Evening,

Having just played my first thief in a very long time (got bored and sucked back in yet again with the edges), after I deleted him I figured I'd throw out some feedback on maybe problems or things that might want addressing for these two thief paths. I went with a basic human imperial thief, going with poisons up to neurological poison and then up to glowing trap (level 30 thief) - my end goal was the "you must be insane" Sandman edge....probably my first mistake.

1. Practicing for either of these paths is a complete pain - moreso than any other class.

-Traps cannot be spam practiced (they come with a timer starting at seven hours), so despite the relatively cheap ingredients you can find (100 copper or so each) it'd be like an invoker whose spells are all on timers. It's not so bad....but you won't even get directional traps (you're first truly practical trap) until level 31. Trappers has to be the hardest path to mix with because anything truly a "trap" that's worth it comes at 31, making you take thirty levels just for a single target knock-out or glowing trap. Shield block is nice but I really think this class needs something earlier on...

-Poisons are even worse. The cheapest way I could find out to spam practice knock-out poison was to continually make them with two emetic poisons - one I bartered (100 copper each) and the other I gathered; which is part of the problem. Out of all the areas I found poisons (roughly around 30-40 ingredients), each area had maybe one or two - the most was four in a single area. So unless you feel like spending a fortune (cheapest knock-out poison was 450 I think) you get to gather....a lot. I know it's a random generator and it could be my lack of luck but I went through roughly 300 emetic poisons and in 150 concoctions with 20 intelligence...I was at 79% in knock-out traps.

You're mileage may vary but I think the general idea is that ingredient-based practicing should get a buff in learning rates or just make ingredients get more than one use.

2. The "real life" aspect put in these paths isn't "fun"

-Poisoners fail nearly every poison mix if they were in combat recently and ingredients crumble. I don't know one other class who suddenly becomes incompetent from combat, you don't see bards failing songs or casters failing spells *out* of combat afterwords. It's not too bad but gathering ingredients "just in case" since you can't mix in a pinch, sucks. Formaldehyde isn't really a practical example with it's cost. Poison mix can take quite awhile, can't be done over water, and can't be done hidden. Another problem is the inability to use certain poisons in certain ways - a great example is emetic. Unless you're a newer player, when you see a poison thief...don't eat strange food and/or water and you'll cancel out a majority of their ability. I don't see a reason why this class can't use emetic as a knock-out or weapon poison. It's not any stronger than crimson, it'd put you in combat with a two round lag, and it might not be inhaled but you could shove something down their throat. Basically until weaponnick or grenades, a lot of your abilities have strong limitations - even then I wouldn't rate them as the strongest thieves. As a path mix thief, it's really not worth it.

-Trappers can hit themselves with traps which can be horrible in a pinch (knock-out yourself)....don't see casters randomly casting sleep on themselves. If you try to trap something you've already trapped, you lose your ingredient. You also can't trap something hidden (even though rangers can snare camo if I remember right).

3. Deathfulness

I don't know, I know I didn't put too much time into the class - I probably took only 17 hours or so to rank to level 30, just spamming circle in groups...then another 13 hours spamming and gathering poisons while horribly failing to retrieve the Codex (one of the worst raiders ever). So I may have not that much experience but having played these quite awhile ago...and having a fairly decent knowledge of the game and each classes' abilities, I can see why it's never really taken hold. They were cute with the whole "suggest eat deathpill" but I was hoping the edges might give some fixes to these two paths. Maybe the mix edges will help enough, but both paths seem very dependent on going to the end - without direction trap, trappers are pretty bad and without weapon nick or even grenade I don't think poisoners are up to caliber either.

Generally if you want to knock them out, gang, or cause people to scream at the screen it's best to play a binder - more reliable, lasts longer, and truly screw up your opponent. If you want to deal damage, rattle groups, and cause general havoc by being deathly it's best to play a thug. If you like uber loot, play a pickpocket.

