Dk losing dirt getting blind

[Ozaru]

Not sure I am a fan of this change, dirt is such a great skill in the lower ranks especially for ranking and even getting yourself out of a bad situation to run away on a pk. Granted the formula for a dk should be balls to the wall damage, but in extended fights dirt is a great equalizer. Every failed blind attempt brings you that much closer to being drained from unholy frenzy. I would think this change would really hurt against rogues as they will not be able to compete damage wise since all their weapon skills will be nullified with blind. I see the point to force dks to use more mal spells with contagion and now blind, but dks are hard enough to play taking dirt just made it harder for people to get into a class that wasn't very popular anyway. My 2cents

[Davairus]

Thanks.

[Davairus]

Actually, I did kind of pass over this post a bit quickly.

What we have chosen to do here is, besides that dark-knights have blindness instead of dirt, we have transferred the combat benefits of being mounted onto holy/unholy armor. By that I mean, reduced chance to flee lag, and really none of the seriously painful ill-effects from the combat /weapon skills (they will take the damage, but thats it). I get just as tired as everybody else of nobody wanting to play the class, and yeah, we argue that it isn't broken, but nobody wanted to play it. .I was so frustrated with that I almost came to just throwing it out altogether. Decided ultimately that dk is an edge case.

Here's my thinking.

Warrior vs warrior seems to work very well, berserkers manage, rangers do great.. (all classes with dodge), the thing with that is they have some things going for them. (1) Better hp pools. (2) No way to "give up" parry and dodge, in the same way as a DK has to "give up" shield block for set parry, or even that completely to dual wield. These guys always have at least 2 defs. That should tell you right away that there is slim chance for DK's. Beyond that, (3) these new skills pump out tons of damage - granted, its not gigantic fireballs that rape arse, but its big, and it would usually (4) lag the DK for free.

On the other side of that fight.. (1) dark-knights just lost dodge and, well, (2) didn't really get anything useful that is on par with those wild combat skills.

Questions, comments, or concerns, are welcomed. I am really quite surprised that you would rather have a one round dirt kick over the blindness spell.

Note as well that, unlike in the past, I am listening to you guys regarding how much fun you feel you are having. If it comes to light, DK's are too OP, not fun unless you are one, etc, lets bring it up. Lets have that discussion here and brainstorm some ideas. I am not going to ridicule your ideas. It is your game as much as mine, I am just the final filter keeping out really bad ideas.. we should be in pretty unanimous agreement that this was really quite necessary to do at this point, if not done earlier, because it was a really bad idea, evidented by the fact that nobody plays the class. It was my favorite class for years, and I gave up too. I went out on my shield, hoped somebody would prove me wrong about them, believing that somebody else had done a good job on the class and I just wasn't up to it. Next time, I will have to be convinced by numbers and math.

[Mr. Forgotten]

I got to level 6 on my human DK and I practiced Blindness three times but only went up 4% each practice....

[Olyn]

That's my fault. Send an in-character note to Olyn. I'll verify you lost the practices and get you fixed.

[Dispater]

Just leave them dirt along with blind. So player can decide if they go for quick burst and dirt finish or longer, extended fight with trying to land blinds.

[Esivole]

can't leave them with both.... What blind does more than anything, in my opinion, is force the dk's opponents to wear saves. I almost never wear saves against them, now I will have to fight them like I fight a shaman reducing my damage output considerably. Conversely, in my mind, having leet damage from unholy strength/blind coupled with summon/trip.bash seems pretty awesome? not sure if it is too awesome though. time will tell?

[Stiehl26]

Because one of the cornerstones to being a dark-knight is the unholy strength, which has a timer until some ill effects take place, it seems the dark-knight would want to more "live in the moment". In my mind, dirt kick falls into that category. While blind could potentially go off on the first cast, I think the chances of dirting someone is higher than a successful blind.

The flip side of that is for the dark-knight to try and blind first unholy later. This reduces some front load damage though. Blind is an awesome spell overall...I think, though, in the long run it may not synergize with the dark-knight as well as dirt would. Just my thoughts.

[Olyn]

[Nycticora]

Please post logs on Invokation of your fights as DKs and keep talking about the plusses and minuses of DK changes. Ensuring that hybrid classes remain viable and become more fun to play is my absolute highest priority.

[Erlwith]

For starters, dirt kick is a skill spammed by most, usually to their detriment unless they have pimp gear (ie valox vs chandran, same general dirt kick tactic, vast gear difference). However classes like rangers and warriors hardly suffer from dirt kick in combat. So already dirt kick is not the skill of choice vs warrior, etc. based on stat reduction alone. Against rogue, they rub out dirt quickly, their dirt is superior, and you have other skills/spells which will do more good than dirt imo. That leaves to some lesser extent mages who you probably wouldn't be dirting anyway. And obviously blind is superior in that respect.

