Paladin's stake skill

[Amdorin]

[crazyhorse]

Master, if someone says they think that potatos should turn into space ships cuz they think that potatoes taste bad... There isnt much to add to that.

My suggestion for the thread.

Use your fucking brain.

There. Constructive. Hooray.

Im still waiting for you to show me a flame on someone who thought about what they typed. I understand if you cant, because I only treat idiots like idiots.

Your fun though. You are far too dedicated to not insulting people however.

Im not asking for proof. Im asking for ONE example. A single example of a flame of either A) I flamed them and called them retarded for not thinking like me or B) flamed someone that thought at all instead of just spewing bullshit cuz they think it sounds l33t.

Your dedication to letting people be ignorant for no reason but to be ignorant is absolutely amazing.

Source for negative reinforcement: Skinner (1944) "Skinner Box". Though this study is looked down upon due to its cold hearted nature, the rate of learning in rats in negative vs positive reinforcement was almost 2:1.

I dont want to hear your opinion about my bad attitude. You have made yourself perfectly clear and I am going to continue to disagree with you. If you would like to offer some sort of evidence however, I will be glad to continue this conversation.

[Kalist19]

I feel dirty for posting in this thread and duck as I do so to avoid the shit flying everywhere.

That being said, I think there has only ever been 1 stake attempt in the history of AR. I don't remember who tried it and who they tried it on, but it failed and did either an annihilate or erradicate and they got better at it. It takes someone either very skilled or very lucky to stumble upon a coffined vampire (assuming the vamp has half a brain) so chances you will get to use this skill are very slim. That being said, I always practice stake on my paladins because you never know when you might come upon a vampire and then you could potentially be the FIRST PERSON EVER to sucessfully stake a vampire in their coffin.

Also, there might have been a time when there were 4 vamps at once. I remember a few years ago they made a bunch of vamps at once and they all sucked really horribly. I think of the lot only one made it to fifty. I don't remember the names though.

[Master]

You are simply not hearing me. I know that you don't actually feel like reading all of what I say, but don't let it intimidate you. If you don't read it, your arguments become even less efficacious than they are now.

Believe it or not, I'm quite aware that potatoes -> spaceships =/= logical thought.

I'm simply saying that you are ineffective. I do not insult people because insults are worthless. They close minds and open mouths which put forth similar concepts which are similarly worthless. This causes a debate to degenerate into a war of people immaturely flinging any verbal assault that they can get their hands on at the opposition.

And now we get down to it. I am not dedicated to letting people remain ignorant for the sake of ignorance. I prefer to cure the ignorance; something that you, for all your hot air, negative reinforcement, and insult, have not managed to accomplish.

You flame for ignorance. That's like pointing at someone and shouting, "Stop being black!" It's a lot more easily said than done. Without the correction that you are so obviously aching (and failing) to provide, we can do nothing.

Undeserved flame and how it was undeserved:
Iolo's first post. I believe that I can roughly spell out his line of thought.

1) The level 35 skill "Stake" is obsolete due to the fact that it has little use.

2) Therefore, we should replace it with something that could be used effectively.

3) The solution, since new skills are unlikely to be implemented, is to give the Paladins something that already exists that would be useful.

4) To prevent slight overpowering, these skills should not have the same level of effectiveness as Stake would against sleeping vampires.

5) This culminates in fairly low-level skills that appear in the game, such as dagger. It is useful. It is not overpowered. It is a good thing.



Can you, in all your arrogance, see how he may have arrived at that conclusion?

Do you know why negative reinforcement works on rats? We are their superiors. You can take negative reinforcement from your superiors. When you hear it from those you consider to be your equals or subordinates, you dismiss it.
You think that you understand psychology, but you only understand the bits that excuse your abhorrent behavior.

Now that I've pointed out a flame that you directed at someone who thought about what they were typing, kindly show me one where you changed someone's opinion, increased their knowledge, or contributed anything whatsoever other than empty, hollow words with nothing behind them except a desire to offend.

Now that the world has heard your suggestion, I put it to you that you have nothing more to contribute and that you should remain silent until such time as you can actually come up with anything yourself. You said, almost verbatim, that if we should want to assist in the progression of the game, we should submit logically thought out ideas.

