Official: Light Armor Mastery and several rogue changes

[Donquix]

http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/GemStone%20IV%20Announcements/Important%20Announcements/view/3497


Hey all,

Here's a summary of the updates that just went out:

* Light Armor Mastery is a new armor specialization available to monks, rogues, and warriors intended to make light armor more attractive.
* Shadow Dance is a new combat maneuver available for rogues that makes Shadow Mastery passive and can be activated to greatly improve stealth for 60 seconds.
* Silent Strike is now aimable at a penalty. Increased ranks in Silent Strike reduce this penalty to a minimum of 90% of your normal aiming skill. In addition, you may specify an attack modifier of WAYLAY, JAB, GRAPPLE, PUNCH, or KICK after CMAN SILENTSTRIKE to use that attack type instead.
* Armored Stealth, Armored Evasion, and Armor Reinforcement have been reduced to 150 armor points each.
* Shadow Mastery rank 5 now grants -1 second reduction to HIDE in addition to the current benefit to SNEAK.

Heavy Armor has been the mechanically superior choice for quite some time and we wanted to bring a bit of choice back to Light Armor. Light Armor Mastery is a new armor specialization that will bridge some of the CvA gap as well as improve your ability to use combat and shield maneuvers. Finally, it is available to monks to help address some of their CvA concerns.

Skill Name: Light Armor Mastery
Mnemonic: lightarmor
Other Requirements: Cloth, Leather, or Scale Armor
Available to: Warriors, Rogues, Monks.
Prerequisites:
None
Armor Point Cost:
Rank 1: 20
Rank 2: 30
Description: You are able to capitalize on your maneuverability in light armor to reduce the effects of magical warding attacks and increase your effectiveness at maneuvers and evasion. At rank 1, you gain a CvA bonus of (70 - (AG * 20))% of the highest AsG you have fully trained. At rank 2, you gain a (20 - (AG * 5)) bonus to your maneuver rolls and a (25 - (AG * 5))% to gain Evasiveness when evading an attack. Evasiveness prevents one attack or spell from harming you and lasts up to 30 seconds. When this effect ends, this ability has a 10 second cooldown.

Shadow Mastery had become a large stamina drain on Rogues who also lack the ability to 3X Physical Fitness. Being squares, we opted to introduce a new Combat Maneuver that would make Shadow Mastery passive as well as give them a maneuver that could be used to dispatch multiple enemies at a time by weaving in and out of the shadows.

Skill Name: Shadow Dance
Mnemonic: sdance
Hostile: No
Stamina Cost: 30
Other Requirements: None.
Available to: Rogues.
Prerequisites:
Shadow Mastery (at rank 5)
CMP Cost:
Rank 1: (Squares) 4
Rank 2: (Squares) 6
Description: At rank 1, Shadow Mastery will become passive and always active for no stamina cost. At rank 2, you can activate Shadow Dance to attune your movements with the shadows. For 60 seconds, Silent Strike, Cutthroat, and Subdue can be used for no stamina cost and sneaking will incur no roundtime. After the ability expires, there is a 5 minute cooldown period during which the ability can't be used.

Silent strike is now aimable with a penalty based on the number of ranks you have. At 1 rank you have 50% of your normal AIM ability which scales to 90% at 5 ranks. In addition, you can specify an attack modifier of WAYLAY, JAB, GRAPPLE, PUNCH, or KICK to use that attack type instead. e.g., CMAN SILENTSTRIKE WAYLAY KOBOLD BACK

Skill Name: Silent Strike
Mnemonic: silentstrike
Hostile: Yes
Stamina Cost: Base 20 (-8 Rank 1, -6 Rank 2, -4 Rank 3)
Other Requirements: Training in Ambush and Stalking and Hiding is recommended.
Available to: Rogues.
Prerequisites:
Shadow Mastery (at rank 2)
CMP Cost:
Rank 1: (Squares) 2
Rank 2: (Squares) 4
Rank 3: (Squares) 6
Rank 4: (Squares) 8
Rank 5: (Squares) 10
Description: Attempt to ambush or waylay from hiding without revealing one's location. Silent Strike reduces aiming chance by 50% at rank 1 and scales down to 10% at rank 5 (10% per rank). You may specify an attack modifier of WAYLAY, JAB, GRAPPLE, PUNCH, or KICK after CMAN SILENTSTRIKE to use that attack type instead.