I'm just not seeing the point of the other two - bards generally have better options than a trapper for damage, area sleep, utility, tanking, etc.....and poisoners are a very limited maledicting thief who needs a *very* limited window to be useful. I feel that in the area of "screw with your opponent" that almost every other class is better...even primordial vengeance is worse than emetic. I always try to think of a class being the best at something in particular, if not the best in a bunch of things (bards)...but these two paths are shadowed by every other option I think.

Am I alone on this? All the feedback I've seen on that other website (even the wiki) pretty much states the "blah" of the paths - and after finally playing it for a bit I definitely realized why. I could be wrong about the full path but that's not entirely the purpose of this since I was talking of the beginning of each path, their ability to mix paths, and being "fun" in general.

Thoughts/suggestions/flames?

all I can really say is that I'm playing a poisoner and loving every second of it. They can be deadly giving the right situation, as thieves are supposed to be. We're far from the dual backstab era, and thieves are not assassin or warriors, but rather a utility class that works well with others and adds an interesting dynamic to the game. The trick to thieves is that nobody ever really knows your capabilities because of the countless options you have to choose from. For me, that is something special right there. On top of that, once you learn how to use your thief skill combinations to their fullest effect, you can be whatever you want to be, from a master RPer to a deadly PKer. It's all about what you want to do with your character. If you want to just be a deadly PKer, then there's always other classes, or going thug/binder, if the intricacies of poisons and traps are too much for you. There aren't many city ties thieves who complain, because for the most part, they've chosen to be thievy thieves moreso than barbarian thieves. I think the different classes of thieves brings an interesting aspect to the game and make it FUN, so long as you're not focused solely upon PKing, and to me, fun is the most important aspect of the game.

....you said "as long as you're not focused on PKing" but poison thieves have nothing that's not PK-related. You can only mind-control mobs (which they might have fixed so you weren't forcing Silent Tower mobs to give you their equipment) but neurological poison does nothing, fear poison seems pretty pointless, and you can't give them emetic poison either. Not really understanding your point here unless you're talking about harassing players and not killing them....which I don't find fun personally.

You also said countless options, but I'm really not seeing it - especially if you don't go full path and get grenades. It's not that the "intricacies are beyond me" - that was a bit condescending. Unless I'm missing a lot, your entire options at hero are to...

1) At best, annoy your victim with stealing/planting emetic stuff (with no poisoning of pills or potions)
2) Fear poison them (which can be nice versus ragers if you get knife and they're cornered, but most classes can just teleport/word if they get in trouble)
3) Neurological is pretty useless unless you weapon nick and even then it's not that bad to have. I'd much rather hate getting primordial vengeance, bard songs, etc.
4) Most of the cool factors of mind control have been removed, and the tricks are gimmicks at best.
5) You can knock someone out for a little longer and a little more reliable than blackjack, but it requires prepping.
6) If you go full path, you can grenade.

That's it beyond basic thief backstab/hide/sneak/steal/trip - and that's assuming your opponent is an idiot for some of them. The reason I say that is because you can entirely avoid emetic poison if you don't wear/eat anything and everything else requires weapon nick to work (which only works on two of those poisons I think). This is also assuming your target isn't immune or resistant to poison (which is easy to get) or worse, can cure them. You can't assume your opponent won't know what you're doing or you're just fighting newbies. Think about any other class and you can think of viable pk options above six things....and no other class in the game requires this kind of prepping.

I'm just not seeing it - if you can name some poisoners or trappers that were deadly after the "eat deathpill" nerf then by all means. Maethron didn't really count since his hasted lieutenants were the majority of his ability (no offense) but beyond that I can't think of one single "deathful" poisoner or trapper - especially at hero. I'd even take a hypothetical common situation where these two paths are best.

I think that if poisoners/trappers had...