You have submitted nothing.


This is fun.

[crazyhorse]

Your suggestion that my flaming has done absolutely nothing made me, quite literally, lol.

Flaming = negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement can either be used to prevent an issue or to bring about an ideal action. The assumption here, of course, is that the flames contribute to the masses by making them fearful to display their stupidity. This does one of... lets say three things.

1) people add only thoughts they think about after they are completely shamed in to doing it (bassball is a fantastic example (though this was done by a superior.))

2) People shut up. Ideal in many situations.

3) they become irate and just add more blah blah blah. Less than ideal, but you have to take the bad with the good.

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I have alerted people on several occasions (starting with the druid thread) why throwing out skills to fill holes is ignorant. Without thinking about the balance AT ALL, your post is bound to be retarded and dismissed.

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You suggesting that adding a weapon to a hybrids arsenal is not a very large change, and thus wont really disrupt any balance, also made me lol.

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In order to have a discussion on new skills for a class, we start with only one assumption (otherwise we would have to start with zero assumptions which would mean this topic would have never arose). That assumption is that Paladins started (before this post) as balanced. Perhaps not perfectly balanced, but they are at least close enough that Dav hasnt changed them or deleted them as yet. Thus, the changing of a useless skill for a useful one is almost the definition of unbalancing something. You can defend this completely botched thought process if you want. I simply disregard it as a serious lack of one. I refuse to believe that Iolo is THAT stupid. I just assume he didnt think about it in a game balancing sense.

Next time I will just assume hes stupid.
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"Can you, in all your arrogance, see how he may have arrived at that conclusion?" Yeap. By not thinking. Ding ding ding. (see above)
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As for your comment about us listening to superiors. Are you saying that social expectations dont actually do anything because in order for you to want to be in the social "norm" your superior has to want that too? Peer pressure is just a figment of your imagination? I agree that taking any sort of reinforcement from a superior is much more likely to work (you consider them your superior after all), however I dont have the luxury of you assuming I am your superior. But if anything, your point is completely inaccurate due to the brief list of social flukes (apparently) given above.

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To go over your main concept one last time:

Your statement: Your flames dont do anything except piss people off.

My response: Your insanely large assumption is absolutely mind boggling.

[Arishel]

"LOUD NOISES!!!"

Oh, and I love lamp.

I think stake should still be about. If you don't think it's useful, don't bother with practicing it. Know alignment, detect evil, detect good, I dare say magic missile could be thrown in too. Those are all skills that we don't really practice, and if you do, please refrain from it next time. Case and point, if you don't like the skill and don't want to use it, just don't practice it.

[Master]

[Resatimm]

[Slade]

[Master]

This thread is so long because crazyhorse and I got into a pissing match.

Thanks for your useful, informative, logical contribution. I had completely forgotten about the defense being foreign vs. known. Although, to nitpick, a mace isn't quite paladin-ish either.

[Davairus]

Maces are exactly paladin like... they even have a title "hammer of heretics"..

[Slade]

RE: Hybrids

Right, the point is with DK you are trading (and hopefully winning on) damage so being hobble planted doesn't matter (since you do not dodge and it therefore does not gimp you if you do not flee - in contrast to dirt which really gimps you as you lack the blind fighting skill and can plant you too).

Paladins are a little different; the threat of being planted via hobble, dirt (the worst), or chain bash at low hp is real - as a result, you have to flee early and often to heal and always keep your HP high enough that any one bad plant won't kill you. Thus you can stand and take a hobble plant (while trading with wrath/dispel/disarm whatever while there) no problem before creating a tiny bit of space and healing again afterwards. A more likely scenario though is to play in constant fear of dirt kick such that against scary high DPS warrior types you don't care about the minimal efficiency lost by not spamming skills and need instead to be able to instantly react to anything, I.E.

