open ambush

[Kazner]

Question for you ambushing warrior's. I wanted to see if I changed up my training and added ambush in at how many ranks will it actually be worth it? I will always be open ambush and from what I can get off some old post and kraki I can not find any real definitive training paths for this. My goal would be a high success rate and the least amount of round time. I am assuming the more I train in it the less round time will occur until I get back to 5 sec correct? Or am I way off? My current training is below any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Also if you see something I am training in that seems stupid let me know. I have not begun worrying about spell burst yet as I have a few more trains to go before it becomes an issue for me. Also he is a GOS master if that makes a difference. I want to be able to hack the necks off the grim in a shot or two especially the guards who seem to like to void my ass allot. Thanks in advance for any help!

Half-Krolvin Profession: Warrior (shown as: Berserker)
Gender: Male Age: 0 Expr: 2,729,137 Level: 51
Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 100 (35) ... 100 (35)
Constitution (CON): 100 (35) ... 100 (35)
Dexterity (DEX): 100 (25) ... 100 (25)
Agility (AGI): 100 (30) ... 100 (30)
Discipline (DIS): 85 (17) ... 85 (17)
Aura (AUR): 80 (15) ... 80 (15)
Logic (LOG): 58 (-6) ... 58 (-6)
Intuition (INT): 64 (7) ... 64 (7)
Wisdom (WIS): 65 (2) ... 65 (2)
Influence (INF): 53 (-4) ... 53 (-4)
Mana: 121 Silver: 351

Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 240 140
Combat Maneuvers...................| 206 106
Two-Handed Weapons.................| 206 106
Multi Opponent Combat..............| 160 60
Physical Fitness...................| 211 111
Dodging............................| 207 107
Harness Power......................| 140 40
Perception.........................| 152 52
Climbing...........................| 120 30
Swimming...........................| 120 30

[Androidpk]

Ambush training does not reduce rt. Only your agi/dex bonus and haste will. As far as training for open aiming you'll want 2x combat maneuvers and 1x ambush. You should also look into a fix stats potion ASAP.

[Kazner]

yah I know I been saving up bounty points for the stats

[Kazner]

Also I am aware it will not reduce my normal round time. I guess I did not say my question correctly. When you ambush your rt goes up correct. I was looking to see if (and maybe it does not ) I over train in ambush will the ambushing part of round time diminish or that will never happen?

[msconstrew]

Open ambush, I would say you'd need 30-35 ranks for it to be worth it. That's what I did on my open ambush monk and she hits her target the vast majority of the time.

And no, overtraining in ambush doesn't get rid of the extra second of RT.

[Buckwheet]

Someone, I don't remember who, did a ton of research on open ambush and they saw great diminishing returns once you had 2x CM and 40 ranks of ambush. Training past that did not improve their hits. I want to say it was Gib, Droit, or Durg. I just don't recall who.

[Kazner]

Thanks guys! Looks like 2xcm for sure and 30 to 40 ranks in ambush. I will try to find that thread buck I do want to waste a bunch of points.

[Gelston]

Someone, I don't remember who, did a ton of research on open ambush and they saw great diminishing returns once you had 2x CM and 40 ranks of ambush. Training past that did not improve their hits. I want to say it was Gib, Droit, or Durg. I just don't recall who.

Madmountain did it. It is posted up on Krakiipedia here: http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Open_ambushing

[Kazner]

Thanks!

[Riltus]

Also this, if haven't already read it:

http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/AMBUSH_(verb)

Each weapon has an assigned BASE and MINIMUM RT. Base RTs can be less than, equal to, or greater than the minimum. RT penalties for ambush (aimed attacks) and encumbrance are added to a weapon's BASE RT; AGI/DEX bonuses can reduce these penalties.

Ambush adds a 3 second RT penalty to a weapon's BASE RT. Also, the minimum RT with the AMBUSH (verb) is 1 second greater than a weapon's normal minimum RT with the ATTACK (verb).

