Naijin no longer on staff

[Tgo01]

Apparently this happened over a week ago. How come I'm always the last to know these things?

Anyone have the drama filled version of what happened? Or even the non-drama filled version?

[Realk]

as far as I know he's been flirting with the idea of quiting the whole thing for a like six months. Simu likely just prolly just said if that's the way you feel then okay this time... maybe?

[BLZrizz]

I appreciated what he did with PSM3 but if this means the poorly conceived pickpocketing flag idea is off the table, I can’t say I mind.

[Realk]

his coding and ability to figure out what previous dev did was off incredible, some/most of his ideas weren't my favorite. Just the idea if you rage quit so many times.. How many becomes too much before someone else can do it for you. Trying to be a GM in this game must be horrible all the way around. It's like being the guy who hands out mashed potatos as a food kitchen and everyone getting mad that you don't have hashbrowns.

[drumpel]

I appreciated what he did with PSM3 but if this means the poorly conceived pickpocketing flag idea is off the table, I can’t say I mind.

Some of it was good, some of it was shit.

I wonder if he was working on the 2nd and 3rd tiers of the Ascension system....a system that was supposed to be finished after PSM3 released. It's been 1.5 years since then and still no indication if the system is coming out or if even being worked on.


Sucks to lose someone that codes for the game, but at the same time I can't say I'd miss him and some of his ideas.

[Winter]

To be fair he did say on the TSC interview when he joined that it wasn't going to be forever, he stayed much longer than I thought he would.

[LOL BRIELUS]

He left because whenever he did something, he would get eviscerated on the Mechanics discord. Go ahead and check it out, usual complainers can easily be identified

[Methais]

Apparently this happened over a week ago. How come I'm always the last to know these things?

Anyone have the drama filled version of what happened? Or even the non-drama filled version?

99% chance he was butthurt over people not liking his shitty ideas, despite him apparently being a really good coder.



He left because whenever he did something, he would get eviscerated on the Mechanics discord. Go ahead and check it out, usual complainers can easily be identified

Perhaps he (and most of Simu dev in general) should stop forcing trash on players then. Especially when he doesn't seem to really know shit about most professions in the first place.

[Taernath]

He left because whenever he did something, he would get eviscerated on the Mechanics discord. Go ahead and check it out, usual complainers can easily be identified

I don’t know, I saw some people on Discord suggest that the PC did it, that the sheer psychic presence of this place that he never read drove him from the game.

I think I like that one better.

[Tgo01]

I don’t know, I saw some people on Discord suggest that the PC did it, that the sheer psychic presence of this place that he never read drove him from the game.

I think I like that one better.

I wonder what scapegoat Discord would use if the PC didn't exist. They might have to actually do some self reflection and realize that they have helped make the GS Discord a pretty toxic place where dissent is squashed and that the toxic GMs are indeed toxic GMs. They would also have to realize that part of the problem is that Simu/Stillfront doesn't really care all that much about the game or the playerbase, they just want to make as much money as possible before the bottom falls out, and that they should be demanding more focus be placed on the game.

Let's get real though, they would probably blame Jesus or something.

[Seran]

I wonder what scapegoat Discord would use if the PC didn't exist. They might have to actually do some self reflection and realize that they have helped make the GS Discord a pretty toxic place where dissent is squashed and that the toxic GMs are indeed toxic GMs. They would also have to realize that part of the problem is that Simu/Stillfront doesn't really care all that much about the game or the playerbase, they just want to make as much money as possible before the bottom falls out, and that they should be demanding more focus be placed on the game.

Let's get real though, they would probably blame Jesus or something.

Discord is toxic because it's moderated, and the PC isn't because the unmoderated toxicity of the former playerbase that posts here have total freedom. Thats an interesting take.

[Tgo01]

Discord is toxic because it's moderated, and the PC isn't because the unmoderated toxicity of the former playerbase that posts here have total freedom. Thats an interesting take.

Discord is toxic because it's filled with a bunch of yes men who seem to run the place, and a few toxic GMs who at times openly imply they hate the playerbase.

I'm not sure you, one of the most toxic people on the PC, should be complaining about toxic people posting to the PC. But you do you.

[gilchristr]

"the sheer psychic presence of this place"

Noice

[Realk]

"the sheer psychic presence of this place"

Noice

Just think if everyone quit their jobs mainly (politics) because not everyone was happy with the media and public opinion.

I know it's not the same things, since those people likely have salaries. Simu being simu probably tossed in a free account and 5 peanuts.

[SpiffyJr]

I'm no longer on staff because I was no longer having fun. I do enjoy reading the alternative theories though.

[Parkbandit]

I'm no longer on staff because I was no longer having fun. I do enjoy reading the alternative theories though.

Wait, SpiffyJr is Naijin?

Let's talk about your bone headed idea about removing pickpocketing.

Rekt.

[SpiffyJr]

Wait, SpiffyJr is Naijin?

Let's talk about your bone headed idea about removing pickpocketing.

Rekt.

I prefer to call it revamping a dead mechanic, but that's kinda irrelevant at this point. :P

[Parkbandit]

I prefer to call it revamping a dead mechanic, but that's kinda irrelevant at this point. :P

Heh... well welcome back to the PC.. the REAL reason you stopped being a GM.

[Orthin]

I'm no longer on staff because I was no longer having fun. I do enjoy reading the alternative theories though.

Does this mean we will get some new bomb spiffyjr scripts?!

[SpiffyJr]

Heh... well welcome back to the PC.. the REAL reason you stopped being a GM.

Hah! Life has gotten busy and focus has shifted as I've aged. Gemstone was about all the gaming I did and I'm unlikely to return, but I won't say never. Gemstone seems to always win in the long run.

[Taernath]

https://i.imgur.com/r7mxUPk.jpg

[Neovik1]

Naijin did a lot of good for the game in a fast amount of time. PSM3 among many other things, actually made the game fun to play as a melee. I doubt I'd still be playing at this point without all the changes that Naijin implemented. Thanks again for all the cool stuff you implemented and good luck with whatever you are up to these days.

[Parkbandit]

https://i.imgur.com/r7mxUPk.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/ac/ed/e8aced4827b4cfc929d3374b759aff8e.gif

[Sorcasaurus]

Naijin did a lot of good for the game in a fast amount of time. PSM3 among many other things, actually made the game fun to play as a melee. I doubt I'd still be playing at this point without all the changes that Naijin implemented. Thanks again for all the cool stuff you implemented and good luck with whatever you are up to these days.

This. Thank you for all the time, effort and for injecting more fun into the game. Cheers, and good luck in whatever has your time and attention these days :smile:

[HebrewToYou]

Hah! Life has gotten busy and focus has shifted as I've aged. Gemstone was about all the gaming I did and I'm unlikely to return, but I won't say never. Gemstone seems to always win in the long run.

I wish you the best moving forward, sir. Happy holidays.

[audioserf]

Box pool and PSM3 alone are all time banger pieces of development. Thanks for all you did while on staff!

[zhagen]

We need to have a PC sponsored AMA (ask-me-anything) with Naijin: Spill all the dirty secrets and craziest staff stories! Someone buy this man a beer as thanks for all his hard work......

[BLZrizz]

We need to have a PC sponsored AMA (ask-me-anything) with Naijin: Spill all the dirty secrets and craziest staff stories! Someone buy this man a beer as thanks for all his hard work......

If only staff didn’t have to sign an NDA…

[Neveragain]

We need to have a PC sponsored AMA (ask-me-anything) with Naijin: Spill all the dirty secrets and craziest staff stories! Someone buy this man a beer as thanks for all his hard work......

I'm not sure it's possible to out crazy the alternative timeline where Simutronics had the ability to dominate the MMORPG genre and actually succeeded by paying their employees a salary.

[Orthin]

I'm not sure it's possible to out crazy the alternative timeline where Simutronics had the ability to dominate the MMORPG genre and actually succeeded by paying their employees a salary.

Fucking Thanos ruined it for us

[Neveragain]

Fucking Thanos ruined it for us

The idea that Thanos was the antagonist that brought SIMU to their knees makes for a good story.

Though, like life often is, the real story just isn't that exciting.

Now if we were to replace Thanos with "cocaine", we may have a story based on real life.

[Orthin]

The idea that Thanos was the antagonist that brought SIMU to their knees makes for a good story.

Though, like life often is, the real story just isn't that exciting.

Now if we were to replace Thanos with "cocaine", we may have a story based on real life.

This is the unexplored part of Boston George's life. They need to peel back the onion on the role he played in early Simu

[Tgo01]

I'm no longer on staff because I was no longer having fun. I do enjoy reading the alternative theories though.

Well this is no fun. Did someone at least throw a pie in someone's face?

[SonoftheNorth]

He got fired for attempting to buff rogues

[Tgo01]

This thread is now about posting why Naijin is no longer on staff. Wrong answers only.

[Alastir]

This thread is now about posting why Naijin is no longer on staff. Wrong answers only.

He ragequit after nobody but the circle jerk bro group wanted to play his version of the game.

He ragequit after he realized $$$ is more important than balance.

He ragequit after he wasn't allowed to further ruin the pure professions and cause everyone to cancel their accounts.

He ragequit so Estild could blame players for him leaving even though he participated and was often the cause of the major discord disputes.

[Viekn]

He ragequit after nobody but the circle jerk bro group wanted to play his version of the game.

He ragequit after he realized $$$ is more important than balance.

He ragequit after he wasn't allowed to further ruin the pure professions and cause everyone to cancel their accounts.

He ragequit so Estild could blame players for him leaving even though he participated and was often the cause of the major discord disputes.

It's almost like you had those written down, ready to go.

[Fortybox]

This thread is now about posting why Naijin is no longer on staff. Wrong answers only.

He quit because his biggest priority right now is to save Twitter, get humanity to Mars, and reduce carbon emissions.

Halflings and rogues will just have to wait.

[Suppressed Poet]

He went to Blizzard Entertainment to work on future patches for Diablo Immortal. It’s a natural fit as just like Simutronics employees are sexually abused there & players spend thousands of dollars on nothingness.

[Parkbandit]

He quit because his biggest priority right now is to save Twitter, get humanity to Mars, and reduce carbon emissions.

Halflings and rogues will just have to wait.

I learned earlier in the week that SpiffyJr was Naijin... and now I'm just learning that SpiffyJr is also Elon Musk?

[Dud]

Thanks for all the code, spiffy. Hope you come back someday.

[Dendum]

He ragequit after nobody but the circle jerk bro group wanted to play his version of the game.

He ragequit after he realized $$$ is more important than balance.

He ragequit after he wasn't allowed to further ruin the pure professions and cause everyone to cancel their accounts.

He ragequit so Estild could blame players for him leaving even though he participated and was often the cause of the major discord disputes.


This guy.

[Osdreth]

He ragequit after nobody but the circle jerk bro group wanted to play his version of the game.

He ragequit after he realized $$$ is more important than balance.

He ragequit after he wasn't allowed to further ruin the pure professions and cause everyone to cancel their accounts.

He ragequit so Estild could blame players for him leaving even though he participated and was often the cause of the major discord disputes.

I thought he quit because of people like you who are just absolute entitled shitheads to everyone all of the time. But sure let's go with your list.

[Orthin]

I thought he quit because of people like you who are just absolute entitled shitheads to everyone all of the time. But sure let's go with your list.

Pretty sure his post was in jest since the previous post was asking for fake reasons Naijin left. Though I could be mistaken

[Viekn]

Pretty sure his post was in jest since the previous post was asking for fake reasons Naijin left. Though I could be mistaken

Only that those are pretty much the exact actual reasons why a group of players disliked what Naijin was responsible for releasing and his motivations for doing so.

[Gelston]

If only staff didn’t have to sign an NDA…

It expires. He can do this in like 5 years.

[Orthin]

Only that those are pretty much the exact actual reasons why a group of players disliked what Naijin was responsible for releasing and his motivations for doing so.

ahhh okay, I don't know the discord beefs I am largely off of it

[WRoss]

He ragequit because he finished savants and they brought true balance to the game. Releasing them would have made the game perfect and pointless to continue. He had to quit or else he would have destroyed GS.

[HouseofElves]

Discord should move to just announcements and players can only use the forum feature.

But also, Simu can't even afford to hire a real full-time coder to fix their stuff, you think they'd actually pursue an NDA? All the former staff that has come here and spilled it, have any of them even remotely suggested there was follow up for breaking their NDA?

[Neveragain]

If only staff didn’t have to sign an NDA…

I'm not sure an NDA would cover talking about dirty secrets and crazy staff stories.

It would be extremely difficult for a failed former software company to prove any losses or any trade secrets being revealed with ancient spaghetti code. (There's no reason that Gemstone shouldn't be open source at this point, anyway.)

It's not like Simu is going to make this sudden comeback in the AAA gaming industry. They don't have the leadership, creativity, or the guts to make that kind of leap.

[Taernath]

He ragequit because he finished savants and they brought true balance to the game. Releasing them would have made the game perfect and pointless to continue. He had to quit or else he would have destroyed GS.

This is what Wyrom would have you believe.

In truth, the methods Naijin used to create savants were far too dangerous and unstable. The resulting accident pried open Naijin's third eye, forcing him to perceive past, present, and future simultaneously, shattering his psyche and hurling his consciousness across all time and realities. Now he exists as a gibbering madman, sharing his forbidden knowledge with rats and pigeons.

[zhagen]

At least now with 2 second rapidfire my eyes can actually read the combat and appreciate the text flavor of battle vs the 1 second scroll grinder..... In the end, Naijin just wanted to bring wizards closer to true immersion, he freed us from our mindless mashing!

[Neveragain]

This is what Wyrom would have you believe.

In truth, the methods Naijin used to create savants were far too dangerous and unstable. The resulting accident pried open Naijin's third eye, forcing him to perceive past, present, and future simultaneously, shattering his psyche and hurling his consciousness across all time and realities. Now he exists as a gibbering madman, sharing his forbidden knowledge with rats and pigeons.

Two things here.

Firstly, I'm officially reserving the name "Kmartsucks" for my Savant.

Secondly, using ones third eye to focus on the singularity that is "the present" seems wasteful when one could be focusing on the past, future and tits.

[WRoss]

This is what Wyrom would have you believe.

In truth, the methods Naijin used to create savants were far too dangerous and unstable. The resulting accident pried open Naijin's third eye, forcing him to perceive past, present, and future simultaneously, shattering his psyche and hurling his consciousness across all time and realities. Now he exists as a gibbering madman, sharing his forbidden knowledge with rats and pigeons.

Oh. Okay.

[Fortybox]

I learned earlier in the week that SpiffyJr was Naijin... and now I'm just learning that SpiffyJr is also Elon Musk?

Secrets in tha sauce…

[Fortybox]

I heard he quit to start his own text game called SafeGems III where combat lasts for hours and there are no pure professions.

Pick pocketing isn’t allowed, not even against monsters (could hurt their feelings). Swords are crush damage. Blunts are slashing. Arrows do 1 point of damage and short bows take 666 seconds to load vs. heavy crossbows take .05 seconds.

[Mobius1]

I for one greatly appreciate that he tried to take a stand for game balance even if it meant nerfs for some. It's a shame it came so late in the game's life though, when the cancer has really spread out of control with all the pay to win and entitled playerbase. It's a monumental task to try and accomplish, and I personally don't envy GMs jobs at all. It's an awful choosing of lesser evils situation when trying to balance this game, and no matter what is done (even if nothing is done), people will be negatively impacted. The other problem is Discord is a vile cesspool of toxicity and vitriol (Second only to LNET.)

Granted, I feel that Simu has always had massive fundamental issues with the dev process, from not paying full time dev salaries, to mostly allowing devs to pick and choose what they want to work on. If no GMs give two craps about paladins, but you have one in love with Clerics, you end up doing even more damage to game balance. It's a pretty awful system that exploits free work and moves with far too little direction and oversight.

Of course, the pay 2 win is probably the worst of all. Any balance a dev tries to accomplish, is like taking 1 step forward, then 2 steps back because of the disgustingly blatant pay to win nonsense.

I'm assuming the rogue proposal is basically getting shelved thanks to this, too. Granted, I'd rather the proposal not exist if it means CvC pickpocketing being destroyed! But I really never actually believed it would get implemented anyways (Regardless of the toxic Discord community acting as if the silly change was already set in stone.).

I wonder what the future of HW and the expanded ascension system is. And what the plan is for Divergence...

[Ramrod]

I for one greatly appreciate that he tried to take a stand for game balance even if it meant nerfs for some. It's a shame it came so late in the game's life though, when the cancer has really spread out of control with all the pay to win and entitled playerbase. It's a monumental task to try and accomplish, and I personally don't envy GMs jobs at all. It's an awful choosing of lesser evils situation when trying to balance this game, and no matter what is done (even if nothing is done), people will be negatively impacted. The other problem is Discord is a vile cesspool of toxicity and vitriol (Second only to LNET.)

Simu's idea of game balance has always been stupid. They nerf something then declare it had to be done for game balance while selling game-breaking gear for $10,000. I'm really not sure which customers want fundamental mechanics changes for the sake of game balance. I'd much rather see them spend the dev resources adding hunting areas, running events/invasions, finishing ascension, adding classes rather than implementing a new series of nerfs.



Granted, I feel that Simu has always had massive fundamental issues with the dev process, from not paying full time dev salaries, to mostly allowing devs to pick and choose what they want to work on. If no GMs give two craps about paladins, but you have one in love with Clerics, you end up doing even more damage to game balance. It's a pretty awful system that exploits free work and moves with far too little direction and oversight.


Spot on. A long time ago, they used to do IG surveys to help focus dev efforts.



Of course, the pay 2 win is probably the worst of all. Any balance a dev tries to accomplish, is like taking 1 step forward, then 2 steps back because of the disgustingly blatant pay to win nonsense.

The game has always been P2W. The difference here is that Simu is taking the money versus the secondary market. They might as well just sell RPA orbs in the Simu store and call it a day. Bounty vouchers are just that with extra steps.

[Mobius1]

Simu's idea of game balance has always been stupid. They nerf something then declare it had to be done for game balance while selling game-breaking gear for $10,000. I'm really not sure which customers want fundamental mechanics changes for the sake of game balance. I'd much rather see them spend the dev resources adding hunting areas, running events/invasions, finishing ascension, adding classes rather than implementing a new series of nerfs.


I'm actually pro game balance over all those things. One of the biggest hurdles to everything you list, is game balance. The more balanced it is, the easier it is to develop new content.

Also, if you are against P2W then you kind of do care about game balance, since they are so intertwined.


The game has always been P2W. The difference here is that Simu is taking the money versus the secondary market. They might as well just sell RPA orbs in the Simu store and call it a day. Bounty vouchers are just that with extra steps.

Yeah, it's definitely been P2W for as long as I've played, even with Simu's pockets. It's why I haven't been to a single EG in all my years, and boycotted paid events for decades. And yeah, it's only a matter of time until RPA's can be purchased. Unfortunately, I feel things are only going to become more and more desperate as time goes on, to try and squeeze more revenue out of us. I'm not a stock guru by any means, but I do feel like things have gotten exponentially worse since Stillfront, and Gemstone is being milked incessantly simply to benefit investors and nothing else. Corporations tend to favor short term over long term gains, because an investor can simply move on to the next stock. Long term I question how much they really give a crap about our game.

I'm not here to preach doom and gloom though. Ultimately the character customization and RP is probably the largest glue keeping people here, and as far as that goes, the game has made incredible improvements. Admittedly even if game balance gets completely flushed down the toilet, the many other unique aspects of the game will keep it together for who knows how many years to come. Hell, if there was only one shimmer trinket in existance I'd probably trade my entire fortune for it!

[Lavastene]

It's why I haven't been to a single EG in all my years, and boycotted paid events for decades. And yeah, it's only a matter of time until RPA's can be purchased.
I mean you basically can. Blue Orbs are sold for 3500 Raikhen at RW. Pretty easy these days to convert cash to alternative in game currencies and buy as many of these as your crypto wallet can afford. Which, these days is a lot less than it was a year or so ago.

[Methais]

Unrelated, but related, but not worth a new thread:

https://i.imgur.com/lIfXH7r.png

[drumpel]

Unrelated, but related, but not worth a new thread:

https://i.imgur.com/lIfXH7r.png

What a twat.

I love how Simu is so fucking cheap they won't pay someone to actually build a nice, functional forums to replace the ancient official forums....Simu will just piggy back more on discord for free and make use of their shitty forum function there.

[Tsk Tsk]

I love how Simu is so fucking cheap they won't pay someone You mean pay anyone. I think maybe 2 people get paid an actual salary? Everyone else is essentially paid with their love for the game.

[Taernath]

Unrelated, but related, but not worth a new thread:

https://i.imgur.com/lIfXH7r.png

Guessing it's in part because when Naijin deleted his account all his posts with relevant PSM changes became unsearchable.

Reason discord is trash #15892

[Viekn]

Guessing it's in part because when Naijin deleted his account all his posts with relevant PSM changes became unsearchable.

Reason discord is trash #15892

Like they couldn't see the writing on the wall with that possibility.

[Methais]

You mean pay anyone. I think maybe 2 people get paid an actual salary?

Wyrom get a salary, and I think maybe a couple onsite people, but I have no idea what they actually do, if it's game related or just maintaining the website (lol) or what.


Everyone else is essentially paid with their love for the game.

Not necessarily...

https://i.imgur.com/24wOYQy.png

But yeah, P2W totally has no influence on things :lol:

[Tsk Tsk]

Wyrom get a salary, and I think maybe a couple onsite people, but I have no idea what they actually do, if it's game related or just maintaining the website (lol) or what.



Not necessarily...

https://i.imgur.com/24wOYQy.png

But yeah, P2W totally has no influence on things :lol:

Well things sure have changed since my time then, happy to hear some of them are actually making something.

[Methais]

Well things sure have changed since my time then, happy to hear some of them are actually making something.

It's a double edged sword. Yeah it's good that they're actually getting paid now, but it's bad because creating P2W items is why they're getting paid, and at least some of them also work on "game balance" for the core game.

Which is why things happen now like, "We had to nerf X because game balance. Btw check out this sword of nuclear pwnage for only $15,000!" and idgaf how much Simu denies that this is the case.

[Taernath]

https://i.imgur.com/eDNMugJ.jpg

[Tsk Tsk]

It's a double edged sword. Yeah it's good that they're actually getting paid now, but it's bad because creating P2W items is why they're getting paid, and at least some of them also work on "game balance" for the core game.

Which is why things happen now like, "We had to nerf X because game balance. Btw check out this sword of nuclear pwnage for only $15,000!" and idgaf how much Simu denies that this is the case.

I'm completely out of the loop but are they really getting tens of thousands of dollars for items now? Baffling. Also, did they completely destroy the players that made money from playing?

[beldannon5]

part of the reason i think jackpots are going away and t5's and such from ebon gate. We don't want make items for you to win, we want you to pay for them.

[Ramrod]

I'm actually pro game balance over all those things. One of the biggest hurdles to everything you list, is game balance. The more balanced it is, the easier it is to develop new content.

See, I disagree here. I think that's part of Simu's flawed thinking. Having mostly played clerics, I don't care if Wizards have rapid fire. That in now way affects me. Simu, however, has to nerf Rapid Fire cause other classes don't have it? I honestly don't like how they've approached game balance. I liked classes having pros and cons versus the way game balance has made classes similar with just different messaging.

[Mobius1]

See, I disagree here. I think that's part of Simu's flawed thinking. Having mostly played clerics, I don't care if Wizards have rapid fire. That in now way affects me. Simu, however, has to nerf Rapid Fire cause other classes don't have it? I honestly don't like how they've approached game balance. I liked classes having pros and cons versus the way game balance has made classes similar with just different messaging.

If balance doesn't matter, then you should have no issues with being nerfed, either. Why is it that when a class is overpowered, it somehow doesn't matter, but when a class is nerfed it suddenly does?

What happens when a class is largely overpowered and they hunt an area that is balanced for everyone else? It gets really boring for them when there is no challenge. And people ask for new more challenging content, and when they finally get it they whine and cry that they aren't Gemstone gods anymore. Of course, now that most people script, boredom is less of a factor, but then I have to ask again - Why does it matter if you are nerfed in that case? A robot is playing your character anyways.

Say a new "challenging" hunting area is being developed, and you are a GM trying to design it to be actually challenging for every class, but not crazy unfairly difficult for others. Having a more balanced game makes this a much easier task. It allows for content to much more easily be rolled out.

And honestly any pure complaining about Divergence can cry me a river. It's not even a nerf as it literally only impacts new hunting grounds. You are still just as powerful as ever in existing content. Or do you actually have a problem with other classes being more powerful than you?

Ultimately though, IMO, the MAIN justification for game balance comes down to fairness. Why should some classes have it so much better than others? Why should someone be able to buy insane gear that makes them have it so much easier as well? People act like this is trivial, yet the hypocrisy is absolutely disgusting. These same people will often judge you based on how strong your character is, and will even act with an air of superiority in how they interact with you, just because they are a more overpowered class.

And of course, there is inflation. Someone being able to kill things much more quickly results in them generating more silvers. True, we have the loot cap now, but as a rogue I have never once hit it from hunting, so whatever.

And service skills? It must be nice as a cleric right now, raking in your overpowered 6m per week. That alone makes you the most powerful class in the game, IMO, as that equates to nearly 300m in silvers per year that you can spend on massive mechanical benefits to your character.

But yeah, balance doesn't matter. What are Paladins, chopped liver?

[Methais]

I'm completely out of the loop but are they really getting tens of thousands of dollars for items now? Baffling. Also, did they completely destroy the players that made money from playing?

A pair of boots that make you immune to all the dumb shit in the rift sold for $28,000 a year or 2 ago. That's the most notorious one so far, but there are plenty of other examples. Not sure if it's posted here somewhere, but just look at the numbers from any Duskruin auction and you'll see now ridiculous it's gotten.


part of the reason i think jackpots are going away and t5's and such from ebon gate. We don't want make items for you to win, we want you to pay for them.

This is probably also why legendary finds quickly became trash for the most part. The first few were pretty nice finds, then there was several months of garbage fluff/scripted stuff dropping instead, and some halfass decent item once in a while, but nothing I'd consider "legendary" unless I'm forgetting something.

Even though it's overrated as fuck and ultimately a situational gimmick item, that rage plate from the other thread is probably the best legendary find in a good while.

Someone found one yesterday though, but I haven't heard what it was yet or who found it.


See, I disagree here. I think that's part of Simu's flawed thinking. Having mostly played clerics, I don't care if Wizards have rapid fire. That in now way affects me. Simu, however, has to nerf Rapid Fire cause other classes don't have it? I honestly don't like how they've approached game balance. I liked classes having pros and cons versus the way game balance has made classes similar with just different messaging.

The ironic part is how Rapid Fire is really only overpowered when other classes are using it.

"We have to nerf Rapid Fire because it's overpowered when non-wizards use it." is what Simu should really be saying, despite the fix to that being a brain dead easy fix that doesn't actually nerf wizards.