If they land a dirt kick, flee immediately (early enough and you can withstand any stumble and still get away), wait it out and heal, re-engage
If they land barrage, flee immediately, wait it out and heal, re-engage
If they land bash or sideswipe (sunfire can help combat that one), and probably trip, wait and re-evaluate
If they land hobble and you are low on hp, flee immdiately, wait it out and heal, re-engage
If a rogue lands a weapon type skill on you then flee, switch weapon setup and/or re-equip anything dislodged, heal, re-engage via spell or charge
If they land hobble and you have hp or it is looking alright then wrath, disarm, maybe flamestrike (bers), etc.
If they do something with less lag then dispel or flamestrike (unless they made this one 2 round, can't remember) is good as you aren't committing yourself to heavy lag either
If they do nothing then doing nothing back isn't a bad thing - against like a warrior they will win any passive skirmish but the whole point is to win via attrition and using that mana to heal up and keep hanging around and around until they start fleeing and it becomes a charge chasing fest.
That said with all that breaking to heal, you must be the one to succesfully initiate again; if you are breaking all the time only to get murdered over and over then you fail.
Likewise if they abandon main skills and just flee murder a bunch, initiate on them when they re-enter, worst case you trade murders and as before they win that battle but you can get them via attrition and time
If they rage most likely run and heal, spam murders, flee, murder etc but be extremely cautious
if they FAIL any skill then unload wrath/disarm/dispel/whatever

ETC.. too many scenarios to go over but the overall point is against real threats, reduce your risk by breaking to heal and getting the most out of that mana to win via attrition, and since you stay healthy, trade with a hobble until you can reset again


RE: Weapons

Is it that bad that some classes can't use certain weapons - i.e. sword wielding shaman. Seems pretty bad lore wise.. certain combos I could see (dagger or maybe spear shaman), most not. All the classes that don't tend to have either meaty defenses, or weapon ward which kills both the passive foreign weapon parry penalty as far as I know, and the weapon type parry override (the 'proc') - for the latter case it makes a nice break between protected, and oh shit ward dropped so you are instantly getting sidestepped. The weapon types seem to be distributed pretty well balance wise, like, staff is a far better mage weapon than polearm (better defense, way way better vuln hitting flexibility) and it is fitting that illusionist has it instead of necro. Not big on the idea of most (non-rogue? whatever) classes wearing whatever weapon for vulns. Exotic is balanced pretty well also as it has a bunch of drawbacks like: segment is trumped by the very common shaft type, most exotics are one handed and you can't grip it so its very predictable to fight against (shaft, dual), they don't defend well, etc. They have to be really good to consider using one (brilliant punch in a box) and you usually only mix it in and out of use (flash some segment to keep them honest), at least against warrior/rogues.

[crazyhorse]

I completely agree with Slade in the sense that exotics are very well balanced, and they perform a good spot for vulns, but also the parry setback is nasty. I think while exotics are necessary, giving every class the opportunity to use most or all weapons (however well) would take away from the separateness each class has.

I disregard pretty much all lore arguments, because I really feel like they dont hold much water, but I feel that weapon wise there is a really good mix of weapons per class, and it is the most balanced thing we have in the game at this point.

Imho.

[Davairus]

You are wrong about that not being a hole in shamans game.

[Vhrael]

[crazyhorse]

AND most shaman players will pick one of two options

A) Mace. Mace = best parry weapon and if your opponent is using a blade it isnt close to the best offensive, and doesnt have the best defense either.

B) Takes the vuln weapon (which is probably not a mace) and trades getting hit more for hitting harder.

Shaman are too uber if you are going to make any argument in my opinion. I came back from a year long hiatus (ignoring brief 2 week long thief stints), and had no problem stepping in to the PK scene.

If shamans have a hole, then they deserve it.

is it shamans or shamen? Or something else?

[Mandor]

[Slade]

[bassball]

Umm. Kinda off topic but, are elves and drows really better at parry and set parry then humans? Cause they have crap strength. So they are only better if they wear hitroll gear correct? Which then results in their crappy strength and no damroll gear meaning they don't do any damage at all? Am I mistaken somewhere? Thanks

[Davairus]

Wis helps parry defenses, so elves would be a bit behind, drows would be a lot behind, this is just parry though. Int helping dodge makes those guys very good at it.