A couple of examples:

1. Dagger: Base RT 1 second, Minimum RT 3 seconds

Unencumbered with 0 AGI/DEX bonuses

ATTACK RT: 3 seconds (minimum)
AMBUSH RT: 4 seconds (1 sec base RT + 3 sec ambush RT penalty)

Note: Even with a 0 AGI/DEX combined bonus, the ambush RT is only 4 seconds. There is a misconception held by some players that the ambush RT penalty is added to the normal attack RT and then reduced by AGI/DEX bonus.

2. Handaxe: Base RT 5 seconds, Minimum RT 5 seconds

Unencumbered with 0 AGI/DEX bonuses

ATTACK RT: 5 seconds (minimum)
AMBUSH RT: 8 seconds (5 sec base RT + 3 sec ambush RT penalty)

3. Two-handed sword: Base RT 8 seconds, Minimum RT 5 seconds

Unencumbered with 0 AGI/DEX bonuses

ATTACK RT: 8 seconds
AMBUSH RT: 11 seconds ( 8 sec base RT + 3 sec ambush RT penalty)

To reduce the two-handed sword's attack RT from 8 sec to its 5 sec minimum would require a combined AGI/DEX bonus of 38.

To reduce the two-handed sword's ambush RT from 11 sec to its 6 sec minimum would require a combined AGI/DEX bonus of 68.

Encumbrance adds a 1 second RT penalty to the weapon's BASE RT for each 5% of a character's encumbered body weight. There is no RT penalty with less than 5% encumbrance.


Mark

[BUBBAcHEWY]

Someone, I don't remember who, did a ton of research on open ambush and they saw great diminishing returns once you had 2x CM and 40 ranks of ambush. Training past that did not improve their hits. I want to say it was Gib, Droit, or Durg. I just don't recall who.

Madmountain :) Gud guy. All you need is 30-35 ranks.

[Rolis]

Just wanted to add this information out there. Smaller weapons are much easier to aim. Larger wearpons (2-handed, polearms and problem even certain OHE) have aiming penalties. Easier for a dagger or fist based weapons to aim shots. You would need less trainining to see sucess in your aiming with those weapons.

[Archigeek]

I haven't had more than 40 ranks of ambush since GS4 started. Currently I am 2x CM with no ambush and doing just fine.

[oneillseanm]

Necro. I'm interested in the topic and the thread's only four months old, so I figured what the heck. Hoping someone takes a peek.

Is two dagger, open ambush, aim at the eyes mode viable even without the stance pushdown and crit weighting bump gained from hidden ambushing? The notion I had was that those two things are what make daggers viable, and thus hidden ambushing is the only way to use daggers. I suppose just about any strike to the eye is going to do something worthwhile, though, so some of my assumptions might be wrong.

[Jace Solo]

2x Cman and 30 ranks of Ambush here (At level 64) and I almost always hit. I aim for the neck on anything that isn't too high for a Giant to reach. I use an "executioner's axe" so it's fitting.


As for daggers, I'd compare them to the numbers other things have on the Krakii charts. I would think that if you had a high enough roll in the eye you'd kill regardless.

[Jeril]

If you had daggers with enough critical weighting it would be possible, you'd likely still run into problems against things in plate armor though. It is easy enough to get things in offensive the way ambush does, but without real weighting you won't be able to make up for the lack of phantom weighting.

[Mtenda]

The thing is you won't get a high enough roll to overcome the poor DF most of the time so it's gonna be a lot of plink plink plink.

[oneillseanm]

Wa ... wa ... waaa ... Well that's deflating. I'm actually not even working with a warrior. I'm considering trying a twc dagger bard for 1-second, twc aimed shots to the eyes with two flaring weapons (one of which being a sonic with double flares). Seems like it would be rapid fire plinkplinkplink with lots of sparkles, but from this it also seems like it would take forever even with the speed and the flares.

Thanks for chiming in, everyone.

