to bonus circle damage would be useful as stab damage in the shop is bonus.

From Gorka's post about the rebirth shop it had everything listed as bonus. If for some reason the circle damage there wasn't bonus it would also be wasted to have 30 more available that is limited by the cap.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Gorka » Thu Jan 23, 2020 5:51 am

Bandit, It's my opinion that the changes that need to happen to thieves really needs to primarily happen at the coding level, not primarily the eq level or shop level. I completely understand why Maniac took more of an eq approach in his overhaul of the eq systems recently... (as it was the one thing within his power to change) I suspect though that this has only created more sync issues between the code, eq and shops. The only reason I say this, is because if you were looking for respite for thieves from the avatar shop... it was always going to end this way.

Regarding shops. Ahhh gosh... there are all sorts of little issues, and your issue regarding stab and circle dam also goes for other stats in other classes. Cyprimus for instance has mentioned this several times - in some cases we are forced to purchase bonus stats in rebirth shop when we can't cap regular stats, or perhaps the stuff we buy in avatar shop is essentially no use. (Bandit's point)

The avatar shop is old, and things have changed, and the avatar shop hasn't changed much from s3.

There are 3 ways to play with player power...

Code changes
Eq changes
Stat shop changes

They should all work together. However these days they appear to be all out of sync. Eq has increased massively, but the shop never kept up with that... and in some places the code hasn't kept up. The bonus stat issue has only made the problem more difficult to fix and then you have different caps for different classes. It's a tangled ball of string.

Personally I think the bonus stat system was a mistake... instead they should have just lifted the caps and just had normal stats. It would be simpler to maintain balances if this were the case. I fear the horse has bolted now and it would be (possible but) a nightmare to re-balance things.

Personally I think and react like you Bandit in these situations when I see problems. Despite ever fiber in my body wanting to point out the mistake, or perhaps a better way, with sloth I've had to learn to wait and enjoy the game for other reasons, than for the reason of progression or making sense. I fight it every day, but it's something you have to live with and continue fighting for, or just quit which is not a solution either. Things do change here, although very slowly. I don't think there is a player or an immortal who doesn't agree thieves need a positive re-evaluation. The rebirth shop will be better for you.

The rebirth shop I believe is robust and solid (the future), however it's kind of built on top of the avatar shop which is a crumbling old entity. Maniac's eq changes have been an attempt to rectify game issues... that really should have been addressed in code. For example, giving mages the sphairai... would have been better handled by a code change where the base damage of spells was lowered, but the effect of saves and spell damage was increased. Now the sphairai is in play... it's more difficult to make a code change without mages ending up like monks at the moment. What I am trying to caution you against is pushing for quick fixes to shops and eq... the proper fix for thieves is code changes in my opinion. To fix thieves through eq and shops will only exacerbate the current balance issues.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Bandit » Thu Jan 23, 2020 11:38 am

Right, no doubt there are things that require code changes. Just trying to point out some issues, that have probably already been pointed out in the past already. Maybe we can get the attention of the people in charge of the code for some of this, I know we have a couple builders looking at it. Neptune mentioned he was looking at the building docs and there was no mention of bonus circle damage even being a thing for gear, and he was going to look further to find out if it was something new added for the rebirth shop.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby Bandit » Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:43 pm

As of the last reboot Circle damage in the avatar shop is now Bonus circle damage, thanks Neptune and Teker! The stat is also available for new gear and so on.
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Re: Damage/Knives/Thieves

Postby *teker* » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:36 am

Bandit wrote:As of the last reboot Circle damage in the avatar shop is now Bonus circle damage


This may revert - I was making changes hastily and the intent was to put that in the rebirth shop (where all the other bonus xxx stats are).
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