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Forum Name Santa Zulg 2010
Topic subjectStun (+maybe choke)
Topic URLhttps://forums.carrionfields.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=70&topic_id=57
57, Stun (+maybe choke)
Posted by Calion on Wed 31-Dec-69 07:00 PM
I don't actually have any recent personal experience on hth specs, so I might be slightly misinformed on their mechanics, but I gather this is how stun works now: at some point you "standardized" knock-out timers to physical sleep protection and at the same decided to apply it to stun too. With ironhands and stun basically being the main skills in hth (i.e. it's mostly a back-up spec, you get to parry barehanded but at the price of losing all weapon bonuses: +hit/dam, higher avg, vuln exploits, etc.) I think the spec has been weakened too much by this, so much that having a single chance to stun a given opponent (in what, every 5 ticks?) makes the spec choice, well, if not flat out underpowered at least completely underwhelming when compared to any other spec skill set.

It seemed nicely balanced before, you had a reasonably good chance to stun succesfully even with a weaker race hth spec (it seems slightly str based), but on the other hand you could've been doing something else during those 2 rounds. Stun is also different from blackjack, strangle and the like in that you lack the surprise element (hide) of the stealth classes and have to be fighting to even try it.

Now it's also compounded by the fact that you don't even know that after the first miss it simply will not land (I remember a recent-ish log where someone tried to stun like 4-5 times in a row before dying horribly because there was no message that the opponent was now -somehow- "protected"). At the very least you should add an echo for this, and (greatly) increase it's chance of landing if it can only be attempted once every so many hours...

However, my wish to Santa Zulg is to make stun exempt from physical sleep protection altogether. Also, the above goes for choke too, so I would apply this to it as well (you can initiate with choke, but it's balanced by its shorter duration and smaller chance of landing).

Anyways, Merry Xmas to Santa Zulg and all the other Santa's (Dark) Elves in immland!

P.S. I thought about reposting my idea from last year's SZ as I never saw it unqueued, but I imagine you probably got sidetracked due to the server wipe. Do you actually have a back log of stuff to sort through from last year?
58, Santa Zulg brings you coal
Posted by Zulghinlour on Wed 31-Dec-69 07:00 PM
>I don't actually have any recent personal experience on hth
>specs, so I might be slightly misinformed on their mechanics,

Sadly you are...and thus you get coal.

>Now it's also compounded by the fact that you don't even know
>that after the first miss it simply will not land (I remember
>a recent-ish log where someone tried to stun like 4-5 times in
>a row before dying horribly because there was no message that
>the opponent was now -somehow- "protected"). At the very least
>you should add an echo for this, and (greatly) increase it's
>chance of landing if it can only be attempted once every so
>many hours...

There is an echo for this. Also the only time you get the physical sleep protection is if you are successfully stunned (see that part about being misinformed).

>P.S. I thought about reposting my idea from last year's SZ as
>I never saw it unqueued, but I imagine you probably got
>sidetracked due to the server wipe. Do you actually have a
>back log of stuff to sort through from last year?

I thought I took care of everything from last year. The only one that was left in the queue from then was Isildur's freeze equipment on heroimm'ing, which I published this year.
59, Oh, good to know, I can go back to musing...
Posted by Calion on Wed 31-Dec-69 07:00 PM
...on that hth spec I hope to find the time to play some day!