I've never been able to understand why Simu thinks that there's some holy grail of game balance that will cause the planets to align and every class will be equally powerful against everything and have no problems with sucking the fun out of things being a tradeoff for "game balance" that they will never achieve and that nobody who isn't on staff actually gives a fuck about, but they need to stop. They won't, but they still need to. They need to just focus on making sure that all classes are fun to play and don't feel weak to anyone. As much as I complain about wizard nerfs, because they're stupid, I'd die of boredom playing something like a rogue.


Anyway, remember when sorcerers could do this?

Kryblue gestures at a csetairi.
CS: +666 - TD: +489 + CvA: +25 + d100: +74 == +276
Warding failed!
A csetairi is suddenly engulfed in flames of pure essence!
... and hits for 132 points of damage!
... 55 points of damage!
Right arm shattered by an extremely well placed hit!
The csetairi is stunned!
... 55 points of damage!
Icy blast freezes the csetairi's right hand!
... 45 points of damage!
Heavy shock to chest illuminates ribcage. Cool!
... 45 points of damage!
Visible wisps of electricity shoot up left arm. Youch!
... 55 points of damage!
Left arm fractured by an icy blast!
... 50 points of damage!
... 50 points of damage!
Nasty burns to right arm. Gonna need lots of butter.
The csetairi shrieks as she falls to the ground and cradles her mangled right arm!
... 50 points of damage!
... 55 points of damage!
Flames burn hole in chest exposing ribs!
... 45 points of damage!
Burst of flames char chest a crispy black.
... 45 points of damage!
Burst of flames to left eye incinerates eyelid. Gruesome.
... 55 points of damage!
Electric blast goes right to the heart! Fibrillation can be fun.
The csetairi writhes in agony and dies.

[Mobius1]

The ironic part is how Rapid Fire is really only overpowered when other classes are using it.

"We have to nerf Rapid Fire because it's too overpowered when non-wizards use it." is what Simu should really be saying, despite the fix to that being a brain dead fix that doesn't actually nerf wizards.

I've never been able to understand why Simu thinks that there's some holy grail of game balance that will cause the planets to align and every class will be equally powerful against everything and have no problems with sucking the fun out of things being a tradeoff for "game balance" that they will never achieve and that nobody who isn't on staff actually gives a fuck about, but they need to stop. They won't, but they still need to.


Remember when sorcerers could do this, for example?



The Divergence changes were driven by raw data. Clearly they saw that the skills that were adjusted were largely dominating compared to other classes. If they could have simply boosted the other classes to match, they would have done so, but they realized that it was mostly a handful of outliers, so adjusting those skills was the logical course.

And as far as the "fun" argument goes, I think that is pretty disingenuous when a robot plays the game for you anyways.

[Methais]

The Divergence changes were driven by raw data. Clearly they saw that the skills that were adjusted were largely dominating compared to other classes. If they could have simply boosted the other classes to match, they would have done so, but they realized that it was mostly a handful of outliers, so adjusting those skills was the logical course.

Yeah, raw data with probably little to no context, and deciding that nerfing the ceiling instead of raising the floor was the "solution."


And as far as the "fun" argument goes, I think that is pretty disingenuous when a robot plays the game for you anyways.

If that's supposed to be a dig at me, I rarely run a full script anymore even at work, which is when 99% of my play time happens anyway, vs. ;wander + spamming macros + ;sloot. But when I do, I monitor it 99% of the time. And before you go nuts over the other 1%, I say 99% because the script I've been using for 8927420 years is sloppy patchwork that's flawed in several ways (not because of the guy who wrote it, but mostly because of stuff that was added to it over time), to where it will get hung up in several different situations that happen regularly, and I have to manually restart it to get it back on track, and it was left that way intentionally. That way, in the other 1% of cases where I run my script and get sidetracked by some bullshit and forget to tab back over to GS or whatever, the script will eventually get hung up, and I will die. And decay. And then stand up and run ;wander with no spells and die again. And decay again, and this will cycle forever for as long as the script is running. And hopefully I'll get a message like this on Discord:

https://i.imgur.com/oJzzCxr.png

^ My death's sting was so bad on this one that catching 30 days instead probably would have worked out in my favor. Even Itzel wouldn't be able to do anything because all I'd be doing is dying over and over while gaining 0 exp and 0 silvers.

If I were running a script afk though, there's a 100% chance that would be the day I found a legendary, which always results in a GM check unless something changed since legendaries were a thing.

Just in a general sense, do you know what encourages more scripting for any class? Added tedium from nerfs.



But gg thinking you knew what you were talking about. Feel free to dm me if you want the script.

[Mobius1]

Well, good on you for not scripting. Sorry; admittedly it's an assumption I simply make about most people anymore, since it's rare people don't these days.

As for the raw data being used out of context, how exactly? If there is discussion to be had in this regard, I don't think any GMs would be unreasonable. It's not like they have it out for wizards/bards specifically. Surely it's not perfect, and honestly Divergence was meant largely as a testing ground, so it's not exactly set in stone, if the data comes back with unsatisfactory results.

People mention raising the floor, and quite frankly they showed that they are more than willing to do so when it is reasonable. For example, they were planning on nerfing ranged RT, but quickly decided that raising the floor for melee would accomplish the same end goal but without a nerf (Granted, I think Waylay needs to be nerfed by 1 second after this change.).

Say you reduced every single classes' RT/CT by 1, except for bards and wizards? I can't even imagine the impact this would have on the way combat works in the game. Me simply having a 2 second Waylay is already overpowered, IMO, and I've been saying it should be nerfed for a while now. But 1 second Waylay?! Yeah, that would be way too crazy.

[Methais]

Well, good on you for not scripting. Admittedly it's an assumption I simply make about most people anymore, since it's rare people don't these days.

As for the raw data being used out of context, how exactly? If there is discussion to be had in this regard, I don't think any GMs would be unreasonable. It's not like they have it out for wizards/bards specifically. Surely it's not perfect, and honestly Divergence was meant largely as a testing ground, so it's not exactly set in stone, if the data comes back with unsatisfactory results.

People mention raising the floor, and quite frankly they showed that they are more than willing to do so when it is reasonable. For example, they were planning on nerfing ranged RT, but quickly decided that raising the floor for melee would accomplish the same end goal but without a nerf

Good, I hope they keep doing things like that. It's a step in the right direction I was unaware of.


(Granted, I think Waylay needs to be nerfed by 1 second after this change.).

I don't know anything about Waylay, but I disagree.


Say you reduced every single classes' RT/CT by 1, except for bards and wizards? I can't even imagine the impact this would have on the way combat works in the game. Me simply having a 2 second Waylay is already overpowered, IMO, and I've been saying it should be nerfed for a while now. But 1 second Waylay?! Yeah, that would be way too crazy.

There are plenty of other ways to buff weaker classes than just lowering RT. That said, I wouldn't give a shit if it happened anyway. I'd probably roll up a new character and check it out.

[Mobius1]

There are plenty of other ways to buff weaker classes than just lowering RT. That said, I wouldn't give a shit if it happened anyway. I'd probably roll up a new character and check it out.

It feels silly to me to have to alter EVERY class just because some GM decided to release one overpowered skill. It's much more logical to nerf the one skill, and requires significantly less effort to accomplish the same end goal.

Also, the thing about roundtime, is that the lower it gets, the more exponential the benefit. For example, going from 5 seconds to 4 is only a 20% increase in attack speed. But going from 2 to 1 is literally a 100% increase. Whoever thought it was a good idea to give people 1 second CT/RT was, to put it bluntly, mechanically challenged. The problem is that in this case it's been around for so long, people just accepted it as the norm. But this game has been Purestone since I started playing, so we've always known this crap is broken! It just took some GMs that finally had the balls to right some of the wrongs.

It's funny how they can nerf the crap out of wizards and they still outperform most classes. That's how freaking overpowered your class has been.

Personally? I not only agree with nerfing my own class if it's warranted, I would be one of the first in line asking for it if I felt there was imbalance. If only people would understand the value of balance, this would be a MUCH better game, and development would be able to come at a much faster pace.

[Realk]

, and development would be able to come at a much faster pace.

You are assuming, that the people volunteering to do the Dev are skilled enough to do much more than fix the code for RT's. The list of people like spiffy is pretty small one. With the idea that simu doesn't really pay out on it's own and a bonus for p2w, how are you gonna boss someone into making xxx... if the things they care about are xxx.

[Ramrod]

It feels silly to me to have to alter EVERY class just because some GM decided to release one overpowered skill. It's much more logical to nerf the one skill, and requires significantly less effort to accomplish the same end goal.

Except in most (all?) cases that one OP skill is something that was 15+ years old and released back when Simu had a full staff including game designers, product managers, etc versus now when they have a ragtag group of part-time employees and one FTE making 99% of the decisions. Point being, they had a full staff of full-time employees that sat down and made the decision and now a ragtag group of part-timers has decided that it's too OP 15 years later. After having something in the game for 10-20 years removing it due to being OP is like finally closing the barn door after the horse got out, had children, raised a family and died of natural causes.



Also, the thing about roundtime, is that the lower it gets, the more exponential the benefit. For example, going from 5 seconds to 4 is only a 20% increase in attack speed. But going from 2 to 1 is literally a 100% increase. Whoever thought it was a good idea to give people 1 second CT/RT was, to put it bluntly, mechanically challenged. The problem is that in this case it's been around for so long, people just accepted it as the norm. But this game has been Purestone since I started playing, so we've always known this crap is broken! It just took some GMs that finally had the balls to right some of the wrongs.

It wasn't always Purestone. It was Purestone whenever the change to spell prep RT went in 20+ years ago. Since then, they've been nerfing pures and semi's in the name of game balance instead of buffing squares. The current state of the game is that it's Squarestone and they haven't adjusted any of the pure killers they put in as obstacles over the years. They added so many creatures to hunting areas that pures just can't hunt and also maneuvers that squares and semis can shrug off or dodge. As a pure you're supposed to use disablers to avoid this, but then they've made creatures that immediately break free of the disabler so your only shot is to stun/kill outright, but then they've nerfed those spells in the name of game balance.



It's funny how they can nerf the crap out of wizards and they still outperform most classes. That's how freaking overpowered your class has been.

Warriors outperform every single class right now, hands down.



Personally? I not only agree with nerfing my own class if it's warranted, I would be one of the first in line asking for it if I felt there was imbalance. If only people would understand the value of balance, this would be a MUCH better game, and development would be able to come at a much faster pace.

If game balance meant something other than a nerf to Simu then I think more people would support it. 99% of the time though it's just meant nerf. Maybe I'm mistaken and I'm in the minority here, but I feel like most players would prefer they quit fucking with mechanics and just add content. And yeah, you can absolutely add content without "game balance" or changing the mechanics as they've shown time and time again over the last 25 years. I mean shit, the most crowded hunting areas today are the older ones, which is really telling when it comes to player sentiment towards Simu's idea of game balance.

Almost every class now feels like a slight variation of a standard template with the variation being the attack messaging. It wasn't always like that.

At the end of the day, Simu doesn't give a flying fuck what their customers actually want. It's just a bunch of GM's working on what they feel like. If Simu actually cared, they'd go back to surveying players instead of listening to the same 20 people spout their opinions on Discord.

[Realk]

Warriors outperform every single class right now, hands down.

That's an opinion statement, and one that I'd not agree with. That being said the fact that everyone has their own preference and idea of what outperform means. Tells me that it is actually fairly balanced and tinkering for the sake of tinkering is just a waste of time and get people upset.

What quantifies out perform? is there a chart to compare side by side?

[Lavastene]

Someone found one yesterday though, but I haven't heard what it was yet or who found it.
The one from yesterday is actually really dope...

LEGENDARY TREASURE: A prismatic display of color in the skies over Mist Harbor caught everyone’s attention early Thursday morning when Deza found a Legendary Treasure. The sigil-carved glowbark runestaff is a T5 Sigil Staff with special Kroderine Soul abilities, evidently. Congratulations,, Deza! What a grand find!

[Ramrod]

That's an opinion statement, and one that I'd not agree with. That being said the fact that everyone has their own preference and idea of what outperform means. Tells me that it is actually fairly balanced and tinkering for the sake of tinkering is just a waste of time and get people upset.

What quantifies out perform? is there a chart to compare side by side?

Of course it's an opinion statement as anything on the matter would be, but between the post-cap training options, a fully developed guild, the armor options, redux, spell options, etc. I would say they're the most capable. They added all these things to help out squares due to the higher RT and then they reduced RT.

[Neveragain]

Of course it's an opinion statement as anything on the matter would be, but between the post-cap training options, a fully developed guild, the armor options, redux, spell options, etc. I would say they're the most capable. They added all these things to help out squares due to the higher RT and then they reduced RT.


Encumbrance is still too great of a factor for squares. There's not even a reason to deepen containers for a square.

[Mobius1]

You are assuming, that the people volunteering to do the Dev are skilled enough to do much more than fix the code for RT's. The list of people like spiffy is pretty small one. With the idea that simu doesn't really pay out on it's own and a bonus for p2w, how are you gonna boss someone into making xxx... if the things they care about are xxx.

All the more reason to take less complex avenues to achieve better game balance, and thus making adding new content all the more easy for them as well.

[Fortybox]

A pair of boots that make you immune to all the dumb shit in the rift sold for $28,000 a year or 2 ago. That's the most notorious one so far, but there are plenty of other examples. Not sure if it's posted here somewhere, but just look at the numbers from any Duskruin auction and you'll see now ridiculous it's gotten.



This is probably also why legendary finds quickly became trash for the most part. The first few were pretty nice finds, then there was several months of garbage fluff/scripted stuff dropping instead, and some halfass decent item once in a while, but nothing I'd consider "legendary" unless I'm forgetting something.

Even though it's overrated as fuck and ultimately a situational gimmick item, that rage plate from the other thread is probably the best legendary find in a good while.

Someone found one yesterday though, but I haven't heard what it was yet or who found it.



The ironic part is how Rapid Fire is really only overpowered when other classes are using it.

"We have to nerf Rapid Fire because it's overpowered when non-wizards use it." is what Simu should really be saying, despite the fix to that being a brain dead easy fix that doesn't actually nerf wizards.

I've never been able to understand why Simu thinks that there's some holy grail of game balance that will cause the planets to align and every class will be equally powerful against everything and have no problems with sucking the fun out of things being a tradeoff for "game balance" that they will never achieve and that nobody who isn't on staff actually gives a fuck about, but they need to stop. They won't, but they still need to. They need to just focus on making sure that all classes are fun to play and don't feel weak to anyone. As much as I complain about wizard nerfs, because they're stupid, I'd die of boredom playing something like a rogue.


Anyway, remember when sorcerers could do this?

Kryblue gestures at a csetairi.
CS: +666 - TD: +489 + CvA: +25 + d100: +74 == +276
Warding failed!
A csetairi is suddenly engulfed in flames of pure essence!
... and hits for 132 points of damage!
... 55 points of damage!
Right arm shattered by an extremely well placed hit!
The csetairi is stunned!
... 55 points of damage!
Icy blast freezes the csetairi's right hand!
... 45 points of damage!
Heavy shock to chest illuminates ribcage. Cool!
... 45 points of damage!
Visible wisps of electricity shoot up left arm. Youch!
... 55 points of damage!
Left arm fractured by an icy blast!
... 50 points of damage!
... 50 points of damage!
Nasty burns to right arm. Gonna need lots of butter.
The csetairi shrieks as she falls to the ground and cradles her mangled right arm!
... 50 points of damage!
... 55 points of damage!
Flames burn hole in chest exposing ribs!
... 45 points of damage!
Burst of flames char chest a crispy black.
... 45 points of damage!
Burst of flames to left eye incinerates eyelid. Gruesome.
... 55 points of damage!
Electric blast goes right to the heart! Fibrillation can be fun.
The csetairi writhes in agony and dies.

Estild’s mangina is so dry it sucks up all the fun out of the game.

Naijin wanted to make combat take years and thought rogues were fine as is.

Whatever. Dev has no interest in listening to the playerbase.

[Fortybox]

Well, good on you for not scripting. Sorry; admittedly it's an assumption I simply make about most people anymore, since it's rare people don't these days.

As for the raw data being used out of context, how exactly? If there is discussion to be had in this regard, I don't think any GMs would be unreasonable. It's not like they have it out for wizards/bards specifically. Surely it's not perfect, and honestly Divergence was meant largely as a testing ground, so it's not exactly set in stone, if the data comes back with unsatisfactory results.

People mention raising the floor, and quite frankly they showed that they are more than willing to do so when it is reasonable. For example, they were planning on nerfing ranged RT, but quickly decided that raising the floor for melee would accomplish the same end goal but without a nerf (Granted, I think Waylay needs to be nerfed by 1 second after this change.).

Say you reduced every single classes' RT/CT by 1, except for bards and wizards? I can't even imagine the impact this would have on the way combat works in the game. Me simply having a 2 second Waylay is already overpowered, IMO, and I've been saying it should be nerfed for a while now. But 1 second Waylay?! Yeah, that would be way too crazy.

Fuck you, I’ll script if I want to. It’s funny how you lose your shit over pickpocketing but want to force people to do things your way.

Stop being a whiny little bitch.

[Mobius1]

Fuck you, I’ll script if I want to. It’s funny how you lose your shit over pickpocketing but want to force people to do things your way.

Stop being a whiny little bitch.

Lol, how did I whine? The ones whining are those who can't handle the game being balanced. I never once said anything about stopping people from scripting in this discussion. My point had nothing to do with that.

I've said many times in the past that bigshot put us in stage 4 cancer. To remove the tumors at this point would kill us, so I'd never suggest such a thing.

[Mobius1]

Except in most (all?) cases that one OP skill is something that was 15+ years old and released back when Simu had a full staff including game designers, product managers, etc versus now when they have a ragtag group of part-time employees and one FTE making 99% of the decisions. Point being, they had a full staff of full-time employees that sat down and made the decision and now a ragtag group of part-timers has decided that it's too OP 15 years later. After having something in the game for 10-20 years removing it due to being OP is like finally closing the barn door after the horse got out, had children, raised a family and died of natural causes.

Sorry, been too busy to respond to your post until now.

With something like this, nothing should ever be grandfathered in. There's instances where grandfathering something is the best course, but I just can't agree that this is one of them. Having a 15+ year old tumor removed is a GOOD thing, even if it might hurt a little at first. Be glad that you got to abuse an overpowered skill for so long!

Granted, as I said earlier, one could also argue that it's not even a nerf, since it only impacts Divergence areas. You can simply continue to use your overpowered skills exactly as before, if you so choose. It's only the new areas where it is different, and those areas are 100% optional.



It wasn't always Purestone. It was Purestone whenever the change to spell prep RT went in 20+ years ago. Since then, they've been nerfing pures and semi's in the name of game balance instead of buffing squares. The current state of the game is that it's Squarestone and they haven't adjusted any of the pure killers they put in as obstacles over the years. They added so many creatures to hunting areas that pures just can't hunt and also maneuvers that squares and semis can shrug off or dodge. As a pure you're supposed to use disablers to avoid this, but then they've made creatures that immediately break free of the disabler so your only shot is to stun/kill outright, but then they've nerfed those spells in the name of game balance.


Warriors outperform every single class right now, hands down.

Honestly, it's going to take a lot more evidence than this to be able to make this claim. The raw data suggests otherwise. In fact, the last data Naijin shared, pures were STILL performing better than squares in Divergence areas. Please give me real examples/evidence if you are going to make these claims. And what critters are killing pures with maneuvers, that aren't killing squares? Surely things are more balanced than they were in the past, in regards to class balance, but that has almost nothing to do with nerfs, actually, and almost everything to do with PSM and other changes which WERE buffs to squares. Yeah, there's vvrael destroyers in the Scatter which are immune to spells, but I 100% think that that is bull crap and should be changed. But critters like that are not the norm, at least.



If game balance meant something other than a nerf to Simu then I think more people would support it. 99% of the time though it's just meant nerf. Maybe I'm mistaken and I'm in the minority here, but I feel like most players would prefer they quit fucking with mechanics and just add content. And yeah, you can absolutely add content without "game balance" or changing the mechanics as they've shown time and time again over the last 25 years. I mean shit, the most crowded hunting areas today are the older ones, which is really telling when it comes to player sentiment towards Simu's idea of game balance.

What has been nerfed? If you were to count how many things have been buffed versus how many things have been nerfed, it's probably 100 to 1!!


Almost every class now feels like a slight variation of a standard template with the variation being the attack messaging. It wasn't always like that.

No balance is perfect. But if you enjoy absolutely wrecking things compared to other classes with overpowered abilities, and don't want that taken away because it made you "unique," that argument will get no sympathy from me. If you want to suggest ways to make classes more unique but NOT overpowered, by all means I am sure they would be happy for ideas. But it also makes perfect sense to make things more streamlined. The whole reason for them doing it is to make it waaaaaaaaaaaaaay simpler for them to add new content, including new abilities, new skills, new hunting grounds, and so fourth.



At the end of the day, Simu doesn't give a flying fuck what their customers actually want. It's just a bunch of GM's working on what they feel like. If Simu actually cared, they'd go back to surveying players instead of listening to the same 20 people spout their opinions on Discord.

I agree that their way of development has issues, as I said earlier in this thread. But I definitely don't think their motives are necessarily the issue. I do think they care, otherwise they wouldn't be doing so much unpaid work, dealing with toxic players who only give them headaches for all they give of themselves. I can't help but sympathize with them, especially since the way it is is largely not their fault, and is probably largely out of their control to change. I feel really bad for Naijin and all the crap he went through, after he selflessly gave so much of himself to this game. We may not have seen eye to eye on a lot of things, but I always knew his heart was in the right place, and I respected him a lot.

And polling the masses does have some value, but on the other hand it's only SO useful. For example, Wizards are the most played class, so therefore polls would likely be more favorable to them, even if they were overpowered. Also players don't necessarily have access to the same data that GMs do.

It's kind of like why we have elected representatives in our government, instead of making every last thing up to a popular vote. That would be disastrous!!

[Ramrod]

Sorry, been too busy to respond to your post until now.

With something like this, nothing should ever be grandfathered in. There's instances where grandfathering something is the best course, but I just can't agree that this is one of them. Having a 15+ year old tumor removed is a GOOD thing, even if it might hurt a little at first. Be glad that you got to abuse an overpowered skill for so long!

Granted, as I said earlier, one could also argue that it's not even a nerf, since it only impacts Divergence areas. You can simply continue to use your overpowered skills exactly as before, if you so choose. It's only the new areas where it is different, and those areas are 100% optional.

I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I don't see it as a tumor. I see it as game decisions made be a bigger, more capable staff that the new ragtag group decides should be changed 15+ years after the fact.



Honestly, it's going to take a lot more evidence than this to be able to make this claim. The raw data suggests otherwise. In fact, the last data Naijin shared, pures were STILL performing better than squares in Divergence areas. Please give me real examples/evidence if you are going to make these claims. And what critters are killing pures with maneuvers, that aren't killing squares? Surely things are more balanced than they were in the past, in regards to class balance, but that has almost nothing to do with nerfs, actually, and almost everything to do with PSM and other changes which WERE buffs to squares. Yeah, there's vvrael destroyers in the Scatter which are immune to spells, but I 100% think that that is bull crap and should be changed. But critters like that are not the norm, at least.

There's destroyers in the scatter, constructs in OTF, and on and on in all high level hunting areas that pures simply can't touch. What makes it worse is that pures can't defend against their maneuvers either. Squares can not only kill them, but can defend against them. I can't even stay in the same room as those creatures.

And then squares gets stuff like this:

Wisps of shadow follow the arc of a withered shadow-cloaked draugr's arm as she swings a huge black alloy greatsword at you!
AS: +667 vs DS: +500 with AvD: +29 + d100 roll: +68 = +264
... and hits for 25 points of damage!
Quick slash catches your cheek!
Dimples are always nice.
The ethereal necrotic film covering a withered shadow-cloaked draugr's black alloy greatsword shrivels away.

Again, it's all going to be opinion based, but warriors can do that while hunting. And then quickstrick for 2 second RT.



What has been nerfed? If you were to count how many things have been buffed versus how many things have been nerfed, it's probably 100 to 1!!

What hasn't been nerfed in this game? lol. Seriously, almost every single attack spell in the game has been nerfed. Shit, even 225/130 were nerfed. Raising and healing were nerfed. Every single one of those changes was made in the name of "game balance." I'm struggling to think of a single pure class that hasn't been nerfed to shit and then given a generic high mana attack spell in its place.

https://gswiki.play.net/Research:Mean_casts_per_kill_(317,_519,_1115)

Those are all basically the same spell with different messaging implemented after nerfing the classes.



No balance is perfect. But if you enjoy absolutely wrecking things compared to other classes with overpowered abilities, and don't want that taken away because it made you "unique," that argument will get no sympathy from me. If you want to suggest ways to make classes more unique but NOT overpowered, by all means I am sure they would be happy for ideas. But it also makes perfect sense to make things more streamlined. The whole reason for them doing it is to make it waaaaaaaaaaaaaay simpler for them to add new content, including new abilities, new skills, new hunting grounds, and so fourth.

I wish classes were more unique and all had pros/cons versus how condensed it is today. There is very little class difference when it comes to hunting as a pure. You're basically picking what service you want access to. There used to be areas where certain classes excelled and other struggled, but that was because there was uniqueness to the classes. Now it's just certain creatures put in hunting areas that are there to kill pures.



I agree that their way of development has issues, as I said earlier in this thread. But I definitely don't think their motives are necessarily the issue. I do think they care, otherwise they wouldn't be doing so much unpaid work, dealing with toxic players who only give them headaches for all they give of themselves. I can't help but sympathize with them, especially since the way it is is largely not their fault, and is probably largely out of their control to change. I feel really bad for Naijin and all the crap he went through, after he selflessly gave so much of himself to this game. We may not have seen eye to eye on a lot of things, but I always knew his heart was in the right place, and I respected him a lot.

I don't doubt they care, but I doubt they care about what their customers actually want. If they really cared about what their customers want then they'd simply ask them like they used to.

[Methais]

It feels silly to me to have to alter EVERY class just because some GM decided to release one overpowered skill. It's much more logical to nerf the one skill, and requires significantly less effort to accomplish the same end goal.

Also, the thing about roundtime, is that the lower it gets, the more exponential the benefit. For example, going from 5 seconds to 4 is only a 20% increase in attack speed. But going from 2 to 1 is literally a 100% increase. Whoever thought it was a good idea to give people 1 second CT/RT was, to put it bluntly, mechanically challenged. The problem is that in this case it's been around for so long, people just accepted it as the norm. But this game has been Purestone since I started playing, so we've always known this crap is broken! It just took some GMs that finally had the balls to right some of the wrongs.