1) easier practicing by increase the learn rates (since it requires ingredients like no other class)
2) their ingredients could be used more than once so you're not waiting for area respawns to get 1-2 ingredients
3) trappers actually got useful traps early on (pre-30)
4) poisoners could give any poison via any method (like inhaled emetic so you could disease sleepers like necro/bard/AP/etc)
5) they removed this "real life" factors like failing mixing after combat, timers on traps, traps blowing up in your face, or even self-disarming backstabs (no other class has this, you don't see casters randomly aiming spells at themselves or warriors dropping weapons)
6) grenades could have more than one poison-effect in it
7) knock-out antidote could make people immune to sleep affects instead of being useless
8) weapon poison worked a LOT more, like normal poisoning weapons or even better

...then maybe it might reach the par but right now I'm not seeing them being anywhere near the caliber of other classes. It's pretty prevelant when you go to Voralian and the guild list is 4 people or you see the last 50 or so hero thieves and none of them are poison/traps.

>....you said "as long as you're not focused on PKing" but
>poison thieves have nothing that's not PK-related. You can
>only mind-control mobs (which they might have fixed so you
>weren't forcing Silent Tower mobs to give you their equipment)
>but neurological poison does nothing, fear poison seems pretty
>pointless, and you can't give them emetic poison either. Not
>really understanding your point here unless you're talking
>about harassing players and not killing them....which I don't
>find fun personally.

The bonus to poison thieves, which is rare for every other class and for the most part besides healing and buffing is that they CAN affect every other character in the game out of PK range. Between food, drink, and contact, you can get off everything except fear or neurological poison, I believe. And hopefully fear is the one you can't get (I really don't feel like checking which one is contact applied), because neurological has nice side effects. To me, that's a HUGE bonus. You keep thinking steal/plant or just outright apply inhaled and do your thing. Poison thieves (and I can only speak for poison thieves) can indirectly affect the entire MUD if they want to, you just have to find more creative ways to do it. They can set people up to get PKed with no risk to themselves and easily manage to do the same for their own prey. apply knock-out armor contact <--- if you've not already made yourself a untrusted menace that can be funny, and deadly, given the right circumstances.

>
>You also said countless options, but I'm really not seeing it
>- especially if you don't go full path and get grenades. It's
>not that the "intricacies are beyond me" - that was a bit
>condescending. Unless I'm missing a lot, your entire options
>at hero are to...

wasn't meant to be condescending, I apologize. I was only saying that it seems like you're trying to play a warrior + necromancer combo using your thief, in which case we all know thieves are not warriors and necromancers do the teleport thing when the fight goes wrong. The trick to poisoners, which it seems you haven't mastered yet, is HOW to get your poisons to work. We all know they work, and they can do damage, so then the trick is getting them to work. Use your imagination instead of charging head first, is all I was saying. With the multiple methods of applying poisons you should be able to get at least ONE to work.


>
>1) At best, annoy your victim with stealing/planting emetic
>stuff (with no poisoning of pills or potions)

emetic can also be applied by contact methods and thieves have the ability to hide. apply knock-out inhaled. recite curse scroll. plant emetic covered armor. apply mind control inhaled. backstab target. flee hide. suggest wear poisoned armor. finish fight. Of course this isn't going to work every time and isn't the end all be all of PKing but again you need to be creative with how you decide to go about fighting as a poison thief. When you do that your death AND your fun level will rise exponentially.

>2) Fear poison them (which can be nice versus ragers if you
>get knife and they're cornered, but most classes can just
>teleport/word if they get in trouble)

you're right. Again, sealing MOST pks near the hero range, because of the amount of HP and the fact people have proven they have survivability, becomes a situational thing, unless for some reason you're just RIPPING through your enemy, which thieves usually don't have the power to do. Mixed with neurological fear can be nasty, both for running warriors and wording mages.

>3) Neurological is pretty useless unless you weapon nick and
>even then it's not that bad to have. I'd much rather hate
>getting primordial vengeance, bard songs, etc.

but then those are skills that play to the classes' strength, and make sense. neurological poison is more like a bonus rather than something you rely on, with some really nice side effects, imho

>4) Most of the cool factors of mind control have been removed,
>and the tricks are gimmicks at best.

narrow-minded use of mind control, no offense. Like I said it can be applied to people out of range and if you have decent prep knowledge and/or use your poisons correctly it can be a naster thing. don't forget that mind control sometimes has a "forget" affect, as well as you can suggest someone to drink your emetic poisoned or sleep canteen, giving you MORE time to A) let previously applied emetic poison seep in B) maledict them more using poisons and scrolls C) keep them in place to set up ambushes D) concoct more ingredients to get ready for the fight ahead. I mean hypothetically with the use of food/drink applied sleep and mind-control you can keep someone in place for as long as you want. Again, you have to think creatively.