[m444w]

You can sing up a sonic shortsword and use a flaring dagger in your offhand, when you max the negative RT from Tonis you will be at 1 second, and it is godly.

Don't even bother ambushing, just let your sonic flares do all the work.

[Wheelerm]

If you aim for the eye with daggers and hit from hiding, it's dead guaranteed. My TWC rogue does this quite a bit for variety. 3 second RT is the best you'll get with two daggers. Other than ambushing eyes, I would not recommend daggers for other attacks.

[Androidpk]

With ambushing from hiding with TWC does the offhand weapon get aimed too?

[cwolff]

If
you aim for the eye with daggers and hit from hiding, it's dead guaranteed. My TWC rogue does this quite a bit for variety. 3 second RT is the best you'll get with two daggers. Other than ambushing eyes, I would not recommend daggers for other attacks.

I don't know about guaranteed. Maybe at your level it is. My rogue's only 43 but it seems that the best you can do in this game is to hit the target 95% of the time. Even then an eye shot is not a guaranteed kill. You can remove both eyes and have to switch aiming points for the third attack. If you choose to uphunt, then it just gets harder. Add in plated creatures or very small and very large creatures and again it's difficult.

[Mtenda]

With ambushing from hiding with TWC does the offhand weapon get aimed too?

Yes but if you miss the your target you miss with both swings. If you can't find an opening with the first swing then you still have a chance to hit your target with the second.

[Wheelerm]

If

I don't know about guaranteed. Maybe at your level it is. My rogue's only 43 but it seems that the best you can do in this game is to hit the target 95% of the time. Even then an eye shot is not a guaranteed kill. You can remove both eyes and have to switch aiming points for the third attack. If you choose to uphunt, then it just gets harder. Add in plated creatures or very small and very large creatures and again it's difficult.

Yeah, there is the 5% failure, so you do have to hit. At 48, if I manage to hit the eye, it doesn't live. I can't think of a single time I've hit the eye and it didn't die once I got to about mid thirties. That's 2x ambush and 1.5x CM though

[Wheelerm]

With ambushing from hiding with TWC does the offhand weapon get aimed too?

I aim at a leg, for example, and the main hand will usually hit whichever leg I aimed at. Now, depending on the damage done, the off hand may or may not hit the leg again. If the main hand severs the leg, the off hand lands somewhere else. If the main hand just injures the leg, the off hand usually attacks the same leg, too (not always). I legged a critter the other night which severed the leg completely. My gauche then hit the body and was driven straight through the heart causing instant death.

[Donquix]

You can make it work to 50+ if you really want to. You just have much more limited hunting options. (read as: nothing past leather armor really)

I hunted forever using dual sais and a lot of the time i was aiming ambushes. I was fully 2xing MoC and mstriking w/ flaring weapons was my bread and butter but during the MoC cooldown (which is, extremely short btw with two small weapons) i would kill things fine w/ twin-hammerfist knockdown (substitute in hamstring i guess with daggers) and an eye ambush. Now, i'm not saying it's the most effective thing in the world. But it works. I also had voln-fu to fall back on for rough spots.

If you want to try just doing the MoC route rather than relying on aiming, it's more effective overall but still noticeably less so than other more common means. Just know that going in, and if you're willing to deal with it great...if not, meh.

I did change to katars at 50+ because i was working on pair of project forged sais and i figured hell, if i'm going to use plain 4x weapons might as well be real ones.

[cwolff]

Yeah, there is the 5% failure, so you do have to hit. At 48, if I manage to hit the eye, it doesn't live. I can't think of a single time I've hit the eye and it didn't die once I got to about mid thirties. That's 2x ambush and 1.5x CM though

I'm not seeing how this is possible. If it were this easy then from lvl 30 on every rogue in the game would just use a shield and dagger. Might as well max DS since you'd have such a high rate of 1 shot kills.

