Frankly I always found Stealth to be a broken skillset.....in the manner that it is such a pointless skillset to have. It offers so little in use and function that there is not much point to learn in it beyond bracing for extra defense.
Masquerade cannot be used as often, since most corpses are turned to graves/stone/eaten/etc. or dont even leave one behind.
Ghostwalk isnt too bad but most will just use mapper to find the target
Looking into people's inventory or hiding your own is kind of pointless since there is no way to actually take something from them.
Aint no monk going to waste balance to truss up a knocked down target
Why does blowgun exist..
Veil is basically all Stealth users have. If a change to veil was being suggested, then I would counter that all of stealth would need a rework to give it more function.
They also have extra celerity! The only character I have who can move faster than Tremula is my stealth monk with acrobatics and trotting mount. I move at the speed of the wiiiiiiiind.
I actually agree with something @Arcanis is saying? Better shut down the forums!
Stealth is literally otherwise entirely useless. Why are you trying to destroy a skillset that literally has NOTHING else going for it.
Oh wait, yeah, it has that ability that makes you shrouded, my bad. Oh and we can always use rooftops, so helpful /s/
EDIT: If we're going to be changing or removing Veil then I think we need a special report, and better make sure Lerad has the final say on what the change is /s/
- It's yesod. Whee. But, one of the more useful skills from the whole skillset.
Evade Escape without notice from unpleasant situations.
- One of the skills I really like. I just need to remember to use it. It'll let you get through walls and stuff if you can move normally.
Sign Communicate through a subtle and silent means.
- lol
Eavesdrop Listen to conversations in adjacent locations.
- also lol
Bracing Brace yourself against harm.
- 1/8 cutting/blunt resist at trans stealth.
Rooftops Rule the urban jungle from the rooftops.
- covered by environment, also lol, no roofs in the forest.
Mislead Give your attackers the slip.
- if it required but did not consume eq, could be moderately useful. Giving false messages that you're moving in another direction when you tumble could be useful for the momentary confusion until you're scented out.
Blowgun The silent blowgun will subdue your foes.
- no crotamine to pop novices/people without curing/dreamweavers anymore, not much of a point.
Stalk Follow a person without their knowledge.
- why? I'll see if it manages to work through veil.
Awareness Sense when foes draw near.
- half a specs (see enemies enter an area) with an okay mana/willpower drain. I've used it to good effect.
Agility Your movements are more agile and quick.
- +dex, whee. Going away come race overhaul. Does also buff movement speed a bit, which is nice. Wouldn't mind seeing this turn into a 1/8 cutting/blunt damage buff.
Whisper Keep your secrets hidden from other sneaks.
- useful against one other guild, meh.
Infiltrate Gather reports by infiltrating the aethers.
- If it provided clan/order listening, I could see it being worthwhile. Though it would also be OP. Can be deleted without any real loss.
Masquerade Though a bit morbid, you can masquerade as the dead.
- Fun to play with, neat to do something with a corpse/head if you manage to get one. Only really useful for deepcover.
Snoop Ever wonder what's in someone else's inventory?
- re-branded appraise from discernment. Meh.
Caltrops Impede progress with these sharp metal tacks.
- can be handy when trying to impede people moving through an area. I've used it for wildnodes. Does slow movement of everyone, even the user.
Truss Firmly bind your prone foe.
- Got getter things to use balance for. Point web can fulfill the same need for an entangle effect.
Waylay Corner your foe from your hiding place.
- Haven't actually used it. Not sure what the percentage on the blocking movement is. Strikes me as a good arena skill, mostly useless for anything else.
Rush Surprise your opponent with a sudden attack.
- 2 power to entangle someone. Meh. Just walk in and point web.
Drag Forcibly drag your prey away.
- Haven't used it. Will play with it, but I rather doubt it'll prove worth the balance.
GhostWalk Travel to your target unobtrusively and quickly.
- Use mudlet. scent, gotop person, done. Though I'm curious if it'll work when they move and the like. Will test.
Aim Aim blowguns from a greater distance.
- lol
Screen Conceal your belongings from prying eyes.
- also lol
Obscure Mask the origin of your darts.
- did I already say lol?
Deepcover Take on the status of the one you masquerade.
Veil is like brumetower and other niche skills. Borderline useless in day-to-day life 90% of the time, borderline hilariously overpowered the other 10% of the time.
I don't think that fixing veil would make monks non-viable.
