Shocking SMR2 Findings.

[Mobius1]

Bards need to be nerfed. They are just too good at like every fucking aspect of the game.

Say the N word around here, and they will tar and feather you!

Honestly, I think all the non-square classes are pretty decently balanced. There real rift is between Squares and everyone else.

I even think clerics are good. You want to know what class I think has the best survivability/tankiness? Not warriors....I'd give that award to clerics. 319, anyone?

[GSIV Rogue]

There real rift is between Squares and everyone else.

Very true.

[Fierna]

Say the N word around here, and they will tar and feather you!

Honestly, I think all the non-square classes are pretty decently balanced. There real rift is between Squares and everyone else.

I even think clerics are good. You want to know what class I think has the best survivability/tankiness? Not warriors....I'd give that award to clerics. 319, anyone?

Let me guess, 319 doesn’t drop on scrolls or imbeds?

[Mobius1]

Let me guess, 319 doesn’t drop on scrolls or imbeds?

Actually, you can simply get it imbedded with 325. But they changed the way the hidden warding roll works, to prevent non-clerics from making good use of it.

[Fierna]

Actually, you can simply get it imbedded with 325. But they changed the way the hidden warding roll works, to prevent non-clerics from making good use of it.

lol, Estild, gatekeeping his own profession since the Wizard tears.

[Maerit]

I've used 319 from scrolls with 202 Arcane Symbols at cap, and have had some minor success seeing it activate on say Lurks in SoS. Seems to be about a 25% chance to activate for my sorcerer when used from a scroll on lower than cap creatures. Suffice to say, I don't bother with 319 all that much unless I'm headed to somewhere with a lot of swarms that can RT lock you. Probably worth it for a warcamp, Reim, or SoS.

[Mobius1]

lol, Estild, gatekeeping his own profession since the Wizard tears.

Well, at least it kept what I consider to be one of the dumbest spells ever implemented, from only being abused by one class, and thankfully that class is at least slightly less powerful than many of the others.

Of course, that's just my opinion, and I'm sure many would disagree.

[Whirlin]

That's quite an amazing find Mobius, and absolutely interesting information. Thank you for the time and energy to research it.

Quite a few posts to go through, but my replies are specifically pointing out the early posts regarding armor use.

There's something more that your research also pointed to that I had noted in my previous bout of research... I was never able to find base Action Penalties associated with armor before any training, nor was I able to find out the relationship between how action penalties and how armor use mitigates them on a per rank/bonus perspective. For all I know, full plate begins with 22716292 points of action penalty, mitigating a ton of points per rank.. so those additional 50 ranks mitigating a handful definitely already imply a massive diminishing return. However, if you're able to find this info somewhere, let me know, it's been a while since I've looked for it.

There's also still a nice benefit with overtraining armor use for the DFRedux points... and as you mentioned, the evade penalty reduction... but I completely agree that it may be a much lower priority based on the lack of impact to SMRv2 defenses.

My only critique is on the perception of SMRv2... SMRv2 is a new framework that establishes a set of skills that are used for offensive and defensive rolls. Any single SMR2 attack can have it's own weighting on how it calculates out the attack side, and can have it's own weighting on the defense side. For example, Spell ranks can add 1 to the attack roll for 917 while only adding .94 to the attack roll for 309. Similarly, perception may have a minimal impact 917 defense, but under the SMRv2 framework, it could be the most important defense for a Roa'ter Burrow (this is just an example). The reason SMRv2 was considered revolutionary is that it centralized a rolling schema that could be centrally applied to multiple custom defined functions. So no longer were devs coding their own creature maneuvers in some obscure line of spaghetti, but now they can simply call the SMRv2 function with a few variables to run the same command in a more systemically streamlined approach. It also gave a defined list of things that were part of the SMRv2 defense calculations, so that we players understood things we could train in that could impact defenses. As more things transition to SMRv2, we may see more volatility in the weighting/calculation approach, but we won't see the same radical differentiation that we saw with legacy creature maneuvers.

SMRv2 aside, I completely agree with you, and I think Action Penalties in generally underutilized, and that we don't really have a good understanding of what a -20 action penalty (for your MBP example) really means compared to where we began, and it's implications along the way training.

[Leafiara]

To me, rogues feel like a relic of an old era when:

• You couldn't just pay silver to NPC locksmiths to save time (and save TPs for the rogues themselves).
  
• Filling your exp pool on a supernode was awesome because there was no alternative of the adventurer's guild giving saturated experience. (And no Gift of Lumnis, no Rings of Lumnis brooches, no LTE boosts...)
  
• Cap was a really faraway thing for most people, so profession balance would be mostly about pre-cap hunting grounds where (I assume) ambushing rogues and archer rogues are just fine. Instead it's usually about post-cap, where you're basically always dealing with swarms, uncrittable enemies, or even sheer fear (liches).

By now all the rogue perks are things I don't really care about. It's a shame, but it's where we're at.

[Mobius1]

Any single SMR2 attack can have it's own weighting on how it calculates out the attack side, and can have it's own weighting on the defense side.

After speaking with Konacon in Discord, he confirmed with me that SMR2 defense works exactly the same way with all skills (Excepting the cases where shield use or survival skill is also a factor.).

The unfortunate thing about perception, is it has no real value outside of maneuver defense. No redux, no DS, etc..

But in the end, the most unfortunate thing is the Action Penalty. It's a damn shame how inconsequential it is. It led me to drop my armor ranks from 220 down to 80, and learn 430 instead, which is stupidly more beneficial to me.

To me, rogues feel like a relic of an old era when:

It's hard to deny that a +115 end roll guaranteeing a death crit was the glory days of rogues.

Granted, I wouldn't take the old days back, even so. The crit changes were a nerf to falchions and handaxes, but a major boon to all the weapons that were once useless. In GS3, a dagger was no better than a smooth stone. Now it's actually a completely viable weapon for a rogue.

But yeah, NPC locksmiths were the death of player locksmithing. That and so many rogues quitting the game that pocket pickers sold like hotcakes.

By now all the rogue perks are things I don't really care about. It's a shame, but it's where we're at.

That's just hurtful. We still have the most dashing good looks, whatever else may be!