QTDDTOT

[hellowhatsgoingon]

Questions that don't deserve their own thread

hey folks. Poking my head back in since it looks like this game is still sort of alive, though I'm told it's mostly the same 10-12 players raiding each other back and forth. So it goes. Was fiddling with the character generator and I had some questions about B3.5, figured I'd just throw everything into one thread. MB if this should be in build advice instead.

Are barricades immune to all skills that affect soak?
I know that precision of the assassin doesn't ignore soak granted by barricades. Is this the case with Conduit skills? (Focused/Channeled Trail)

How 'bout Reveal Weakness? 'Drained' status from Corruptors? DO stackable negative soak from Acid Burn?

Are liches still 1 build fits all? (ie get ghouls, get simulacrum and TA, get servitor, everything else is just details with ghouls being superior to other pet options because they self replicate and are cheap)

Are ESes still painfully mediocre tanks that remain strapped for CP? Looks like the removal of DBSes has gimped them by making them less capable of that whole "gank the petmaster with WoF/DBS because you have no aura" though I suppose that was always more of a theoretical role anyways

Do corruptors with pet enchanters still get to pull mad soak/flight/accuracy/immunity/regen/etc shenaningans by manabiting enchanted gear for ridiculous durations?

Divine Herald archers + Death Harbinger mp/AP loop abuse on raids?

Are wizards still better at using guns than most combat classes?

How 'bout dem Fallen? At a glance, they...well gun users seem sort of viable with lots of minmaxing, but idunno, any Fallen want to weigh in?
Are shadow meld hidden fallen invisible to pets? (not sure if pet enhanced senses are different from character enhanced senses, so)

tbh I'm a minmaxing dick who enjoys theorycrafting so I'm less interested in "well the flavour is super cool" / "I have an X and that one time I used my skill to Y I was just cackling with glee" and more "this is how you can prop up a struggling faction by fulfilling multiple roles while also still being above average/good in one specialization"

I'll probably have more questions later I suppose. Thanks in advance.

[jazelock]

I'm going to be completely unhelpful and give mostly vague answers, except for one.

Liches, it has been told to me, can act as rather good tanks with a modified build.

ESes, it has also been told to me by someone trying to help me build my ES, is actually really good if you ignore their favored weapon skills (guns and h2h), which are the skills sucking up CP for the most part, and actually go with, say, archery and the generic damage boost skills. But your question was about tanking. They can get really really dodgey if you don't spend all your CP on combat skills, but they do lack an aura. You'd be reliant on potions, but if you have access to a good potions person... But, I guess if you want the best tank around who nobody can get down, then other classes such as Seraph or IB would be more to your liking?

Now, somewhat addressing your wizards/guns question as well, I play a maxed Fallen at the moment and I love love love the class. The flavor is amazing yeah, but also they never need to search for ammo. They pretty much never run out of ammo in a raid, as long as there's a target left so that they can reload from HP, shoot a target to heal HP, and rinse and repeat. They can deal over 30 damage per hit with a pump action shotgun (charged attack from hiding).

I don't know for certain if they're detectable by pets or not while Shadowskulking. My personal experience is that my Fallen has only been detected once by a pet, and that was a Will-O-Wisp, but I may have just gotten lucky, so I'll let someone else confirm.

In a raid, they're pretty good at bashing and taking down forts. If they have Plague of Doubt, they can make killing tanky goods a lot easier. (I'm looking at you, darn Seraphs.) If their faction didn't bring along a PM to clear, I suspect a properly built Fallen could clear a sizable portion of the enemy's SH. And not having enough AP to head back is no problem as Shadowmeld just lets you hang out near the downed enemy SH. I'm guessing the Charade tree would also make the Fallen a headache for any good faction trying to raid their SH. But given my Fallen is BEING HELD HOSTAGE in an IDIOTIC good faction with plenty of raiding PMs, I have no personal experience with these elements.

#ThisFallen'sTwoCents
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Cassandra 943 | Flowey 10025 | SCP-053 10454

[hellowhatsgoingon]

yeah I was a bow ES in B3 iirc. Never had any complaints about his offensive output [had an effective +14 to dmg with enchants and skills most of the time with WoF for extra burst dmg] but I remember my jimmies being rustled when the (admittedly necessary) dodge enchant nerf brought him down to near useless, even after going full dodge. Master of the flow being fairly terrible CP investment didn't help things much either. Sucked that he couldn't even contribute by camping off plane to forage for components without getting eaten by wandering zombies of all things. I'm guessing not much has changed on that end, then.