Dirt kick was useful for dks in certain scenarios, DKs suffering most now from ranking and potential stumble lag on an opponent who is trying to flee. However blindness is nicer hypothetically. It would in theory force your opponent to wear more save mal gear than average vs old dirt kick dk. It lasts longer than dirt as well which is an obvious plus.

So now while that warrior can easily avoid your blindness he also will suffer more in hit/dam while doing so. Also the potential of an upgraded unholy strength (we'll have to wait and see how good of an upgrade it is) should even things out.

If anything just reduce the upkeep cost of unholy strength a little to supplement the mana cost of blindness or something for those lower levels. Dirt kick will be a bitch to rank without.

Last poster makes a good point though, we'll just have to wait and see the fights before we can really judge properly.

[Ergorion]

I think that most of the dark-knights we've seen in the past have not utilized their maledictive spells correctly. Deadzero is right, when I fight a dark-knight I never use saves because most of them are too stupid to cast their spells. The addition of blindness now forces opponents into using saves. While this does reduce their overall damage output, I think this actually adversely affects a correctly played dk.

Why? As a dk without blindness, your opponents never wear saves anyway so you can land your spells generally with one cast. Curse, poison and plague. Curse reduces accuracy by 6, poison drops strength and dex anywhere from 5 to I think 9 is the most I've seen. Plague is more the drawn out fight cherry on top spell. Given the situation that your opponent lags themselves with a failed dirt (even a successful dirt) or a failed bash, the combo of a one round lag poison (with potential weapon drop) followed by a successful dirt kick has great potential especially with the damage dark-knights can dish out in a hurry.

Now that people will start using saves against dks, you'd be wasting mana casting those mal spells. You'd be better off flee/murder or casting those affs. Dks still can't locate object, correct? In which case, they have no idea if that blind is even going to make a difference. A warrior class stocked with four gyvels is going to eat a dk alive even more on account of superior defenses and more or less immunity from blind (given appropriate saves). 1/20 chance of landing blind against an adequately protected target. With four gyvels, what's the chance that you're actually going to land a useful blind?

Sure, blindness could result in a lucky kill against someone with no gyvels, but dks are in the blind themselves as to whether or not their prey is prepared or not.

What I've been advocating for the hybrid classes for a long time is a skill that they can use against fighter classes while dual wielding. It's just plain stupid for the most part to dual wield against a fighter as a hybrid. You have no defenses, no off-hand enhanced to take advantage of that unholy strength, and no skills that you can use while dual wielding bait your opponent out of a defensive stance. I would give the upper hand to a defensive warrior over a dual wielding hybrid.

I think you should give hybrids off-hand enhanced damage at the least. The one drawback is they will become pretty fearsome against mages. The other suggestion being to give them a skill they can use while dual wielding that will be stopped by weapon ward.

This change, in my mind, hurts dark-knights.

[Erlwith]

Good point regarding no way to detect gyvel potions. However DKs were meant to be a all or nothing style attack if anything. Which is why I assume they originally were drained after unholy. A properly played DK for the most part isn't meant to sit around in battle casting plagues, etc. etc. Also why they have such terrible mana and mana regen. You're also forgetting the afflictive saves you'll have to wear against fireball and iceball which are two underrated spells.

[Ergorion]

I think the characterization of DKs as an all-or nothing bet-the-house and go-for-broke class is a bit one-sided. Sure, DKs have the potential to frenzy up land an <<<ERADICATES>>> charge on a sleeping target and dish a k/o in a couple rounds, but dks' survivability is vastly underrated.

I'd be interested in seeing a direct healing comparison between a paladin's cure light/serious and a dark-knight's curing with a 15 mal break and vampiric touch. I remember on my dk back in the day, I was getting 60+ hp per vampiric touch with a necromancer's breakstone ring and that wasn't even against targets with a mal vuln. I know vamp touch has been changed a bit since then, so i'm not exactly sure how the healing mechanics work right now, but vamp touch gives a dk a good amount of healing.

Furthermore, energy scrolls no longer cost any mana to recite so an uncaballed dark-knight can farm some of those. Paired with a star-tipped wand or two (I know, it eats a weapon spot, but a dk can get by with a shield, a polearm and two good one-handers which leaves two spots open for consumables) and you have a lightweight shaman on your hands who can dish out third attacks with enhanced damage. That's not even taking into account the fact that caballed dks get access to restorer wands. I think we've all seen how much Eloret and other mage classes - Occuilus way back in the day - can heal up with restorers. No mana burn, and more healing without taking up a precious rare slot.