Let's not forget that Rapid Fire used to result in 0 RT for as long as GS existed, until 2015 or 2016 whenever the big wizard nerf happened. I don't remember when 0 RT with Haste stopped being a thing, but that could easily result in 0 RT with any weapon if you had enough DEX/AGI, before enhancives even existed, neither were self cast, and Rapid Fire could be stacked for 4 hours on anyone. The tradeoff with Rapid Fire, at least back then when most players didn't have mana battery alts, was that you'd run out of mana really really fast and then you're useless.

Going from 1 to 2 is a pretty huge nerf. Going from 0 to 1 is a gargantuan nerf.


But going from 2 to 1 is literally a 100% increase.

Yet you seem to think a 100% decrease to wizards is the fix.


It's funny how they can nerf the crap out of wizards and they still outperform most classes.

So according to you, wizards are outperforming "most" classes, which means wizards are still being outperformed by some other classes, which invalidates this statement:


It feels silly to me to have to alter EVERY class just because some GM decided to release one overpowered skill.

But responding to your point anyway, it sounds to me like that speaks more about the lack of creativity on the part of dev regarding other classes more than anything else. But since some classes, according to you, are still outperforming wizards, then it appears that some GM figured it out at some point.



You are assuming, that the people volunteering to do the Dev are skilled enough to do much more than fix the code for RT's. The list of people like spiffy is pretty small one. With the idea that simu doesn't really pay out on it's own and a bonus for p2w, how are you gonna boss someone into making xxx... if the things they care about are xxx.

This is correct.


That's how freaking overpowered your class has been.

Ok cool. Let's nerf Rapid Fire again, you know, since it's already been nerfed, and then at bare minimum, un-nerf Immolate, let wizards be able to train to actually aim bolts, and fix our useless trash spells like Sandstorm and Weapon Fire (lol) and all the other useless garbage we have. Sound ok? If not, why not?


Personally? I not only agree with nerfing my own class if it's warranted, I would be one of the first in line asking for it if I felt there was imbalance. If only people would understand the value of balance, this would be a MUCH better game, and development would be able to come at a much faster pace.

I hope you find the race to mediocrity enjoyable.

[Realk]

Not a divergence or high end topic but to the idea of magic immune.. you can find tattoo'd and sparkling or whatever the other adjective boss creatures around various grounds through all hunting levels. I've thought that was bullshit since they started making the mini bosses.

[drumpel]

Ok cool. Let's nerf Rapid Fire again, you know, since it's already been nerfed, and then at bare minimum, un-nerf Immolate, let wizards be able to train to actually aim bolts, and fix our useless trash spells like Sandstorm and Weapon Fire (lol) and all the other useless garbage we have. Sound ok? If not, why not?


Don't forget about Stone Fist. 14 mana to cast it and all it does is hold a single target in place. If you want the spell to do damage after that you need to throw/wave/slap/clench, which costs extra mana, and don't forget you can't do some of those actions without being at least .75x or better in EL:E skill (based on your level).



Not a divergence or high end topic but to the idea of magic immune.. you can find tattoo'd and sparkling or whatever the other adjective boss creatures around various grounds through all hunting levels. I've thought that was bullshit since they started making the mini bosses.

The only thing about those mini-bosses that piss me off are the ones that shoot a fucking laser beam when they die. Nothing better than a creature dying that shoots a beam of energy that fries your nerves or breaks a limb or takes out an eye and it immediately ends your hunt. What a stupid fucking creature design.

[Ramrod]

I hope you find the race to mediocrity enjoyable.

That sums up Simu's approach to game balance perfectly.

[Mobius1]

I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I don't see it as a tumor. I see it as game decisions made be a bigger, more capable staff that the new ragtag group decides should be changed 15+ years after the fact.


We had staff that thought that Wizards with 0 seconds was a good idea! Or staff that thought sorcerers being able to do what Methais posted earlier, was a good idea! Heh, I remember when I first started in the 90's, after like just a week of playing the game, I asked my RL friend who played a sorc, why casters seemed so much stronger than other classes, and he was like "It's lore. We have spells so we're supposed to be stronger." Yeah, keep telling yourself that buddy! I never bought that load of malarkey for even half a second!!



There's destroyers in the scatter, constructs in OTF, and on and on in all high level hunting areas that pures simply can't touch. What makes it worse is that pures can't defend against their maneuvers either. Squares can not only kill them, but can defend against them. I can't even stay in the same room as those creatures.


Though I disagree with 100% magic immune critters, it's actually not that big of a deal. There's also many critters that are conversely built to give physical combat a harder time.



And then squares gets stuff like this:

Wisps of shadow follow the arc of a withered shadow-cloaked draugr's arm as she swings a huge black alloy greatsword at you!
AS: +667 vs DS: +500 with AvD: +29 + d100 roll: +68 = +264
... and hits for 25 points of damage!
Quick slash catches your cheek!
Dimples are always nice.
The ethereal necrotic film covering a withered shadow-cloaked draugr's black alloy greatsword shrivels away.

Again, it's all going to be opinion based, but warriors can do that while hunting. And then quickstrick for 2 second RT.


First of all, you are giving an example of Hinterwilds, which quite frankly is purpose built to better balance the classes. If you don't care about class balance, a warrior being able to do that shouldn't matter to you. Interestingly, one thing I have complained about in the past is that Kroderine Soul is a bit unbalanced for HW, because it allows lower XP characters to perform pretty well there, when the area was designed to be for very post capped players. Not that KS is overpowered or anything - I actually think it's not that great; only in spell sever areas do I think it's really that great.

But even so, with the screen shot of yours, you know what's even better in that situation? Having the 700 DS to not even take damage at all! Something a pure can much more easily do when casting in guarded stance (or stance dancing to guarded stance in the case of a bolter.).

People wanted a challenging new area, and they got it!



What hasn't been nerfed in this game? lol. Seriously, almost every single attack spell in the game has been nerfed. Shit, even 225/130 were nerfed. Raising and healing were nerfed. Every single one of those changes was made in the name of "game balance." I'm struggling to think of a single pure class that hasn't been nerfed to shit and then given a generic high mana attack spell in its place.

https://gswiki.play.net/Research:Mean_casts_per_kill_(317,_519,_1115)

Those are all basically the same spell with different messaging implemented after nerfing the classes.


Nerfing you say? That's quite a myopic view I'd say, especially coming from a cleric. You posted that warrior log earlier, but you know what's also stupidly OP? 319 making that hit do zero damage!! Honestly, many people would say that clerics are the most powerful class in the game now! You also get to make your sweet 6m per week (300m per year) thanks to your new service skill. To say you've had all your spells "nerfed" is a freaking slap to the face of all the boosts your class has gotten!



I wish classes were more unique and all had pros/cons versus how condensed it is today. There is very little class difference when it comes to hunting as a pure. You're basically picking what service you want access to. There used to be areas where certain classes excelled and other struggled, but that was because there was uniqueness to the classes. Now it's just certain creatures put in hunting areas that are there to kill pures.


What has changed and where? I know immolation was nerfed many many years ago, but that also came with many wizard buffs since. What other spells have been nerfed? Please explain. How are classes less unique?



I don't doubt they care, but I doubt they care about what their customers actually want. If they really cared about what their customers want then they'd simply ask them like they used to.

I personally have had more conversations with GMs by probably 100 fold or more in the last few years, than I ever did in the past.



Let's not forget that Rapid Fire used to result in 0 RT for as long as GS existed, until 2015 or 2016 whenever the big wizard nerf happened. I don't remember when 0 RT with Haste stopped being a thing, but that could easily result in 0 RT with any weapon if you had enough DEX/AGI, before enhancives even existed, neither were self cast, and Rapid Fire could be stacked for 4 hours on anyone. The tradeoff with Rapid Fire, at least back then when most players didn't have mana battery alts, was that you'd run out of mana really really fast and then you're useless.

Going from 1 to 2 is a pretty huge nerf. Going from 0 to 1 is a gargantuan nerf.

I know, right? Pretty crazy how overpowered wizards have been over the years. It's quite obvious why they have always been the most played class.



Yet you seem to think a 100% decrease to wizards is the fix.

I'm not going to say that the rapid fire nerf is the best answer to balance. I think I said as much in an earlier thread about this, too. Whether or not the rapid fire and song of tonis nerfs were too heavy handed or not, is not what these discussions tend to be about, sadly. I'd MUCH prefer to have that conversation, to be honest. Instead, we get these asinine arguments trying to claim that game balance itself doesn't matter! I'm sorry but though I can very much agree that some nerfs go too far, I absolutely can NOT agree that game balance doesn't matter, or that there should never be nerfs (if done fairly.).

To be honest I don't have access to the latest metrics to tell you how fair or unfair the rapid fire nerf is. I will say that the bard nerfs are far worse for their viability than what wizards got, though. Thankfully Divergence is a beta test, as Naijin himself basically said on Discord, so things may (and probably will) be tweaked more in the future.



So according to you, wizards are outperforming "most" classes, which means wizards are still being outperformed by some other classes, which invalidates this statement:

No, what I said was not a contradiction. I was referring to raw data in Divergence areas only. So even in Divergence areas, where rapid fire is slower, wizards were still outperforming squares according to the last data Naijin gave us.



Ok cool. Let's nerf Rapid Fire again, you know, since it's already been nerfed, and then at bare minimum, un-nerf Immolate, let wizards be able to train to actually aim bolts, and fix our useless trash spells like Sandstorm and Weapon Fire (lol) and all the other useless garbage we have. Sound ok? If not, why not?


This comment is 10,000 times more productive than trying to make a case that balance doesn't matter! I'm all for having a discussion about fixing underperforming skills. Still, wizards are the most versatile class in the game, and have a plethora of super powerful spells, like 520, 530, 535, 540, 550, 920, 925, 930, 950, etc.. Wizards have so much defense, utility, versatility, and viability. I absolutely agree that wizards have a lot of room for improvement and buffing a lot of their spells would be great. But on the other hand, IMO, I don't think a GM should so much as buff a single wizard spell until classes like Paladins are buffed first.

[Methais]

To be honest I don't have access to the latest metrics to tell you how fair or unfair the rapid fire nerf is. I will say that the bard nerfs are far worse for their viability than what wizards got, though. Thankfully Divergence is a beta test, as Naijin himself basically said on Discord, so things may (and probably will) be tweaked more in the future.

The underlying issue is Simu has a long track record of "nerf now, fix later" with the "fix" either never happening, or taking a really long time and then the "fix" itself usually ends up being meh and doesn't actually improve anything. This isn't just a wizard thing, and is a big reason why most people oppose nerfs in general, because the promised fixes usually never happen.

If the nerfs and "fixes" happened all at once, people in general would be a lot more accepting of whatever the current nerf happens to be. But the reality is Simu's track record is why almost nobody trusts them to deliver on any promises.


This comment is 10,000 times more productive than trying to make a case that balance doesn't matter! I'm all for having a discussion about fixing underperforming skills. Still, wizards are the most versatile class in the game, and have a plethora of super powerful spells, like 520, 530, 535, 540, 550, 920, 925, 930, 950, etc.. Wizards have so much defense, utility, versatility, and viability. I absolutely agree that wizards have a lot of room for improvement and buffing a lot of their spells would be great. But on the other hand, IMO, I don't think a GM should so much as buff a single wizard spell until classes like Paladins are buffed first.

It's also something wizards have been trying to get dev to do for several years now, especially since the big wizard nerf in 2015/2016. Meanwhile, 0 of our useless spells have gotten fixed since then (EDIT: With the exception of 917 and 520, to give credit where it's due), but wizards are expected to eat more nerfs with the "fixes" coming "later" yet again. Meanwhile, dev seems to have all the time in the world to dedicate to creating more P2W items.

Nobody's saying wizards are terrible. All I'm saying is that if they're gonna continue to nerf us, then the "fixes" need to be applied at the same time as said nerfs happen, and Simu's track record is typically them doing the opposite of that.

[Ramrod]

How are classes less unique?

I was going to write a response to everything, but my feelings boil down to this:

Every pure now just follows a cookie-cutter meta:
A bolt spell
A maneuver spell
A high mana cost warding spell that's pretty much the same spell as other classes with different messaging
A service

There used to be diversity. Sorcs were warders, Wizards bolters, Empaths/Clerics semis. Clerics could clean up in areas like tree spirits. Vesperti were meat for squares. Sorcs could destroy anything that would crit. Wizards have an arsenal of bolts to choose from based on what they were hunting.

Now it's just train in the same skills for runestaff DS and everyone sit back in guarded and use their high mana warding spell. There used to be diverse training paths for the classes that led to different outcomes.

And no one is paying 6m/week for sanct work. It's generally 2m/week, but even on a high bonus S6 it's 20m.

[Mobius1]

The underlying issue is Simu has a long track record of "nerf now, fix later" with the "fix" either never happening, or taking a really long time and then the "fix" itself usually ends up being meh and doesn't actually improve anything. This isn't just a wizard thing, and is a big reason why most people oppose nerfs in general, because the promised fixes usually never happen.

If the nerfs and "fixes" happened all at once, people in general would be a lot more accepting of whatever the current nerf happens to be. But the reality is Simu's track record is why almost nobody trusts them to deliver on any promises.

It's also something wizards have been trying to get dev to do for several years now, especially since the big wizard nerf in 2015/2016. Meanwhile, 0 of our useless spells have gotten fixed since then (EDIT: With the exception of 917 and 520, to give credit where it's due), but wizards are expected to eat more nerfs with the "fixes" coming "later" yet again. Meanwhile, dev seems to have all the time in the world to dedicate to creating more P2W items.

Nobody's saying wizards are terrible. All I'm saying is that if they're gonna continue to nerf us, then the "fixes" need to be applied at the same time as said nerfs happen, and Simu's track record is typically them doing the opposite of that.

If wizards are viable, and still outperforming many classes even in Divergence areas, why do they need fixes? Usually when you nerf something, it's because it was too strong. You can't just buff something else to make up for every nerf or it's not really a nerf. The whole intention of the nerf WAS to weaken wizards. Or at least those who were utilizing rapid fire.

Essentially what I am saying here, is that even after the nerfs from years back, wizards were STILL at the top according to the data. THAT's how powerful you were!!! And even after these divergence nerfs they are still doing fine! Again, is there room for improvement? Absolutely no question. Most of the spells you listed are valid points and could use some tweaking. But even so I think most of them still actually make viable builds, so most of them are not THAT bad.

Also, as of yet I don't know if the plan is/was to actually make divergence game wide. I know it had been floated around, but GMs say a lot of things, like that they are going to implement a nosteal flag, which ultimately get shot down. Will it happen? Maybe? Should it happen? I actually think yes (with some refinement), but that's a different discussion.

You're sitting here complaining about your first world problems while Paladins are straight up living in squalor! You also overlook all the new crap you've been given even when you were already OP. Hell, if you make 2m per week on enchanting, that's literally made you like 1 billion silvers richer over the last 10 years than me as a rogue who has no service skill. Man, the mechanical benefits I could get if I bought 1 billion silvers worth of gear....

[Mobius1]

I was going to write a response to everything, but my feelings boil down to this:

Every pure now just follows a cookie-cutter meta:
A bolt spell
A maneuver spell
A high mana cost warding spell that's pretty much the same spell as other classes with different messaging
A service

There used to be diversity. Sorcs were warders, Wizards bolters, Empaths/Clerics semis. Clerics could clean up in areas like tree spirits. Vesperti were meat for squares. Sorcs could destroy anything that would crit. Wizards have an arsenal of bolts to choose from based on what they were hunting.

Now it's just train in the same skills for runestaff DS and everyone sit back in guarded and use their high mana warding spell. There used to be diverse training paths for the classes that led to different outcomes.

And no one is paying 6m/week for sanct work. Right now you can buy an S6 for 20m.

All I have done as a rogue for the last like 25 years is hide, ambush, hide, ambush, hide, ambush, hide, ambush. What kind of diversity did you ever have in the past that you no longer have? I feel like classes are far more diverse than ever before; pures, squares and semis. You have maneuver spells, warding spells, bolting spells, AS attacks, UCS. Squares can now use maneuver attacks, UCS, etc., instead of just AS attacks. I could go on and on. I don't know why you think there is LESS diversity now! Your description of "sitting back in guarded and use their high mana warding spell" has always been the freaking case. When the hell did that ever change? At least now you have more spells and more options than before! (Hell, remember when Empaths could barely even hunt? Now they are like freaking A or S tier!!)

[Lavastene]

And no one is paying 6m/week for sanct work. It's generally 2m/week, but even on a high bonus S6 it's 20m.
My cleric gets 6m to 6.5m per week at a 650+ bonus.

[Ramrod]

All I have done as a rogue for the last like 25 years is hide, ambush, hide, ambush, hide, ambush, hide, ambush. What kind of diversity did you ever have in the past that you no longer have? I feel like classes are far more diverse than ever before; pures, squares and semis. You have maneuver spells, warding spells, bolting spells, AS attacks, UCS. Squares can now use maneuver attacks, UCS, etc., instead of just AS attacks. I could go on and on. I don't know why you think there is LESS diversity now! Your description of "sitting back in guarded and use their high mana warding spell" has always been the freaking case. When the hell did that ever change? At least now you have more spells and more options than before! (Hell, remember when Empaths could barely even hunt? Now they are like freaking A or S tier!!)

Following your logic, Rogues have access to bolt spells, maneuver spells, warding spells, etc. I mean, clerics have one more bolt spell than rogues (306). They have the same number of maneuver spells as rogues (2). Just because you can train a character in something doesn't make it viable much less efficient. The fact that I could bolt something doesn't make it efficient. Why would I cast 306 at something 5+ times to kill it when I could just one/two shot it with 317? Same thing with the maneuver spells. Just so I can?

If you think diversity is having a bunch of options that aren't really viable and then settling on casting 317/519/1115 over and over, then we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm happy to take you hunting and you can watch 306/309 in action.

I personally think they've pushed pures into the same training path (runestaff DS) towards settling for the same hunting style of warding from guarded. And yeah, it would be cool if AS/UCS were still viable choices beyond level 50 or so.

[Methais]

If wizards are viable, and still outperforming many classes even in Divergence areas, why do they need fixes? Usually when you nerf something, it's because it was too strong. You can't just buff something else to make up for every nerf or it's not really a nerf. The whole intention of the nerf WAS to weaken wizards. Or at least those who were utilizing rapid fire.

Essentially what I am saying here, is that even after the nerfs from years back, wizards were STILL at the top according to the data. THAT's how powerful you were!!! And even after these divergence nerfs they are still doing fine! Again, is there room for improvement? Absolutely no question. Most of the spells you listed are valid points and could use some tweaking. But even so I think most of them still actually make viable builds, so most of them are not THAT bad.

Also, as of yet I don't know if the plan is/was to actually make divergence game wide. I know it had been floated around, but GMs say a lot of things, like that they are going to implement a nosteal flag, which ultimately get shot down. Will it happen? Maybe? Should it happen? I actually think yes (with some refinement), but that's a different discussion.

You're sitting here complaining about your first world problems while Paladins are straight up living in squalor! You also overlook all the new crap you've been given even when you were already OP. Hell, if you make 2m per week on enchanting, that's literally made you like 1 billion silvers richer over the last 10 years than me as a rogue who has no service skill. Man, the mechanical benefits I could get if I bought 1 billion silvers worth of gear....

Imagine playing a non-ambushing melee build that just spams ATTACK all day with little to no reliably effective CC spells (emphasis on reliably, most of our CC gets broken almost instantly by most things, at least at cap). That's about what playing a bolting wizard without Rapid Fire feels like, especially on the tedium scale. Even dev has acknowledged that wizards would need some things to make up for another nerf to Rapid Fire. The 940 spell that Estild teased years ago would be a nice start. It's nothing that was or is actually in the works to my knowledge, but it was this, which was originally posted by Estild a long time ago during the ELR, when Rapid Fire stuff was being discussed:

>incant 940
You trace a series of glowing runes while chanting the phrase for Elemental Overload.
Your spell is ready.

You gesture.
You suddenly feel more powerful. (30 second effect)
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

>incant 910
Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Major Shock.
Your spell is ready.

You hurl a powerful lightning bolt at a triton radical!
AS: +332 vs DS: +263 with AvD: +39 + d100 roll: +92 = +200
... and hit for 75 points of damage!
Heavy jolt to chest causes solar plexus to explode. Remarkable display of spraying blood.
... and hit for 57 points of damage!
Stunning arc of electricity fuses right arm at elbow.
... and hit for 44 points of damage!
Horrid jolt to neck explodes vocal cords. The triton radical gurgles in response.
The triton radical collapses, gurgling once with a wrathful look on its face before expiring.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

^ Feel free to tell me what's wrong with something like this. And in case it needs to be said, this spell wouldn't work with Rapid Fire.

If they added something like this, along with removing the 519 nerf and fixing our useless trash spells that you for some reason think a viable build can be made out of in their current forms, they could delete Rapid Fire from game for all I care.


Essentially what I am saying here, is that even after the nerfs from years back, wizards were STILL at the top according to the data. THAT's how powerful you were!!!

No. that's just how shitty the other classes were, no matter how many exclamation points you use to try to paint wizards like they're OG Shin Akuma (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Shin_Akuma) on the OP scale. Empaths and sorcerers had no problems keeping up, and I'm pretty sure they've gotten buffed since then, while pure bards just wreck every other class both in and out of Divergence areas. My bard alt does most of the heavy lifting, whether it's DR, a Divergence area, etc. despite only having a fraction of the exp that my wizard has.

Not sure how clerics are these days, but wizards aren't even the best pure in the game is the point. They're still strong and one of the best classes in the game, but they're also not at all the god mode class you seem to think they are and don't need to be nerfed even more.

I'd maybe be ok with killing Rapid Fire if it were done correctly and replaced with something that was actually good and creative and removed at least some of the tedium of all the plink-spamming wizards currently do. But I'm pretty sure that will never happen, because Simu.

Rapid Fire is little more than a crutch for a flawed and outdated bolting system. Just because some other classes might have bigger problems, like whatever the deal is with paladins, doesn't undo the fact that even the stronger classes still have issues that need to be addressed, a lot of which are issues that have been around since well before paladins existed. And since GMs in general can just work on whatever they feel like, there's not exactly a priority system in place. I would have zero issues if dev decided to focus all their resources on buffing every weak class into a top tier class before doing anything else at all with anything.


Also, as of yet I don't know if the plan is/was to actually make divergence game wide.

They've flip flopped several times on this. First it was going to be new capped areas only, then gamewide, then Wyrom said it wasn't going gamewide, then Estild said it was going gamewide, but not before the bard review and making some wizard adjustments (i.e. the previously mentioned post-nerf "fixes"), and I stopped paying attention after that, so I'm pretty sure Simu doesn't even know what the plan is. And that was before multiple GMs up and quit, apparently over all the Discord bullshit.


Most of the spells you listed are valid points and could use some tweaking. But even so I think most of them still actually make viable builds, so most of them are not THAT bad.

Please tell me more about how literally any Weapon Fire, Stone Fist, Sandstorm, Meteor Swarm, etc. build would work, since you seem to know something that no wizards in the entire history of GS game know about. Even 519 is barely a build these days unless you go heavy on CS enhancives and don't mind wasting shitloads of mana. But a 519 build is still doable, even if it's meh and super inefficient.

The other spells that were mentioned...no. Just no. Not even remotely. At all.

I'm gonna assume based on that statement that you have little to no experience with playing a wizard. Which is fine, as long as you don't claim to know what you're talking about. Except you're doing that too.



You're sitting here complaining about your first world problems while Paladins are straight up living in squalor! You also overlook all the new crap you've been given even when you were already OP.

I don't know shit about Paladins nor do I care, but if they're weak, then they need to be buffed so that they're both powerful and fun to play. You seem to think buffs/nerfs between classes is a zero sum game though. It's not.

Advocating against further nerfs is me complaining now? As much as I'd like to see it happen, I'm not advocating for them to undo any of the Divergence nerfs. My point is we don't need to be nerfed even more. I don't really interact with dev at all anymore anyway, since anyone who's been around any real length of time should know that it's a waste of time, and has been even worse since Discord. Though they're shifting back toward the officials again, which the actual forums are obviously trash, but at least you don't have to stay glued to them 24/7 to keep up with things like you do with Discord.

Also...anyone complaining about literally anything at all in this game is a first world problem. That includes you. Try to at least have a little self awareness in your rants and hyperbole.

[Mobius1]

Following your logic, Rogues have access to bolt spells, maneuver spells, warding spells, etc. I mean, clerics have one more bolt spell than rogues (306). They have the same number of maneuver spells as rogues (2). Just because you can train a character in something doesn't make it viable much less efficient. The fact that I could bolt something doesn't make it efficient. Why would I cast 306 at something 5+ times to kill it when I could just one/two shot it with 317? Same thing with the maneuver spells. Just so I can?

If you think diversity is having a bunch of options that aren't really viable and then settling on casting 317/519/1115 over and over, then we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm happy to take you hunting and you can watch 306/309 in action.

I personally think they've pushed pures into the same training path (runestaff DS) towards settling for the same hunting style of warding from guarded. And yeah, it would be cool if AS/UCS were still viable choices beyond level 50 or so.

You want to talk about rogues? Let's talk about rogues. We can do ranged, or melee, and excel at both. TWC, shield, UCS? open ranged? Sniper? Sure. Waylay? Yep! Eviscerate and other maneuvers? I mean, we even have open builds becoming popular like I've never seen before! What I'm saying here, is that there are tons of VIABLE builds now, like never before. And yet wizards are even more versatile! Even semis now, can kill in like 500 different ways!

Why should I have to explain clerics to you? Figure it out yourself. They sure as hell are more versatile than I can ever remember! Again, please explain to me how clerics have gotten WORSE when it comes to diversity? What did clerics have nerfed that made a training path worse than before? You mentioned runestaves, but that in no way nerfed any previous builds that I know of? It just gave you more options.

[Mobius1]

Imagine playing a non-ambushing melee build that just spams ATTACK all day with little to no reliably effective CC spells (emphasis on reliably, most of our CC gets broken almost instantly by most things, at least at cap). That's about what playing a bolting wizard without Rapid Fire feels like, especially on the tedium scale. Even dev has acknowledged that wizards would need some things to make up for another nerf to Rapid Fire. The 940 spell that Estild teased years ago would be a nice start. It's nothing that was or is actually in the works to my knowledge, but it was this, which was originally posted by Estild a long time ago during the ELR, when Rapid Fire stuff was being discussed:

>incant 940
You trace a series of glowing runes while chanting the phrase for Elemental Overload.
Your spell is ready.

You gesture.
You suddenly feel more powerful. (30 second effect)
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

>incant 910
Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Major Shock.
Your spell is ready.

You hurl a powerful lightning bolt at a triton radical!
AS: +332 vs DS: +263 with AvD: +39 + d100 roll: +92 = +200
... and hit for 75 points of damage!
Heavy jolt to chest causes solar plexus to explode. Remarkable display of spraying blood.
... and hit for 57 points of damage!
Stunning arc of electricity fuses right arm at elbow.
... and hit for 44 points of damage!
Horrid jolt to neck explodes vocal cords. The triton radical gurgles in response.
The triton radical collapses, gurgling once with a wrathful look on its face before expiring.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

^ Feel free to tell me what's wrong with something like this. And in case it needs to be said, this spell wouldn't work with Rapid Fire.