Armored Stealth and Armored Evasion have been reduced to 150 armor points. This allow you to take rank 2 of Light Armor Mastery and rank 5 of the other rogue armor skills provided you have 200 total armor ranks. Additionally, Armor Reinforcement for warriors has been dropped to 150 points to be a more competitive choice for Armor Support.

[Taernath]

All of those sound solid.

Is this... what real dev looks like?

https://media.giphy.com/media/RnPRNP5ICPl6M/giphy.gif

[Astray]

Holy shit.

[Donquix]

the other big changes being worked on that they have mentioned on discord:

the locksmithing queue (benefits everyone)

for all cman users - the ability to use SOME cmans while in your own induced combat RT, basically. At a stamina penalty and obviously still incurring the RT the maneuver would cause you to accrue. i.e. you ambush something, while you are in the 4-6 second ambush RT something that can implode you walks into the room, while still in RT you could DIVERT, shield bash it, etc. before it could act. acceptable maneuver (feint is a hard no) list being figured out

all i can think of, not sure if they said any others.

[Alashir]

Wow that is...amazing

[Methais]

All of those sound solid.

Is this... what real dev looks like?

https://media.giphy.com/media/RnPRNP5ICPl6M/giphy.gif

Yes. Hopefully he won't eventually fall into the P2W trap and end up like Estild and the other dev douches became.

WTB SpiffyJr for wizards.

[SonoftheNorth]

Great update, I'd like to see rogues get something involving poisons.

[drumpel]

Great update, I'd like to see rogues get something involving poisons.

I'd like to see them fix the poison flaring weapon that takes pourable poisons. The flares for them take 30 seconds before the poison damage triggers after the weapon flared. What's the point of these flares if the target will be dead before 30 seconds?

[Methais]

I'd like to see them fix the poison flaring weapon that takes pourable poisons. The flares for them take 30 seconds before the poison damage triggers after the weapon flared. What's the point of these flares if the target will be dead before 30 seconds?

Simu (or at least Estild) probably sees rogue poisons that are effective as a threat to rotflares or some other P2W item.

[drumpel]

Simu (or at least Estild) probably sees rogue poisons that are effective as a threat to rotflares or some other P2W item.

They don't have to do poisons that are strictly damage based. Poisons could impact other aspects of creatures - cause blindness (maybe cuts perception by half), lowers DS, drops EBP, slows, paralyzes/stuns, causes confusion (prevents creature from attacking) and so on.

[Methais]

They don't have to do poisons that are strictly damage based. Poisons could impact other aspects of creatures - cause blindness (maybe cuts perception by half), lowers DS, drops EBP, slows, paralyzes/stuns, causes confusion (prevents creature from attacking) and so on.

I didn't mention anything about strictly damage though.

[nocturnix]

Much needed buffs to the rogue class. Makes me want to play my rogue more or my baby monk. I feel alt-itis coming g on...

[Alashir]

Much needed buffs to the rogue class. Makes me want to play my rogue more or my baby monk. I feel alt-itis coming g on...

Srsly. Such a great change. And it comes on the heels of all sorts of fun TWC releases at duskruin

[m444w]

I appreciate the improvements, the Light Armor Mastery is the big win here, the other stuff is playing checkers when everyone else is playing chess.

Smastery already costs a hell of a lot of cman points and now it requires even more to make it what it should've been in the first place, passive.

Silent strike got some buffs, but it still costs somewhere like 1/6th of your resource pool at cap to use for a ginormous aiming penalty that invokes hard RT? It's supposed to be the sort of stealth keystone trump card ability, and it needs a bigger overhaul than this to actually be useful, but I guess rogues don't really have anything else worth spending stamina on.

Compare the silent strike buff to the buff fire 520 for extra flares, which wizards are lulzing at because it's not as good as EDPing or whatever from earth 520....

It's like if you were a boxer in a fight with both hands tied behind your back and then someone unties one and tells you it's progress.

[Methais]

I appreciate the improvements, the Light Armor Mastery is the big win here, the other stuff is playing checkers when everyone else is playing chess.

Smastery already costs a hell of a lot of cman points and now it requires even more to make it what it should've been in the first place, passive.