>5) You can knock someone out for a little longer and a little
>more reliable than blackjack, but it requires prepping.

sleep grenades, mind-control, or food/drink applied and some patience, not to mention the direct inhaled method. As well see my above response. Again this is what I meant by the intricacies of poison thieves. It wasn't meant as an insult, just me assuming from your complaints you're trying to play them too brute strength, instead of creatively.

>6) If you go full path, you can grenade.
>
>That's it beyond basic thief backstab/hide/sneak/steal/trip -
>and that's assuming your opponent is an idiot for some of
>them. The reason I say that is because you can entirely avoid
>emetic poison if you don't wear/eat anything and everything
>else requires weapon nick to work (which only works on two of
>those poisons I think). This is also assuming your target
>isn't immune or resistant to poison (which is easy to get) or
>worse, can cure them. You can't assume your opponent won't
>know what you're doing or you're just fighting newbies. Think
>about any other class and you can think of viable pk options
>above six things....and no other class in the game requires
>this kind of prepping.

But no other class can affect out of PK characters in just about the same way they can their in PK counterparts. Man honestly, if you can manage to get mind control applied to someone out of range, you can honestly... HONESTLY... manage to kill someone out of your PK range if you do it right. Of course this would be tough, but it's POSSIBLE. If that aint a bonus, combined with the other tactics I've just mindlessly given out to the entire MUD, then I just don't know man...

>
>I'm just not seeing it - if you can name some poisoners or
>trappers that were deadly after the "eat deathpill" nerf then
>by all means. Maethron didn't really count since his hasted
>lieutenants were the majority of his ability (no offense) but
>beyond that I can't think of one single "deathful" poisoner or
>trapper - especially at hero. I'd even take a hypothetical
>common situation where these two paths are best.

I guess wait for me and we'll see if I can make it work lol

>
>I think that if poisoners/trappers had...
>
>1) easier practicing by increase the learn rates (since it
>requires ingredients like no other class)

Okay learn rates suck... I will most definitely agree.

>2) their ingredients could be used more than once so you're
>not waiting for area respawns to get 1-2 ingredients

There's an edge for this. As well, it's so EASY to gather handfuls of ingredients to make higher level ingredients I just don't find this to be a problem. Once you've found a decent source of emetic poison and a few good sleep poison sources that occur naturally in game, you can make any poison you want to if you know how to combine them properly. On top of this, let's say you know some high level ingredients of one kind, but not so many of the other kind. you can combine those ingredients to make a strong concoction of the one you don't know. That's a pretty nice incentive to me.

>3) trappers actually got useful traps early on (pre-30)

no idea man... sucks for trappers.

>4) poisoners could give any poison via any method (like
>inhaled emetic so you could disease sleepers like
>necro/bard/AP/etc)

at which point they'd lose their out of PK abilities and to me, honestly, the class would not only become predictable and boring, but obviously, overpowered as well.

>5) they removed this "real life" factors like failing mixing
>after combat, timers on traps, traps blowing up in your face,
>or even self-disarming backstabs (no other class has this, you
>don't see casters randomly aiming spells at themselves or
>warriors dropping weapons)

lol but warriors can drop weapons using grease weapon and emetic poison! Besides, I haven't encountered the after combat thing yet. maybe I will but so far I haven't. besides they have edges for the backstab stuff if it's really bothering you.

>6) grenades could have more than one poison-effect in it

Hella overpowered. One launch could neurological, emetic AND mind control? No way...

>7) knock-out antidote could make people immune to sleep
>affects instead of being useless

THIS I can definitely vouch for, and I think should definitely be implemented if it isn't already.