If they added something like this, along with removing the 519 nerf and fixing our useless trash spells that you for some reason think a viable build can be made out of in their current forms, they could delete Rapid Fire from game for all I care.

No. that's just how shitty the other classes were, no matter how many exclamation points you use to try to paint wizards like they're OG Shin Akuma (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Shin_Akuma) on the OP scale. Empaths and sorcerers had no problems keeping up, and I'm pretty sure they've gotten buffed since then, while pure bards just wreck every other class both in and out of Divergence areas. My bard alt does most of the heavy lifting, whether it's DR, a Divergence area, etc. despite only having a fraction of the exp that my wizard has.

Not sure how clerics are these days, but wizards aren't even the best pure in the game is the point. They're still strong and one of the best classes in the game, but they're also not at all the god mode class you seem to think they are and don't need to be nerfed even more.

I'd maybe be ok with killing Rapid Fire if it were done correctly and replaced with something that was actually good and creative and removed at least some of the tedium of all the plink-spamming wizards currently do. But I'm pretty sure that will never happen, because Simu.

Rapid Fire is little more than a crutch for a flawed and outdated bolting system. Just because some other classes might have bigger problems, like whatever the deal is with paladins, doesn't undo the fact that even the stronger classes still have issues that need to be addressed, a lot of which are issues that have been around since well before paladins existed. And since GMs in general can just work on whatever they feel like, there's not exactly a priority system in place. I would have zero issues if dev decided to focus all their resources on buffing every weak class into a top tier class before doing anything else at all with anything.

They've flip flopped several times on this. First it was going to be new capped areas only, then gamewide, then Wyrom said it wasn't going gamewide, then Estild said it was going gamewide, but not before the bard review and making some wizard adjustments (i.e. the previously mentioned post-nerf "fixes"), and I stopped paying attention after that, so I'm pretty sure Simu doesn't even know what the plan is. And that was before multiple GMs up and quit, apparently over all the Discord bullshit.

Please tell me more about how literally any Weapon Fire, Stone Fist, Sandstorm, Meteor Swarm, etc. build would work, since you seem to know something that no wizards in the entire history of GS game know about. Even 519 is barely a build these days unless you go heavy on CS enhancives and don't mind wasting shitloads of mana. But a 519 build is still doable, even if it's meh and super inefficient.

The other spells that were mentioned...no. Just no. Not even remotely. At all.

I'm gonna assume based on that statement that you have little to no experience with playing a wizard. Which is fine, as long as you don't claim to know what you're talking about. Except you're doing that too.

I don't know shit about Paladins nor do I care, but if they're weak, then they need to be buffed so that they're both powerful and fun to play. You seem to think buffs/nerfs between classes is a zero sum game though. It's not.

Also...anyone complaining about literally anything at all in this game is a first world problem. That includes you. Try to at least have a little self awareness in your rants and hyperbole.

First of all, I'm surprised more pures weren't nerfed by Divergence. I guess the 140 change does somewhat.

Again, as far as I understood based on what we were told on Discord, these nerfs were done based on data gathered from tracking players hunting. They found that a few spells were major outliers, and needed to be adjusted. I for one am glad that squares are finally being boosted up to be more balanced with pures, and I also can't see any good way to do it other than having to also nerf.

You mentioned bards, and yeah, 1030 was stupidly OP. It's hard to defend not nerfing it, in my opinion. Especially since it's a semi spell. It makes sense to nerf a handful of spells rather than having to devote who knows how many hours to try and raise the floor. They CLEARLY have shown that they would prefer to raise the floor when it is reasonable.

Obviously no one is perfect, and no MMO exists that is perfectly balanced. Gemstone is especially tricky because of all the RL $$$$ invested into the game by players. I've literally had a whale tell me that they think it's perfectly reasonable that they should be able to dictate what changes happen in the game. So trying to balance this game is practically a losing battle, especially when they have people like you on top of the whales, who are completely unwilling to accept nerfs or any mistakes on their part. Is 2 second Rapid Fire too harsh a nerf? I can't answer that. But I do know that Wizards still do just fine even in Divergence, so it's not THAT bad. I also know that Divergence isn't yet completed (Though who knows what will happen with it with Naijin gone.), and if the nerfs are too heavy handed they can adjust. I'd freaking like to see you try to improve game balance, and never have to nerf and then boost afterwards!! The reason you see it happen so often is because that it's a pretty damn normal part of game balancing - It's almost impossible to fully predict how any nerf will play out in such a complex game environment, and there's pretty much no way to truly fully test something before rolling out.

I for one at least respected Naijin like hell because he had the balls to take on the whales and other entitled "how dare you lower the ceiling!!!" players! You couldn't pay me to have his job!


Advocating against further nerfs is me complaining now? As much as I'd like to see it happen, I'm not advocating for them to undo any of the Divergence nerfs. My point is we don't need to be nerfed even more. I don't really interact with dev at all anymore anyway, since anyone who's been around any real length of time should know that it's a waste of time, and has been even worse since Discord. Though they're shifting back toward the officials again, which the actual forums are obviously trash, but at least you don't have to stay glued to them 24/7 to keep up with things like you do with Discord.

I DEFINITELY don't think Wizards need to be hit any harder than they have by Divergence. I wasn't aware that any suggestion of the sort has been made by me or any GM?

[Methais]

Gemstone is especially tricky because of all the RL $$$$ invested into the game by players.

Simu opened that can of worms, and have no one else to blame but themselves. With as much customization as GS offers, they could have made plenty of money just selling cosmetics in the Simucoin store, or at least just not selling nuclear items outright for thousands of dollars at Simucoin events. You (Simu) can't claim to be wanting game balance while simultaneously selling stupidly overpowered items for large amounts of cash and still expect to be taken seriously. I'll also never be convinced that at least some nerfs, whether it was wizard nerfs or something else, weren't done with some sort of P2W bullshit in mind, no matter how much Simu denies it. That whole deal where they created a new bolt spell, gave it to monks, laughably justified that as "Well if Savants DID exist, they could use the spell, therefore this is an appropriate spell slot!" and then were selling SK items of that same spell at the next DR kind of proves the point, despite the fact that that's not really nerf related. But it still paints the same general picture. And it isn't even really a good spell. Best case, it should have been a new common wand that got added to the game or something, not a $1000 SK item.



especially when they have people like you on top of the whales, who are completely unwilling to accept nerfs or any mistakes on their part.

As if Simu gives a fuck what I think. Come on now. :lol:


Is 2 second Rapid Fire too harsh a nerf? I can't answer that.

It's remarkably boring and tedious if you're not scripting, and Simu's obsession with wanting to slow down combat just in general is retarded. It doesn't seem like that extra second would have that much of an effect, but it does. But it's whatever, I've accepted it and until if/when it goes gamewide, I just stick to normal areas. They're easier to juggle while at work anyway, and there's no real incentive to go hunt an area that has built in nerfs when you don't need to. Even cranking up the loot wouldn't matter all that much since loot is capped now anyway, so I'm not even sure what sort of carrot there could be. That convoluted mess of Hinterwilds "carrots" they were talking about a while back isn't it though.

They seem to forget that GS is a text game where there aren't actual animations that play out in front of you and other things that keep you engaged while roundtime equivalents are ticking down.

And while I have no actual data to back this up, I'm fairly certain that most capped wizards have long since gone back to the non-Divergence areas. Estild has also stated on Discord that they basically don't give a shit if something is fun or not, because balance. Not in those actual words of course, but I'm too lazy to go find the post, and you've probably seen it anyway.


But I do know that Wizards still do just fine even in Divergence, so it's not THAT bad.

You could also level from 0-100 using 0x gear and just spamming ATTACK. Do you really want to though? Being able to hunt an area isn't all that much of an indicator in this game.


I also know that Divergence isn't yet completed (Though who knows what will happen with it with Naijin gone.), and if the nerfs are too heavy handed they can adjust. I'd freaking like to see you try to improve game balance, and never have to nerf and then boost afterwards!! The reason you see it happen so often is because that it's a pretty damn normal part of game balancing - It's almost impossible to fully predict how any nerf will play out in such a complex game environment, and there's pretty much no way to truly fully test something before rolling out.

I'll be shocked if it's ever completed, tbh. Same with Ascension. How long have we been waiting for the other Ascension tiers now?

[Ramrod]

You want to talk about rogues? Let's talk about rogues. We can do ranged, or melee, and excel at both. TWC, shield, UCS? open ranged? Sniper? Sure. Waylay? Yep! Eviscerate and other maneuvers? I mean, we even have open builds becoming popular like I've never seen before! What I'm saying here, is that there are tons of VIABLE builds now, like never before. And yet wizards are even more versatile! Even semis now, can kill in like 500 different ways!


Then why did you say it was nothing but hide/ambush for 20+ years?



Why should I have to explain clerics to you? Figure it out yourself. They sure as hell are more versatile than I can ever remember! Again, please explain to me how clerics have gotten WORSE when it comes to diversity? What did clerics have nerfed that made a training path worse than before? You mentioned runestaves, but that in no way nerfed any previous builds that I know of? It just gave you more options.

You didn't explain clerics to me. You made a bunch of wrong assumptions. Swinging/UCS isn't viable given that to do it you now need to train dodge for DS in addition to 1x CM, 1x weapon. Even so, they still run into problems at high levels generating enough AS.

The cleric circle has 1 bolt spell. That makes bolting a viable option? Well then shit, I guess squares are viable bolters with 425 + 111/118.

Clerics have 1 maneuver attack spell (309) and that's a damage over time spell. 435 does more damage than 309. So I guess squares beat them there.

You keep saying how diverse classes are while admitting you've only really played a rogue and then throwing your hands up when someone tells you that your assumptions are wrong.

Runestaves forced the classes into the exact same training path - Runestaff DS. You train AS, HP, MIU, SA, MC, Lore, Spells. All the pures now train all the same things with slightly different flavors. Then they go out and hunt exactly the same way - 1 warding spell from guarded over and over. Every other assumption you've made outside of that is wrong. Bolting Wizards are the exception because they have enough bolt options to actually hunt with bolts.

If you have to train AS, HP, MIU, SA, MC and Spells, then there's no points left over to try something like UCS, swinging, CM, dodge, ranged, etc. The points just aren't there like they were before. Adding a 6 mana bolt spell to a circle or a 9 mana DOT maneuver spell doesn't change anything. It's still faster, safer, and cheaper to kill with 317. So yeah, I can sit there and cast 306 5+ times from offensive and not kill something OR I can just one shot it with 317 and move on. The same goes for Empaths and 1115. I believe most sorcs are doing about the same thing. 519 Wizards are doing the same thing.

Making all pures train in the exact same skills and hunt the exact same way isn't diverse. It doesn't matter how many unused bolt/maneuver spells you throw into the spell circle to try and change the narrative when the reality is completely different.

Then they went and added weird ass requirements to spells to force training paths. Sanctify bonus is based on AS, MIU and SMC. So if you did want to go the semi cleric route you would have jackshit for sanct ability.

When lores and channeling were originally released, the communication was that they're not necessary, but do offer a reward. They've become more and more necessary especially at higher levels.

So almost everything you've said around diversity (Swinging, UCS, Bolting, Maneuver) just isn't there. I wish I could run around and kill things reliably and quickly with 309 or train in OHB/Shield and be viable, but I can't.

Simu has pushed all pures into the same training path and toward the same hunting style except bolting wizards and they're getting nudged that way too.

And yes, 317/519/1115 is the same spell with the tiniest of differences and different messaging.

Also, for what it's worth, when the population declined and spread out, they introduced the locksmith pool so pickers could still level off of it. They told empaths and clerics to go hunt.

[Realk]

Clerics have 1 maneuver attack spell (309) and that's a damage over time spell..

there is 320 too.

[Ramrod]

there is 320 too.

Which Simu says isn't really an attack spell, but is based on mana reduction. That's why I didn't mention it.

[Realk]

Which Simu says isn't really an attack spell, but is based on mana reduction. That's why I didn't mention it.

I've had it do plenty of crits in nelemar for not being an attack spell. but your reasoning is fair. It is a maneuver spell however regardless of if you qualify it as an attack spell.

[Ramrod]

It's remarkably boring and tedious if you're not scripting, and Simu's obsession with wanting to slow down combat just in general is retarded. It doesn't seem like that extra second would have that much of an effect, but it does. But it's whatever, I've accepted it and until if/when it goes gamewide, I just stick to normal areas. They're easier to juggle while at work anyway, and there's no real incentive to go hunt an area that has built in nerfs when you don't need to.

Honestly, this is some of the things that Simu totally fucked up. Back before divergence and spell burst, I had 5+ accounts I think where I would just load up on every spell I could then go hunt. If the game was faster and I could wear every spell everywhere, I'd have more accounts. Leveling/finishing goals is the most fun part of the game to me and them slowing shit down means I spend less. Well leveling and cybering myself in Methais's house are the two most fun things IG.

[Vindicate]

Warriors outperform every single class right now, hands down.


I might disagree with this.

[Fortybox]

Simu opened that can of worms, and have no one else to blame but themselves. With as much customization as GS offers, they could have made plenty of money just selling cosmetics in the Simucoin store, or at least just not selling nuclear items outright for thousands of dollars at Simucoin events. You (Simu) can't claim to be wanting game balance while simultaneously selling stupidly overpowered items for large amounts of cash and still expect to be taken seriously. I'll also never be convinced that at least some nerfs, whether it was wizard nerfs or something else, weren't done with some sort of P2W bullshit in mind, no matter how much Simu denies it. That whole deal where they created a new bolt spell, gave it to monks, laughably justified that as "Well if Savants DID exist, they could use the spell, therefore this is an appropriate spell slot!" and then were selling SK items of that same spell at the next DR kind of proves the point, despite the fact that that's not really nerf related. But it still paints the same general picture. And it isn't even really a good spell. Best case, it should have been a new common wand that got added to the game or something, not a $1000 SK item.




As if Simu gives a fuck what I think. Come on now. :lol:



It's remarkably boring and tedious if you're not scripting, and Simu's obsession with wanting to slow down combat just in general is retarded. It doesn't seem like that extra second would have that much of an effect, but it does. But it's whatever, I've accepted it and until if/when it goes gamewide, I just stick to normal areas. They're easier to juggle while at work anyway, and there's no real incentive to go hunt an area that has built in nerfs when you don't need to. Even cranking up the loot wouldn't matter all that much since loot is capped now anyway, so I'm not even sure what sort of carrot there could be. That convoluted mess of Hinterwilds "carrots" they were talking about a while back isn't it though.

They seem to forget that GS is a text game where there aren't actual animations that play out in front of you and other things that keep you engaged while roundtime equivalents are ticking down.

And while I have no actual data to back this up, I'm fairly certain that most capped wizards have long since gone back to the non-Divergence areas. Estild has also stated on Discord that they basically don't give a shit if something is fun or not, because balance. Not in those actual words of course, but I'm too lazy to go find the post, and you've probably seen it anyway.



You could also level from 0-100 using 0x gear and just spamming ATTACK. Do you really want to though? Being able to hunt an area isn't all that much of an indicator in this game.



I'll be shocked if it's ever completed, tbh. Same with Ascension. How long have we been waiting for the other Ascension tiers now?

Hopefully it’s all scrapped. Ascension and Divergence are dumb and only make the game less fun to play.

Just add more level 100 grounds to the game without the stupid RT/Rift-like bullshit. It’s a fucking game and Estild/Naijin sucked all the fun away.

[drumpel]

I laugh at all your logic and how pures are locked behind warding/bolting or even lowly warmage! Ha!

You can get a reduxmage and be a successful hunter. It takes discipline and dedication, but it is viable. You people need to get gud!





Help with enhancives and ascension.....any odd ball skills you see, they're actually from enhancives, just ignore them.

(at level 61), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 175 75
Shield Use.........................| 169 69
Combat Maneuvers...................| 162 62
Edged Weapons......................| 211 111
Physical Fitness...................| 172 72
Magic Item Use.....................| 69 14
Harness Power......................| 154 54
Elemental Mana Control.............| 2 0
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 138 39
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 117 29
Stalking and Hiding................| 10 2
Perception.........................| 164 64
Climbing...........................| 138 39
Swimming...........................| 131 35

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 20

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 13

>health
You seem to be in one piece.

Maximum Health Points: 193
Remaining Health Points: 193

Maximum Spirit Points: 9
Remaining Spirit Points: 9

Maximum Stamina Points: 123
Remaining Stamina Points: 123

Physical Damage Reduction: 15.81%

your Combat Maneuvers are as follows:

Skill Mnemonic Ranks Type Category Subcategory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cunning Defense cdefense 5/5 Passive
Disarm Weapon disarm 2/5 Setup Warrior Guild
Feint feint 5/5 Setup Warrior Guild

Available Combat Maneuvers Points: 6


your Ascension Abilities are as follows:

Skill Mnemonic Ranks Type Category Subcategory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Armor Use armoruse 5/50 Passive Common Skill
Edged Weapons edgedweapons 5/50 Passive Common Skill
Physical Fitness physicalfitness 5/50 Passive Common Skill

Available Ascension Abilities Points: 1

Shield: 7x/T2
Falchion: 7x/T2, 7 CER crit & 4 CER damage
Armor: studded leather, 7x/T2, 2 CER crit & 6 CER damage

AS = 343
DS (offensive) = 321



Sacrifice those spells, focus on armor use and you, too, could be doing combat with a redux mage in no time.

[Tgo01]

I laugh at all your logic and how pures are locked behind warding/bolting or even lowly warmage! Ha!

You can get a reduxmage and be a successful hunter. It takes discipline and dedication, but it is viable. You people need to get gud!





Help with enhancives and ascension.....any odd ball skills you see, they're actually from enhancives, just ignore them.

(at level 61), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 175 75
Shield Use.........................| 169 69
Combat Maneuvers...................| 162 62
Edged Weapons......................| 211 111
Physical Fitness...................| 172 72
Magic Item Use.....................| 69 14
Harness Power......................| 154 54
Elemental Mana Control.............| 2 0
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 138 39
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 117 29
Stalking and Hiding................| 10 2
Perception.........................| 164 64
Climbing...........................| 138 39
Swimming...........................| 131 35

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 20

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 13

>health
You seem to be in one piece.

Maximum Health Points: 193
Remaining Health Points: 193

Maximum Spirit Points: 9
Remaining Spirit Points: 9

Maximum Stamina Points: 123
Remaining Stamina Points: 123

Physical Damage Reduction: 15.81%

your Combat Maneuvers are as follows:

Skill Mnemonic Ranks Type Category Subcategory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cunning Defense cdefense 5/5 Passive
Disarm Weapon disarm 2/5 Setup Warrior Guild
Feint feint 5/5 Setup Warrior Guild

Available Combat Maneuvers Points: 6


your Ascension Abilities are as follows:

Skill Mnemonic Ranks Type Category Subcategory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Armor Use armoruse 5/50 Passive Common Skill
Edged Weapons edgedweapons 5/50 Passive Common Skill
Physical Fitness physicalfitness 5/50 Passive Common Skill

Available Ascension Abilities Points: 1

Shield: 7x/T2
Falchion: 7x/T2, 7 CER crit & 4 CER damage
Armor: studded leather, 7x/T2, 2 CER crit & 6 CER damage

AS = 343
DS (offensive) = 321



Sacrifice those spells, focus on armor use and you, too, could be doing combat with a redux mage in no time.

Yeah but like...why?

[Ramrod]

Hopefully it’s all scrapped. Ascension and Divergence are dumb and only make the game less fun to play.

Just add more level 100 grounds to the game without the stupid RT/Rift-like bullshit. It’s a fucking game and Estild/Naijin sucked all the fun away.

Pretty much. Just ask the players what they want and develop around that instead of their idea of what the game should be.

[drumpel]

Yeah but like...why?

Same reason I've got a pure paladin that uses his runestaff to trip and then he bolts.
Or a hiding warrior that uses his MCW quarterstaff and uses waylay. Because I can.
Or a shield bashing, THW-hurling warrior.
Playing the same old and tried and true classes gets dull. I find it entertaining to see what kind of mutants I can make and see how viable they really are.

[Fortybox]

Pretty much. Just ask the players what they want and develop around that instead of their idea of what the game should be.

https://i.imgflip.com/73afjg.jpg

[Sorcasaurus]

Or a hiding warrior that uses his MCW quarterstaff and uses waylay.


Sell this to me instead :bigsmile:

[drumpel]

Sell this to me instead :bigsmile:

He trips things first and if the target is squishy, an unaimed attack usually hits the head or neck 75% of the time due to trip applying VULNERABLE. If a target isn't squishy, then he hides and uses WAYLAY. With vulnerable being active, about 75% of the time an unaimed waylay hits the head/neck and has a decent chance to kill and if it doesn't, it can take large amounts of health depending on the endroll results.

Only downside is that his hiding skill lags behind what a rogue can do or a ranger (if they make use of camouflage), so I've been putting ascension points into stalking & hiding (currently has 8 ranks in stalking & hiding through ascension).

The upside to training in stalking & hiding is that you get the reduced RT for hiding and sneaking once you hit the appropriate thresholds. With ascension, I just recently hit 90 ranks last training, so he's down to a 2 second hide and a 1 second sneaking RT. He's at 92 ranks at level 41. I should hit 120 ranks around level 49/50 to get his hiding RT to 1 second.

You can get the WAYLAY to trigger twice in one swing, from what I can tell, if you have your weapon bonded and set to to a second attack. Also, if you have multiple creatures in the room and you have Executioner's Stance active, it looks like the WAYLAY effect carries over to the second target if Executioner's Stance triggers. I don't see these happen that often, so I can't say with 100% certainty that the WAYLAY effect carries over, but I know the DS pushdown does from a bonded weapon second strike on the same target.

[Mobius1]

Simu opened that can of worms, and have no one else to blame but themselves. With as much customization as GS offers, they could have made plenty of money just selling cosmetics in the Simucoin store, or at least just not selling nuclear items outright for thousands of dollars at Simucoin events. You (Simu) can't claim to be wanting game balance while simultaneously selling stupidly overpowered items for large amounts of cash and still expect to be taken seriously. I'll also never be convinced that at least some nerfs, whether it was wizard nerfs or something else, weren't done with some sort of P2W bullshit in mind, no matter how much Simu denies it. That whole deal where they created a new bolt spell, gave it to monks, laughably justified that as "Well if Savants DID exist, they could use the spell, therefore this is an appropriate spell slot!" and then were selling SK items of that same spell at the next DR kind of proves the point, despite the fact that that's not really nerf related. But it still paints the same general picture. And it isn't even really a good spell. Best case, it should have been a new common wand that got added to the game or something, not a $1000 SK item.


Yeah, for sure all the pay to win crap is a damn cancer. And some of them have been such blatant money grabs, it makes me sick. But I also think that the GMs who actually care about game balance are not the driving force behind that crap. I doubt they like the idea of people entering their hunting areas with 15x and +50 TD gear and mopping the floor with everything that was intended to be a challenge.



It's remarkably boring and tedious if you're not scripting, and Simu's obsession with wanting to slow down combat just in general is retarded. It doesn't seem like that extra second would have that much of an effect, but it does. But it's whatever, I've accepted it and until if/when it goes gamewide, I just stick to normal areas. They're easier to juggle while at work anyway, and there's no real incentive to go hunt an area that has built in nerfs when you don't need to. Even cranking up the loot wouldn't matter all that much since loot is capped now anyway, so I'm not even sure what sort of carrot there could be. That convoluted mess of Hinterwilds "carrots" they were talking about a while back isn't it though.


You can't have fun combat unless you can spam attacks every 1 second? So what about us plebs who have always had 3+ second rounds?



And while I have no actual data to back this up, I'm fairly certain that most capped wizards have long since gone back to the non-Divergence areas. Estild has also stated on Discord that they basically don't give a shit if something is fun or not, because balance. Not in those actual words of course, but I'm too lazy to go find the post, and you've probably seen it anyway.

I never saw that post. I also can't speak for Divergence numbers, though I did see plenty of wizards when I hunted Atoll. I do know that many rogues/warriors are impacted even more negatively in those areas, especially rogues, because of spell sever. A square with only 2 spells is much worse off than a Wizard or Bard in there. So mostly KS warriors and high XP rogues with spells are the ones doing any good in there.



You could also level from 0-100 using 0x gear and just spamming ATTACK. Do you really want to though? Being able to hunt an area isn't all that much of an indicator in this game.

I guess it depends on how you want to define viable. I think most people would agree that that is not a very viable build.



I'll be shocked if it's ever completed, tbh. Same with Ascension. How long have we been waiting for the other Ascension tiers now?

I'm personally not an Ascension fan. I think it breaks too many systems that were never designed with such high skills/stats in mind, and allows too many classes to overcome their biggest weaknesses, boost their strengths to even greater extremes, and so forth. Obviously enhancives did the same thing, but adding yet another stack on top of that is just making it worse.



Then why did you say it was nothing but hide/ambush for 20+ years?

Because it was? How recent was PSM after all?



You didn't explain clerics to me.


Again, let me make it very clear to you. You claimed that pures (and even clerics) have been nerfed to the point that everyone is essentially the same builds now. What I'm saying is that that is simply not the case. You will always have your min/max builds, but please explain to me how any of the previous builds were nerfed? Just because Runestaves are so good and a lot of people like to take advantage of them, is in no way a nerf whatsoever. If you were a sword and board cleric before runestaves, that playstyle was not nerfed in any way whatsoever - No, it was in fact BOOSTED too. You mention having to train CM and dodging. You realize that you ALWAYS had to train CM for swinging, so that is not somehow more expensive than before. Dodging? There was literally no dodging skill before, so it's literally free DS that you didn't have access to before - To train in it may cost you, but you can also NOT train it and be exactly the same as before with no nerf to your DS.

You also mentioned lores. You realize that they are nothing but a BOOST? You can choose to not train lores at all, and you will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOU WERE BEFORE THEY WERE RELEASED (just like dodging.). These are all boosts and not nerfs.



So almost everything you've said around diversity (Swinging, UCS, Bolting, Maneuver) just isn't there. I wish I could run around and kill things reliably and quickly with 309 or train in OHB/Shield and be viable, but I can't.

I don't recall 309 ever being nerfed. Was it ever nerfed? I know OHB/Shield has not only not been nerfed, but is stronger than ever before, thanks to things like Sanctify (Holy flares anyone?), ascension/enhancives (You can actually break that 1x weapon skill wall now!), etc.. To say that these things are not only nerfed, but not viable anymore absolutely baffles me! How were they nerfed? How are they not viable?



And yes, 317/519/1115 is the same spell with the tiniest of differences and different messaging.


I disagree with this on many levels. And I can also point out that I believe only 519 has actually been nerfed (which actually helped with diversity, from the perspective that you are taking.).