Silent strike got some buffs, but it still costs somewhere like 1/6th of your resource pool at cap to use for a ginormous aiming penalty that invokes hard RT? It's supposed to be the sort of stealth keystone trump card ability, and it needs a bigger overhaul than this to actually be useful, but I guess rogues don't really have anything else worth spending stamina on.

Compare the silent strike buff to the buff fire 520 for extra flares, which wizards are lulzing at because it's not as good as EDPing or whatever from earth 520....

It's like if you were a boxer in a fight with both hands tied behind your back and then someone unties one and tells you it's progress.

I don't know much about how this new stuff affects rogues, but for what it's worth, those flares are the same strength as regular flares, which are typically weak as fuck and aren't going to make any noticeable difference in 99% of a wizard's encounters. And they always flare fire, regardless of what spell you're casting, which is extra dumb and makes it useless in a lot of situations.

That, and the base 5% chance to proc with some stupid seed requirement that's not worth picking up fire lore for to increase the chance.

The whole idea is to make fire lore worth training in again, at least past the 20 ranks needed to unlock Steam because that's all it's currently good for, but they keep failing at it really hard and then getting butthurt when wizards aren't creaming their pants over underwhelming low hanging fruit dev that nobody asked for in the first place, because Estild is scared that if he implements anything with some actual power behind it, it might cut into his P2W profits while the things wizards have been asking for for years and years, like fixing our useless trash spells (914, 915, 514, 525, etc.) continue to be ignored. The only non-P2W dev Estild is interested in is shit that takes like 10 minutes to code, because he'd much rather spend all of his time working on P2W items.

Estild has been trolling wizards for like 5 years now, ignoring everything that's needed and instead trickling in weak bullshit that nobody asked for just to pad some annual list of meaningless dev accomplishments, which that list now includes bug and typo fixes...as dev.

I'll put it this way...even Krakii thinks the flares need to hit harder if they're expecting people to pick up fire lore for it. And Krakii is one of the biggest advocates in the game for overall mediocrity and tedium and nerfing everything under the sun and making shit boring and useless.

If those flares could be trained up to hit like sonic flares with 150+ fire lore ranks or something like that, that would make it worth training heavy fire lore for. Having drake falchion quality flares attached to it, no so much. An extra 5-25 damage or whatever that apparently never crit kills (I haven't even seen one of these flares crit kill a vaespilon, which are super squishy and even 901 can crit kill those) isn't going to make any kind of difference, and certainly isn't worth giving up the crit padding you get from 520 earth, which in almost any situation is the only 520 effect that's worth using.

If they want us to give up a huge defensive bonus, then the offensive bonus we're giving it up for needs to be strong enough to be worth the defensive loss.


It's like if you were a boxer in a fight with both hands tied behind your back and then someone unties one and tells you it's progress.

This is pretty much the case with wizards too if you're comparing pre-ELR to post-ELR, which also just happens to be around the time when P2W became Simu's top priority.

Why give professions cool and powerful abilities when you can put it in an item to flip for cash instead? That's basically Estild's outlook these days, and is exactly why P2W dev GMs need to be completely separated from non-P2W dev. It's a massive conflict of interest and is complete shit for the game as a whole, for all professions.

The problem with rogues is they've been completely ignored for so long that it's gonna take a bunch of updates for them to catch up. Just be glad you have someone like Spiffy working on rogues and not a self-serving tard like Estild who's obsessed with P2W dev over everything else.

TLDR: The fire flares being weak garbage that doesn't even come close to offsetting the loss from not using 520 earth is why wizards don't give a fuck about this 520 fire update.

[khorpulent]

Another nice thing about this is that it makes races other than halfling sort of viable as monks.

[Methais]

WyromToday at 1:53 PM
Best strat is amass +50 stamina recovery. Be a rogue. Use CMAN VANISH every time. You don't even need armor.
WyromToday at 1:53 PM
I hunt with a scimitar and a main gauche.
Haven't died since 2009

I'm guessing he's hunted like twice since 2009, but is stamina the current bottleneck for rogues?

[audioserf]

I don't know about rogues, but amassing +50 stamina recovery is a great strategy for any character that uses anything involving stamina

[m444w]

I don't know much about how this new stuff affects rogues, but for what it's worth, those flares are the same strength as regular flares, which are typically weak as fuck and aren't going to make any noticeable difference in 99% of a wizard's encounters. And they always flare fire, regardless of what spell you're casting, which is extra dumb and makes it useless in a lot of situations.