>8) weapon poison worked a LOT more, like normal poisoning
>weapons or even better

Eh... not so much here. Because you can apply poisons to people's weapons out of PK range it would really cause a problem if your whole damn raiding group had some uber buffed weapons going into a cabal raid. As cool as it would be from an RP perspective to be able to do that, it would just be overpowered. Instead, I propose to perhaps increase or decrease the effectively of the said weapon poisons by attack type. I'd think piercing type attacks would have a much better chance than say a blunt attack.

>
>...then maybe it might reach the par but right now I'm not
>seeing them being anywhere near the caliber of other classes.
>It's pretty prevelant when you go to Voralian and the guild
>list is 4 people or you see the last 50 or so hero thieves and
>none of them are poison/traps.

I think this is more of people wanting to jump right in head first into the PK and get it crackin. Thugs can do this. Binders, after blackjacking someone (remain conscious edge anyone? Would suck for binders huh?), can do this. City ties thieves cannot. Trappers cannot. Poison thieves cannot, but then given the right circumstances they can nasty the #### out of out someone just as good as anyone else, and their skills don't rely on you knocking someone out like binders, where there's an edge out that vastly improves your chances of winning any fight against them, or running them off.

Like I said I can't speak on trapper thieves but as far as poisoners, people just need to be more creative, point blank period. You can be an out of PK MENACE, a mischievous poisoner, or be an imaginative poisoner who manages to use all his skills to become a successful PKer. I'll tell you how the successful PKer thing goes when I play my thief.

Something you seem to value a lot is the ability to kill or harass someone out of PK-range, which I find pretty useless. Especially emetic poison, the chances you die from it is pretty low at any level...I know if I see a new food in my inventory I didn't buy that I'm not eating it - same usually for gear unless it's really nice, which then I'll just use cure poison. Out of range weapon poisons are pretty pointless as it *rarely* works without weapon nick.

Guess we can just agree to disagree - we'll see if you become deathful or not ;)

the out of PK thing mostly applies to being able to mind control someone to get them to knock themselves out from a poisoned food/drink to set them up for a ambush by someone else. It can be a pretty useful technique for someone who wants to become a sword for hire or a bounty hunter or a mercenary, not to mention people who are in involved in cabal wars and need to set their enemy up for the fall one way or another. you can use your imagination there on how to set that up. I can't give away ALL my ideas.

As far as the out of range poisons I said that in response to your making the weapon applied poisons to go off more often. It would make it WAYY to overpowered, which I assume is the reason they have it trigger at the frequency that it does.

And yeah... lol we'll see how deadly I am. Let's see if I can manage to not delete before I get enhanced damage

Okay, there is something wrong with the path when the best arguement for it is that you can mess with people out of pk range. Are poisoners too weak as they are to fight people in their own range?

And another question, why does it even work out of pk range? I thought pk ranges were in place to help prevent abuse from higher level characters (not to mention, it is newer players that I see being the main target of said poisoners).

Also, you might want to try hitting the hero ranges before discussing how viable the path is...

Ditto on hero range

Hit hero first kiddo poisoner, then we'll talk.

You'll eventually figure out that it takes you longer to kill someone as a poisoner than as a binder.

You'll also eventually realize the moment anyone wears a worn container, you're boned unless you manage to find a way to consistently blind people the way a necromancer does.

All you are is a fancy utility support for ganging. Worse, there's people better than you, and most likely the moment anyone sniffs out that you're around they will either flee, or better yet they'll know all your poison's effects inside and out and come up with cheeky ways to fight you. Did you know fear poison doesn't stop mages from zapping you with wands?

'harrassment' does not a good character make, especially with a playercount topping out at 40. Just because you can fart around in the inn and annoy people with your vomiting, or watch pre-10's writhe from vomiting because hunger and thirst don't affect them, doesn't make a character that contributes to the game.

Neuro's effects are too slow to wait to take effect and take too much effort to use well. If you weren't still pre-35 you'd know this. A fight can be over (you killed outright, word, flee/walk) before neuro ever becomes a factor. A fat -4 dex, whee.

There are a few situations where an emetic poisoned character can outright ignore the poison and fight on. You've probably already seen some of that happen already.

