1. First of all their pretty much the most expensive class to train and use even without the decaying vials the costs are astronomical and yet it's even worse because you have to keep making vials over and over when the old ones fade away. You could just carry the ingredients and concoct when you need but forget about doing that in the middle of being attacked and expect to miss any opportunity you might have hade to use it whil you where busy brewing.

2. Until you get grenade (I'm assuming that grenade makes it actually viable) Emetic poison is pretty much useless against PCs and NPCs alike. the best you can do is poison something and drop or plant it on them hoping that they'll eat/drink/wear it and that they don't run off too fast/into the wilderness before that happens.

3. Knock-out while being the most useful poison is prone to the fact that even mastered inhaled poison is pretty unreliable. might as well just get blackjack and try to get what your doing done in that hour.

4. Psychological poison sounds good but after testing it, it's hardly disorienting at all with it only misdirecting you a fraction of the time (half of which is just into walls).

5. Fear poison another poison that sounds good in theory but put quite simply if your afraid, why would you be attacking. sure it's nice that they flee whenever you hit them but short of a ####ty mage your gonna be half dead by the time you get that hit in and then they can just return to get the job done. Even if you to make it so they couldn't attack they could just sit there and if the thief takes the initiative they're get their chance again to pound on them.

6. Finally mind control poison has pretty much the same problem as fear poison, sure you can control them, but only once per hour and they can still do whatever they want, aka you poison them and try to stick around to suggest and they just go ahead and kill you, or run away.

Now I'm sure there will be plenty of people that will say their plenty playable and all which I'm not saying their completely unplayable but but that they could be much more fun without being overpowered even if you fixed all of these things they still wouldn't be the top dog by any means even for people attacking thieves it would give an added challenge instead of just seeing a thief and knowing for certain they'll get owned. A warrior, or conjurer, or shapeshifter or antipaladin, or assassin, or ranger all on seeing a poisoner thief right now can pretty much be guaranteed victory even if they get hit by every single poison the thief has, which even if I was the attacker sounds altogether boring. On the other hand being turned away because I'm too afraid to chase after them, or because my vision/sense of direction is so bad that It's like I'm actually in a maze and even when I do catch up to the thief they look like a pink elephant rather then a thief, or becuase they managed to get off a lucky inhaled poison and managed to get mind control into my system, All of these sound more entertaining then what it's like now. Even with that chance of these thieves would hardly be that dangerous because howmany hits would a thief truly get on them? and how many of those would actually manage to transfer poison? Not many.

I would say remove the restrictions on what poisons can be used how, remove the decay from vials, make it so people affected by fear poison can't attack, increase the effects of neurological poison, and either take away the lag on suggest or make it so a mind controled victim can't attack or move and after all that you'd have a wild card class that would be fun to play whil still by no means be the top of the food chain. Even so I realize that's alot to ask and I's pretty much be happy with even half of them.

PS I know I made another thread before but it was getting a bit spread out with scattered thoughts and ideas, thus the clean slate.

You know what I actually think might be interesting is if there was a limit to the number of things you can pry off a corpse, like maybe two or three, that way people would have to actually think about what they want/need rather then grabbing everything, as well for the victim they'd likely lose some of their most powerful stuff but they wouldn't have to worry about the tedium of finding everything again.

Oops posted to wrong place somehow...

...they still both suck in my opinion (trappers and poisoners). Sebeok/Cyradia and the rest who came up with their ideas will tell you how awesome they are but in practical sense you have better luck with an assassin if it takes that much preparation to get a kill. You can spend your entire time online trying to get one single kill which more than likely won't work - if you're that sadistic, go for it.

Sure you can screw with villagers (emetic demon-headed pendants or multiple knockout traps in a row)....sure you can do some RP stuff (suggest dance bitch!)...and sure you can annoy people (still think primordial vengeance is worse than any poison/trap)....

But when the majority of your abilities are under-powered, over-costing, and require massive gathering and exploring from about the worst exploring/gathering class in the game....no thanks.

Sorry, but level 60 trap items that do DEMOLISHES with a 3-4 hour immolate and can't be stacked...it's just not worth it. Any high killing poisoner or trapper in the hero range (a general problem with almost all thieves) hasn't existed in a long time, especially after you couldn't suggest people to drink PWK potions or had something else going for them (tribunal town sitting with 40+ hour uncurable blinds or emperor powers).....which any thief could do a lot better.

You know I don't really get why at level 42 Thieves are pretty much done. Kind of makes me not even want to bother leveling anymore.

