Short COMBAT Questions

Teani

@Nalor: Yes, I have discernment.

Also, when I try to mangle a limb that is not broken I only get the generic message saying that the limb I'm trying to mangle is not damaged enough. It doesn't say which limb, so I'm unsure how to code something that would remove the proper limb affliction. I suppose I could somehow set up a system that tracks the last limb I attempted to attack, but since I'm a complete freak that pretty much spams things when I panic in combat, I might hit several macros and ruin said tracking. <.< I'm sure there's a better way, yes?

Irruel

@teani

There is! The best plan is to figure out why it misses cures. In TW, when resto is applied, it announces that the specific limb will be cured in 3.8 seconds.
You can also see the target's affs echoed with every prompt, spammy though it is. Good for debugging logs though.

Find a spot in a log where you destroy instead of mangle (or whatever attack it is that is wrong), note the timestamp or line number, and work back from there until you find the unnoticed cure. Then send me the log (or someone else, up to you. Kaeus even.)

It's probably a timing issue, some limiter being too long for your ping, or it could be certain classes tricking TW somehow.

Nalor

Its more then likely the person curing when you hit balance and your attack going through

When I mangle a limb like, send("mangle " .. target .. " left leg") for expample, I do something like

send("mangle " .. target .. " left leg")
combat.missed = "mangledleftleg"

And have that failed messge to do something like if combat.missed == "mngledleftleg" then enemyCured("leftlegbroke") and so on for each mangle/destroy ... as no one can help when you hit balance, person cures but your system already sent the mangle...

Best advise Join KLL Clan! Many people in that are willing to help unsure if this part of the forums is best place to explain since its more a coding issue them a question (not sayin no one will help you tho just so the topic doesnt go off topic) @teani

Ishin

I couldn't really find a combat ideas thread..so I suppose I'll ask here.

It's generally accepted that without a shield, Syssin are pretty squishy(lol). But with one, we can generally manage pretty well. However, this brings up issues of weapon swapping to flay, swapping back to stab, swapping to flay shield, flaying aura, swapping back to stab...you guys get the picture. It's hectic and heinous, right?

In the long run, that kind of swapping can really end up messing you up, if you aren't tracking it properly. I would rather simplify, and make things easier.

How would you all feel if the Weaving skill caused a worn shield to apply the same reduction as normal, as long as it were active? The only real negative I see is that against some classes, like vamps in both incarnations and lumis, it could lead to you getting anni/absolved a little faster. I think it would help un-cluster Syssin pvp by not having to require us to choose between slightly faster without swap or MUCH less tank without shield.

Daskalos

If Syssin are going to gain in tankiness and such, then they need to sacrifice some of their ridiculous escapability.

Jensen

We aren't gaining anything it's just a way to remove some tediousness with coding

Xavin

Jensen said:

We aren't gaining anything it's just a way to remove some tediousness with coding

Not really true. Ishin's proposed change would allow syssin to gain the effects of a worn shield while wielding both a whip and dirk. Currently, as Ishin stated, syssin are forced to choose between the tankability of wielding a weapon+shield thus necessitating weapon swapping or wielding both a dirk and whip and sacrificing tank.

What that change would amount to is a boost in the syssin's ability to tank physical damage (with potential for elemental resistance as well due to artifact shield powers).

Haven

Why not make it even simpler and just have dstab autoraze? Whip would then just be a bashing/flavor skill/endgame kill method/utility weapon.

I believe dstab wasn't allowed this because you could reduce the speed to like...2 seconds or so with artifacts. But since that option is gone, autorazing at the 2.41 seconds they dstab at doesn't seem all that bad. Templars raze at similar or faster speeds I think.

Jensen

Xavin said:

Jensen said:

We aren't gaining anything it's just a way to remove some tediousness with coding

Not really true. Ishin's proposed change would allow syssin to gain the effects of a worn shield while wielding both a whip and dirk. Currently, as Ishin stated, syssin are forced to choose between the tankability of wielding a weapon+shield thus necessitating weapon swapping or wielding both a dirk and whip and sacrificing tank.

What that change would amount to is a boost in the syssin's ability to tank physical damage (with potential for elemental resistance as well due to artifact shield powers).

Keep shield wielded and swap out whip for dirk and vice versa.  Shield up all the time and no reduction in defenses and therefore nothing new added to your defenses.

For Haven's bit you'd need to work with yank, glock, garrote somehow

edit: The responses against the idea should be:

How can you ensure someone wont wield a shield and wear one for double protection

How is this fair to other classes that don't get the same perk?

or Just learn to code it in and stop being a baby.