That's not what they're saying. What they're saying is that Veil/DeepCover is literally the only two abilities in Stealth worth anything. As opposed to Harmony (please, someone say Harmony is bad. I dare you.) Nerfing those two should probably merit a special report (although with the recent special report hilarity, it should just go through the normal envoy process). With that said, Veil/Deepcover can be easily fixed (Shuyin's suggestions are good).
tl;dr Use a scalpel, not a lumberaxe. Lusternia is prone to extremes; obscenely good or ridiculously bad. Find that sweet in-between spot.
Making veil an appropriate skill is a scalpel. It's bad balancing to 'justify' a bad skillset with one awful gimmicky bs skill. Veil might be one of the only powerful skills, but the solution to that is to make the other skills better, not to defend the one stupid benny hill gimmick on that basis. Veil is certainly something that is holding the rest of the skillset back, with a crazy idea of what 'stealth' is and is for in Lusternia one that just doesn't work well. It'd be one thing to agree that it's a bad skill but it needs to stay in because the class doesn't work without it (sap, anyone?), and to defend a skill like veil on that basis.
No one is suggesting it get nuked as part of the overhaul or by fiat - it'd totally be okay to change it alongside other regular reports to improve the skillset (though any non-utility monk buffs are likely to face pretty stiff scrutiny). It's not a burning issue, it's just one of those things that's been the case forever, and for which the 'patches' have done nothing to change. Making it drop temporarily when engaged by another player would fix it imo, and the duration could even be raised at that point.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
2
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited June 2015
I'd be more interested in this conversation if it weren't so predictably partisan. Again.
Harmony has the best regen in the game, monk speed buffs, insane resistance to mana kills, super tumble, damage resistance, damage buffs, entangle resistance, one power prismatic etc. and the ability to change between them for an extremely cheap cost (1 power). Instead of addressing any of that, the most predictably partisan envoys in the game want to cause a stink over stealth.
What? But they caught that guy several times. Clearly veil needs to be buffed.
"Chairwoman," Princess Setisoki states, holding up a hand in a gesture for her to stop and returning the cup. "That would be quite inappropriate. One of the males will serve me."
I'm sorry, but most of the arguments here are borne out of mistaken understandings of abilities as well as overblown and exaggerated statements.
Veil's use is in combat?
Are you KIDDING me?
A veiled user can be webbed, stunned, knockeddown, sleeped, aeoned and all other things everyone in combat can be done in order to hinder them. The statement quoted below, that they can't be held down with anything but pfifth, is a hyperbole so big, it blew a hole in the galaxy.
If all it was used for was 'getting in' and 'doing stuff' it would be fine. It's when people grab wildenodes and veil up so you can't catch them, or run around inside Prime org territory terrorizing with a mob of people trying to chase them down, having instantly spotted them (sneakiness failed) but still being totally unable to engage them in combat because they can't be tracked or held down with anything but pfifth (until they beast gust and walk away). Who cares about guards, they're practically useless anyways - that's the real problem.
When running after someone for combat (not for quests), you have 2 scenarios:
1) The person is running to leave, get out, disappear. In which case, the moment he's out of your room, you're almost pretty much never going to catch them. In this case, veil is useless. I can get out of multiple people hitting on me, and I've done so countless times, and made a clean escape, and veil has never ever been a factor in whether I could do it or not.
2) The person is running to chase after another objective in the area. Leaving the kill group to regroup with his friends. Leaving the killgroup to hit aspects. Leaving the killgroup to go grab some item or kill a NPC (King Thoril, or whatever). In which case, veil is also useless. You can't track him, but you either have a bigger problem to take care of (the enemy group, if it's a standoff) or you can protect the objective if it's just one of it (King Thoril, grabbing an item) etc.
Veil has pretty close to zero use in combat, because scrying abilities are of supremely limited use in groups, and of zero use in 1v1s. The only non-balance scrying abilities, scent and thirdeye, are easily countered by smart use of room names. If you mystery map to chase, you're never going to catch me, I can absolutely assure you that. Any combatant worth his salt knows how to disengage, and you don't need veil to do that.
The only thing veil is good for is preventing easy chasing when the veiled user is not overloaded with afflictions. If he is, you'll catch him anyway if you have a good grasp of the area, and where he is likely to run toward. This is what Sidd meant when he says you guys are too reliant on scrying abilities - the last thing you want to do when your opponent is stacked with lots of afflictions and managed to tumble out, is to scry him - you move in his direction by instinct and web him or hit him again to continue the fight. If he's gotten out without hindering afflictions, he'll be gone two, three rooms before you get your balance back, and even if he didn't have veil, you're not going to catch him if he's at all competent.