Knife + fear poison is cute, but ultimately useless outside the Galadon Arena. Try it on an overpowered STSF elf sometime and see if they stick around long enough for you to kill them that way. Better yet, anyone with enough HP or decked out in rare gear can park themselves in a single exit room and for all intents and purposes ignore your fear poison when you're forced to knife them, thereby letting them outmelee you. I've died that way to people who would otherwise have been easy kills because I knew the risk and took it anyway.

hint: Anything really interesting for you to force people to eat is usually too dangerous to obtain with just backstab, second attack, parry and dodge.

Mind control doesn't allow you to order people to remove gear so you can steal it (such as extremely rare gear that gives your opponent detects you don't want them to have anymore, or nodisarm weaponry that isn't cursed norem), it doesn't allow you to quaff potions (getting rid of PWK potions is a far more elegant solution than LOL YOU'RE NOT PRETTY ENOUGH TO TELL PEOPLE TO QUAFF POTIONS) and many of it's other limitations aren't mentioned in the helpfile.

Knock out poison is EXTREMELY USEFUL... when you're not trying to KO someone that's fighting, or trying to KO a duergar/orc/svirf/dwarf. Nevertheless if you're going to grease weapon (and grease weapon is where you should probably do a full-stop if you're doing a poisoner hybrid with binder or thug) then it's a nice bonus that partially alleviates needing to practice blackjack for thugs, and completely alleviates skull-daze timers.

The one thing I disagree with Torak on is how much has to be done to make the class viable. Change all poison so all methods work. Change neurological poison to apply all of it's affects immediately with a shorter (5 tick) duration. Change weapon poison to apply faster without weapon nick and make weapon nick do more damage. Alternatively, make different poisons apply with different success rates in normal melee swings. Because as it is right now it's not worth you wasting the time poisoning your allies' weapons because it never takes and if it does it has no effect (neurological) or causes them to bug out before you can stop them from doing so (fear).

Grenades are fine right where they are. They don't need to be touched except possibly moved downward in level, or better yet scaled in level and swapped with a different kind of poison or other skill that gets buffed. Poisoners would be vastly more interesting with grenade and without mind control/fear poison at 30 than 40.

And yes, I'm aware fear poison can be potentially used to force some dude to watch you with their thumb up their ass for 20 hours while you solo raid their inner. That's nice. Now take their nice gear. Not gonna happen. In all probability you're not strong enough to finish off the inner all by your lonesome either even with prog gear and preps.

And don't be afraid to admit when you CAN'T hero because of the pk range (or lack thereof) giving you a decent shot at it. Thieves of any path are rough to rank because all they do is damage (and very very mediocre damage) and detect hidden. They can't tank past 30 as it is except possibly trappers (lol) Even if you're proactive there's a good chance no one will take you and as many people will lie to not have to take you as possible.

You were rank 30 at 31 hours. You were barely around long enough to make a really informed opinion or give it enough of a chance for it to get better.

That's saying I haven't played these classes before (and I have, both paths to around 40-45 non-mixed) or that just because I didn't spend enough time I didn't understand how the class worked. I had just assumed that with edges that these paths might have been tweaked (like when traps got special effects) but in all honesty, they are as bad as they ever were. Seriously, look at the numbers of poisoners+trappers or especially mixed paths... if it took me 100 hours or 15 hours to reach level 30, it doesn't change the fact of what I had problems with at level 30 - a total lack of ability in fights with most of my skills being pointless at the time (emetic food/drink and neurological weapon poison never hitting), the inability to practice my skills effectively, and a knowledge that if I had reached 51 that all I would have is knock-out poison and knock-out directional traps. At level 30, most classes have a lot of options and abilities - in comparison to everything I'd get in other paths, I had knock-out poison and that was pretty much it.

The paths need work, I'm just trying to be honest and forthcoming on why these aren't played. I feel that each class should have it's niche for what it's good at and trappers or poisoners have nothing they excel at that's worth it in the end.

>You were rank 30 at 31 hours. You were barely around long
>enough to make a really informed opinion or give it enough of
>a chance for it to get better.