It's not giving the Syssin anything new, it'd just be handy for people that want to get into Syssin combat but are struggling with the shield swapping.  Especially since their squishyness without a shield is an issue.

Serrice

Weapon swapping can be interrupted or hindered. The proposed change would remove this. It is, in effect, a buff, not a zero change situation as it has been represented as.

Jensen

And your mana can be drained or the def can be stripped, it's not without the negatives

Haven

I don't think the Syssin should be forced to weapon swap just to raze. I'd prefer to give dstab a raze and should they choose to weapon swap to the whip to utilize the many different functions it serves, then they ought suffer through like any other class (Luminaries for their shields, Templars for their different weapon sets, etc).

Serrice

I don't disagree with that, though I do think the advantage in this case outweighs the perceived disadvantages. Weaving is already a typical buff that would be put up when fighting a dodgable class, so there's no real 'negative' here. You're adding functionality on top of something you'd be doing anyways. Against a non-dodgable class where your physical audit and mana usage matters, you could simply resort back to shield switching. Again, there's no real negative here.

Jensen

the interruption or hinder still slows down attacking, if you're swapping out your dirk/whip and not shield then you're still getting the hinder in and not the reduced audit

edit:

Argument for or against this idea is pointless.  I'm pretty confident the idea will be shot down by admin regardless of the pro/con debate on this thread.

Irruel

I feel like the best answer is to scrap the ridiculous idea that was WEAPONBELTS in favour of a mechanic that actually makes life easier instead of more difficult.

quickdraw broadsword229791 kite

You secure your previously wielded items and instantly draw a strong broadsword into your left hand,
with a kite shield flowing into your right hand.

Ishin

RE: wielding one shield and wearing another -- shields don't stack, same way you can't wield two shields and get the buffs from both. Else we'd have vamps running around DW shields and just wrecking all the bashing areas lol.

I never said it wasn't a buff, but it would definitely be a much better QoL change. Weaving IS a drain, and against classes that can't be dodged(most of the EQ classes I believe), having a shield wouldn't help lower your damage intake anyway, unless you had a resist on it - in which case you'd want to use weaving anyway.

TBH the whole idea would be to help negate the weapon swapping. I mean, it's just really annoying, and it requires you to track what weapon you have, whether or not you actually wielded it, etc. It just seems like, to me, it would be a better way to minimalize that interruption and help keep our offense on track. I can't really think of any other class that has to suffer like this in order to keep up an effective offense.

Toz

While it's not exactly going to change some of the issues people have with it, here's a useful bit of code for Mudlet - it was inspired by a function @Kaeus already had in TW, but I re-wrote it to work better:

function syssin_swap(weapon)

if weapon == "whip" then

if not (string.find(gmcp.Char.Vitals.wield_left, "whip") or string.find(gmcp.Char.Vitals.wield_right, "whip")) then

send("secure dirk")

send("wield whip")

end

elseif weapon == "dirk" then

if not (string.find(gmcp.Char.Vitals.wield_left, "dirk") or string.find(gmcp.Char.Vitals.wield_right, "dirk")) then

send("secure whip")

send("wield dirk")

end

end

end

It's short, sweet, to the point, and I don't have any real trouble swapping my weapons because it's set to run at the start of every offensive string, so if stupidity or whatever messes me up, I'm going to do it again as soon as physically possible.

Nalor

OR Why not just change the 'flay' skill to be a dirk instead of whip then, oh hey problem solved!

then flay ishin - you whip a dirk at ishin stripping his rebounding /

dstab -- as dstab is :P

Just use whip for garrote/garrotelock.

Ashmer

I don't see the big issue with weapon swapping, but I'm not someone who has to deal with it often.

 

I also don't see the problem with having a dstab clone that pokes rebounding aura with the first poke, then with the venom on the second one.

Ishin

I'm not really sure what the difference is between having d-raze and d-stab, and my proposal. It's essentially the same thing, with just a different way of getting it done. I was using my idea in the hopes of giving my class a unique kind of mechanic, not because I wanted to copy pasta 'wield shield and main weapon yo'.

Toz

Dualraze with dirk would up the active APS of Syssin - essentially a buff. Best way to balance this, if it goes in, would be to just let dirks have flay (maybe re-name it to something else?) instead. 1 aff on 1.88s bal = 0.532 APS, whereas a dualraze (assuming it factors in dstab speed) would be in the neighborhood of 0.806 APS.