Also, for what it's worth, when the population declined and spread out, they introduced the locksmith pool so pickers could still level off of it. They told empaths and clerics to go hunt.

It had almost zero to do with decreasing populations, and 100% to do with people only using NPC locksmiths for boxes. People weren't going to rogues with their boxes when they could just have their script deal with it. Hurray for rogues no longer having 99% of boxes get picked by NPCs! I advocated for these changes for 10+ years and I'm not even a picker.

If you want to advocate for Empaths/Clerics getting stuff because of their issues with NPCs having their services (and herbs), I'd be all for it. It's just not as big of a problem as what rogues were dealing with, since it was a more pervasive thing with boxes, and since you don't have to sacrifice your combat strength to heal or raise (You CAN to be better at it, sure. But you don't HAVE to.). Locksmiths have to sacrifice more in order to pick, skill wise and monetarily (Thus why I can't pick, because I would rather focus on combat ability.).

Also, changes to healing or raising may help 2 classes (maybe 3 if you count Paladins?). But the locksmithing changes affected every class that wants to pick (People tend to overlook the fact that picking is not rogue-only.).

[drumpel]

You can't have fun combat unless you can spam attacks every 1 second? So what about us plebs who have always had 3+ second rounds?


That's the same thought process from GMs that doesn't make any sense.

Just because a couple of classes can have reduced RT to 1 second (bards and wizards) and other classes can't, the GMs want to take away something that's been part of the game for many, many, many years. Their thought process is to slow things down for those two classes and make things go slower and become more tedious for hunting instead of finding ways to make things better for the other classes that are lacking.

How is that fun for anyone?

[Methais]

Pretty much. Just ask the players what they want and develop around that instead of their idea of what the game should be.

But if they make new areas fun there will be less incentive for people to spend $10000 on a pair of socks that bypass all the built in bullshit said area has.

In before they sell an item that makes you immune to HW weather effects, and whatever that -150 AS garbage is in the new Icemule area.

[Mobius1]

That's the same thought process from GMs that doesn't make any sense.

Just because a couple of classes can have reduced RT to 1 second (bards and wizards) and other classes can't, the GMs want to take away something that's been part of the game for many, many, many years. Their thought process is to slow things down for those two classes and make things go slower and become more tedious for hunting instead of finding ways to make things better for the other classes that are lacking.

How is that fun for anyone?

I already mostly explained this. They are very clearly willing to raise the floor when it is feasible. But there are times when it's simply not reasonable. They can't just give everyone 1 second RT/CT, or the ability to nuke an entire room with ease like 1030.

It's easy to SAY they should just buff everyone else instead, but a lot hard to actually DO. It also has other concerns, such as having massive impacts on game dynamics on a much larger scale. It's one thing if you have just 1 or 2 classes that have overpowered skills, but if everyone is suddenly that strong, it may take the game in an entirely new direction that Simu doesn't want to see. I mean give me a break, I've never played an MMO where people whined and complained so damn much about nerfs. They are a normal part of ANY MMO, so why is Simu somehow wrong for doing it (on very rare occasion, at that.).

I for one would rather perform better than others, not because I have some overpowered class or skill, but because I am actually good at the game. It's why I am all for nerfs to my own class when they are warranted. I think I've asked for at least 2 nerfs to rogues in the last year alone.

And again, let me be clear here. I am NOT saying that all the Divergence changes are necessarily ideal. I think even Naijin felt as much, since they were making updates to it. I was actually kind of upset at him for it at first at how it was carried out, but when I brought it up to him in Discord, his answer was reasonable and totally changed my mind on it. He essentially wanted to use Divergence as a way to get some really good testing and data, which they very much planned on adjusting if they saw any issues. I think that is pretty reasonable, and I think that most people here would be FAR better served actually giving real data and real arguments on adjusting the nerfs (if they are truly too heavy handed), rather than simply complaining about being nerfed to begin with.

Granted, I never did get over my beefs about spell sever with him, and quite frankly I've grown tired of barking up that tree since it literally has no impact on Midgar anyways, and the people it does negatively affect, who I was mostly advocating for, were actually taking his side on it (Damn Discord ass kissers, it drives me crazy!).

[Ramrod]

Again, let me make it very clear to you. You claimed that pures (and even clerics) have been nerfed to the point that everyone is essentially the same builds now. What I'm saying is that that is simply not the case. You will always have your min/max builds, but please explain to me how any of the previous builds were nerfed? Just because Runestaves are so good and a lot of people like to take advantage of them, is in no way a nerf whatsoever. If you were a sword and board cleric before runestaves, that playstyle was not nerfed in any way whatsoever - No, it was in fact BOOSTED too. You mention having to train CM and dodging. You realize that you ALWAYS had to train CM for swinging, so that is not somehow more expensive than before. Dodging? There was literally no dodging skill before, so it's literally free DS that you didn't have access to before - To train in it may cost you, but you can also NOT train it and be exactly the same as before with no nerf to your DS.

You also mentioned lores. You realize that they are nothing but a BOOST? You can choose to not train lores at all, and you will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOU WERE BEFORE THEY WERE RELEASED (just like dodging.). These are all boosts and not nerfs.

I don't recall 309 ever being nerfed. Was it ever nerfed? I know OHB/Shield has not only not been nerfed, but is stronger than ever before, thanks to things like Sanctify (Holy flares anyone?), ascension/enhancives (You can actually break that 1x weapon skill wall now!), etc.. To say that these things are not only nerfed, but not viable anymore absolutely baffles me! How were they nerfed? How are they not viable?

I disagree with this on many levels. And I can also point out that I believe only 519 has actually been nerfed (which actually helped with diversity, from the perspective that you are taking.).

I'd say that's worth about nothing, and is also wrong. It had almost zero to do with decreasing populations, and 100% to do with people only using NPC locksmiths for boxes. People weren't going to rogues with their boxes when they could just have their script deal with it. Hurray for rogues no longer having 99% of boxes get picked by NPCs! I advocated for these changes for 10+ years and I'm not even a picker.

You have no idea what you're talking about. According to you, this would be a great cleric at 100:

1x OHB
1x Shield
1x CM
0x Lore
0x Dodge

So sanct is in the toilet, chrisms are meh, shit SMRv2 defense for a swinger, shit evade, lower AS than squares/semis.

For 16m exp, that same cleric could go 1.5x OHB and 1.5x CM to make up some of that AS. lol

Adding holy flares to a sanct takes 100 ranks of lore, btw.

309 wasn't nerfed, but you seem to think that you can just go hunt with 309. It's 10 seconds for a single cast to complete. For fun, I just used it to kill. It took 3 casts. So about 25 seconds for one kill. Yay, that's your maneuver hunting ability in action.

I mean, sure, you're right in the sense that you can train any profession any way you want and find a way to make it work. You get exp until 10 levels above the creature level so whatever path you take will generally work. The difference is whether or not you want to spend 20 minutes per hunt.

It's a game. The primary goal shouldn't be balance it should to provide entertainment and to be fun. If it were up to me, I'd speed everything up, get rid of spell sever and divergence and just let the customers have fun and enjoy it. Or they could just keep slowing things down, implement game-wide divergence and then sell workarounds for $10,000 each. Hell, they sell RoL brooches to speed up the game and maxed out those are $8,200 so we can see which path they chose.

[Mobius1]

You have no idea what you're talking about. According to you, this would be a great cleric at 100:

1x OHB
1x Shield
1x CM
0x Lore
0x Dodge

So sanct is in the toilet, chrisms are meh, shit SMRv2 defense for a swinger, shit evade, lower AS than squares/semis.

For 16m exp, that same cleric could go 1.5x OHB and 1.5x CM to make up some of that AS. lol

Adding holy flares to a sanct takes 100 ranks of lore, btw.

309 wasn't nerfed, but you seem to think that you can just go hunt with 309. It's 10 seconds for a single cast to complete. For fun, I just used it to kill. It took 3 casts. So about 25 seconds for one kill. Yay, that's your maneuver hunting ability in action.

I mean, sure, you're right in the sense that you can train any profession any way you want and find a way to make it work. You get exp until 10 levels above the creature level so whatever path you take will generally work. The difference is whether or not you want to spend 20 minutes per hunt.


Please explain to me how this build was in any way nerfed whatsoever? (And you get flares from bless now at least, if not from sanct.)

Again, to repeat myself - How were any of those cleric builds nerfed? Is an OHB cleric weaker than it was in the past? (By the way, I played an OHB cleric in GS3. I got him to level 50 back in like '99.). Quit trying to misconstrue what I am arguing here.



It's a game. The primary goal shouldn't be balance it should to provide entertainment and to be fun. If it were up to me, I'd speed everything up, get rid of spell sever and divergence and just let the customers have fun and enjoy it. Or they could just keep slowing things down, implement game-wide divergence and then sell workarounds for $10,000 each. Hell, they sell RoL brooches to speed up the game and maxed out those are $8,200 so we can see which path they chose.

You're just projecting your idea of fun onto everyone else. I for one know of more players that have non-min maxed builds than I do those that are min-maxed, because killing as quickly as possible is not what makes the game more fun for them.

The GMs are trying to make the game more challenging, and many would say THAT is what makes the game more fun.

[Methais]

You can't have fun combat unless you can spam attacks every 1 second? So what about us plebs who have always had 3+ second rounds?

Ever wonder why other pures rarely if ever use their bolt spells, despite being able to generate a high enough AS for it?

Hint: It's for the same reason most wizards ran 519 builds before the nerf, which Rapid Fire wasn't at all needed for.

As I said in my previous post, Rapid Fire is a crutch for an outdated and flawed bolting system. Simu needs to either leave the crutch alone, or remove the need for the crutch.

Easiest way for them to remove the need for the crutch without having to do a giant overhaul would be to let wizards aim bolts, and/or unnerf 519 and not let either aimed bolts or 519 work with Rapid Fire.



I never saw that post. I also can't speak for Divergence numbers, though I did see plenty of wizards when I hunted Atoll.

I almost specified Atoll as a possible exception (haven't been there in forever so I don't know who's usually there) since it's literally Nelemar reskinned with Divergence mechanics, and Nelemar is ultimate easy mode for anyone who's capped.


I do know that many rogues/warriors are impacted even more negatively in those areas, especially rogues, because of spell sever. A square with only 2 spells is much worse off than a Wizard or Bard in there. So mostly KS warriors and high XP rogues with spells are the ones doing any good in there.

Spell Sever is just as stupid as Divergence nerfs. Possibly even dumber in a lot of situations.


I guess it depends on how you want to define viable. I think most people would agree that that is not a very viable build.

Speaking of viable, I'm still waiting for you to tell me how Weapon Fire / Stone Fist / SandStorm / Meteor Swarm / etc. builds are viable from one of your posts from yesterday.


I'm personally not an Ascension fan. I think it breaks too many systems that were never designed with such high skills/stats in mind, and allows too many classes to overcome their biggest weaknesses, boost their strengths to even greater extremes, and so forth. Obviously enhancives did the same thing, but adding yet another stack on top of that is just making it worse.

I'm pretty sure that Ascension will be a wash in the long run, because future areas will probably be built under the assumption that you already have +50 in XYZ Ascension skills. Aside from that, it's beyond insane that there's still no info at all about tier 2 and 3 and apparently isn't even being worked on. Not that I expect future Ascension tiers to be creative or interesting vs. "+1 to this" but still...


Again, let me make it very clear to you. You claimed that pures (and even clerics) have been nerfed to the point that everyone is essentially the same builds now. What I'm saying is that that is simply not the case. You will always have your min/max builds, but please explain to me how any of the previous builds were nerfed? Just because Runestaves are so good and a lot of people like to take advantage of them, is in no way a nerf whatsoever. If you were a sword and board cleric before runestaves, that playstyle was not nerfed in any way whatsoever - No, it was in fact BOOSTED too. You mention having to train CM and dodging. You realize that you ALWAYS had to train CM for swinging, so that is not somehow more expensive than before. Dodging? There was literally no dodging skill before, so it's literally free DS that you didn't have access to before - To train in it may cost you, but you can also NOT train it and be exactly the same as before with no nerf to your DS.

I would bet that if someone checked the training of every hunting pure in the game, at least 90% of them would be using the same overall build and play style, with the rest either being mutant builds like drumpel, or just some noob who doesn't know how to train correctly.


It had almost zero to do with decreasing populations, and 100% to do with people only using NPC locksmiths for boxes. People weren't going to rogues with their boxes when they could just have their script deal with it.

That totally explains things like the East Tower staying packed back when the population was higher and less spread out and no one ever had trouble finding a picker, even though the NPC picker was an option back then too.

People started using the NPC locksmith because the overall shortage of pickers made having your boxes picked a pain in the ass that took way too long, which was a direct result of the population decline.

[Suppressed Poet]

Quit trying to misconstrue what I am arguing here.

https://i.imgflip.com/73cxxq.jpg

[Mobius1]

Ever wonder why other pures rarely if ever use their bolt spells, despite being able to generate a high enough AS for it?

Hint: It's for the same reason most wizards ran 519 builds before the nerf, which Rapid Fire wasn't at all needed for.

As I said in my previous post, Rapid Fire is a crutch for an outdated and flawed bolting system. Simu needs to either leave the crutch alone, or remove the need for the crutch.

Easiest way for them to remove the need for the crutch without having to do a giant overhaul would be to let wizards aim bolts, and/or unnerf 519 and not let either aimed bolts or 519 work with Rapid Fire.



Again, when Naijin posted the data, Wizards were still performing well in Divergence areas. You can't just make claims that Wizards have issues without any proof to back it up. If bolts are so awful, why are you still outperforming so many classes even with the Divergence changes?

Also, I completely understand the 519 nerf and I think it's pretty well balanced. It makes sense that they wanted to steer wizards away from predominantly being warders, since that is not the direction they wanted to see wizards take. Yet it's still a perfectly viable build. Look at Ycelacie, for example, who hunts HW, the hardest hunting ground in the game and Divergence, and is still very viable, even without having pay to win gear. I'd say that's pretty good for a build that is very much intended NOT to be a Wizard's best build.



Speaking of viable, I'm still waiting for you to tell me how Weapon Fire / Stone Fist / SandStorm / Meteor Swarm / etc. builds are viable from one of your posts from yesterday.


I don't believe any of those skills were ever intended to have builds based around them and be used to kill critters outright - At least not in their current iterations. I'm not saying they shouldn't be boosted, by any means. But hell, we all have useless spells/abilities. You want to see useless abilities? Look at 90% of my rogue skills!



I'm pretty sure that Ascension will be a wash in the long run, because future areas will probably be built under the assumption that you already have +50 in XYZ Ascension skills. Aside from that, it's beyond insane that there's still no info at all about tier 2 and 3 and apparently isn't even being worked on. Not that I expect future Ascension tiers to be creative or interesting vs. "+1 to this" but still...

Honestly, the whole Ascension system was catering to a very small subset of players who were either true capped or effectively true capped. I personally never liked the idea of it, and feel it just makes the game an even greater infinite grind-fest than it already was, and an even greater balancing nightmare (even more-so in the future, as the gap between player XP increases.). And as you point out, they don't even really have the ability to fully develop it, nor should they be trying to, when they have so many other pressing issues that should be addressed first (Like giving all classes good service skills!).



I would bet that if someone checked the training of every hunting pure in the game, at least 90% of them would be using the same overall build and play style, with the rest either being mutant builds like drumpel, or just some noob who doesn't know how to train correctly.


And if this is the case, it's almost nothing to do with nerfs. 519 is about the only one that comes to mind, but that was nerfed how long ago now?



That totally explains things like the East Tower staying packed back when the population was higher and less spread out and no one ever had trouble finding a picker, even though the NPC picker was an option back then too.

People started using the NPC locksmith because the overall shortage of pickers made having your boxes picked a pain in the ass that took way too long, which was a direct result of the population decline.

Honestly, I don't really want to get derailed into arguing over this as it's super pointless. I can say that I was advocating for changes for many many many years, and even tried to run events and crap to try and help locksmiths, so I'm pretty knowledgeable about the whole affair over the large span of things. But hey, SpiffyJR can always jump in and give the definitive answer if he wants.

[Viekn]

Ever wonder why other pures rarely if ever use their bolt spells, despite being able to generate a high enough AS for it?

Hint: It's for the same reason most wizards ran 519 builds before the nerf, which Rapid Fire wasn't at all needed for.

I have first hand experience with this. When I returned to the game in 2014, I chose to be a wizard so I could mostly just rely on my own spells for defense, have a 3 sec RT because I knew I didn't like the classic ohe 5 sec melee RT, and could eventually enchant stuff for my own use.

I made it to level 40 before I just got bored as hell with it. Bolting just felt like I was slowly plinking stuff to death. There didn't seem to be many 1 or 2 shot kills, not a lot of crits, very few knockdowns unless I used Tonis bolt, no extra damage beyond what I did with the initial hit. Just continued to hit that 903 macro 3-7 times before turning to the next critter in the room and repeating the process. I wasn't using rapid fire. I can't remember if I just didn't have enough mana yet to consistently use it (I believe this was before the changes to harness power) or if there was another reason. I admit that maybe I wasn't the best at being a wizard, but I didn't see that I had a ton of other options for a better way to do things. I ended up just selling the character.

[drumpel]

The change from GS3 to GSIV was to remove some of the headaches that were in place such as the open level system and classes having access to so many outside circle spells. They had troubles designing new hunting areas due to having to take so much of this into consideration.

GSIV introduced a cap to level (100) and a restructuring of spell circle availability. A good amount of spells were changed to self cast and some were changed to situational spells (919 and 140 are great examples). With these things in place, the idea was they could design more hunting areas for high level because they didn't have to worry about uncapped AS/DS/TD/CS.

The past 8 years or so there has been a drastic change in how they do things. They no longer care about the capped end-game content or trying to designing hunting areas for this level range because they now have so much more to take into consideration, just like the GS3 days. They've introduced so many SK items, adjustment to adding everything + the kitchen sink to weapons/armor, access to outside spells (specifically the invoker), new items/spells/scripts that boost your AS/DS/TD/CS and ascension (even though they've only released the entry level tier) it's impossible to design capped hunting grounds without nerfs being put into place.

We're back to the GS3 days in terms of available power creep. The levels may still be capped at 100, but with Ascension, new items, higher enchant level (was 10x, it's now 15x), SK items and so on.....the GMs have to find a way to combat the fuckup they've created. Instead of leaving things alone or focusing on improving things for classes, they're also going through and nerfing aspects of the game because they can't just take away everything they've added without alienating most (if not all) of the population that's left.

The access to so many spells, now look what they're doing to some hunting areas....adding of spell sever because of their fuckup with allowing the access to so many spells with and letting SK items run rampant into the game.

People are running around with armor/weapons that are easily heavily crit and damage weighted, scripted to boost AS/DS/CS/TD, fancy flares and so on that basic hunting is impossible to impact most people like that. Thus, the introduction of the CML/SMR system to be changed over the SMRv2 system. This system fully bypasses the AS/DS/CS/TD aspects and coupled with the open rolls everyone is guaranteed to get fucked over by the system regardless of whatever fancy items/services they have and no matter how much money they've put into them. Then add in the SMR downward defense adjustment in PSM3 and pures really got screwed there. All pures were screwed with the loss of 20+ SMR defense and squares come way out on top with the fact they bypass most heavy armor SMR penalty (with enough overtraining in armor use), plus heavy armor reduces the crit factor for manuevers.....squares and some semi builds make a lot of maneuvers used against them laughable.

Changing spells over to SMRv2 doesn't really help players, either. The SMRv2 system is very heavily based on level. No matter how much I over train my capped wizard in the wizard circle, spell 917 is going to suck ass against creatures that are higher level than him. Sure, the endroll results may allow my cast of 917 to have a higher endroll to get a successful hit on a target, but if that target is 4+ levels over him, the effectiveness of 917 drops off considerably. Then the results are reversed if that 4+ level creature hits him with a SMRv2 spell/ability, it hits that much harder over like level creatures. Over hunting with SMRv2 spells isn't viable and not having a reliable CS based spell to help that means as a wizard you're bolting.

The GMs have no one but themselves to blame for fucking over the system and having to constantly hand out nerfs to "correct" the overpowered aspect of everyday players with their souped-up items and access to nearly every spell out there.

Anyone that constantly feels the GMs are doing things well with nerfs/reductions to "balance" the game out are either naïve about everything or just don't understand the fucked up situation the GMs have built with all these changes.

The GMs fucked up with allowing the game to drift back to GS3 days and their only out now is to nerf stuff that's been in place for years. Fuck them and their ignorance.

It's no longer a balancing game for the GMs. It's turned into a "we made some classes more powerful with all the stupid shit we added to the game and some of these classes are more OP than ever so we need to nerf some stuff." For a while now and from here on out it'll be a never ending cycle for the GMs.

Taking away to "balance" the game isn't okay. Sadly, though, we're left to the mercy of the GMs because they get to code/design/change how the game functions.

[Mobius1]

The change from GS3 to GSIV was to remove some of the headaches that were in place such as the open level system and classes having access to so many outside circle spells. They had troubles designing new hunting areas due to having to take so much of this into consideration.

GSIV introduced a cap to level (100) and a restructuring of spell circle availability. A good amount of spells were changed to self cast and some were changed to situational spells (919 and 140 are great examples). With these things in place, the idea was they could design more hunting areas for high level because they didn't have to worry about uncapped AS/DS/TD/CS.

The past 8 years or so there has been a drastic change in how they do things. They no longer care about the capped end-game content or trying to designing hunting areas for this level range because they now have so much more to take into consideration, just like the GS3 days. They've introduced so many SK items, adjustment to adding everything + the kitchen sink to weapons/armor, access to outside spells (specifically the invoker), new items/spells/scripts that boost your AS/DS/TD/CS and ascension (even though they've only released the entry level tier) it's impossible to design capped hunting grounds without nerfs being put into place.

We're back to the GS3 days in terms of available power creep. The levels may still be capped at 100, but with Ascension, new items, higher enchant level (was 10x, it's now 15x), SK items and so on.....the GMs have to find a way to combat the fuckup they've created. Instead of leaving things alone or focusing on improving things for classes, they're also going through and nerfing aspects of the game because they can't just take away everything they've added without alienating most (if not all) of the population that's left.

The access to so many spells, now look what they're doing to some hunting areas....adding of spell sever because of their fuckup with allowing the access to so many spells with and letting SK items run rampant into the game.

People are running around with armor/weapons that are easily heavily crit and damage weighted, scripted to boost AS/DS/CS/TD, fancy flares and so on that basic hunting is impossible to impact most people like that. Thus, the introduction of the CML/SMR system to be changed over the SMRv2 system. This system fully bypasses the AS/DS/CS/TD aspects and coupled with the open rolls everyone is guaranteed to get fucked over by the system regardless of whatever fancy items/services they have and no matter how much money they've put into them. Then add in the SMR downward defense adjustment in PSM3 and pures really got screwed there. All pures were screwed with the loss of 20+ SMR defense and squares come way out on top with the fact they bypass most heavy armor SMR penalty (with enough overtraining in armor use), plus heavy armor reduces the crit factor for manuevers.....squares and some semi builds make a lot of maneuvers used against them laughable.

Changing spells over to SMRv2 doesn't really help players, either. The SMRv2 system is very heavily based on level. No matter how much I over train my capped wizard in the wizard circle, spell 917 is going to suck ass against creatures that are higher level than him. Sure, the endroll results may allow my cast of 917 to have a higher endroll to get a successful hit on a target, but if that target is 4+ levels over him, the effectiveness of 917 drops off considerably. Then the results are reversed if that 4+ level creature hits him with a SMRv2 spell/ability, it hits that much harder over like level creatures. Over hunting with SMRv2 spells isn't viable and not having a reliable CS based spell to help that means as a wizard you're bolting.

The GMs have no one but themselves to blame for fucking over the system and having to constantly hand out nerfs to "correct" the overpowered aspect of everyday players with their souped-up items and access to nearly every spell out there.

Anyone that constantly feels the GMs are doing things well with nerfs/reductions to "balance" the game out are either naïve about everything or just don't understand the fucked up situation the GMs have built with all these changes.

The GMs fucked up with allowing the game to drift back to GS3 days and their only out now is to nerf stuff that's been in place for years. Fuck them and their ignorance.

It's no longer a balancing game for the GMs. It's turned into a "we made some classes more powerful with all the stupid shit we added to the game and some of these classes are more OP than ever so we need to nerf some stuff." For a while now and from here on out it'll be a never ending cycle for the GMs.

Taking away to "balance" the game isn't okay. Sadly, though, we're left to the mercy of the GMs because they get to code/design/change how the game functions.

I agree with a lot of things you are saying. But I don't agree with what you have to say about nerfs. Again, please explain to me what has been nerfed? Sure, there have been a small handful of nerfs, but overall it's been nothing but buffs buffs buffs. They have been incredibly generous in their willingness to raise the floor when possible rather than nerf.

I also agree that there are problems with the SMR2 system and higher levels, and this needs to be addressed. Not just SMR2 offense, but SMR2 defense, in fact, since the diminishing returns make it pretty unfair when trying to defend against higher level SMR2 skills when we are capped at level 100 and critters are not.

As far as pointing blame at GMs or trying to read into their intentions, I just don't see any real validity or value in it. Naijin certainly isn't to blame for the pay to win disaster that we are in now, or all the mistakes made by previous developers. In fact, it's been nothing but a source of headaches for him, and is probably the biggest reason he stepped down. I find it very sad that we are in a position where GMs that genuinely want to balance the game, are dragged through the mud just because they've inherited such an impossible situation. I for one was so damn happy that they hadn't just put their hands up and surrendered, but with Naijin gone we are sadly moving more to that direction. Just because it's a freaking mess, doesn't mean we aren't better off having them do their best to try and improve it.

Ultimately, it comes down to what I said in the very beginning in this discussion - The real problem is our dev structure in Gemstone, and the lack of collaboration between GMs and other departments (and lack of pay, full time work, etc.). Instead of being master of pay 2 win, Wyrom should be trying to send the game into a more cohesive direction. Instead we have quick money grabs being his MO. But hell, I probably can't even fairly put that one on Wyrom, as it's probably largely out of even his control, since I'm sure he's under a ton of pressure from his bosses. So really, I'm not even going to criticize him, and quite frankly I've seen him also do a ton of good for this game where he has been able. Hell, without him GS might very well have died by now. Ultimately, this whole Stillfront situation is a downright disaster for us players!

The truly unfortunate thing is that Simu was bought out by a company that has no problems preying on the mental disorders of this player base and exploiting them to the full. Not that they are the only company guilty of this in the MMO world, but it's certainly the worst I've personally seen in any game.

[Gelston]

The truly unfortunate thing is that Simu was bought out by a company that has no problems preying on the mental disorders of this player base and exploiting them to the full. Not that they are the only company guilty of this in the MMO world, but it's certainly the worst I've personally seen in any game.

Like it would have been any different if it wasn't.