That, and the base 5% chance to proc with some stupid seed requirement that's not worth picking up fire lore for to increase the chance.


Oh, I'm not saying the 520 fire stuff made sense relative to the other wizard options, but it is at least a persistent boon that increases damage, versus costing a wizard 80 mana or whatever everytime they decide to use it. Also even if they added a 200% bonus to hiding or whatever it still wouldn't matter for the Rift since half of the rooms cannot be hidden in and the environ changes randomly.




TLDR: The fire flares being weak garbage that doesn't even come close to offsetting the loss from not using 520 earth is why wizards don't give a fuck about this 520 fire update.

Basically the TL;DR for rogues is that at cap it's better to have defensive manuevers like subdual strike or gkick, so that you have a lot stronger defenses against bandits versus trying to run around spending a large subset of cman points on silent strike. I am extremely glad to see Spiffy working on this stuff, but the costs for cmans, both CMAN point wise and stamina wise relative to the effect is so far outsized for most of them, they are basically worthless.

If they had changed silent strike to do this and be soft RT, so you could immediately re-attempt to hide when you fumble, then I would think it might be worth it. Compare the effect on if a wizard spends 1/6th of their 400 mana at cap, so let's say 950 versus silent strike for relative resource expenditure... I know which one I'd use in SoS.

My case is that squares with the exception of berserk, relative resource (stamina) expenditure compared to pure resource (mana) expenditure is absolutely not even on the same planet, let alone in the same zip code. The entire conversation is framed like it's still happening in the 1990's.

Also, I absolute agree with your points on there needing to be a separation of P2W dev and actual game dev, why would they improve combat systems at all when they can just sell $500 bandaids and get a cut of the profits (like the P2W gms do for every upgrade sold)? Like we saw with the arrow autobundle quivers and such.

[Donquix]

Oh, I'm not saying the 520 fire stuff made sense relative to the other wizard options, but it is at least a persistent boon that increases damage, versus costing a wizard 80 mana or whatever everytime they decide to use it. Also even if they added a 200% bonus to hiding or whatever it still wouldn't matter for the Rift since half of the rooms cannot be hidden in and the environ changes randomly.




Basically the TL;DR for rogues is that at cap it's better to have defensive manuevers like subdual strike or gkick, so that you have a lot stronger defenses against bandits versus trying to run around spending a large subset of cman points on silent strike. I am extremely glad to see Spiffy working on this stuff, but the costs for cmans, both CMAN point wise and stamina wise relative to the effect is so far outsized for most of them, they are basically worthless.

If they had changed silent strike to do this and be soft RT, so you could immediately re-attempt to hide when you fumble, then I would think it might be worth it. Compare the effect on if a wizard spends 1/6th of their 400 mana at cap, so let's say 950 versus silent strike for relative resource expenditure... I know which one I'd use in SoS.

My case is that squares with the exception of berserk, relative resource (stamina) expenditure compared to pure resource (mana) expenditure is absolutely not even on the same planet, let alone in the same zip code. The entire conversation is framed like it's still happening in the 1990's.

Also, I absolute agree with your points on there needing to be a separation of P2W dev and actual game dev, why would they improve combat systems at all when they can just sell $500 bandaids and get a cut of the profits (like the P2W gms do for every upgrade sold)? Like we saw with the arrow autobundle quivers and such.

FWIW that's been brought up (re: you use a cman like once and you're out of resource). I hope it's something they'll look at. Mixing things beyond attack/ambush is fun, using abilities is fun. using an abilty and losing half your stamina and standing there like an idiot is not fun.

[drumpel]

I find it more fun to screw around with my mutant warmage build than it is to sit there and bolt at something as a normal wizard.

Got my spells up - DS in offensive is around 300, AS at level 46 is 324, he's in scale armor and gets free crit padding from 520...plus get's got roughly 5% redux right now.

Casting 506 and using 909 self cast is more entertaining for me than utilizing bolts or 917. I still hunt my other mages (one bolts and uses 917 for most of his attacks) and the only strictly uses 917 and 502, but the gimped warmage is by far more entertaining right now.

