theobserver
Guest
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 Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 8:09 pm Post subject: Combat Module B: Dirt kick, lag skills, and more rage stuff. |
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The big change for this section of the combat module is dirt kick.:
| Code: |
'DIRT' 'DIRT KICKING'
Syntax: dirt <target>
[...] Some terrain types are more difficult to kick up dirt in than others. Also,
certain classes have better chances of kicking up dirt in certain terrain
than other classes do. Being airborne makes it both harder to perform a
dirt kick and less likely that an enemy's dirt kick attempt will be
successful.
It is harder to successfully dirt kick one's opponent upon initiation than
during combat proper, due to proximity and where the victim is facing.
Fleeing while one is blinded by dirt kick is risky, since one may stumble
while attempting to escape combat. Also, it takes longer to rub the dirt out
of one's eyes when one is focused on fleeing from combat. |
More than any other change thus far, the dirt kicking change is the one that you will most notice and be affected by.
Dirt kicking duration is no longer tick-based. It is based on rounds now, so it spans ticks just fine. It keeps combat more fluid by doing away with all this ridiculous "wait a full tick after a 3-round fight because someone fled after both sides have dirted" nonsense.
Fleeing while blinded by dirt kicking is dangerous. The most important thing to keep in mind is that fleeing makes being dirted worse, since you're too distracted by finding your way while blinded to be actively rubbing your eyes out. This means that dirt will last longer if you try to run while dirted, rather than if you simply staying in combat to fight through it. In additionally, there's a chance you'll be lagged from stumbling or even take damage from trying to flee blindly after being dirted. If you're one of those cowardly types who flees at the first sign of dirt and refuse to fight while dirted, your life is now going to be difficult.
Initiating with dirt kick incurs a penalty. You'll have a higher chance of success murdering someone first, then dirt kicking afterwards. This means that the defender's own dirt kick will either be the first one out, or the one with better chances of success if the attacker initiated. In other words, there's no real advantage to standing there spamming dirt anymore.
Low-dex fighters are worse at dirt kicking than high-dex ones. If you're big and strong already, you won't need to rely on these underhanded methods as much to win.
Dirt kicking is affected by terrain and class. Don't expect rangers to dirt kick as well as thieves in civilized terrain types, or thieves to dirt kick as well as rangers out in the wilderness.
Flying makes it difficult to dirt kick and to be dirt kicked. Pretty self explanatory. Note that the penalties on either side are NOT symmetrical.
Blindness dust now works in a similar way to dirt kick. Previously, blindness dust use to be a simple AOE blind; now, it uses a similar per-round style duration as dirt kick, with similar flee penalties as well. Make sure to read the help file about it if you're a ninja. A couple of key differences is that there's no penalty for initiation with blindness dust, and blindness dust now works a lot better in combat than against a sleeping opponent.
Well that's just for starters. Next up, lag skills:
| Code: |
'TRIP'
Syntax: trip <target>
[...] Flying targets cannot be tripped, and it is difficult to trip others from
an airborne position as well. |
The helpfile only mentions the fly-related change, but in actuality, all lag skills have been replaced with new versions. (Hooray, no more n00b cannon bodyslams.) Be aware that the newer versions of are much more stat-sensitive (especially compared to some really bizarre numbers in the old versions). This means no more watching fire giants killing halflings by tripping them to death. Also, there are bonuses and penalties within the lag skills to make them different but useful in different ways: for example, one set of bonuses inherent in bodyslam is that it is now absolutely brutal vs spellcasters without prot shield, but is somewhat harder to land on a rogue class. Experiment to see which lag skills are useful against which opponents and under which circumstances.
STR is the requisite stat for all bash-type attacks (bash, bodyslam, grapple, etc) and DEX is the requisite stat for trip and air thrash. This means that high-str chars have a better chance of success with bash AND lags their enemy for longer (size now affects damage, rather than lag duration). The stats of your enemy matters as well, which means reducing your opponent's stats is a great way to make them more vulnerable to being lagged. (Hear that, ninjas? And don't forget roar, too.) As for trip, it retains its high success rate, but now it CANNOT chain lag as the bash-type skills can. So it's more useful as a way of either reducing the frequence of enemy combat skills or slowing down a fleeing victim, but not for holding someone in combat by itself.
[EDIT: I forgot to mention that there's a new anti-initiation and anti-gangbang factor for all lag skills now. It's quite severe at level 20 and below, and pretty mild at 50. Essentially, your lag skills have a decreased chance of connecting if either a) you're using it to initiate combat, or b) you're using it against someone who isn't fighting you back (i.e. he's fighting someone else and you're gangbanging him). Lag skills are most effective in the middle of a fight and during one-on-one fights, but again this is much less of an issue at high levels than at low levels, since it's the newbies who tend to have the most problem with lag skills under those circumstances.]
