Official: Light Armor Mastery and several rogue changes

[Donquix]

http://forums.play.net/forums/GemSto...ents/view/3497

Hey all,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Taernath]

All of those sound solid.

Is this... what real dev looks like?

[Astray]

Holy shit.

[Donquix]

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

the locksmithing queue (benefits everyone)

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

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

[Alashir]

Wow that is...amazing

[Methais]

All of those sound solid.

Is this... what real dev looks like?

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

WTB SpiffyJr for wizards.

[SonoftheNorth]

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

[drumpel]

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

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

[Methais]

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

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

[drumpel]

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

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