I will not speak for traps because you can already see their massive headaches on paper alone. The only thing worth a damn in that path is weapontrip, and this realization comes from fighting them as well. Maethron's power came from two hasted lieutenants and circlestab, not his traps that he forced raiders to go through. If a gang wanted him dead, he died. If any thug with separate and haste went after him, he died or got heavily beaten before he could flee to the safety of the cabal or guards.

Your skill percentages don't matter all that much with poisoner honestly. Even if they were at 100 there would be no way to never fail a concoction. I never noticed the combat thing you mention, but then I was never cracked enough to assume concocting during combat was ever an option due to the no-concoct-while-hiding thing. If you fail KO poison, it's not your skill percentage. Really it's success rate is only slightly worse than blackjack and still way better than strangle/

Grenades come with he same backfire risks as traps. Grenades shine in raids. The more trap ingredients you know, the better grenades get. I didn't play long enough to figure out if there were elemental or holy/unholy trap ingredients to put into grenades.

Emetic's problem isn't it's effect, it's it's application. Grenade solves this, but you're right that's way too late for it to be fun. You're basically screwed out of practical application of this poison until 40, when it makes perfect sense for it to be a weapon poison. Furthermore, you can concoct an antidote for knock-out poison but what's the point? Shouldn't this be changed to provide immunity from knock-out effects for a duration of half that were the ingredient in question made to be a KO poison? Shouldn't thieves be able to apply antidotes via inhalation? Coding issues aside shouldn't poisoners be able to poison potions/pills?

Poisoners lack the body count of thugs. Unfortunately it's like the class was designed with a terrifying fear that they could be overpowered in hand to hand combat were emetic actually useful, or were neurological poison's varied affects applied all at once. Fear poison is 'nifty' and a neat way to protect yourself from various bard songs and targetted effects but in the end it causes your opponent to flee. Parting block doesn't work well enough to make combining it with fear poison and cheap shot to make sense.

Thugs need *half* the amount of skills poisoners do to get *twice* as much done. It's a little ridiculous. There's a number of automatic or otherwise 'perk' or useless skills.

I see what you're saying but the inevitable answer is that it either doesn't need fixing, the edges are sufficient for now, or that it's not worth the time and effort to fix (yet) even if someone does come up with a rebalancing solution.

Besides even if you do all of that there's an unspoken truth that other than their various utility, PK ability and detect hidden, thieves aren't all that hot while ranking at any level range. Come 30 or so almost anyone else is more useful and it gets worse as you go on.

I couldn't agree more for the most part - the only reason I wanted to practice poisons was for edges, but as I said...it's about the worst thing to practice along with traps because of timers and/or ingredient requirements.

They definitely need work to be up to par with the others, but either the Immortals just don't agree or it's not high priority. Not sure which.

I'd love to see a "deathful" trapper or poisoner that was solo and in raids quite a bit (and didn't have lieutenants)....just don't see it happening. Especially if they try to mix at all.

Maethron's power came from two hasted
>lieutenants and circlestab, not his traps that he forced
>raiders to go through.

Maethron was a scary SOB when you had to retrieve. I fully empathized with people in Maethron's range who wanted to wait for someone he couldn't touch to retrieve. In the city, Maethron was badass.

Which I actually raided directly against him as. I got as far as the Executioner with two orcs until there were flat too many people swinging at me. Hasted lieutenants are teh ghey.

I suppose he could be scary to other people, but throw one shaman in the mix and have anyone else just hanging around to harrass him and you could get in and out with no issue whatsoever. If you were blinded then you simply walked away or waited out the sequester.

If a Shaman had no trouble with it, a healer with a merc and progging gear, or several paladins (if paladins ever had to raid Trib) would be equally well off. Possibly many druids as well.

...I think, coming away from this post, that it would be wise to move trapper and poisoner thief paths into the "not for new players" section of the character generation routine.

Personally I think there was a lot of good intent with the paths, but in all practicality, trappers and thieves should probably be combined into one path, and have some things modified or dropped, as well as some things added, to make them viable and balanced.