Personally, I think that unholy strength and frenzy had flexibility in use. If you knew you were going to catch someone with their pants down or in a confined space, unholy frenzy and pwn them and if it ran out, you would run away with the time bomb of the drain. The flip side of that is that unholy frenzy could act as a stunning finisher. I know when I'm fighting people, I get a feel for how hard they're hitting, so a dark-knight can sucker you in by fighting without unholy strength and then slapping it on towards the end of the fight to dish a ton more damage and c 'harm' a target who felt secure fighting at big nasty / pretty hurt.

I don't know why I'm writing essays on dark-knights. I think I've just got a soft-spot for dark-knights.

[Xenyar]

I think I like the change... I'll have to agree with erlwith about dk's not having dirt kick will make it a bitch for ranking. If there's no warrior class or rogue around to tank, hybrid then fill the tanking spot. Human dk's won't suffer as badly.... Drow will suffer the most... Low health, poor defenses, and no dirt kick can just make tanking a bitch. It just means longer resting periods and a lot more monster potions.

[Davairus]

Hey guys, just wanted to update you all on this, so that you can understand the philosophy a little better.

Currently our defenses go like this:
1 - mage
1.5 - shamans (parry + rubbish shield block)
2 - hybrids , rogues (parry + good shield block, or just dodge)
3 - fighters

DK falls under hybrids, so they give up a defense. They are gonna earn that back through either more offence (e.g. wrath, fireball, maledictions) or some other ways of defence - cure, sanc - or more utility - detect invis, ability to use fly with scrolls. Down the road, I think we will take monks as hybrids as well, and maintain this process.

In addition to the defences, there are some other things around:
- flight
- protective shield
- weapon ward

Its been fairly obvious that "unholy armor" help vs the extremely negative effects of having no prot shield with defences, and basically you get some lowered chance to bash and take dirt. However the weapon ward spell is missing and they are completely vulnerable as spellcasters. We decided to just extend unholy armor a bit more to cover the worst effects.

That means that basically you will take the lag from fleeing dirted (which isnt a lot, and coming from a warrior has a short duration -- its obviously necessary to keep this because they reside next to rogues on the defences table), while the other mondo weapon type skills are essentially just damage dealers vs you (again, doesnt harm rogues too much, mostly impedes a warrior that plays a lagging-you kind of game).


Also, as a general notice on balance changes... please, don't come back to me whining dark-knight is your favorite class and you can't play it anymore. If I have had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say dark-knight is their favorite class, I'd probably have 50 bucks, so... yeah. Try to be a good sport, and not just complain for more power. I am looking for RELIEF for the class to be playable, not make you the most OP class on the game (vamp hopefuls - you also need to keep that in mind). I have to look at the big picture, and one person having all the fun while the rest are being raped isn't a good thing for a mud. Its the variety of players that makes a mud, and with that comes different people with different opinions. Its impossible to please everyone, and I'm not trying to. The goal is to make the class feel satisfactory to play for the kind of player that wants to play it. That means it is able to get them the results they want (playerkilling) so we'd definitely be giving up some defense for more offense here. You should be dying more often than a warrior would and getting more kills in the bag than a warrior would. If dying bothers you, you need to steer over toward clerics, mages, etc, with the nice spell offense and nifty escape spells, but then you won't have the same lethality as a DK (bash and trip).

[Beljia]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned certain things about the change.

First, dirt kick is a minimum of two rounds lag and doesn't last long (certainly not as long as blindness).

Second, blindness only has a one round lag AND lasts for several minutes.

Third, blindness is much better in PvE. Benefits include:


a. Ability to redirect attacks to the dark-knight if used properly while in a group (it's both more effective and less effective than a direct rescue. More effective because the damage will CONTINUE to be directed at the dark-knight, less effective because it might fail due to saves and can only succeed once);

b. It enables skirmishing on mobs (I've seen shamans blind the fighter at the entrance to the Challenge Arena, I did that and killing him was incredibly easy);

c. one-round lag versus two-rounds lag. If you're fighting something which can lag you, this becomes critical.

[Ozaru]

yeah but lvl 30 and under its a struggle, you have a small hp pool, not as easy to run away, forget about trying to heal yourself. Try fighting a paladin with no dirt kick when they wrath the crap out of you, of course its fine at 50 just lower ranks its pretty damn tough.

[Fireballe2]

I was saying hybrids were gimp before it was cool.

At least you guys finally admit it.

[Davairus]

The negativity puts a barrier in the way of progress. Please take it down a notch.


We didn't give dk's blind instead of dirt because of game balance. We gave it them because we wanted to. We are creating a different feel for the class. Now we are following the results to their logical conclusions to attain balance. There are other things to do first, but they are going receive more updates.

You guys are right that blindness forces people onto saves, which leads to the DK taking less damage since people fear that.