[Mobius1]

Like it would have been any different if it wasn't.

Honestly, it's certainly correct to say that that is just an opinion of mine. In fact some people argue that p2w is the main reason the game still exists, which could very well be true. Not that I personally feel the ends justify the means, in any case.

But ultimately, I really see absolutely no value in statements like this:


The GMs fucked up with allowing the game to drift back to GS3 days and their only out now is to nerf stuff that's been in place for years. Fuck them and their ignorance.

Where people are freaking trashing on unpaid or underpaid GMs who literally work on this game out of the goodness of their hearts. I'd love to see these people do a better job of running this game!

It's not constructive, and it's not even valid, IMO. And this is coming from someone who has probably argued with GMs more than he has agreed with them!! :D

[Gelston]

Honestly, it's certainly correct to say that that is just an opinion of mine. In fact some people argue that p2w is the main reason the game still exists, which could very well be true. Not that I personally feel the ends justify the means, in any case.

But ultimately, I really see absolutely no value in statements like this:



Where people are freaking trashing on unpaid or underpaid GMs who literally work on this game out of the goodness of their hearts. I'd love to see these people do a better job of running this game!

It's not constructive, and it's not even valid, IMO. And this is coming from someone who has probably argued with GMs more than he has agreed with them!! :D

People derive other value out of positions besides money. Sure, people trash GMs, and that sucks usually, but these people are also paying for a product and get upset with it.

[Mobius1]

People derive other value out of positions besides money. Sure, people trash GMs, and that sucks usually, but these people are also paying for a product and get upset with it.

And those people unfortunately only make our game worse, by getting GMs like Naijin to throw in the towel.

[Methais]

I don't believe any of those skills were ever intended to have builds based around them and be used to kill critters outright - At least not in their current iterations. I'm not saying they shouldn't be boosted, by any means. But hell, we all have useless spells/abilities. You want to see useless abilities? Look at 90% of my rogue skills!

You literally said the exact opposite in regards to Weapon Fire, Stone Fist, Sandstorm, Meteor Swarm, etc. just a day or two ago:


Most of the spells you listed are valid points and could use some tweaking. But even so I think most of them still actually make viable builds, so most of them are not THAT bad.


So...please either explain what you're basing that statement on, because it completely contradicts the quote above it. Or just acknowledge that you don't know what you're talking about and are talking out of your ass.

[Mobius1]

You literally said the exact opposite in regards to Weapon Fire, Stone Fist, Sandstorm, Meteor Swarm, just a day or two ago:

So...please either explain what you're basing that statement on, because it completely contradicts the quote above it. Or just acknowledge that you don't know what you're talking about and are talking out of your ass.

What, you can't think of any use for those skills? Hell, I may not like Sweep myself, but I can think of plenty of viable builds that make good use of it. At the very least I am happy to have it as an available tool for certain situations, even if they aren't common for me personally. I mean sure, Meteor Swarm isn't going to see use, but I didn't say ALL of them.

[Ramrod]

It's no longer a balancing game for the GMs. It's turned into a "we made some classes more powerful with all the stupid shit we added to the game and some of these classes are more OP than ever so we need to nerf some stuff." For a while now and from here on out it'll be a never ending cycle for the GMs.

Taking away to "balance" the game isn't okay. Sadly, though, we're left to the mercy of the GMs because they get to code/design/change how the game functions.

100%. But here's the thing - I don't give a shit if someone dropped $30k+ on the game and doesn't die. That doesn't affect me. Introducing game-wide nerfs to "fix" those players does affect me.

The bigger problem is that the GM's decide what the problems are in an echo chamber and then spend their time fixing those problems rather than just asking players what they want and designing around that.

[Methais]

What, you can't think of any use for those skills? Hell, I may not like Sweep myself, but I can think of plenty of viable builds that make good use of it. At the very least I am happy to have it as an available tool for certain situations, even if they aren't common for me personally. I mean sure, Meteor Swarm isn't going to see use, but I didn't say ALL of them.

No, I can't. And it's not because I haven't made an attempt over the years. It's because they are completely ineffective, a waste of time (some of these spells have a build up time before they start doing anything at all, and once they start doing stuff it's still weak trash), a waste of mana, and a wasted opportunity cost vs. casting a spell that actually does something useful. If you had a clue about wizards at all, which you're repeatedly demonstrating that you don't, this wouldn't even be being debated. Ask any wizard anywhere if you think I'm just talking shit. Hell ask any GM if you don't trust the word of any players and they'll almost definitely tell you the same thing. There are 0 instances where spells like Weapon Fire, Sandstorm, Meteor Swarm, etc. are useful.

Stop moving the goal posts. You literally said "most of them still actually make viable builds" when literally none of them make a viable build, and you can't explain how or why any of them would make a viable build, and instead keep backpedaling and moving goal posts.

Like this:


I mean sure, Meteor Swarm isn't going to see use, but I didn't say ALL of them.

You're right. You didn't say all of them. You said "most" of them. Which is still wrong as fuck and you'd know this already if you knew anything about wizards.



Again, when Naijin posted the data, Wizards were still performing well in Divergence areas. You can't just make claims that Wizards have issues without any proof to back it up. If bolts are so awful, why are you still outperforming so many classes even with the Divergence changes?

If you really think I'm gonna go make a bunch of of clips to present an argument to you because you just decided I'm making shit up, especially when you've already demonstrated that you don't know shit about wizards as it is and keep changing your arguments when bullshit is pointed out...no.

Just stop acting like you know anything at all about wizards.



Which reminds me...



I have first hand experience with this. When I returned to the game in 2014, I chose to be a wizard so I could mostly just rely on my own spells for defense, have a 3 sec RT because I knew I didn't like the classic ohe 5 sec melee RT, and could eventually enchant stuff for my own use.

I made it to level 40 before I just got bored as hell with it. Bolting just felt like I was slowly plinking stuff to death. There didn't seem to be many 1 or 2 shot kills, not a lot of crits, very few knockdowns unless I used Tonis bolt, no extra damage beyond what I did with the initial hit. Just continued to hit that 903 macro 3-7 times before turning to the next critter in the room and repeating the process. I wasn't using rapid fire. I can't remember if I just didn't have enough mana yet to consistently use it (I believe this was before the changes to harness power) or if there was another reason. I admit that maybe I wasn't the best at being a wizard, but I didn't see that I had a ton of other options for a better way to do things. I ended up just selling the character.

Rapid Fire comes with a cooldown that you can eventually train down to 0 at 202 EMC, so it was most likely that. You can still cast during the cooldown, but everything you cast will cost an extra 5 mana. Which at lower levels will make a pretty big difference. And by the time you have enough mana to where that won't matter, you'll have enough EMC to eliminate the cooldown.

[Taernath]

I have first hand experience with this. When I returned to the game in 2014, I chose to be a wizard so I could mostly just rely on my own spells for defense, have a 3 sec RT because I knew I didn't like the classic ohe 5 sec melee RT, and could eventually enchant stuff for my own use.

I made it to level 40 before I just got bored as hell with it. Bolting just felt like I was slowly plinking stuff to death. There didn't seem to be many 1 or 2 shot kills, not a lot of crits, very few knockdowns unless I used Tonis bolt, no extra damage beyond what I did with the initial hit. Just continued to hit that 903 macro 3-7 times before turning to the next critter in the room and repeating the process. I wasn't using rapid fire. I can't remember if I just didn't have enough mana yet to consistently use it (I believe this was before the changes to harness power) or if there was another reason. I admit that maybe I wasn't the best at being a wizard, but I didn't see that I had a ton of other options for a better way to do things. I ended up just selling the character.

Hunting systems like crit randomization and no aiming/reliance on channeling along with lack of mana combine to form a perfect storm of suckage for lower level wizards.

[Ramrod]

What, you can't think of any use for those skills? Hell, I may not like Sweep myself, but I can think of plenty of viable builds that make good use of it. At the very least I am happy to have it as an available tool for certain situations, even if they aren't common for me personally. I mean sure, Meteor Swarm isn't going to see use, but I didn't say ALL of them.

So your entire argument summed up is - This spell/skill might have a use at some point in the game so it makes a build around that skill/spell viable?

When I say a viable training path, I don't mean something that technically works, but hunts take 30 minutes. I mean something that when compared to the rest of the players is on par. You can technically play a giantman ranged sorc, drop $30k on gear including SK items, 15x items and advance, but I wouldn't call that viable.

I don't consider something viable simply because it's technically possible. Buying lottery tickets as a retirement strategy is possible, but it's not really a viable strategy.

[Ramrod]

Please explain to me how this build was in any way nerfed whatsoever? (And you get flares from bless now at least, if not from sanct.)

Again, to repeat myself - How were any of those cleric builds nerfed? Is an OHB cleric weaker than it was in the past? (By the way, I played an OHB cleric in GS3. I got him to level 50 back in like '99.). Quit trying to misconstrue what I am arguing here.

I didn't say that build was nerfed. I said Simu's idea of game balance 99% of the time was to nerf something and that pures had been nerfed to shit. What you said was, "You have maneuver spells, warding spells, bolting spells, AS attacks, UCS. "

My argument is that just because you have access to something doesn't mean it's useful or viable.

Maneuver Spells: 309/320 vs 410/435. Squares have access to just as many maneuver spells. 309 takes 25+ seconds to kill.
Warding Spells: I said this was where they were pushing clerics/empaths.
Bolting Spells: Got it about as good as squares in that department.
AS Attacks: Not viable past about 50. That's why the undead gap was a big deal.
UCS: Same as AS attacks

Nerfs that affected clerics (off the top of my head):
225
130
302
Raising
Meditate

That was the core of the class right there. Easily dispatch undead, rescue and raise.

On top of that, to do the exact same things as before pures had to start training things like HP. You can't stop training at 24 ranks of most skills anymore because most things are based on ranks per level rather than bonus. 101 ranks of survival and I still slip and fall. Mana splitting into elemental, spiritual and mental was a nerf to pures. Then, they added "features" like open hand casting, lores and channeling. Before those, your max damage from a spell could be done with soft RT and with a weapon in hand. You're seriously arguing that those things aren't taken into account when they're making game balance decisions? Seriously? Then they released some of the best spells and built-in dependencies for them such as ranks of SMC, MIU, AS and lore. Sure, technically you can still cast sanctify without any of those skills because you went OHB/Shield, but your bonus will be shit and you can't ever do holy flares. But hey, technically it still works.



You're just projecting your idea of fun onto everyone else. I for one know of more players that have non-min maxed builds than I do those that are min-maxed, because killing as quickly as possible is not what makes the game more fun for them.

If that was the case then the game wouldn't be filled with AFK scripters. Seriously, that's why people are AFK scripting. They're speeding up advancement. Given the vast number of AFK scripters there's no way the majority of customers prefer to go slower. Maybe you don't count all the AFK scripters you encounter as players you "know."



The GMs are trying to make the game more challenging, and many would say THAT is what makes the game more fun.

Weird how if that's the case you're the only one in this thread arguing for that. Also weird that people flock to easier hunting areas when so many are looking for a challenge. Hey, like I said, I concede that I might be in the minority, but Simu's refusal to ask their customers means we'll never know. The fact that they don't survey customers anymore says a lot honestly.

[Mobius1]

So your entire argument summed up is - This spell/skill might have a use at some point in the game so it makes a build around that skill/spell viable?


My entire argument is that game balance DOES matter, and that sometimes nerfing is the best course of action to achieve it. That is literally the entire argument I am making here.

You then began to make claims that nerfs have somehow severely impaired pures, and I am simply refuting that, as it is absolutely not true. In your example to try and act as if clerics have been "nerfed" you mention mostly utility changes, and some changes that quite frankly aren't that big a deal anyways and were quite logical changes for the most part.

Clerics are literally one of the best classes in the game, if not THE best class in the game now, so why the hell are you even here arguing about nerfs to your class? It's freaking absurd. You have only gotten STRONGER as a cleric, and though some builds may be better than others for you, pretty much every single one of them have not been nerfed, and in fact have been BOOSTED, even OHB builds and whatever else.

Hell, 319 is one of the most OP spells in the game and I actually think it should be nerfed, so there is that too. I'm getting done with arguing with you over this because it's freaking silly and absurd. At least come at it from the perspective of a bard or wizard and not a freaking cleric!! Lol



If that was the case then the game wouldn't be filled with AFK scripters. Seriously, that's why people are AFK scripting. They're speeding up advancement. Given the vast number of AFK scripters there's no way the majority of customers prefer to go slower. Maybe you don't count all the AFK scripters you encounter as players you "know."

I see, so people afk script because combat is too slow? Is that the argument you are making? I'm just making sure I am understanding your argument correctly.



Weird how if that's the case you're the only one in this thread arguing for that.

I won't presume to speak for who's the majority or not, but I can definitely say that even those that agree with me probably aren't inclined to speak up, because they know how hostile people are about this. I'm probably losing friends just by having this discussion!



Also weird that people flock to easier hunting areas when so many are looking for a challenge.

Interestingly, this is a subject I have broached many times over the years. I certainly have my views on why this happens, and I feel it's actually quite pertinent to why people script, though for a completely different reason than what you are implying.

But to basically restate what I said in this discussion earlier - The whole "fun" argument really falls pretty flat on its face when you consider the fact that most people script, so therefore it's pretty disingenuous for them to claim that it detracts from their "fun." Sure, not everyone scripts, but who are you to project what is fun onto them?

I for one think that overall, the fun factor increases when the game is more balanced, development becomes easier, etc.. I can say that playing a rogue is better than ever before, more fun, and more versatile if you want it to be. My only big remaining beef is our lack of a service skill, really. As a cleric you should be over the moon right now!

[Realk]

Please explain to me how this build was in any way nerfed whatsoever? (And you get flares from bless now at least, if not from sanct.)

Again, to repeat myself - How were any of those cleric builds nerfed? Is an OHB cleric weaker than it was in the past? (By the way, I played an OHB cleric in GS3. I got him to level 50 back in like '99.). Quit trying to misconstrue what I am arguing here.

The amount of creatures with maneuvers ..I was not aware that smrv2 was even a dream in any mind ever in gs3. You aren't wrong that technically nothing has changed so it's not a nerf, but as far as viability it's not nearly close.

[Ramrod]

My entire argument is that game balance DOES matter, and that sometimes nerfing is the best course of action to achieve it. That is literally the entire argument I am making here.

You then began to make claims that nerfs have somehow severely impaired pures, and I am simply refuting that, as it is absolutely not true. In your example to try and act as if clerics have been "nerfed" you mention mostly utility changes, and some changes that quite frankly aren't that big a deal anyways and were quite logical changes for the most part.

I said that pures were nerfed to shit, which is absolutely true. Hard RT, training required for mana, lores required for max potential, MIU/AS/MC requirements for spells, mana sharing requiring 3 different skills - That's just off the top of my head. That compared to a 3 sec soft RT and no TP's required to get mana. Yeah, those are pretty huge nerfs. Add to that SMRv2 requiring dodge, all the individual spell nerfs, anti-magic creatures strewn across the game and a host of other obstacles thrown out there to stop pures and yeah, I think pures have been nerfed to shit over the years. That's been Simu's idea of "game balance."





Clerics are literally one of the best classes in the game, if not THE best class in the game now, so why the hell are you even here arguing about nerfs to your class? It's freaking absurd. You have only gotten STRONGER as a cleric, and though some builds may be better than others for you, pretty much every single one of them have not been nerfed, and in fact have been BOOSTED, even OHB builds and whatever else.

Just because you repeat it doesn't make it true. You're just sitting here, moving goalposts and repeating the same things over and over and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. I detailed how swinging, UCS, maneuver spells, bolt spells and everything you listed isn't really viable. It's all neat, but none of it is all that useful.



Hell, 319 is one of the most OP spells in the game and I actually think it should be nerfed, so there is that too. I'm getting done with arguing with you over this because it's freaking silly and absurd. At least come at it from the perspective of a bard or wizard and not a freaking cleric!! Lol

Bards are probably the best casters in the game right now. As a semi.



I see, so people afk script because combat is too slow? Is that the argument you are making? I'm just making sure I am understanding your argument correctly.

No, you said that "everyone you know" doesn't "min/max" because they're not interested in hunting/advancing as fast as possible. I said that every AFK scripter out there contradicts that. People are AFK scripting to speed up progression whether that's in terms of loot or exp. Some people hunt for loot, others for exp and some for both, but that's what I mean by progression. I think most people script in general to eliminate the tedium of it versus AFK'ing to advance.



I won't presume to speak for who's the majority or not, but I can definitely say that even those that agree with me probably aren't inclined to speak up, because they know how hostile people are about this. I'm probably losing friends just by having this discussion!

It's a game and anyone who would throw away a friendship over something this trivial is dumb. I don't think any better/worse of you as a person because we disagree on direction of a 25 year old text game. I don't remember your character(s), but I do remember you were on my AIM list cause of your icon.



Interestingly, this is a subject I have broached many times over the years. I certainly have my views on why this happens, and I feel it's actually quite pertinent to why people script, though for a completely different reason than what you are implying.

Look, I don't AFK script anymore although I did 15? years ago or so. The reason I did it was to speed up progression. Hunting the same thing the same way for 100+ hours before moving on and repeating isn't all that fun. Like I said, my two favorite things to do in this game are to meet a goal and cyber myself in Methais's house, both of which are easier to do with a script.



But to basically restate what I said in this discussion earlier - The whole "fun" argument really falls pretty flat on its face when you consider the fact that most people script, so therefore it's pretty disingenuous for them to claim that it detracts from their "fun." Sure, not everyone scripts, but who are you to project what is fun onto them?

I'm not projecting my fun onto anyone. I'm simply saying that I don't find nerfs and further slowing down what is maybe one of the slowest games in existence fun and I don't think I'm in the minority. I concede that I could be wrong, but unless Simu is willing to ask their customers we'll never know. If I was projecting my fun onto others then I'd be arguing for making gift of lumnis permanent and getting rid of spell sever and divergence altogether and letting people just go out and max out builds. I'd also argue for true multi-classing post-cap. I'm not trying to project that on anyone and am simply asking that Simu quit nerfing shit, which slows down progression in an already slow game.



I for one think that overall, the fun factor increases when the game is more balanced, development becomes easier, etc.. I can say that playing a rogue is better than ever before, more fun, and more versatile if you want it to be. My only big remaining beef is our lack of a service skill, really. As a cleric you should be over the moon right now!

See, I don't have a problem with game balance. I just don't like that game balance to Simu generally just means a nerf. They keep nerfing entire systems because of the 1% or less of players. I mean, wasn't the loot cap introduced because of a single player? This is already an incredibly slow game and every single nerf just slows it down more. Death by 1000 paper cuts.

[Realk]

the weapon fire build thing. Before the cm changes, I on occasion would weapon fire things so they couldn't disarm. (despite other ways to prevent it) Between getting my CM's up, and the recovery system I don't even pretend to play with it.

[Mobius1]

I said that pures were nerfed to shit, which is absolutely true. Hard RT, training required for mana, lores required for max potential, MIU/AS/MC requirements for spells, mana sharing requiring 3 different skills - That's just off the top of my head. That compared to a 3 sec soft RT and no TP's required to get mana. Yeah, those are pretty huge nerfs. Add to that SMRv2 requiring dodge, all the individual spell nerfs, anti-magic creatures strewn across the game and a host of other obstacles thrown out there to stop pures and yeah, I think pures have been nerfed to shit over the years. That's been Simu's idea of "game balance."


SMR2 requires dodge in what way? It's literally only a 6% difference to your SMR2 defense as a pure going from 0 to 100 dodging (and you also get a crap ton of extra DS).

Not only that, but before when things were basically the wild west when it comes to maneuvers, you had SMR1, and a whole plethora of maneuver skills based on unique crap that was quite often much worse than SMR2 is for you now. In fact you want to talk about getting buffed as a pure through SMR2? Let's talk about how CM defense got converted to SMR2 defense. Your defense against cmans went to the freaking MOON!! That was a massive buff for pures.

Man, you remind me of people like Scintillion, who come around and try to claim that rogues were better in GS3. I'm sorry, but no.



Just because you repeat it doesn't make it true. You're just sitting here, moving goalposts and repeating the same things over and over and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. I detailed how swinging, UCS, maneuver spells, bolt spells and everything you listed isn't really viable. It's all neat, but none of it is all that useful.


I've never once moved the goalposts. Don't go throwing in verbiage thinking it somehow makes your argument better.

My initial comment on various builds, for one, was clearly in reference to pures in general, and I'd love you to re-read it before you continue further with this argument. I didn't claim that every single pure has some awesome build of every type I listed. But you absolutely can not deny that there are way more options that are viable than ever before in the past, which was what my point was.

I also think that you and I must have completely different definitions of what is "viable." For example to say that a OHB cleric build isn't viable makes no sense to me, as it's literally never been as good as it is now for clerics.

I dunno, maybe your head is stuck in Hinterwilds or something?



Bards are probably the best casters in the game right now. As a semi.


I've been saying this for years now, myself. In fact the GMs clearly agree as well, seeing as it is downtweaked in Divergence. Still, just because 1030 is strong is in no way a nerf to pures.



No, you said that "everyone you know" doesn't "min/max" because they're not interested in hunting/advancing as fast as possible.

Oh yeah? Did I? How about you actually quote what I said, instead of making it up and adding quotation marks to it? I think half your problem in this discussion is you don't even really read what I am saying. Maybe actually stop and take the time to read my posts instead of just skimming over them, please?



It's a game and anyone who would throw away a friendship over something this trivial is dumb. I don't think any better/worse of you as a person because we disagree on direction of a 25 year old text game. I don't remember your character(s), but I do remember you were on my AIM list cause of your icon.

I agree it's dumb. Some people sadly get very triggered when someone disagrees with their views. Look at LNET as a great example, lol. I've lost friends over much less than this, sadly.



Look, I don't AFK script anymore although I did 15? years ago or so. The reason I did it was to speed up progression. Hunting the same thing the same way for 100+ hours before moving on and repeating isn't all that fun. Like I said, my two favorite things to do in this game are to meet a goal and cyber myself in Methais's house, both of which are easier to do with a script.

I'm not projecting my fun onto anyone. I'm simply saying that I don't find nerfs and further slowing down what is maybe one of the slowest games in existence fun and I don't think I'm in the minority. I concede that I could be wrong, but unless Simu is willing to ask their customers we'll never know. If I was projecting my fun onto others then I'd be arguing for making gift of lumnis permanent and getting rid of spell sever and divergence altogether and letting people just go out and max out builds. I'd also argue for true multi-classing post-cap. I'm not trying to project that on anyone and am simply asking that Simu quit nerfing shit, which slows down progression in an already slow game.


The reality is that even if this game had the most fun combat system of any game ever made, you would STILL get bored of it after playing for 10, 20, even 30 years. When you've killed the same critters literally millions of times, it doesn't matter if your CT is 1 second or 2, you are going to be bored. This certainly leads to more people scripting, no doubt. But it also leads some people to want to try other builds, other classes, etc., which more often than not, tend to be slower and/or more challenging builds. Those that are scripting? Should they really be giving two craps about combat being a tad bit slower for them? If a robot is playing the game for them, what difference does it have in regards to their fun? They're just watching Youtube anyways. And those who are truly looking for fun? Yes, I really think in most of those cases, more challenge is likely more fun for them. It's one reason I've seen so many rogues making mutants these days, running TWC open builds and crap.



See, I don't have a problem with game balance. I just don't like that game balance to Simu generally just means a nerf. They keep nerfing entire systems because of the 1% or less of players. I mean, wasn't the loot cap introduced because of a single player? This is already an incredibly slow game and every single nerf just slows it down more. Death by 1000 paper cuts.

First of all, my main argument against you in this discussion, has been that I disagree that there have been many nerfs. There really hasn't been many nerfs, and the amount of buffs VASTLY outnumbers them.

And as for a nerf because of a 1% extreme? Those situations are usually the BEST ones to implement a nerf, because it's better to nerf the extreme than try to buff everyone else. The loot cap is freaking fantastic if you ask me.

[gilchristr]

This thread is starting to look like a huge eye-bleeding piece of shit. This probably why they decided to take down the official forums

[Neveragain]

I don't recall the officials being a eye wrenching mess like this.

Of course, I basically used the officials to post short / interactive stories.

P.S. 6% to dodge is a lot more than it appears. You should see the difference in DPS when going from 0%to hit to 6% to hit on one's parses.

[Mobius1]

I don't recall the officials being a eye wrenching mess like this.

Of course, I basically used the officials to post short / interactive stories.

P.S. 6% to dodge is a lot more than it appears. You should see the difference in DPS when going from 0%to hit to 6% to hit on one's parses.

I'd say it's not really that big of a difference. Most SMR2 attacks are not lethal and the few that are can largely or even completely be mitigated through other means (for example, nature resist and/or piercing fittings for spike thorn, slash fittings for rift crawlers, etc.). It's one thing if that was a 6% higher chance for death (which arguably still isn't a huge difference.), but it's another if it's generally a move that might lead to death but not necessarily.

Also, there is the facts I pointed out earlier, about how in most cases you are better off with SMR2 than you were in the past, especially cmans.

Also, mind you that that bonus easily drops to only +3-5% instead of 6, if you get maneuver skills/stats boosted.

[entropy]

SMR2 requires dodge in what way? It's literally only a 6% difference to your SMR2 defense as a pure going from 0 to 100 dodging (and you also get a crap ton of extra DS).

Not only that, but before when things were basically the wild west when it comes to maneuvers, you had SMR1, and a whole plethora of maneuver skills based on unique crap that was quite often much worse than SMR2 is for you now. In fact you want to talk about getting buffed as a pure through SMR2? Let's talk about how CM defense got converted to SMR2 defense. Your defense against cmans went to the freaking MOON!! That was a massive buff for pures.


Most SMR2 attacks are not lethal

All of this is complete nonsense.

>Dodging isn't required, 101 ranks only gives 6% benefit
This is only true if the pure has trained up all their other SMRv2 defense skills. In other words, defense scales logarithmically with ranks in defense skills. Which undermines your followup claim of:

>now that CMANs are SMRv2, pures can defend the shit out of them
Due to that scaling, pures can't train their way out of getting CMANed, period. The seemingly massive buff from 20% chance to 65% chance to resist (at 10m+ exp) doesn't result in improved survivability in practice because monsters yolo out CMANs constantly. Here's a concrete numbers example: my warmage, not even a pure, is perf stats, 1x pf, 1x perception, 1.5x cman (yes), 0.6x effective dodge, 5/5 disarm. Chance to defend against a like leveled disarm attempt? About 60%. Getting clipped by like level SMRv2 (CMAN or otherwise) is a statistical guarantee. I suspect you experience playing a rogue has you both underestimating how frequently it happens and unaware of how deadly that is for a pure. They have neither the redux nor the armor modifiers to blunt the impact of the maneuver or the followup hits delivered while the character's subsequently disabled.