And now, flight. Trying to sweep low to the ground to trip someone obviously is more difficult for fliers, but what isn't mentioned in the help files is that there are also penalties for flight mismatches for the bash-type skills as well. It is harder to bash a grounded opponent from an unstable flying position (since you can't push off the ground), and conversely, it's harder to knock a flying target out of the sky with bash. (There are no penalties for ground vs ground or fly vs fly.) What this means is that, for example, against a flying berserker, an avian is actually better off landing and dirt/bash/disarm/etc from the ground. The berserker can try to bodyslam, but he won't be able to dirt kick very well while flying, etc. Flying is now a double edged sword, and that's why avians can manually control whether they actually want to be flying or not. This will come in handy against other spells or skills that specifically target fliers, more of which are waiting to be implemented.
But until then, one last set of changes for this part of the change module:
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'RAGE'
Syntax: rage
Syntax: rage <target>
Syntax: rage <target> <argument to yell>
[...] If a berserker rages while fighting against certain opponents (players),
his rage cannot be ended until it has run its duration, by the relax skill,
or by slaying an opponent of his rank or greater. During that time, he may
attack any random bystanders automatically as part of his rage. |
| Code: |
'RELAX'
Syntax: relax
[...] Because dwarves have daily practice in coping with their own wild temperments,
they are also better at relaxing themselves out of rage (or else they would
have long since killed themselves off through feuding).
Relax is a risky skill, and success is far from certain. Only one relax
attempt can be made per rage. A failed relax attempt will worsen the rage. |
| Code: |
'RAMPAGE'
Syntax: AUTOMATIC
When enraged and fighting multiple opponents (players), a berserker will
perform rampage attacks when he bodyslams an adversary. During his
rampage, the berserker throws himself about the room wildly, attacking
anyone within striking distance. This includes groupmates and any
bystanders, including even those who might be hidden or camouflaged but
still caught within the range of the berserker's rampage. The more
opponents the berserker is fighting against when he begins his rampage
attack, the more dangerous his rampage attacks will be.
When faced against tremendous odds, berserkers have been known to deliver
rampage attacks of incredible power, sometimes even capable of slaying their
attackers outright (or an unfortunate groupmate or bystander).
Dwarves perform better rampage attacks than other berserkers, and are
truly fearsome when they are outnumbered. |
What high level berserkers will now immediately notice is that rage durations have been increased. Or, more accurately, the scaling for rage duration reduction, which used to be level-based, is now stat-aware, and your wis score affects how long you stay raged out of combat. So it's no longer trivial to simply wait for the end of tick for rage to wear off.
The reason why being in rage might be bad is because we've introduced rage targetting for ALL rages while fighting other players. Yes, this means you can attack people directly using "rage <target>" even if you're neither fighting nor raged -- very nasty to land fully-raged on top of an unprepared opponent -- and rage targetting even comes with the bonus that if you walk into a crowded room and the target of your rage is there, you'll attack him directly without attacking a random bystander instead. But now if you rage against a PC, your rage duration must run its full course UNLESS you either kill your target (or either a PC or mob of comparable levels -- no killing bunnies or cityguards to snap out of rage) or succeed with a relax skill. And you'll still aggro against other targets you run into, except that with the change to rage duration, you'll actually have to fight them instead of simply waiting for tick. So being in rage definitely makes you vulnerable in certain ways.
So being able to relax out of rage is a good thing to prevent accidental aggros, right? It's not so simple. Relax is also stat-aware now, so low-wis characters (I'm looking at you, fire giants) have a worse chance of succeeding. Plus, since you only have ONE shot at relax now, whether or not you want to take the chance of increasing your rage duration upon failure is up to you. On the flip side, you CAN attempt to relax during combat now, though at a penalty compared to relaxing while standing. This will give you one chance to escape fighting a fight you didn't want to fight; otherwise, your rage has you committed to the fight, win or lose. You do NOT want to rage every fight without considering the consequences beforehand.
But there are benefits for raging. The new rampage skill is brutal if you ever find yourself staring down a gangbang -- the more the merrier. Against a small gangbang you can do things like lag the entire enemy group at once with additional rampage bodyslams, but rampage gets especially interesting versus larger groups. You can be tossing out unspeaks on rampage attacks when you're fighting 4 or 5 people or so, and even worse against more opponents. The path of the berserker is to dive into the fray, take as many bastards down with you as possible, and leave behind a beautifully mangled corpse. That's what you signed up for as a berserker, isn't it?
Last edited by Burzuk on Sat Apr 30, 2005 8:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Brains
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
Posts: 248
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| Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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Damn you, Burzuk!
I hate you! Hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, hate you, HATE YOU!
...
I was finally free of AR. FREE! No more desire to stalk around as an avian ninja or a mino zerker... and you, along with the rest of the crew, go and add all these tasty tactical elements to AR. And now I'm feeling the old itch...
Bah. |
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pwnt by burzuk's little conspiracy to bring the addict out of everyone.