I read through the updates and additions for rogues and they don't interest me enough to dust my level 49 rogue off and get out hunting him again. Having max dexterity and being 2.5x in hiding, it sucks having things constantly spot him when trying to hide or stay hidden. To make use of smastery his shield spell block, sweeping and so on it just eats through his stamina too fast - I have to pace his hunts to make sure he wasn't popping his muscles and issues with hiding....it got to be too much of a hassle for me to hunt him. So he just picks boxes for alts from time to time and slowly levels (I think he's gone from level 46 to now being about 2k from level 50) in the past 18 months.

[n0551n3n0m1n3]

If I read this correctly, rank 2 light armor mastery requires 50 ranks of armor use...and if you use the chart on wiki that means you are trained for Aug chain or better? So the bonus to CvA sucks, and just gets worse with more armor ranks...sound dev right there

[audioserf]

FWIW that's been brought up (re: you use a cman like once and you're out of resource). I hope it's something they'll look at. Mixing things beyond attack/ambush is fun, using abilities is fun. using an abilty and losing half your stamina and standing there like an idiot is not fun.
It is pretty wild how my empath can cast Wither 26 times on a head of mana, not even including pulses or society mana abilities, and a square can use an active cman once or twice and they're done if they want to mstrike or do anything else. They really should fairly dramatically reduce stamina costs for pretty much everything. The CMs still wouldn't be as powerful as one of the empath's 26 Withers.

[drumpel]

It is pretty wild how my empath can cast Wither 26 times on a head of mana, not even including pulses or society mana abilities, and a square can use an active cman once or twice and they're done if they want to mstrike or do anything else. They really should fairly dramatically reduce stamina costs for pretty much everything. The CMs still wouldn't be as powerful as one of the empath's 26 Withers.

Next DR for 250K BS, get a 1x use/day stamina restore item. You can buy multiples and stack them, up to 50!

[rolfard]

Unnecessary. I stacked up max stamina and stamina recovery on my rogue and can vanish and qstrike without a hard time. The new changes will make it easier too

[mgoddess]

If I read this correctly, rank 2 light armor mastery requires 50 ranks of armor use...and if you use the chart on wiki that means you are trained for Aug chain or better? So the bonus to CvA sucks, and just gets worse with more armor ranks...sound dev right there

If I understand how/what you're saying/asking.... yes, you're trained for Aug Chain, if you've got the 50 ranks in AU... if you then spec in Light Armor Mastery, and wear anything leather, you will have a *BETTER* CvA, than if you were just trained for that leather AsG.

I put this example on the talk page, to someone else's confusion of the chart on the wiki:
"How I read it is that, taking Double Leather as an example... if you're wearing Double Leather, and are trained for Double Leather (8 ranks of AU), you'll have the normal CvA of 12. However, if you happen to up your AU training to that of something like Brigandine (30 ranks) and still wear your Double Leather, with Light Armor Mastery, you'll now have an effective CvA of 9. With even more AU training, say the 80 ranks needed for MPB, while still wearing your Double Leather, you'd have an effective CvA of 3. Pretty much, the more Armor Use training you have, with AsG's less than what you're trained for, you get better CvA's. If this doesn't help, let me know, please!"

Remember the lower the CvA number the better.

[n0551n3n0m1n3]

I forgot lower CvA is better...that clarifies things, thank you

[Fortybox]

If I understand how/what you're saying/asking.... yes, you're trained for Aug Chain, if you've got the 50 ranks in AU... if you then spec in Light Armor Mastery, and wear anything leather, you will have a *BETTER* CvA, than if you were just trained for that leather AsG.

I put this example on the talk page, to someone else's confusion of the chart on the wiki:
"How I read it is that, taking Double Leather as an example... if you're wearing Double Leather, and are trained for Double Leather (8 ranks of AU), you'll have the normal CvA of 12. However, if you happen to up your AU training to that of something like Brigandine (30 ranks) and still wear your Double Leather, with Light Armor Mastery, you'll now have an effective CvA of 9. With even more AU training, say the 80 ranks needed for MPB, while still wearing your Double Leather, you'd have an effective CvA of 3. Pretty much, the more Armor Use training you have, with AsG's less than what you're trained for, you get better CvA's. If this doesn't help, let me know, please!"