Chasing is not at all about scrying, the ubiquity of scent-walkers and auto-mappers in IRE games have made chasing all about them, but a combatant who can't chase without scrying is really in no position to complain about veil. The only time veil is used to its full effect is during quests, when you want, or need, to bypass players to get to a certain objective... and in those cases, ambushing and setting up in that objective area is the answer, not chasing the veiled user around.
Combat is combat - not being able to chase down a veiled user in a combat scenario is really a non-issue. Veil is not a combat ability, and trying to twist facts to make it out as one is not something I'm interested in wasting my time on.
------------
Now, for deepcover. Deepcover is maintained for within its timer, or until the mask drops, whichever comes first. Once the mask drops, you need to spend 10p to put deepcover up again. Each use of the mask reduces its decay time by 1 month, and all masks start with 25 months. Masks drop on any offensive action on the target, or done by the target. Offensive action means anything that will drop shield, with an exception for movement. It drops within 3-5 seconds on the user using an offensive action, or being hit by one. Once a guard has recognized you (deepcover dropping, walking into guards without deepcover), further deepcovers won't prevent them from attacking you until you leave the area or logout, to reset their attention.
Deepcover, and masks, do not stay up after being hit by an offensive action. Period.
--------------------
These two abilities in stealth are amongst the best balanced in the game - they serve a very niche purpose, and have extensive drawbacks and limitations. Without smart usage, the user is likely to get himself killed, and the situational power of their effects are combined with very well thought out cooldowns or caveats. You don't just deepcover anywhere you like without thinking, and you need to think hard and fast if you're going to try to use it on the run, in combat. A mis-step with deepcover will blow power that will cripple you, leaving you without an escape if you want to use it as such, for a long while. The only real thing they fall short in is the fact that they can't really be used in combat - that both defines the effects' purpose as well as act as a drawback, and I have no intention of making them more combat-usable either.
These are not abilities that come without risk, or without limits, or without counters. They mess with the opponents by disabling certain mechanical aids from the game, but they do not affect player skill or actions. They trick the system and the game alerts, but they cannot trick player alertness nor player counters. Without smart usage, a stealth user gets nothing done, and cannot use these abilities to their potential. I don't see why the defending side has to be allowed to counter and kill said stealth user without applying their brains either, too.
Lerads points are good, but this thread also assumes that attempts to improve Stealth as a skillset never happened. Report 130 (Screen), 250 (rooftops), 93 (waylay) come to mind. I'm sure you also remember 930 (Blowgun rework) and the subsequent 977 (Blowgun change) Which did literally nothing to change blowgun's usefulness (Yay I can target three people with blowgun! ). Not to mention all of the ghostwalk changes that were proposed (and not approved), when I can do exactly what ghostwalk does fast for 0 power (albeit with dingbats) with the scent script that has been going around for ages.
Its not as though we haven't tried to improve Stealth. Maybe the problem IS just that we haven't nerfed Veil yet, and so the skill doesn't deserve anything additional. If removing Veil entirely (I note that you're not asking for that) is what it takes to make Stealth just on par with Harmony, I'm on board. Otherwise, its pretty clear the Furies are not keen on making changes to Stealth for the better.
Next thing you'll be telling me is stalk is so op because the victim doesn't know they're being followed. You can't counter that!
Now, for deepcover. Deepcover is maintained for within its timer, or until the mask drops, whichever comes first. Once the mask drops, you need to spend 10p to put deepcover up again. Each use of the mask reduces its decay time by 1 month, and all masks start with 25 months. Masks drop on any offensive action on the target, or done by the target. Offensive action means anything that will drop shield, with an exception for movement. It drops within 3-5 seconds on the user using an offensive action, or being hit by one. Once a guard has recognized you (deepcover dropping, walking into guards without deepcover), further deepcovers won't prevent them from attacking you until you leave the area or logout, to reset their attention.
Deepcover, and masks, do not stay up after being hit by an offensive action. Period.
--------------------
Then it smells like deepcover and masks are bugged. If I attack someone who is in the process of ascending out through a distort because they have deepcover and their mask 1. didn't drop and 2. they still ascended out, how do you explain that particular scenario? Because I've seen it happen more than once. Never mind that I've seen it happen where I attack them, they move 1 room away, start ascend and I walk in with an entangle on entry and they still get out.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Log it and bug it, then. Once the mask (and therefore deepcover) drops, they won't be able to ascend out of a distorted area until they deepcover again. If there are instances where that is happening, the admin will be more than happy to fix it, I am sure.