I think of the craftsmanship in CF's other classes, and it has always seemed that these two have needed "rounding out" since they were brought in...and it will never happen because there really are no great solutions.

Thief edges were put into place to encourage path mixing. The issues though is you never know what you are going to get when you mix paths. Before I made my last thief I checked the PBF's to make sure I could get the skills I wanted. Guess what? That guy received extra thief points, which were not posted in the PBF. I ended up deleting the character after 100 hours.

On a sidenote about players leaving take the above scenario for example. Imagine taking 100 hours out of your life for a character that you pretty much decided was a waste. I was gone for almost a year. Guess what I found when I returned, a lot of same people that were here when I left. This year I turn 31. I’m pretty sure a significant amount of the imm staff and playerbase are reaching that as well. I think it is time someone realized that and made a few concessions to take a little of the work out of cf. This is a game I grew up with and love but, I’m not 15 anyone either. Long gone are the days or rolling three shifters until I got the forms I liked. Thieves? Sure I can do it, but I can’t run the risk of mixing paths. If the paths and forms are balanced then why not take some of the guesswork out of this. This is not something that would make a huge impact on game balance. It isn’t something that would take 100 hours of coding. It is something that would just make things easier and more enjoyable for the playerbase. Sure there would be your powerhouse character that would lead to the 10 copycats. How is this different from warriors? STSF/Dagger specs anyone?

It’s your sandbox and I just play here. Despite the fact I’ve pried myself away numerous times, you all have kept it interesting enough for me to keep coming back. That in itself is a testament to the hard work you put into this game. Thank you for the work, but please acknowledge the customer.

My original plan was to respond to the above post, but I strayed pretty hard. Bottom line is that trappers and poisoners are too hard to game balance. With the current setup those two paths just don't compliment most playing styles. It will take someone with a lot of love for thieves and a dedicated coder to get them back on the map.

Re: Thief points

This is something we're looking into when we get to a minor thief revamp is the ability to see points, sprinkle in a few non-path skills to choose from, etc. They were specifically left out because the original thought was most folks would take a full path and a couple more extra skills here and there. We also really didn't want to see the excessive number crunching, path optomization, statistical analysis that seems to be so prevalent in things like this. Obviously that's not how it has played out in practice.

Re: Shifter forms

Once I finish up the air forms, there will be a way to swap out either of your final forms for a cost, one time. The randomness of forms for shapeshifters is something I see as a building block of the class that I don't want to remove. Any of your final forms should be good, they may not be what you had hoped (c'mon lion/falcon!) but you will be able to contribute meaninfully at hero-level. If it really is that much of a deal-breaker for you, there are many other classes to choose from.

And I bet it goes in now that I am off for two weeks on Holiday!

-----Abernyte (all packed and ready for Sunny Scotland!)

This is good to hear on both counts.

But even if you revamp the point system please consider making poisoners/trappers less restrictive to play. There is no reason to leave them as a dumb griefer paths that can't even do that well, or depend so hard on plant and a player's low intelligence/common sense to use the simplest methods or making the first useful traps such a ridiculously high level. Seeing the list of edges that came in, they are only part of the solution. Move some skills to lower level, swap them in places, make some skills generic thief skills again (shield block, quite possibly knife) and all in all allow more hybrids and less one-full-path-and-a-couple-bonus-skills.

This was done with rangers quite successfully. It can be done again and still regain some measure of their dual-backstab-bind appeal as well as an entirely new flavor without making cheap-shot the be-all end-all of murderous rogues. ;P

Edges are part of the solution for this, they don't have to be the only solution/compromise.

Thank you! I look forward to it going in.

I loved carrion fields growing up....hitting 27 this year. I can't invest as much time as I once did, and things I read on the Forum's both draw me back and push me away.

I was never a great player, heck I'd even say I was average...
But I have played for over 12 years, and I think I'm finally done.
Flame away and all that stuff, I'll check back in a Month.

Bye Maple

P.s. Remember the good ole days when we started at 40 and it was a free for all with Noobs?