Hm. Lich tanks? Guess that's, uhhhh... +30% from max simulacrum and terrifying aspect, +10% blur, additional dodge/evasion if you're HtH and either a castable aura or Aura of the Crypt. Plus pets functioning as meatshields. Not sure I'd want to waste my offensive pets as meatshields but they self replicate, so. Oh, plus alchemy I guess.

Yeah it looks like with an enchanted shotty on a fallen you could loop Sadistic Glee and Bond of the Mechanical (with bonus AP gain on kills), as well as shadow dancing and/or combining that with Hellfire for soaky targets. Infernal Jets notwithstanding, I guess it could be pretty fun if kitted out, even with a 100CP tax

[Teksura]

I guess I'll field some of this.

[Saint_Jimmy]

ES tanking - you can, if you're in a good faction, still hit mid 60s dodge, which is enough that most pets (such as ghouls!) will almost never hit you. That said, I'm pretty sure they've got higher to hit than the pet table says, but... In terms of not dying in a couple of ticks to a pet wall, you're better off than most classes outside of NCs. The lack of an aura *is* a pain, and you usually want to have a few MR potions and just WoF the PM in the face.

Divine Heralds still get bonus AP/MP on kill, yes.

I *think* that corruptors hex of agony can bypass forts, but I haven't ever picked that skill up, so...

I think everything else you asked has been covered already.

[hellowhatsgoingon]

Whoops. Yeah I meant forts not barricades, ha.

Guess I worded some of my questions poorly. I understand that Precision is about ignoring soak and the other skills are about applying negative soak. Just wanted clarification on whether or not the other skills get no sell'd when it comes to fortifications the same way Precision does.

ex let's say we have a mortal wearing no armor in a faction with max forts. He has 10 soak. VW will do (base dmg - 10) points of dmg, regardless of whether or not he has precision of the assassin.

If my DO dings the same mortal, say, four times in a row, that mortal now has -4 soak [so 6 soak total]; so on the fifth hit, I'm now doing [9-6] dmg?

Same deal with reveal weakness? Say I'm a conduit who has strength and a throwing knife [3+2=5dmg]; even if that mortal has 10 soak from fortifications, since I've raised his damage floor to 4 it means I'll ping him for 4 as long as he's under the targeted status?

cheers though, thanks for the answers

[Teksura]

[Lychwood]

[Teksura]

There has been an awful lot of arguments and discussions about attacks from hidden. And even some flat out "Screw this I'm writing some code to run simulations for us".

One thing I personally would like to see the Fallen get is some means to auto-hide (or at least attempt a hide) on a hit. Possibly as a feature of the Shadow Dirk, possibly applying to all attacks (at a cost negated by the Dirk), but I dunno. We have a lot of opinions on hiding and the potential dangers of auto-hides (especially in a live combat situation). And many of these concerns I do not have good answers to, which means I'm in a position where I should back down since that's how our development process works. Basically, if I go "here is a thing I'd like to see", and someone else goes "Here is a massive problem caused by that", unless I have a good explanation for why that either isn't such a big problem, or how to resolve that issue, I really should be letting it go.


As I recall, the main concern with auto-hides like that was in a live combat situation, it actually creates a HUGE advantage because you're frequently vanishing from the target pane. Right now the best answer I can throw out there is to give a different effect which still gives the damage bonuses for attacking from hidden, but instead of being hidden you get some kind of defense bonus or something. I dunno.
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[Lychwood]

[GCP]

That sounds interesting.

Get Behind Them : 30CP skill

Upon a successful attack you get a chance to 'Get Behind Them' = to your chance to hide in the current square. If successful, your next attack would gain all the plusses and minuses of an attack from hiding (based on your skillset) but you would not actually be hidden.

Maybe have it be a toggle ability that costs 1-5 MP / successful attack.

This would keep you from constantly disappearing from the target pane, unless of course you chose to actually use the Hide button and do things the old fashioned way - an option you would still have should you run out of MP.