Log it and bug it, then. Once the mask (and therefore deepcover) drops, they won't be able to ascend out of a distorted area until they deepcover again. If there are instances where that is happening, the admin will be more than happy to fix it, I am sure.
That's the thing, the mask didn't drop. Including chasing the same person across Rockholm for a good 2-3 minutes into an ascend, getting at least 6 hits along the way.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Sounds like the game just doesn't check for deepcovered at the completion part of ascension. It only checks at initial where it is technically still active (since it doesn't drop immediately).
Now, for deepcover. Deepcover is maintained for within its timer, or until the mask drops, whichever comes first. Once the mask drops, you need to spend 10p to put deepcover up again. Each use of the mask reduces its decay time by 1 month, and all masks start with 25 months. Masks drop on any offensive action on the target, or done by the target. Offensive action means anything that will drop shield, with an exception for movement. It drops within 3-5 seconds on the user using an offensive action, or being hit by one. Once a guard has recognized you (deepcover dropping, walking into guards without deepcover), further deepcovers won't prevent them from attacking you until you leave the area or logout, to reset their attention.
Deepcover, and masks, do not stay up after being hit by an offensive action. Period.
--------------------
Then it smells like deepcover and masks are bugged. If I attack someone who is in the process of ascending out through a distort because they have deepcover and their mask 1. didn't drop and 2. they still ascended out, how do you explain that particular scenario? Because I've seen it happen more than once. Never mind that I've seen it happen where I attack them, they move 1 room away, start ascend and I walk in with an entangle on entry and they still get out.
Only Pfifth that I know of stops ascending. The reason that is happening is because Distort only checks at the beginning of the teleport. If I begin Ascending as Kelly in Celestian Territory distort doesn't stop me. Your attack will drop my deepcover, but still won't stop me ascending. Entangle still doesn't stop me from ascending, as far as I know.
I'd explain it by saying that not a single attack will stop ascend once it starts and that the mask does drop, but not immediately (ok, pfifth does I guess, new to me)
Maybe it only does the check at the beginning, but if the mask drops, they're no longer deepcovered.
@Elanorwen always has a flimsy memory of events anyway, so it's tough to say if what she says happened, actually happened
It's easy enough to test this on friendly, envoy-y terms anyway. Just snag a Lerad when you get the chance, city enemy him for a second, and spend some power til testing is done.
Heck, if you'd like to test it to have a fresh log to show, I'm game.
I see no problem with testing. I know I've chased Malarious around Rockholm and hit him repeatedly and he somehow still ascends out.... unless we're talking about him reapplying the mask and deepcover every time I hit? Then again, all I see is the one person he's impersonating moving around.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Heck, if you'd like to test it to have a fresh log to show, I'm game.
I see no problem with testing. I know I've chased Malarious around Rockholm and hit him repeatedly and he somehow still ascends out.... unless we're talking about him reapplying the mask and deepcover every time I hit? Then again, all I see is the one person he's impersonating moving around.
Deep cover drops during pk. If it's not, bug it. It's god damn rocket science, that's why not everyone can do it
Comments
Masquerade cannot be used as often, since most corpses are turned to graves/stone/eaten/etc. or dont even leave one behind.
Ghostwalk isnt too bad but most will just use mapper to find the target
Looking into people's inventory or hiding your own is kind of pointless since there is no way to actually take something from them.
Aint no monk going to waste balance to truss up a knocked down target
Why does blowgun exist..
Veil is basically all Stealth users have. If a change to veil was being suggested, then I would counter that all of stealth would need a rework to give it more function.
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
Stealth is literally otherwise entirely useless. Why are you trying to destroy a skillset that literally has NOTHING else going for it.
Oh wait, yeah, it has that ability that makes you shrouded, my bad. Oh and we can always use rooftops, so helpful /s/
EDIT: If we're going to be changing or removing Veil then I think we need a special report, and better make sure Lerad has the final say on what the change is /s/
Veil is like brumetower and other niche skills. Borderline useless in day-to-day life 90% of the time, borderline hilariously overpowered the other 10% of the time.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Veil's use is in combat?
Are you KIDDING me?
A veiled user can be webbed, stunned, knockeddown, sleeped, aeoned and all other things everyone in combat can be done in order to hinder them. The statement quoted below, that they can't be held down with anything but pfifth, is a hyperbole so big, it blew a hole in the galaxy.
When running after someone for combat (not for quests), you have 2 scenarios:
1) The person is running to leave, get out, disappear. In which case, the moment he's out of your room, you're almost pretty much never going to catch them. In this case, veil is useless. I can get out of multiple people hitting on me, and I've done so countless times, and made a clean escape, and veil has never ever been a factor in whether I could do it or not.