Here's what came up in the paladin folder when we were talking about builds:
Endroll-100*DF = raw damage. Then you divide by crit divisor to get the pre-randomization crit rank. Then you randomly get a crit rank between that pre-randomization rank and half (rounded up) of the prerandomization crit rank. Then you add the crit damage

I don't know how to figure out the pre-randomization crit rank or the random crit rank (Is someone here knows this formula well please feel free to post an example) but it seems that you may be overestimating the efficiency of hunting with a dagger.

[Wheelerm]

I'm not seeing how this is possible. If it were this easy then from lvl 30 on every rogue in the game would just use a shield and dagger. Might as well max DS since you'd have such a high rate of 1 shot kills.

Here's what came up in the paladin folder when we were talking about builds:

I don't know how to figure out the pre-randomization crit rank or the random crit rank (Is someone here knows this formula well please feel free to post an example) but it seems that you may be overestimating the efficiency of hunting with a dagger.

I think maybe the part you're missing is I say IF I hit the eye, then it dies. I'm not implying that I hit the eye every time, but your replies to my posts seem to indicate you're missing the "if" in my statements. I do aim for the eye and sometimes wind up hitting them in the neck or the head and on a rare occassion some other wildly off-target location like a leg. However, IF I manage to hit the eye, I honestly can't remember an occasion where the target lived. The dagger usually "connects with something vital," and causes insta-death. The success is high enough that my hunting partners complain a little bit if I do it for too long.

I don't know why this statement is so hard to believe, honestly? It's not any harder to believe this than to believe that sniping rogues have a high death count when they snipe critter's eyes...

[oneillseanm]

Wheelerm, are you referring to ambushing from the open or from hiding?

[Wheelerm]

Hiding. I rarely, if ever, open ambush.

[lordsmo]

There was a thread a while back where I believe a consensus was reached that a capped rogue with 2x ambush generates approximately 60 points of crit weighting when ambushing from hiding. With that amount of weighting, a 100% kill probability for a successful eye ambush with a dagger is achieved at the following endrolls:

cloth: 120
leath: 130
scale: 170
chain: 268
plate: 620

I'm not sure what the "weighting vs. ambush ranks" curve looks like, nor do I know what kind of weighting a mid-level rogue would generate, but at 40 points weighting the endrolls for 100% kill probability for a successful eye ambush with a dagger are:

cloth: 120
leath: 170
scale: 330
chain: 428
plate: 887

[Jeril]

Looks like if that capped rogue had a dagger with 30 points they'd only need a 220 endroll though. They might be wrong about the weighting too though because I know Gib has said he only needs a 228 endroll or something to ensure a kill on something in plate.

[lordsmo]

Against full plate with a non-player forged dagger a 228 (or 220 for that matter) endroll should do 9 damage with no chance of death, regardless of crit-weighting. Against MBP, ABP or half-plate a 228 (or 220) endroll with a dagger to the eye and 60 points of ambush weighting should generate a kill probability of 90.625% (assuming the slash: puncture ratio for daggers is 62.5:37.5 as posted on Krakii; not sure how robustly tested those are).

Against full plate a 247 endroll is required to even activate the crit-weighting, so anything below that should just be a small-damage flesh wound with no crit. A perfect dagger would push the requirement down to 239.

[lordsmo]

Looks like if that capped rogue had a dagger with 30 points they'd only need a 220 endroll though. They might be wrong about the weighting too though because I know Gib has said he only needs a 228 endroll or something to ensure a kill on something in plate.

You mean a dagger with 30 points (Expert CW or whatever) on top of the ambush weighting? Like 90 points total? Definitely enough for a 220 endroll guaranteed death crit against partial plate, but not full plate. I guess the lesson here is: wear a helmet kids.

And yeah, I don't know how definitive the 60 point figure for a capped rogue is.

Also, since it bears on this, do we know if weapon weighting fully stacks with ambush weighting? I remember a while back that it was shown that DEX weighting did not, but, depending on methodology, those findings may or may not have been invalidated by the more recent discovery that DEX weighting only applies to certain weapon bases.