Moirean

Yeah, just take the flay skill, make it require a dirk not a whip and reskin the message. Nothing changes except for the minor latency of a weapon swap and errors due to stupidity, but it makes the class a lot more friendly to newer/less codey players. Right now, you need to put in a lot of failsafes to fight with the audit that Syssin is designed and BALANCED around - not only can attacks bork in the swap between dirk and whip, you can lose an entire round if you don't have a complex hypno code, since you'll be off eq from a suggestion and can't just try to spam stabbing through the stupidity. Good coders can get around this, but it seems unnecessarily punishing and complex and I honestly doubt that requisite planning was intended when flay was first conceptualized back in the day. Today's Syssin features an insanely bloated stack of commands - swap/wipe/rub/stab/sleight/hypno - not to mention the background stuff like running an aff script, but the class is balanced around that ideal audit of having a shield there, and discussions have cited that audit as reason to not give them x/y/z thing - so that audit should be able to be fairly easily maintained.

Their affliction rate should also be a fairly predictable one. Having it rotate heavily around the RNG of stupidity procs and chance slip ups with weapon swaps introduces this huge variability into the class's affliction momentum, where the really good coders will be able to eke out minimal issues with the swapping, the heavy heavy artifacted players will be able to ignore the knock to the audit, and the average Joe will be left flailing - and the class itself will struggle to be balanced, since the potential will be incredibly high, but achieving it will have an unreasonable threshhold.

Aishia

Could give them an autowield thing that just makes it switch when you try to use a skill that uses one or the other. Is that too good? I don't even know! Could even have it add a minor balance cost to the ability used with the new weapon if you were already wielding the wrong one for ~balance.

Aishia

then it's kind of a unique mechanic, but also seamless.

Ishin

Hrm..hao 2 fite shamwow?

Aishia

don't die!

Ashmer

Ishin said:

Hrm..hao 2 fite shamwow?

Four or five segments of specialized coding worked into your curing system.

Ashmer

Also, in response to the weapon-switching thing, it's not even that big of a deal. I figured out how to handle that just like I handle everything else in stupidity a day or two ago, and I haven't had any problems at all with it.

 

If you want to talk about making coding easier, an update on the messages from Hypnosis would keep that insert_fairy_tale_creature_here.jpg from being so fairy_tale_creature_caught_in_scandal.png esoteric to code. It still uses full titles for some of the messages, by Ivoln's earthen Pillar!

 

In polite reply to @Daskalos: Also, the 100% unstoppability of Syssin escapability is getting toned with the Scaling changes, and there's a few facts here worth pointing out:

1. When the Syssin leaves the room they sacrifice their own offense almost entirely (if not entirely) as well.

2. Moirean and Toz's comments are true, just delivering the Hypnosis offense alone can easily put you in Absolve, Annihilate, or clean-yourself-up-you're-bleeding range. Sometimes the only recourse they have is to go oshiz and just bail.

It's worth noting that Syssin aren't the only class that's really, really difficult to pin down. Nothing seems to stop Nirvana, for example, or Templar Latency. With the Scaling nerf I think we'll have to see if Syssin escapability is still too much (which I am definitely of the opinion that it was.) In general escape mechanisms are pretty much a thing around here these days, and it's an intentional part of the class.

Oh, in an entirely separate point, it seems to me that the Nerf Bat(tm) is also really, really readily at hand here. Don't get me wrong, I really do thing there are things that need to be looked at, balanced, re-balanced, et cetera about combat as we go, but a lot of the time I just see people reaching for that handy Nerf Bat(tm) in favor of actually doing the thinking to see what they can do to counter whatever's OP about that. Combat here takes intellectual effort, forethinking, planning, trial, and error, and failure is definitely a factor. It's what makes the IRE combat system far and above the weighties and most satisfying of any game I've played.

I hate losing probably more than the next guy, but I personally find way more satisfaction in figuring something out and countering it, [b]along with[/b] speculating about potential ways something that seems un-fun or un-balanced might be re-balanced (or just made fun).

Also, another thing to note is

killTimer(timers.ashmer_rant)

system.rant = false

[System] Info: Rant disconnected.

Ashmer

Sorry for all of the posts, hitting the edit key keeps crashing my browser here.

 

@Ishin, as far as Shaman handling goes you need:

1. Loki handling. (including the hidden on Staticburst)

2. Shell fetish handling.

3. Stormtouched handling.

4. A way to track and deal with serpent spirit hidden.

5. OMFGWTF messages on Reclamation (and tracking when it can't be stopped). Bonus: specialized handling in your offense.

 

Because I think there should still be secrets, and out of respect for @Aishia, @Kheoss and the other Shaman combatants out there I won't delve into the details, since some things should really still be figured out in my opinion.

Nalor

Ashmer said:

4. A way to track and deal with serpent spirit hidden.my opinion.

So you need loki handling as you already said