2) The person is running to chase after another objective in the area. Leaving the kill group to regroup with his friends. Leaving the killgroup to hit aspects. Leaving the killgroup to go grab some item or kill a NPC (King Thoril, or whatever). In which case, veil is also useless. You can't track him, but you either have a bigger problem to take care of (the enemy group, if it's a standoff) or you can protect the objective if it's just one of it (King Thoril, grabbing an item) etc.
Veil has pretty close to zero use in combat, because scrying abilities are of supremely limited use in groups, and of zero use in 1v1s. The only non-balance scrying abilities, scent and thirdeye, are easily countered by smart use of room names. If you mystery map to chase, you're never going to catch me, I can absolutely assure you that. Any combatant worth his salt knows how to disengage, and you don't need veil to do that.
The only thing veil is good for is preventing easy chasing when the veiled user is not overloaded with afflictions. If he is, you'll catch him anyway if you have a good grasp of the area, and where he is likely to run toward. This is what Sidd meant when he says you guys are too reliant on scrying abilities - the last thing you want to do when your opponent is stacked with lots of afflictions and managed to tumble out, is to scry him - you move in his direction by instinct and web him or hit him again to continue the fight. If he's gotten out without hindering afflictions, he'll be gone two, three rooms before you get your balance back, and even if he didn't have veil, you're not going to catch him if he's at all competent.
Chasing is not at all about scrying, the ubiquity of scent-walkers and auto-mappers in IRE games have made chasing all about them, but a combatant who can't chase without scrying is really in no position to complain about veil. The only time veil is used to its full effect is during quests, when you want, or need, to bypass players to get to a certain objective... and in those cases, ambushing and setting up in that objective area is the answer, not chasing the veiled user around.
Combat is combat - not being able to chase down a veiled user in a combat scenario is really a non-issue. Veil is not a combat ability, and trying to twist facts to make it out as one is not something I'm interested in wasting my time on.
------------
Now, for deepcover. Deepcover is maintained for within its timer, or until the mask drops, whichever comes first. Once the mask drops, you need to spend 10p to put deepcover up again. Each use of the mask reduces its decay time by 1 month, and all masks start with 25 months. Masks drop on any offensive action on the target, or done by the target. Offensive action means anything that will drop shield, with an exception for movement. It drops within 3-5 seconds on the user using an offensive action, or being hit by one. Once a guard has recognized you (deepcover dropping, walking into guards without deepcover), further deepcovers won't prevent them from attacking you until you leave the area or logout, to reset their attention.
Deepcover, and masks, do not stay up after being hit by an offensive action. Period.
--------------------
These two abilities in stealth are amongst the best balanced in the game - they serve a very niche purpose, and have extensive drawbacks and limitations. Without smart usage, the user is likely to get himself killed, and the situational power of their effects are combined with very well thought out cooldowns or caveats. You don't just deepcover anywhere you like without thinking, and you need to think hard and fast if you're going to try to use it on the run, in combat. A mis-step with deepcover will blow power that will cripple you, leaving you without an escape if you want to use it as such, for a long while. The only real thing they fall short in is the fact that they can't really be used in combat - that both defines the effects' purpose as well as act as a drawback, and I have no intention of making them more combat-usable either.
These are not abilities that come without risk, or without limits, or without counters. They mess with the opponents by disabling certain mechanical aids from the game, but they do not affect player skill or actions. They trick the system and the game alerts, but they cannot trick player alertness nor player counters. Without smart usage, a stealth user gets nothing done, and cannot use these abilities to their potential. I don't see why the defending side has to be allowed to counter and kill said stealth user without applying their brains either, too.
Its not as though we haven't tried to improve Stealth. Maybe the problem IS just that we haven't nerfed Veil yet, and so the skill doesn't deserve anything additional. If removing Veil entirely (I note that you're not asking for that) is what it takes to make Stealth just on par with Harmony, I'm on board. Otherwise, its pretty clear the Furies are not keen on making changes to Stealth for the better.
Next thing you'll be telling me is stalk is so op because the victim doesn't know they're being followed. You can't counter that!
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Source: @Shuyin
This entire thread was mostly conducted in "Quotes." I wanted you to come flag everyone off topic, but Lisaera moved it. Hey man, how's it going?
Vive l'apostrophe!
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Deep cover drops during pk. If it's not, bug it. It's god damn rocket science, that's why not everyone can do it