[Jeril]

Well daggers is one of those weapons that DEX weighting works with. I am not exactly sure where you'd say partial and not fullplate, you can set the math up and it is pretty simple and straight forward.

Crit rank 9 = (( Endroll - 100 ) * DF + Weighting points)/ Crit Divisor
9 = (( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90 )/11
11*9 = [(( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90 )/11] * 11
99 = ( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90
99 - 90 = ( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90 - 90
9 = ( Endroll - 100 ) * .075
9/0.075 = [ (Endroll - 100 ) * .075]/0.075
120 = Endroll - 100
120 + 100 = Endroll
220 = Endroll

Of course this only holds true if two things are correct, that the weapon weighting and ambush weighting stack, and the ambush weighting at cap is indeed 60 points. Next time I see Gib I'll have to ask him the exact endroll and if that was for a 100% kill rate or not.

[lordsmo]

Well daggers is one of those weapons that DEX weighting works with. I am not exactly sure where you'd say partial and not fullplate, you can set the math up and it is pretty simple and straight forward.

Crit rank 9 = (( Endroll - 100 ) * DF + Weighting points)/ Crit Divisor
9 = (( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90 )/11
11*9 = [(( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90 )/11] * 11
99 = ( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90
99 - 90 = ( Endroll - 100 ) * .075 + 90 - 90
9 = ( Endroll - 100 ) * .075
9/0.075 = [ (Endroll - 100 ) * .075]/0.075
120 = Endroll - 100
120 + 100 = Endroll
220 = Endroll

Of course this only holds true if two things are correct, that the weapon weighting and ambush weighting stack, and the ambush weighting at cap is indeed 60 points. Next time I see Gib I'll have to ask him the exact endroll and if that was for a 100% kill rate or not.

Need to do a rank 1 to activate the weighting. Means you need 11 raw damage for an eyeshot against full plate to get any effect from the crit-weighting, but only 9 raw for an eyeshot against partial plate. 220 endroll with a dagger against plate does 9 raw damage. That's why 220 is enough against partial plate but not against full plate.

[Aganii]

Which weapon bases does Dex weighting apply to?

[Gelston]

Which weapon bases does Dex weighting apply to?

All of them.

[lordsmo]

All of them.

After an admittedly brief search of the archives I was unable to locate the thread where this was discussed, so perhaps I have confabulated its existence, but I believe there was a recent thread where it was demonstrated that many weapon bases do not benefit from DEX weighting. If I overcome my laziness I may attempt a more thorough search later.

[Donquix]

SUMMON THE RITLUS BOT

[Whirlin]

All of them.

That is inaccurate... Riltus found that only half the OHEs had DEX phantom damage.

I started working on polearms and THW... but I had a poor choice in critter, and unbeknownst to me, the mobs I were choosing were naturally crit padded... But that being said, instances of yes to Dex bonus should still apply if natural crit padding existed.

But hey... now we know of some more critters with natural crit padding!

It's on the list of things I volunteered to do for the community and spend a few days testing the game mechanics... but just not feeling it quite yet. After the crap with the Sorc Guide thread and the moderation of Lnet, I'm just a bit put off. Don't get me wrong, I'm not holding a grudge about those threads, but I'd just rather clock some time into some Steam games rather than doing mechanics testing in my free time.

Here was where I began testing... but yeah... got lazy, and the methodology was incorrect:
http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?79967-Backsword-Scale-%28AG3%29-DF-Correction

[Donquix]

hrm...if i wasn't still being a whiney bitch refusing to give simu money i'd be tempted to script this out in shattered. seems pretty ideal for this. new character, just start going down the weapon list at the weapon shop repeat after X swings have been seen. for a given class. fixskill, repeat.

also, since the steam summer sale just wrapped up.... i think we're ok with you getting your Truck Simulator 2013 on.