Remember the lower the CvA number the better.

I still don’t get the point. Why would a rogue want to wear doubles when mbp gives the CvA and protects better.

Only benefit I see is for monks.

[mgoddess]

I still don’t get the point. Why would a rogue want to wear doubles when mbp gives the CvA and protects better.

Only benefit I see is for monks.

One thing I can think of is that, with doubles, you can stack up the armor accessories without upping the effective AsG that you're wearing (same with brig & chain haub.). Second thing, I think leathers are better for dodging, compared to MBP. A third thing, which may only be for higher-level rogues, is the casting penalty... it's much harder to cast in MBP, compared to the leather armors.

Also remember, that it isn't *just* doubles that this works for, it's for any of the leather armors (and robes). So, rogues wearing brig, who have AU trained higher, and get LAM, can see an improvement, too.

I do, agree, that Light Armor Mastery seems to be much more oriented towards Monks, but there are definitely side cases where it may be useful for the odd rogue.

[Skeletor]

Not quite understanding this. At rank 5 light armor mastery how much of a CvA bonus am I gettng exactly if I were say a monk with 200 armor use ranks?

[n0551n3n0m1n3]

Its 2 ranks, and you should check the wiki page on light armor mastery. I think wearing robes with 200 ranks your cva drop to -3 compared to the standard cva of robes which is 25

[mgoddess]

Not quite understanding this. At rank 5 light armor mastery how much of a CvA bonus am I gettng exactly if I were say a monk with 200 armor use ranks?


Its 2 ranks, and you should check the wiki page on light armor mastery. I think wearing robes with 200 ranks your cva drop to -3 compared to the standard cva of robes which is 25

And there's no reason to go to 200 ranks... 50 ranks of AU is all you need for the second level of LAM... but, 150 AU ranks is what you'd need to get that -3 CvA for robes.

[Lulfas]

Not quite understanding this. At rank 5 light armor mastery how much of a CvA bonus am I gettng exactly if I were say a monk with 200 armor use ranks?

Your CvA would be -3

[n0551n3n0m1n3]

And there's no reason to go to 200 ranks... 50 ranks of AU is all you need for the second level of LAM... but, 150 AU ranks is what you'd need to get that -3 CvA for robes.

I was thinking rogues for the 200 ranks with armor spec rank 5 being 150, with 50 for LAM

[mgoddess]

I was thinking rogues for the 200 ranks with armor spec rank 5 being 150, with 50 for LAM

Ooooh, yeah, that's a good point.

[Donquix]

Not quite understanding this. At rank 5 light armor mastery how much of a CvA bonus am I gettng exactly if I were say a monk with 200 armor use ranks?

there's only 2 ranks of LAM, the first gets you all of the cva the second gets you the maneuver bonus and chance to just outright avoid attacks.

to state it a little more plainly than the actual cman, you get a CVA bonus equal to a percent of the DIFFERENCE between the armor you're WEARING and the armor you are most TRAINED for.
The percentage changes based on the armor you're wearing. It is 50 / 30 / 10 for cloth / leather / scale.

If robes are 15 CvA, and you're trained for armor that is say 7 CvA. The difference is 8, 8 * 50% = 4, your final cva would be 11. There's a handy chart on the wiki now, Naijin made it cause he kewl.
https://gswiki.play.net/Light_Armor_Mastery

You should note that CvA makes large jumps at the main armor groups. Armors within a group (say between reinforced and full leather, between half and full plate, etc.) only have a difference of 1 CvA between them. So for a monk, specifically, the difference between being fully trained in MBP and full plate is only 2 CvA (-1 to -3). That training jump costs ~1000 PTPs and isn't worth it until way post cap IMO.

For monks who obviously can benefit the most from this when they can train it (armor is expensive) the key stopping points would be:
20 ranks - if you just wanted to get "something" lets you train the first rank of LAM and get the CvA bonus. you would be trained for cuirbolli and get 5 better CvA (final of 10 CvA before ensorcell)
50 ranks - puts you into the chain class group, lets you train both ranks of LAM for the avoidance / maneuver bonuses. trained for chainmail, 10 better CvA (final of 5 CvA before ensorcell)
80 ranks - MBP, -1 CvA pre-ensorcell for a total of 16 bonus from robes

huge diminishing returns after that.