No, really. I'd like to see the stoneshatter spell removed from mobs. Highly annoying. Sort of like when dragons used to burn gear. Really, really annoying.

Or you have to constantly remove stone items--which is as equally gay as mobs having stoneshatter in the first place.

Stoneshattering mobs have a significant impact on shifters. I can see removing the eq destruction aspect of it, but the damage-if-stoneskinned aspect should remain.

Stoneshatter is annoying, but you can just.. remove the stone.

Now dent.. I do wish mobs didn't dent. At least not mundane random guard #129837123786. Its not so bad when its Sauron Lord of the Mace of your favorite crown crumbling, makes killing him all the sweeter.

... PAINFUL if you have dentable gear... As Arrna me and my group lost like 80% of our gear going through 1/10 of one of those areas. And we were raping the mobs. Just couldn't disarm quickly enough when we faced a 3-6 patrol group...

I'm not really in favor of this.

I'm not really for or against it, but in what way is stoneshatter different from eq burning (which was removed not too long ago) that would make you want to keep stoneshatter but do away with eq burning?

I agree that "stoneshatter is annoying" may not be a strong enough argument unto itself to justify its removal. But I always thought the reason eq burning was removed was to encourage people to explore the new dragon lairs; the same argument could be used for stoneshatter.

And I don't see what you can't deal with the consequences of that.

It is also one of the perks of vokers.

... The past year I've met at least 4 different hero invokers that each time they've faced me just spammed stoneshatter until they get the desired gear to explode, or realize that I ain't wearing it before they word out... And that sucks.

BUT, using it as a tactical weapon (not as a one-trick pony thing) is a perk for invokers, and should be. The few hours Arrna had a certain piece of gear she REALLY was on her toes when invokers were about. And with the certain restrictions of that item made it a real tactical choice when to wear and not to wear it. (Add in a thief with that invoker...) I had that piece of gear stolen from me no less than 3 times due to removing it to save it from stoneshatter.

So it's both a good element of tactical diversity and it has the potential for griefing bastards.

Just as dent is for mace specs. (Denting those strange bracers, or that heavy piece of gear that give much -AC for the gates of the forge warrior you're facing.)

It's a two-edged sword... If the griefing aspect could be removed form both and yet keep the tactical diversity... That would be great! :D

~

Instead of destroying gear it renders the gear useless (functions as an empty slot) but unremovable (a-la web) for a moderate amount of time long time (15-30 ticks). And giving a +ac penalty (proportional to size of thing dented).

This removes the griefing aspect of being able to trash someone's gear, while remaining somewhat useful in rare circumstances. It'll still be annoying (who wants to spend 20 minutes unable to wear half a suit of armor) but not too horrible.

I honestly can't see a use for that version. It's almost always easy to avoid your enemies for that long if you want to. You'd probably have to make half of someone's gear useless for that long with each use of the skill for it to be useful, not one piece.

And targettable (maybe?).

There are clear items that people want to dent - strange bracers, +str/+dex items are clear favorites. With a mace spec, boneshatter = king.

You could make it have extra effects maybe, above and beyond nuking the armor's stats. Imagine having your leg coated in platemail, then that platemail getting crushed like an egg crate. Its probably going to mess up your mobility a little.

Of course, then it just becomes a little mini-boneshatter or mini-hack. Which doesn't have much flare.

>I honestly can't see a use for that version. It's almost
>always easy to avoid your enemies for that long if you want
>to. You'd probably have to make half of someone's gear
>useless for that long with each use of the skill for it to be
>useful, not one piece.

My suggestion made dent intentionally weak to match how weak it is now. Mace is a good spec, and dent is a crappy skill, so boosting dent to make it more useful didn't seem right. Really the state of dent as it is doesn't bother me enough think it needs changing.

That said, I think my version is comparable. With regular dent you'll be lucky to hit something that takes 15-30 ticks to replace and they can easily replace it with *something* else. It's a valid criticism to say that my version removes dent's main use, which is to keep uber-geared liches off my back because killing me isn't worth the risk of having an elite set messed with.

But in a nutshell, the tradeoff is that dent would lose some utility against people wearing mostly-uber gear (the one purpose it has now, seemingly), and gain some unique tactical utility against anyone who cares about ac (not many people).

Finally, surely you're not serious that it would need to do half to be fair. Half of someone's gear is a big, big maladiction. That's going to be 100hp, 10str, lots of saves. And it essentially targets whatever they value most (by virtue of the fact that they chose to wear it). If you boneshatter and then nullify half someone's gear, that seems quite strong. I'm sure you were being hyperbolic, but don't ignore that gear mashing represents a non-negligible maladiction even for just a couple pieces.

What do you see as dent's role now?

You probably used stoneskin preps.
You were fairly gear orientated, and hard to kill. So it's one of the few deterrents.

I just never wear stone/gem gear. Problem solved.

They removed that while the blue dragon was still offering his skin to goodies.

I personally have nothing against eq destroying mobs. Too many people on this game are eq dependent for my tastes.