>SMRv2 is better for pures than SMRv1/custom creature code
Pretty much only true in your whiteroom example. Get a few levels over a roa'ter and it can't meaningfully harm you. Same level creature starts throwing SMRv2 attacks and suddenly it can hit for max damage 1 in 20 times. In other words, even if you could somehow render yourself out range of a successful SMRv2 roll, 5% of the attempts hit, and hard, via open rolls. This shit is often a hunt ender for pures. 15 dmg slash critical to the abdomen comes with a lovely R2 nerve wound, hunt over. Charge breaks your hand, you get a minor on your other arm while knocked down, hunt over. Same Charge RNGs to your head instead, massive stun, R2 head wound, hunt over. And these are some of the better outcomes. You can just as well take a moderate puncture crit to the eye and just straight up die, or get walked in on while you're disabled and eat a second maneuver that auto-hits because defense is so low.

Simply put, pures do not have the damage mitigation to walk away from these scenarios and keep playing the game, and they are guaranteed to occur due to logarithmic SMRv2 defense scaling and open rolls.


Anyway I'm in here trying to read memes and mechanics analysis/suggestions and you're just going too hard man. Some aspects of the game you're really knowledgeable about - I applied your crit analysis post to my warmage to great effect - but your take here does not share that same veracity.

[Neveragain]

I'd say it's not really that big of a difference. Most SMR2 attacks are not lethal and the few that are can largely or even completely be mitigated through other means (for example, nature resist and/or piercing fittings for spike thorn, slash fittings for rift crawlers, etc.). It's one thing if that was a 6% higher chance for death (which arguably still isn't a huge difference.), but it's another if it's generally a move that might lead to death but not necessarily.

Also, there is the facts I pointed out earlier, about how in most cases you are better off with SMR2 than you were in the past, especially cmans.

Also, mind you that that bonus easily drops to only +3-5% instead of 6, if you get maneuver skills/stats boosted.

I honestly don't know.

I've played mages for 20 years, I have never gotten fancy about it. E-wave, bolts and move on. I've always been crazy greedy and it's usually not a big deal. My krol cleric was by far the easiest to play but, like I said, I don't get fancy, spam 302 and move on. But the cleric was a beast and nearly impossible to kill under normal hunting ground situations.

Rogue, by far, is the worst class in the game to hunt with. It just fucking sucks.

[drumpel]

SMR2 requires dodge in what way? It's literally only a 6% difference to your SMR2 defense as a pure going from 0 to 100 dodging (and you also get a crap ton of extra DS).

Not only that, but before when things were basically the wild west when it comes to maneuvers, you had SMR1, and a whole plethora of maneuver skills based on unique crap that was quite often much worse than SMR2 is for you now. In fact you want to talk about getting buffed as a pure through SMR2? Let's talk about how CM defense got converted to SMR2 defense. Your defense against cmans went to the freaking MOON!! That was a massive buff for pures.




The GMs have finally put everything into one spot, one system, and that's SMRv2. This is good on the backend because it helps simplify things so you're not having to design a skill/spell that might need to be configured for multiple systems. That's basically the best thing that the GMs did when they dumped the CML and SMRv1 and moved things to SMRv2.

You are right that the defense against things did go up for pures when this change was made because of the absolute shit CML defense they had, however, pures get the worst of SMRv2 when compared to semi and square classes.

PSM3 tanked the SMRv2 defense, especially for pures. When my pures had a 75% chance to avoid SMRv2 stuff, the PSM3 changes dropped their SMRv2 defense by upwards of 20 points. That means my pures went from being able to defend (outside of open rolls) 3/4 of manuevers made on them down to defending about half.

Now, now....I know you're going to say that that's better then what you got from CML defense and even though that is true, pures are still pretty much fucked when a maneuver hits them. The spell hindrance of armors keeps pures in light armors and even with crit padding (massive amounts) you get slaughtered when endrolls exceed 101 with some of these maneuvers.

Semis tend to wear brig or some form of chain and depending on your level and skills, you can build up some redux.
Squares tend to be in some form of plate or at the very minimum, some level of chain and get a lot of redux.
Redux doesn't impact SMRv2, but it does help against physical AS attacks.
Heavy armor plays a significant role in helping reduce crits from maneuvers and also CS based spells (this has been confirmed by NIR on the forums a couple years ago).

SMRv2 was supposed to give those in light armors a better chance to dodge SMRv2 attacks. However, that's not true. You can over train in armor use and negate almost all of the heavy armor penalty for SMRv2, thus making heavy armors just as successful for allowing you to dodge SMRv2 attacks as if you were wearing lighter armors. Tack on the fact that the crit factor reduction for heavy armors against maneuvers means that semis and squares shake off manuevers a lot of the time (outside of the horrific open RNG the system allows).

Not only do semis and squares have the ability to easily defend against SMRv2 on average due to being able to train 2x (and some 3x) in each physical skill for SMRv2 defense, they also get the added benefit of being able to train away most of the heavy armor penalty to SMRv2 defense and they also get the reduced crit benefit of heavier armors.

Now, now....I know, you're going to say that squares and semis are meant to be more resilient against physical attacks. However, the system is skewed against pures and there is no real way around it.
They can't train as much in PF/Perception/CM/Dodge as semi and squares and they can't easily train in these skills either due to the very high costs for some of them.
They also can't get the benefit of wearing heavier armors due to spell hindrance....if you can't cast a spell without failure, then you're pretty much screwed.
They also don't get the reduced crit factor for wearing heavier armors.
They also got screwed the most with the PSM3 tanking of SMRv2 defense.

I've had pures take killing shots from a boar maneuver charge that resulted in a 102 endroll (102, that's 102). Rank 3 neck, eye or head.
I've had pures take hunt ending hits from charges (polearm) on 105 endrolls (even when having 15 CER of crit padding); broken arms, rank 2 head wounds. Anything over 110 endrolls is always a hunt ending hit that if it doesn't outright kill them it gives a wound they need to retreat and get healed so they can go back to casting.

Take it as you like, but you seem to either not understand the plight pures have with SMRv2 or you just don't care because you don't have to deal with it in game because you don't play a pure on a constant basis.

[Mobius1]

All of this is complete nonsense.


*sigh* Give me a break man. You realize you are talking to someone that has literally spent hundreds of hours testing SMR 1 and 2, trying to figure out the equation? I know extremely well how it works. With squares, semis, AND pures.


Dodging isn't required, 101 ranks only gives 6% benefit
This is only true if the pure has trained up all their other SMRv2 defense skills. In other words, defense scales logarithmically with ranks in defense skills. Which undermines your followup claim of:


Again, I understand how it works. Seeing as training dodging is as expensive as it is for pures, it's generally a post cap goal, and I'm pretty sure most are training it after maxing out their other SMR2 skills first. Also, keep in mind that your level itself is the biggest contributor to your diminishing returns with SMR2 defense, so even if you actually trained 100 dodging ranks without the other skills being maxed, the difference would be like 1%.


now that CMANs are SMRv2, pures can defend the shit out of them
Due to that scaling, pures can't train their way out of getting CMANed, period. The seemingly massive buff from 20% chance to 65% chance to resist (at 10m+ exp) doesn't result in improved survivability in practice because monsters yolo out CMANs constantly. Here's a concrete numbers example: my warmage, not even a pure, is perf stats, 1x pf, 1x perception, 1.5x cman (yes), 0.6x effective dodge, 5/5 disarm. Chance to defend against a like leveled disarm attempt? About 60%. Getting clipped by like level SMRv2 (CMAN or otherwise) is a statistical guarantee. I suspect you experience playing a rogue has you both underestimating how frequently it happens and unaware of how deadly that is for a pure. They have neither the redux nor the armor modifiers to blunt the impact of the maneuver or the followup hits delivered while the character's subsequently disabled.


I'm failing to see how any of this shows that what I said is wrong. It's a fact that your cman defense went up, as you yourself here claimed. If I need to explain to you why going from 20% chance to resist to 65% is a massive improvement, I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with you in this discussion. Not only are you going to outright avoid cmans more than 3 times as often as you did before, you are also going to significantly reduce their efficacy. Even if you are hit by a cman, you are still significantly better off having a lower end roll against you due to having increased defense against it. The fact that I am even having to argue this is silly.

Also, you realize you can't get better than 80% resist against a cman unless you learn the skill? And redux does nothing against maneuvers unless you go Kroderine Soul, which I'm personally not a fan of (especially as a rogue.). Heavier armor can reduce maneuver damage slightly (It's 5 CER), but with things like 520, 319, crit padding on armor, etc., those differences become smaller. And not every square is wearing full plate, either.


SMRv2 is better for pures than SMRv1/custom creature code
Pretty much only true in your whiteroom example. Get a few levels over a roa'ter and it can't meaningfully harm you. Same level creature starts throwing SMRv2 attacks and suddenly it can hit for max damage 1 in 20 times. In other words, even if you could somehow render yourself out range of a successful SMRv2 roll, 5% of the attempts hit, and hard, via open rolls. This shit is often a hunt ender for pures. 15 dmg slash critical to the abdomen comes with a lovely R2 nerve wound, hunt over. Charge breaks your hand, you get a minor on your other arm while knocked down, hunt over. Same Charge RNGs to your head instead, massive stun, R2 head wound, hunt over. And these are some of the better outcomes. You can just as well take a moderate puncture crit to the eye and just straight up die, or get walked in on while you're disabled and eat a second maneuver that auto-hits because defense is so low.

Lol, you think the old maneuver attacks didn't have open rolls? SMR 1 has open rolls, I can tell you that. And I mentioned rift crawlers earlier, which is the same move as roaters, in which case getting slash resist does wonders. If you are in Voln you can use symbol of transcendence if you really feel the need. Clerics can 319, etc..



Simply put, pures do not have the damage mitigation to walk away from these scenarios and keep playing the game, and they are guaranteed to occur due to logarithmic SMRv2 defense scaling and open rolls.

And how, pray tell, does a square fair much better? Excepting Kroderine Soul, the differences are actually not huge (Empaths can even 3x PF). It's not like open rolls don't pose issues for squares either! In fact, pures get some pretty sweet spells that help with maneuvers, such as the ones I mentioned earlier in this post.



Anyway I'm in here trying to read memes and mechanics analysis/suggestions and you're just going too hard man. Some aspects of the game you're really knowledgeable about - I applied your crit analysis post to my warmage to great effect - but your take here does not share that same veracity.

Don't come and claim that going from 20% to 65% is nothing, and then proceed to tell me that I'm not very knowledgeable about this. You literally jumped into this discussion to try and school me about something I likely know more about than you (maneuver defense), and the argument you are making is totally incorrect.

But anyways, to re-iterate my initial point that all this was about - Pures have not been nerfed when it comes to maneuver defense, they have actually been buffed. Not only was switching things to SMR2 more beneficial for you in most circumstances, you have also been given new spells over the years that help. And dodging is not a "nerf" for pures, unless you call the ability to get a ton of extra DS a nerf.

[Mobius1]

You are right that the defense against things did go up for pures when this change was made because of the absolute shit CML defense they had, however, pures get the worst of SMRv2 when compared to semi and square classes.

Honestly, I don't care to get too deep into a square vs. pure comparison here, since the point I am trying to make is more centered around whether pures were nerfed. The difference between a fully trained pure and a fully trained square is about 20 SMR2 defense. That seems pretty fair to me. And that gap can be lessoned by getting enhancives (since a square gets less bang for their buck if they enhance SMR2.), and being a maneuverable race (+40-80 dodging.).



PSM3 tanked the SMRv2 defense, especially for pures. When my pures had a 75% chance to avoid SMRv2 stuff, the PSM3 changes dropped their SMRv2 defense by upwards of 20 points. That means my pures went from being able to defend (outside of open rolls) 3/4 of manuevers made on them down to defending about half.


Yeah, this was kind of a nerf, but only depending on how you look at it. Though it technically impacted everyone, not just pures. But it was mainly aimed at pures (and semis who hunt like pures), since stance has so much weight in the equation it was actually giving them a huge advantage since they don't leave guarded stance.



Now, now....I know you're going to say that that's better then what you got from CML defense and even though that is true, pures are still pretty much fucked when a maneuver hits them. The spell hindrance of armors keeps pures in light armors and even with crit padding (massive amounts) you get slaughtered when endrolls exceed 101 with some of these maneuvers.





Heavy armor plays a significant role in helping reduce crits from maneuvers and also CS based spells (this has been confirmed by NIR on the forums a couple years ago).

It's Plate 5 CER, Chain 3, Scale 1, Leather -1, robes -3. Maneuvers/spells use a /5 crit divisor, so absolutely it's pretty decent when in plate. But as I said in my previous post, pures do get things that help with this. 520, for example, is +10 CER (Which I understand is randomized if you have over 6 CER padding).



SMRv2 was supposed to give those in light armors a better chance to dodge SMRv2 attacks. However, that's not true. You can over train in armor use and negate almost all of the heavy armor penalty for SMRv2, thus making heavy armors just as successful for allowing you to dodge SMRv2 attacks as if you were wearing lighter armors. Tack on the fact that the crit factor reduction for heavy armors against maneuvers means that semis and squares shake off manuevers a lot of the time (outside of the horrific open RNG the system allows).


Well, overtraining is actually mostly worthless. Heavy armor has such little impact on SMR2 defense because of the diminishing returns in the equation, and not because of overtraining (or armored evasion). Most squares will see a 0% benefit from overtraining armor, and some might at best get an extra 1% on some attacks due to rounding.

Going from robes to full plate is a 1% hit to most capped squares.



Not only do semis and squares have the ability to easily defend against SMRv2 on average due to being able to train 2x (and some 3x) in each physical skill for SMRv2 defense, they also get the added benefit of being able to train away most of the heavy armor penalty to SMRv2 defense and they also get the reduced crit benefit of heavier armors.

No doubt they are better against SMR2, by design. It would be silly if pures defended as well as them. Though I do think the gap between semis and squares is too small (Semis only have 6 less SMR2 defense), but that's a different discussion.



They also got screwed the most with the PSM3 tanking of SMRv2 defense.


I personally disagree, because of the benefits of the cman changes. Overall I think it's a stretch to call the stance change a nerf, since SMR2 had relatively only been around for a brief period, as those rollouts came recently (The converting of creature maneuvers to SMR2.). It was likely due to all the rollouts that this deficiency in the system became obvious to them, so they had to nip it in the bud.

EDIT: Basically, what I am trying to say here, is that overall SMR2 was a buff for pures, even if there was a nerf that happened in the short term.



Take it as you like, but you seem to either not understand the plight pures have with SMRv2 or you just don't care because you don't have to deal with it in game because you don't play a pure on a constant basis.

Every single death I have had in like the last 2 years as a rogue has been from maneuvers, and I have enhancives to push my SMR2 defense to the limits. Open rolls are the enemy of everyone, not just pures.

EDIT: As a side note, getting impact resistance for your head is also super helpful against deadly maneuvers, as it only needs 15 damage to kill. Though, at least in my experience, the vast majority of maneuvers that hit you with impact damage are cmans. The second damage hit of roater/crawler burrows are impact, but that's the weaker hit (though you'd certainly be better served getting impact resist for it.). The wave in Atoll is the only other that comes to mind, but that is 100% avoidable.

[Ramrod]

First of all, my main argument against you in this discussion, has been that I disagree that there have been many nerfs. There really hasn't been many nerfs, and the amount of buffs VASTLY outnumbers them.


Yeah, that's where we disagree. When you say that, you're either taking what Simu originally said 20 years ago at face value or looking at it in a vacuum. Are runestaves and lores a hard requirement for pures? Nope, but since introducing the systems I can't think of a single spell update/release that didn't have a strong benefit from those skills. I mean, Sanctify is pretty worthless without MIU/AS/SMC training. Did swinging clerics get directly nerfed? No, and in a vacuum it's just as viable, but in reality with things like SMRv2 and PSM3 that's just not true.



And as for a nerf because of a 1% extreme? Those situations are usually the BEST ones to implement a nerf, because it's better to nerf the extreme than try to buff everyone else. The loot cap is freaking fantastic if you ask me.

lolwut. You think that every single player should be punished because of the actions of a handful of players? Seriously? Simu could just address the underlying problem rather than putting in game-wide nerfs. Instead, fuck the customers they can all suffer because of one person.

[Mobius1]

Yeah, that's where we disagree. When you say that, you're either taking what Simu originally said 20 years ago at face value or looking at it in a vacuum. Are runestaves and lores a hard requirement for pures? Nope, but since introducing the systems I can't think of a single spell update/release that didn't have a strong benefit from those skills. I mean, Sanctify is pretty worthless without MIU/AS/SMC training. Did swinging clerics get directly nerfed? No, and in a vacuum it's just as viable, but in reality with things like SMRv2 and PSM3 that's just not true.


Except even outside of a vacuum they didn't get nerfed. Lores were a buff, dodging was a buff, and SMR2 was a buff.



lolwut. You think that every single player should be punished because of the actions of a handful of players? Seriously? Simu could just address the underlying problem rather than putting in game-wide nerfs. Instead, fuck the customers they can all suffer because of one person.

The loot cap didn't impact most players - It nerfed the extreme. Why would you go through the trouble of buffing the 99% when you can just nerf the 1%? That was my whole point.

[drumpel]

Honestly, I don't care to get too deep into a square vs. pure comparison here, since the point I am trying to make is more centered around whether pures were nerfed. The difference between a fully trained pure and a fully trained square is about 20 SMR2 defense. That seems pretty fair to me. And that gap can be lessoned by getting enhancives (since a square gets less bang for their buck if they enhance SMR2.).


"Hello? Hello? Anybody home, huh, Think, McFly! Think!"

You just said your point is about trying to see if the change was a nerf, yet you agree that they were (see below).




Yeah, this was definitely a nerf. Though it nerfed everyone, not just pures. But it was mainly aimed at pures (and semis who hunt like pures), since stance has so much weight in the equation it was actually giving them a huge advantage since they don't leave guarded stance.



The fact is, pures were nerfed and they are screwed with maneuvers. As I said in my last post.....one that you kind of agreed with, yet disagreed with somehow.





It's Plate 5 CER, Chain 3, Scale 1, Leather -1, robes -3. Maneuvers/spells use a /5 crit divisor, so absolutely it's pretty decent when in plate. But as I said in my previous post, pures do get things that help with this. 520, for example, is +10 CER (Which I understand is randomized if you have over 6 CER padding).

Yes, we've already established heavy armors provide better crit protection, which is why pures get hosed against maneuvers. Even with lots of crit padding in light armor pails in comparison to unpadded chain and especially plate armor.




Well, overtraining is actually mostly worthless. Heavy armor has such little impact on SMR2 defense because of the diminishing returns in the equation, and not because of overtraining (or armored evasion). Most squares will see a 0% benefit from overtraining armor, and some might at best might get an extra 1% on some attacks due to rounding.

Going from robes to full plate is a 1% hit to most capped squares.


And that's a problem that NIR won't fix. I've asked them and they won't do it. They feel it's okay to allow heavy armors to be able to avoid maneuvers just as easily as light armors. Light armor was supposed to give those that wore it a significantly better chance to dodge maneuvers, but they don't. If this was fixed, it would lessen the impact of maneuver deaths to pures since they're in light armors. It won't stop maneuvers from still being deadly when they're struck by them, but at least it would reduce the chance of getting hit.

Heavy armor is just awesome when it comes to defending against maneuvers, if you get hit. It should be a lot harder to dodge said maneuvers in heavier armors because you can take the hit.
Robes should give you a +20 to SMRv2 defense.
Leather should be +10.

A change like this would fix some of the nerf handed out during the PSM3 SRMv2 defense reduction to pures. Yeah, they'd get hit less (like how it was before PSM3), but they'd still take hard hits. I was okay with it when I had 3/4 a chance to avoid maneuvers before PSM3. Taking a 20-25 SMRv2 defense reduction was a kick in the nuts. Now it becomes next to impossible to survive a maneuver as a pure. If it doesn't outright kill you, you're left prone and/or stunned to take a pummel from AS attacks or worse, other maneuvers that will kill you.



No doubt they are better against SMR2, by design. It would be silly if pures defended as well as them. Though I do think the gap between semis and squares is too small (Semis only have 6 less SMR2 defense), but that's a different discussion.


It's not a different discussion. Semis and especially squares benefit doubly from being able to over train in armor use to negate SMRv2 armor penalty and also glean the benefits of heavy armor protecting better. Then stack on the fact they can train in more skills to improve their SMRv2 defense numbers, they get the best of it all where the pures get none of it.




I personally disagree, because of the benefits of the cman changes. Overall I think it's a stretch to call the stance change a nerf, since SMR2 had relatively only been around for a brief period, as those rollouts came recently (The converting of creature maneuvers to SMR2.). It was likely due to all the rollouts that this deficiency in the system became obvious to them, so they had to nip it in the bud.


You just said above that it's a nerf. You can't keep going back and forth.



Every single death I have had in like the last 2 years as a rogue has been from maneuvers, and I have enhancives to push my SMR2 defense to the limits. Open rolls are the enemy of everyone, not just pures.


Same with pures, except you don't die from every maneuver that does hit you. I have a rogue that's almost level 60, wears aug chain, has 25% redux. He takes hits from maneuvers and survives most of them and with his redux and chain armor he can take a few hits without dying if he's stunned/prone.

I've got a couple of warriors between level 36 and 45, they're in chain right now, have around 25% redux and they too take maneuver hits and keep on going, I've yet to have one that outright has killed them.
None of my squares have crit padding on their armor.
Hell, even my level 28 TWC paladin that wears unpadded chain mail survives maneuvers.
I've got multiple pures that range from low level to capped and even with 15+ CER crit padding with soft leather, low endrolls (low endrolls of 102 can kill) from maneuvers either outright kill or at the very minimum put my pures running back to town to heal so they can go back to hunt. The only exception to this is my level 61 reduxmage, he's got almost 16% redux, wearing studded leather and has 7 CER crit padding - he can take a hit almost as well as my rogue and keep on hunting most of the time without having to retreat.


In the end, pures got screwed with SMRv2. I don't disagree with you that they should defend as well as a semi or square, but when pures get zero of the benefits that semis and squares get to have (outside of mutant builds), there is something broken with the system.

[Mobius1]

"Hello? Hello? Anybody home, huh, Think, McFly! Think!"

You just said your point is about trying to see if the change was a nerf, yet you agree that they were (see below).

Sure, but it's more of a technicality. Perhaps my point didn't come across right.

SMR2 was pretty new and needed a tweak. It was a nerf in the short term, but my point is that in the long term, SMR2 is better than the old maneuver systems.



The fact is, pures were nerfed and they are screwed with maneuvers.

Are they though? "Screwed" denotes a pretty severe issue. But regardless of how severe it actually is, the point I am trying to make is that they are still better off than they used to be against them. If you are screwed by maneuvers now, you aren't more screwed than you were under the old wild west systems. Man, I for one sure can't wait for Implode to go SMR2! That will be a win for everyone!



Yes, we've already established heavy armors provide better crit protection, which is why pures get hosed against maneuvers. Even with lots of crit padding in light armor pails in comparison to unpadded chain and especially plate armor.


Actually, lots of padding to light armors is actually equal to or better than the bonus from unpadded chain/plate. I already pointed out what the bonuses/penalties are in my earlier post. In fact, in the conversation in Discord where Naijin talked about it a couple years ago that was mentioned earlier, his main point was that 520 was comparable to full plate against maneuvers, funny enough.



And that's a problem that NIR won't fix. I've asked them and they won't do it. They feel it's okay to allow heavy armors to be able to avoid maneuvers just as easily as light armors. Light armor was supposed to give those that wore it a significantly better chance to dodge maneuvers, but they don't. If this was fixed, it would lessen the impact of maneuver deaths to pures since they're in light armors. It won't stop maneuvers from still being deadly when they're struck by them, but at least it would reduce the chance of getting hit.

No, you have this completely backwards. Light armor is supposed to do absolutely nothing to help you avoid maneuvers. Heavy armor is supposed to make you avoid maneuvers more poorly. So to "fix" this, would not mean any benefit to characters in light armor, but simply a nerf to people in heavy armor. In fact Estild personally told me that the reason they will not change this, is because all it would do is nerf squares.


Heavy armor is just awesome when it comes to defending against maneuvers, if you get hit. It should be a lot harder to dodge said maneuvers in heavier armors because you can take the hit.
Robes should give you a +20 to SMRv2 defense.
Leather should be +10.

You hugely overestimate the benefits of heavy armor against maneuvers. It's also too narrow of a view, as not only are there other pros/cons to armor choice, but pures get many spells to help make up for their deficiencies, as I keep trying to say.

But again, to keep repeating myself: I am not really wanting to get dragged into a pure vs square debate here. My point is that SMR2 has been good for pures, and didn't somehow put you in some dire catastrophe where you are somehow "screwed" by it. We all have weaknesses, and a pure's weakness to maneuvers didn't suddenly come into existence when SMR2 was implemented.



Now it becomes next to impossible to survive a maneuver as a pure.

Next to impossible? Talk about melodrama!

Meanwhile we got 319 straight up laughing at maneuvers! :D :D :D



Same with pures, except you don't die from every maneuver that does hit you. I have a rogue that's almost level 60, wears aug chain, has 25% redux. He takes hits from maneuvers and survives most of them and with his redux and chain armor he can take a few hits without dying if he's stunned/prone.

If you are dying from every maneuver that hits you, your class is not the problem.



I've got a couple of warriors between level 36 and 45, they're in chain right now, have around 25% redux and they too take maneuver hits and keep on going, I've yet to have one that outright has killed them.
None of my squares have crit padding on their armor.
Hell, even my level 28 TWC paladin that wears unpadded chain mail survives maneuvers.
I've got multiple pures that range from low level to capped and even with 15+ CER crit padding with soft leather, low endrolls (low endrolls of 102 can kill) from maneuvers either outright kill or at the very minimum put my pures running back to town to heal so they can go back to hunt. The only exception to this is my level 61 reduxmage, he's got almost 16% redux, wearing studded leather and has 7 CER crit padding - he can take a hit almost as well as my rogue and keep on hunting most of the time without having to retreat.


I literally gave exact numbers about how all this works. I learned way back in the 90's that just because I perceived something to work a certain way, doesn't mean that's how it actually works. I'm literally telling you how it actually works - I can certainly explain it in more detail if you want to understand better how it works.



In the end, pures got screwed with SMRv2. I don't disagree with you that they should defend as well as a semi or square, but when pures get zero of the benefits that semis and squares get to have (outside of mutant builds), there is something broken with the system.

Again, it sounds to me like your problem isn't your class but is something else you are doing. Unless you are just being melodramatic.

[entropy]

Don't come and claim that going from 20% to 65% is nothing, and then proceed to tell me that I'm not very knowledgeable about this. You literally jumped into this discussion to try and school me about something I likely know more about than you (maneuver defense), and the argument you are making is totally incorrect.
You're missing, or more likely choosing to ignore, the point because if you leave the whiteroom your argument collapses. I concisely explained why that change doesn't result in practical improvement in played experience, so I'm not expending any more energy on it. For anyone else that's curious, you can find my post up-thread (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?135184-Naijin-no-longer-on-staff&p=2274230#post2274230).

[Mobius1]

You're missing, or more likely choosing to ignore, the point because if you leave the whiteroom your argument collapses. I concisely explained why that change doesn't result in practical improvement in played experience, so I'm not expending any more energy on it. For anyone else that's curious, you can find my post up-thread (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?135184-Naijin-no-longer-on-staff&p=2274230#post2274230).

Lol, fine...Here is what you said:


Due to that scaling, pures can't train their way out of getting CMANed, period. The seemingly massive buff from 20% chance to 65% chance to resist (at 10m+ exp) doesn't result in improved survivability in practice because monsters yolo out CMANs constantly. Here's a concrete numbers example: my warmage, not even a pure, is perf stats, 1x pf, 1x perception, 1.5x cman (yes), 0.6x effective dodge, 5/5 disarm. Chance to defend against a like leveled disarm attempt? About 60%. Getting clipped by like level SMRv2 (CMAN or otherwise) is a statistical guarantee. I suspect you experience playing a rogue has you both underestimating how frequently it happens and unaware of how deadly that is for a pure. They have neither the redux nor the armor modifiers to blunt the impact of the maneuver or the followup hits delivered while the character's subsequently disabled.

So by your exact same reasoning, it is a statistical guarantee that a square will also get hit by maneuvers. So my advantage of having higher SMR2 defense than you, by your logic, has no practical benefit either. Quite frankly, I am having an extremely difficult time wrapping my head around your argument as it's in my opinion absolutely nonsensical.

As I said earlier - Not only was it a 3-fold boost to your cman defense, even when you do get hit it will be less severe than it was in the past. How is this an impractical boost? If I suddenly got a +45 DS boost, I wouldn't value it at even 1/10th the value of a +45 boost to SMR2. And you're just poo pooing that? I'm befuddled.

And again, not to be a broken record here, but pures also get spells to help deal with when they get hit by a maneuver.

[drumpel]

You're missing, or more likely choosing to ignore, the point because if you leave the whiteroom your argument collapses. I concisely explained why that change doesn't result in practical improvement in played experience, so I'm not expending any more energy on it. For anyone else that's curious, you can find my post up-thread (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?135184-Naijin-no-longer-on-staff&p=2274230#post2274230).

He's missing the point of things because the issues that plague other users don't impact him. It's like talking to Seran in politics, if it doesn't fit his agenda then it's wrong.

[Mobius1]

He's missing the point of things because the issues that plague other users don't impact him. It's like talking to Seran in politics, if it doesn't fit his agenda then it's wrong.

Hmm, I'd say the main difference here is that my agenda is 100% unselfish, whereas yours is.

It's definitely getting tiring seeing these pures flopping and diving so much. You'd think I was watching the world cup here.

Entropy's pures after they get hit by a maneuver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07mBfR8erMY

[drumpel]

Hmm, I'd say the main difference here is that my agenda is 100% unselfish, whereas yours is.

It's definitely getting tiring seeing these pures flopping and diving so much. You'd think I was watching the world cup here.

Entropy's pures after they get hit by a maneuver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07mBfR8erMY

Yep. Coming from the guy that plays a rogue, but only dies from maneuvers. Hard to take your opinion on the matter seriously when you're so one sided.

I have no issues with maneuvers with my semis and squares. They shrug most off aside from outlandish open rolls. Pures get none of it.

You act and sound just like the GMs when you make claims such as, "but you defend so much better from maneuvers than you did when they were under CML!". We really don't.

I posted a lot of shots of my pures getting hit from maneuvers before they changed them from CML to SMRv2, my pures were taking endrolls of 130-150 and not getting splattered all over the wall, sure, they were ending my hunts for the most part, but they weren't outright killing me. I then posted the same maneuvers after the change over to SMRv2 and my pures were getting rolled with endrolls under 110. Nothing else changed except for the system the maneuvers now used, yet endrolls of 110 and down to even 102 were crit killing me when they weren't before.

You can claim all you want that you know how it all works, but in the end, pures got the shaft of it all and when comparisons were shown the GMs said nothing changed. I even went as far as to post many different hits by maneuvers in 10 CER crit padding from full leather armor to unpadded chain and with chain the chances of dying were gone, unlike the crit padded light armor.....but, per your information, even well padded light armor is better against maneuvers of unpadded heavier armor, yet I showed that wasn't the case. I was told that crit randomization was the reason....but I thought 5 CER crit padding made light leather the same as unpadded plate? You even said so yourself. So why were lower endrolls decimating my pures in heavily crit padded full leather, but you weren't seeing the same results when wearing unpadded chain or plate?

Keep patting yourself on the back like you know all the answers because of your expertise in the matter, that's fine. It's okay if you're oblivious, just stop telling everyone else they're wrong or that they're being selfish because they'd like the system to be corrected and not so unforgiving to pures.

[Mobius1]

So even the GMs, who have complete access to how it all works, told you the same thing I am also telling you.

I wonder who is right?

[Mobius1]

The only thing that comes to mind is that they added impact damage to a couple of cmans/shield skills in PSM 3, which means the critters that use them suddenly can deal impact damage as well. This means that, as I said earlier, you can die from 15 damage to the neck. In fact, that is the reason I usually die, myself, as the critters I hunt shield charge. It's not killing on a 102 end roll though (I'd love to see a log of this.). Not that I'm saying it's not possible - There are definitely modifiers that don't show in your roll, such as certain size penalties. But even if this is the case, you are still massively blowing it out of proportion, as something like that would be rare. And once you move to the next hunting area, I doubt they'll have a maneuver with impact damage.

[Methais]

Yeah, that's where we disagree. When you say that, you're either taking what Simu originally said 20 years ago at face value or looking at it in a vacuum. Are runestaves and lores a hard requirement for pures? Nope, but since introducing the systems I can't think of a single spell update/release that didn't have a strong benefit from those skills. I mean, Sanctify is pretty worthless without MIU/AS/SMC training. Did swinging clerics get directly nerfed? No, and in a vacuum it's just as viable, but in reality with things like SMRv2 and PSM3 that's just not true.



lolwut. You think that every single player should be punished because of the actions of a handful of players? Seriously? Simu could just address the underlying problem rather than putting in game-wide nerfs. Instead, fuck the customers they can all suffer because of one person.

It's stupid as fuck, but that's nothing new with Simu.

A couple examples off the top of my head...way back in the GS3 days I was fucking around one night and decided to bombard TSC with cheese from the treehouse, back when you could drop something from the treehouse and it would land in TSC, sometimes bonking someone on the head (fluff messaging). I dropped a lot of cheese on empaths' heads that night.

Instead of a GM hitting me up like "Hey, quit doing that shit," Simu instead plugged up the "hole" in the treehouse the next day, and now you can no longer drop stuff from the treehouse into TSC.

I used to also mana farm everything in Shadow Valley in GS3 back when it swarmed constantly, to charge up shitloads of blue crystals and ruby amulets, since enchanting without a private workshop under the old INFUSE system was the worst and most tedious thing in the universe, even worse than forging without a script unless you had a giant MA army of halfling/dwarf clerics to spam 308 on whoever had the highest mana pool and was in CoL (308 used to have no cooldown either). Simu's "fix" to this "problem" was to nerf both 516 (it was unlimited with no cooldown pre-nerf) and hugely nerf 517 (pre-nerf there were no increased mana costs, no giant penalty for charging out of sphere items, no degradation over time, 99% sure greening stuff wasn't a thing either, etc. Basically there was just a small chance to implode the item, which still exists.) This happened not very long after Celtic (who was eventually GM Mahegh), who owned or at least had access to a private workshop and made 94873290742342894 silvers with effortless enchanting from it, started whining about it.

So yeah, making heavy handed nerfs because of 1 person doing something isn't really anything new.


EDIT: Still waiting for Midgar to explain to me how Weapon Fire, Stone Fist, Sandstorm, etc. are viable builds.

[Mobius1]

Clearly not every nerf has been done in the best way. Generally an ideal nerf to stop an extreme is when it only impacts the extreme.

The crazy thing to me about old wizard enchanting, is how absurd it was that only a small privileged group was able to make so much money. The fact it was even introduced to begin with was a travesty! Who thought it was a good idea to give one profession something like that (and in a way that was pretty limited even within that profession.)? I'm so glad that things are so much more balanced than they were back then. Now if only they'd finish all the service skills, we'd really be in a good place!

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing greening go, though, hehe. I have a 303 MjE wizard just to be able to avoid it as much as possible.

[Methais]

Clearly not every nerf has been done in the best way. Generally an ideal nerf to stop an extreme is when it only impacts the extreme.

The crazy thing to me about old wizard enchanting, is how absurd it was that only a small privileged group was able to make so much money. The fact it was even introduced to begin with was a travesty! Who thought it was a good idea to give one profession something like that (and in a way that was pretty limited even within that profession.)? I'm so glad that things are so much more balanced than they were back then. Now if only they'd finish all the service skills, we'd really be in a good place!

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing greening go, though, hehe. I have a 303 MjE wizard just to be able to avoid it as much as possible.

The population was pretty small back then, so I guess something like private workshops wasn't really a problem back then like it would be today under the old system, especially with public mana pools as part of the equation that pretty much anyone could drain anytime they wanted. But I want to say that a lot of wizards didn't even charge for enchants, at least for a while. But that was all way before I started playing so I could be mistaken.

I always thought greening an item was just a fumble, but I never bothered doing any real research about i t.

[Mobius1]

I always thought greening an item was just a fumble, but I never bothered doing any real research about i t.

Well, I tend to just do 1 charge on high risk items. The only time I have greened is on a second or third (This is on higher level spells like 215, 1119, 219, etc.). I actually haven't done a lot of research on it beyond what I have learned from my mistakes and what I have been told by others (Which may or may not be completely true.).

I don't really care to burn through items and orb gems to test, though.

[Tgo01]

Speaking of Naijin no longer being on staff, why are there like 55,000 Product Managers now?

[Fortybox]

A couple examples off the top of my head...way back in the GS3 days I was fucking around one night and decided to bombard TSC with cheese from the treehouse, back when you could drop something from the treehouse and it would land in TSC, sometimes bonking someone on the head (fluff messaging). I dropped a lot of cheese on empaths' heads that night.

Instead of a GM hitting me up like "Hey, quit doing that shit," Simu instead plugged up the "hole" in the treehouse the next day, and now you can no longer drop stuff from the treehouse into TSC.

Thanks for ruining GS.

[Gelston]

You can now instead get hundreds of 2 coin promissory notes and drop them in the treehouse and cast breeze and bombard TSC. The best part is people will spam get note and continue to grab them out of their own containers.

[drumpel]

Thanks for ruining GS.

As far as I can tell, the bug for bundling skins still isn't fixed (at least it wasn't two days ago). You can abuse this bug for doing skin bounties.

all you need is at least one skin that is of the quality level the bounty is asking for and make sure you use that skin first when you start a bundle. Any quality level of skins after that one, the system defines them as the same quality level as the first skin in the bundle.

So if you need 10 exceptional skins to turn in, the first skin in your bundle needs to be of exceptional quality or higher, the rest you bundle with it doesn't matter.


Be careful, though. You can screw yourself if you bundle a crappy skin first, then all other skins (regardless of their quality level) will be defined as the crappy skin you used first.

I bugged this in game 3-4 weeks ago (even bugged it a second time) and I posted on the officials. They don't give a shit. So abuse the bug while you can.

[Ramrod]

So yeah, making heavy handed nerfs because of 1 person doing something isn't really anything new.



Back in the day, the PUNISH verb was visible to everyone so you could PUNISH Methais and everyone would see:

Ramrod beats Methais severely.

I rolled up a character, Off, and would punish him in TSC:

Ramrod beats Off severely.

Instead of making me change my name or telling me to cut that shit out, they just made it so PUNISH isn't visible to everyone. There's other shit through the years that I've broken, but I don't remember it all.

I just wish instead of slowing down the game and nerfing shit, they'd speed up the game and just let people play. I feel like the majority of players would prefer they quit nerfing shit and just add content/run events.

[Taernath]

Back in the day, the PUNISH verb was visible to everyone so you could PUNISH Methais and everyone would see:

Ramrod beats Methais severely.

I rolled up a character, Off, and would punish him in TSC:

Ramrod beats Off severely.

Instead of making me change my name or telling me to cut that shit out, they just made it so PUNISH isn't visible to everyone. There's other shit through the years that I've broken, but I don't remember it all.

I mean yeah it's funny, but let's not pretend that's an example of GM overreach. Even if you would have stopped or changed your name, someone else would have been along with a character named Meat and it's the same issue all over again. So thanks for getting something removed for the sake of a joke, I guess?

[Methais]

Thanks for ruining GS.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU0RqqGVKbI


You can now instead get hundreds of 2 coin promissory notes and drop them in the treehouse and cast breeze and bombard TSC. The best part is people will spam get note and continue to grab them out of their own containers.

TIME TO NERF RANGERS

[Methais]

Back in the day, the PUNISH verb was visible to everyone so you could PUNISH Methais and everyone would see:

Ramrod beats Methais severely.

I rolled up a character, Off, and would punish him in TSC:

Ramrod beats Off severely.

Instead of making me change my name or telling me to cut that shit out, they just made it so PUNISH isn't visible to everyone. There's other shit through the years that I've broken, but I don't remember it all.

I just wish instead of slowing down the game and nerfing shit, they'd speed up the game and just let people play. I feel like the majority of players would prefer they quit nerfing shit and just add content/run events.

I've been wondering for 94873294023 years why PUNISH became invisible, which makes no fucking sense.

Thanks for ruining GS.



I mean yeah it's funny, but let's not pretend that's an example of GM overreach. Even if you would have stopped or changed your name, someone else would have been along with a character named Meat and it's the same issue all over again. So thanks for getting something removed for the sake of a joke, I guess?

Time to remove the SMILE verb.

[Fortybox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU0RqqGVKbI



TIME TO NERF RANGERS

:lol:

[Methais]

Found the guy who’s been nerfing everything:

https://i.imgur.com/Pyxzda1.jpg

[WRoss]

Back in the day, the PUNISH verb was visible to everyone so you could PUNISH Methais and everyone would see:

Ramrod beats Methais severely.

I rolled up a character, Off, and would punish him in TSC:

Ramrod beats Off severely.

Instead of making me change my name or telling me to cut that shit out, they just made it so PUNISH isn't visible to everyone. There's other shit through the years that I've broken, but I don't remember it all.

I just wish instead of slowing down the game and nerfing shit, they'd speed up the game and just let people play. I feel like the majority of players would prefer they quit nerfing shit and just add content/run events.

Reminds me of the free plat point bug I discovered. They didn't care about it until Sirina or someone suggested being able to pool plat and premium points and I had around 20k plat points. Boom. Issue fixed. There have been some other fun ones over the years.

[Methais]

https://i.imgur.com/UsFlCmc.jpg

[Ramrod]

Looks like Naijin is back. Nerfstone is back on the menu, boys.

[Methais]

Looks like Naijin is back. Nerfstone is back on the menu, boys.

Just when things were starting to get decent again.

If that piece of shit Divergence comes back as a result of this...

https://www.pngkit.com/png/detail/149-1498252_facepalm-facepalm-through-head-meme.png

[Sherlock]

Just when things were starting to get decent again.

If that piece of shit Divergence comes back as a result of this...

https://www.pngkit.com/png/detail/149-1498252_facepalm-facepalm-through-head-meme.png

I could not agree with you more. Things felt a lot more positive with him gone. Hopefully that doesn't change but you know.. Simu.

[Mobius1]

Glad to hear he's back, myself.

Has he made any changes since? Or is there anything in the pipes?

[Mobius1]

And here I'm told he's gone again! What gives?

[Leff]

My understanding is that he is currently on staff and working on the rogue service. He is not currently active on Discord.

[Mobius1]

Nice, he's doing God's work.

[Methais]

Nice, he's doing God's work.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAWdc9haQcA

[drumpel]

My understanding is that he is currently on staff and working on the rogue service. He is not currently active on Discord.

I thought with the last debacle on Discord with him and players he basically had his Discord account disabled from interacting with the customer base....I could be remembering wrong because I don't really use discord, but I thought that is why he's not showing up on Discord anymore.

[Mobius1]

Is it more Divergence hate or what?

[Methais]

Is it more Divergence hate or what?

They got rid of Divergence a while ago. Pretty sure that disaster mechanic isn't coming back.

Know what would be cool though? Some actual Ascension updates. How many years has it been now?

[Izzy]

I thought with the last debacle on Discord with him and players he basically had his Discord account disabled from interacting with the customer base....I could be remembering wrong because I don't really use discord, but I thought that is why he's not showing up on Discord anymore.

Yeah no, that's not it at all. Like the PC, the GS discord has its fair share of douchbags who don't know how to conduct themselves in a sensible manner. A series of negative interactions occurred in response to various proposals that were aired, eventually he decided to take an indefinite hiatus because people are assholes. He returned to staff several months ago. Simu implemented policies to protect their staff, and now we have the Envoy program which is 3 player volunteers that serve as discord moderators and liaisons to the dev team.

[Mobius1]

Man, I'm glad I capitalized on the reduced RT in Atoll when I had the chance!

I guess there's no hope in ever balancing the game if Divergence failed. It was an uphill battle from the start, since this community blows a freaking lid over nerfs unlike any game community I have ever witnessed!

Obviously it wasn't perfect, but it was at least working toward improved game balance. But I realize my views on this are unpopular; Thanks to all the pay to win, years of major imbalances, etc., the bulk of players these days have simply accepted that imbalance is fine. Instead of discussing HOW to balance the game, I usually end up getting into an argument over whether or not balance even matters to begin with!

[drumpel]

They got rid of Divergence a while ago. Pretty sure that disaster mechanic isn't coming back.

Know what would be cool though? Some actual Ascension updates. How many years has it been now?

Last I heard is that Ascension is slated to be worked on and finished after all profession reviews are done. I think it's down to empaths, wizards, sorcerers and bards, all other professions are done or just have one or two things left to finalize.

How long that'll be before all the reviews are done and rolled out??? RSN.....yep, RSN.

[drumpel]

Man, I'm glad I capitalized on the reduced RT in Atoll when I had the chance!

I guess there's no hope in ever balancing the game if Divergence failed. It was an uphill battle from the start, since this community blows a freaking lid over nerfs unlike any game community I have ever witnessed!

Obviously it wasn't perfect, but it was at least working toward improved game balance. But I realize my views on this are unpopular; Thanks to all the pay to win, years of major imbalances, etc., the bulk of players these days have simply accepted that imbalance is fine. Instead of discussing HOW to balance the game, I usually end up getting into an argument over whether or not balance even matters to begin with!

I'd still be okay with them releasing breakage. I'm probably in the very minority here....but that's just me.

[Mobius1]

I'd still be okay with them releasing breakage. I'm probably in the very minority here....but that's just me.

Not sure if you are serious here or just pulling my leg.

They couldn't implement breakage even back when they had the best chance to do so! Now would be near impossible, especially with all the millions of PTW dollars invested in gear. And hell, even if they did implement it, it would be simply to rake in more $$$ with a fix or not break mechanic. When you have a text based weapon worth as much as your RL house, what's another $500 to make it unbreakable, eh?

Honestly, the pay to win system is more to blame for breaking game balance than anything else. Trying to balance the game is essentially pitting two different teams of GMs against each other - those trying to bring balance, and those actively breaking it with pay to win. That's a recipe for disaster for any GM trying to bring balance. Every step forward they take, PTW takes two steps back!

[Methais]

Honestly, the pay to win system is more to blame for breaking game balance than anything else. Trying to balance the game is essentially pitting two different teams of GMs against each other - those trying to bring balance, and those actively breaking it with pay to win. That's a recipe for disaster for any GM trying to bring balance. Every step forward they take, PTW takes two steps back!

They went all in on P2W with the latest Duskruin. Now you can just buy books for Simucoins and turn them into an NPC for bull BS and 5k exp in your head that stacks.

Anyone at Simu talking about "balancing the game" at this point is either clueless as fuck or just full of shit.

[Izzy]

Man, I'm glad I capitalized on the reduced RT in Atoll when I had the chance!

The reduced RT is now global.

[Mobius1]

They went all in on P2W with the latest Duskruin. Now you can just buy books for Simucoins and turn them into an NPC for bull BS and 5k exp in your head that stacks.

Anyone at Simu talking about "balancing the game" at this point is either clueless as fuck or just full of shit.

XP? Damn, they always were big on how they wouldn't cross that line, and here we are. But hell, you'd have to live under a rock to not see this coming. As long as this way of running things continues, it's only going to get worse.

I bet those same GMs are playing Baldur's Gate right now and are like, "Man, it's so refreshing this game doesn't have a cash shop."

[Mobius1]

The reduced RT is now global.

Nice, because of course they couldn't nerf anyone! Not that I'm complaining, as it was a good change for balance.

Is there an announcement or something about it? I've been gone since like December so I'm obviously behind on any changes since then.

[Neveragain]

They went all in on P2W with the latest Duskruin. Now you can just buy books for Simucoins and turn them into an NPC for bull BS and 5k exp in your head that stacks.

Anyone at Simu talking about "balancing the game" at this point is either clueless as fuck or just full of shit.

I think it's funny that they even focus on GS anymore. Valheim and BG3 have shown what is in demand. BG3 has created an opportunity for developers like SIMU to get back into the mainstream. If SIMU doesn't see this as a chance to redeem itself, then they may as well close up shop.

[Mobius1]

I think it's funny that they even focus on GS anymore. Valheim and BG3 have shown what is in demand. BG3 has created an opportunity for developers like SIMU to get back into the mainstream. If SIMU doesn't see this as a chance to redeem itself, then they may as well close up shop.

Simu is strapped down in the Stillfront milking machine. Do they even have the talent or manpower to do anything else anymore?

[Neveragain]

Simu is strapped down in the Stillfront milking machine. Do they even have the talent or manpower to do anything else anymore?

I think 3 people created Valheim.

Granted, they would have to actually pay for coders.

[Tgo01]

Simu implemented policies to protect their staff, and now we have the Envoy program which is 3 player volunteers that serve as discord moderators and liaisons to the dev team.

So the envoys are supposed to take the brunt of customer abuse instead of the GMs? Sounds about right.

[Mobius1]

So the envoys are supposed to take the brunt of customer abuse instead of the GMs? Sounds about right.

Well, let's be real here, it goes both ways. I've seen lots of GM Discord behavior that got me feeling they need to take some customer service classes. In fact it was a GMs Discord behavior that got me to stop using it.

[Tgo01]

I've seen lots of GM Discord behavior that got me feeling they need to take some customer service classes.

Well yeah, like that one GM that called paying customers racist and told them to take their money elsewhere. That wasn't on Discord, but that's only because the forums were still a thing, otherwise it would have been on Discord.

[Leff]

Man, I'm glad I capitalized on the reduced RT in Atoll when I had the chance!

I guess there's no hope in ever balancing the game if Divergence failed. It was an uphill battle from the start, since this community blows a freaking lid over nerfs unlike any game community I have ever witnessed!

Obviously it wasn't perfect, but it was at least working toward improved game balance. But I realize my views on this are unpopular; Thanks to all the pay to win, years of major imbalances, etc., the bulk of players these days have simply accepted that imbalance is fine. Instead of discussing HOW to balance the game, I usually end up getting into an argument over whether or not balance even matters to begin with!

I don’t think this is quite right — and I know you probably made up your mind re: Discord, but I hope you come back! Miss having your valuable input there.

[Neveragain]

So the envoys are supposed to take the brunt of customer abuse instead of the GMs? Sounds about right.

I'm 99.99999% sure they had people willing to do anything to capture those "envoy" positions.

[Tgo01]

I'm 99.99999% sure they had people willing to do anything to capture those "envoy" positions.

Well one of them is Whirlin, so yeah.

[Mobius1]

I don’t think this is quite right — and I know you probably made up your mind re: Discord, but I hope you come back! Miss having your valuable input there.

I'll probably rejoin it at some point. Hopefully all the crap about removing pickpocketing has blown over, at least.

[drumpel]

Nice, because of course they couldn't nerf anyone! Not that I'm complaining, as it was a good change for balance.

Is there an announcement or something about it? I've been gone since like December so I'm obviously behind on any changes since then.

The melee RT reduction, I don't recall any kind of announcement - but I suppose it could have been made on discord, but since I don't use discord I don't know for sure if they even announced it there or not. It was released to the world of GSIV sometime in maybe the past 8-12 months. I just remember I was out hunting with my warrior and his mighty quarterstaff one morning, RT for swinging it was 4 seconds (as it had been for a while - the RT on a quarterstaff was moved from 5 to 4 seconds maybe a year or two prior to the recent melee RT reduction) and his CMAN TRIP was 3 seconds. I logged out for just a bit, came back to play some more and during the middle of a hunt my RT changed. Swinging the quarterstaff was 3 seconds and trip was only 2 seconds. I didn't see any announcement, it was just there.

[Parkbandit]

Well, let's be real here, it goes both ways. I've seen lots of GM Discord behavior that got me feeling they need to take some customer service classes. In fact it was a GMs Discord behavior that got me to stop using it.

This has always been the case.

[Parkbandit]

I'm 99.99999% sure they had people willing to do anything to capture those "envoy" positions.

https://media.tenor.com/1OefavGvKMgAAAAC/suck-it-bridesmaids.gif

[Parkbandit]

Well one of them is Whirlin, so yeah.

https://media.tenor.com/1OefavGvKMgAAAAC/suck-it-bridesmaids.gif

He's always chasing the "power"...

[Parkbandit]

I'll probably rejoin it at some point. Hopefully all the crap about removing pickpocketing has blown over, at least.

I'm honestly surprised it wasn't removed from the game. It's such an invasive skill.. almost akin to rape.

[Methais]

Well, let's be real here, it goes both ways. I've seen lots of GM Discord behavior that got me feeling they need to take some customer service classes. In fact it was a GMs Discord behavior that got me to stop using it.

The G in GM stands for Gaslighting.

[Methais]

I'm 99.99999% sure they had people willing to do anything to capture those "envoy" positions.

I heard that the interviews were done at Simucon. In a locked hotel room. One person at a time.

https://i.imgur.com/Xg4W9FG.jpg

[Mobius1]

It's such an invasive skill.. almost akin to rape.

You definitely have no idea what I might do with my hand once it's inside your pants.

[Parkbandit]

You definitely have no idea what I might do with my hand once it's inside your pants.

Exactly. The only thing worse than the pickpocketing skill is players who <look> at someone and see the pronouns that are used.. then misgenders them by using those same exact pronouns.

The humanity...

[Mobius1]

Naijin why have you forsaken us?!

The rogues need you! They look up to you!

[Methais]

Naijin why have you forsaken us?!

The rogues need you! They look up to you!

Did he rage quit again?

[Mobius1]

Well, I heard he is gone again.