I tried a poisoner, and it takes patience. Similar, I experimented a lot with a poisoner in game, and learned first hand that there are tons of creative ways to take down any class in the game.

The player who likes a poisoner or a trapper will be the kind that sees a tall ceiling to his potential depending on what he can find and how clever he is. A few folks already spelled out some strategies.

A successful poisoner will know about lots of different bad foods, cursed weapons, and other things all over thera he can Suggest a target to wear.

Push and thief waylay can help you get suggests off. You can jack a person, then while they are sleeping apply inhaled. yep. Think of what you could do with that!

Powerful neuro poison can cause blindness. And forget. Depending on the concoction these will flake in periodically or potentially stick around.

That said, poisoning is still hard. It takes timing, hit points (don't gear for damage) and yes luck. But what other class can get an AP to wield a cursed level 5 dagger instead of his unholy blessed axe?

That said, I vouch that poison skills are too expensive. If you go all poisoning I think it costs around 60 points. Granted, poisoners get 17 skills, way more than other paths, but still hard to work with.

I looked into a poisoner adding the basics: plant, scrolls and knife, That's 81 points. You got 19 left to get creative with. Maybe blackjack and shield block. Maybe push and thief waylay and cheap shot. Bleah, not a lot of room for creativity in the build.

I lump trappers and poisoners in the same boat.

I know where to get ingredients, but I also have a fair idea that it would be a pain to collect them because thief melee is terrible, and they know comparatively few weapons so they get tooled even worse.

Why would I want to play a horribly underpowered class that needs to spend ages prepping just to be competitive in PK?

I'd rather play a binder that has their skillset available without the drudgery.

It's very telling that to my knowledge not a single IMM has recently played a trapper or a poisoner. I think it's because they just aren't very much fun.

>It's very telling that to my knowledge not a single IMM has
>recently played a trapper or a poisoner.

It's dangerous or stupid (your choice!) to draw conclusions from something you have a very incomplete knowledge of.

I mean, to my knowledge no murders have ever been committed, because no one I know has been murdered.

>It's very telling that to my knowledge not a single IMM has
>recently played a trapper or a poisoner. I think it's because
>they just aren't very much fun.

Maybe it wasn't super recent, but I played a poisoner and I had an absolute blast. And I played a trapper briefly a while back to work some of the bugs out and I enjoyed it as well.

Poisoners can be quite effective if you set up the situation and get a little luck.

**1. First of all their pretty much the most expensive class to train and use even without the decaying vials the costs are astronomical and yet it's even worse because you have to keep making vials over and over when the old ones fade away. You could just carry the ingredients and concoct when you need but forget about doing that in the middle of being attacked and expect to miss any opportunity you might have hade to use it whil you where busy brewing.**

a.)You don't need all poisons all the time.
b.)You don't have to buy all your ingredients.
c.)You are a thief, you should have a lot of control over when your in the middle of being attacked
d.) fermalgahyde extends the shelf life of poisons, use it if your that concerned.
e.)Your skill at concoct will make you concoct a lot faster as its near perfected

**2. Until you get grenade (I'm assuming that grenade makes it actually viable) Emetic poison is pretty much useless against PCs and NPCs alike. the best you can do is poison something and drop or plant it on them hoping that they'll eat/drink/wear it and that they don't run off too fast/into the wilderness before that happens.**

a.) try using mind control to get emetic on them if thats what you want to do (contact poison preferably on a piece of nasty nasty gear)
b.) You would be surprised at how effective neuro poison can be at making running at stopping people from running into the wilderness... sometimes

**3. Knock-out while being the most useful poison is prone to the fact that even mastered inhaled poison is pretty unreliable. might as well just get blackjack and try to get what your doing done in that hour.**

a.) combining blackjack with poison path is a very very legit tactic
b.) avoid trying to inhale poison races that are resist poison it makes a big difference.


**4. Psychological poison sounds good but after testing it, it's hardly disorienting at all with it only misdirecting you a fraction of the time (half of which is just into walls).**

a.) It also can drop your moves and a variety of other things, try combining it with fear so they can't control where they walk and they constantly wimpy and throw blindness on to make their life real hell and disorienting.


**5. Fear poison another poison that sounds good in theory but put quite simply if your afraid, why would you be attacking. sure it's nice that they flee whenever you hit them but short of a ####ty mage your gonna be half dead by the time you get that hit in and then they can just return to get the job done. Even if you to make it so they couldn't attack they could just sit there and if the thief takes the initiative they're get their chance again to pound on them.**

a.)try combining knife or grenade with fear poison as you get free openers and they don't get a chance to hit you back as they flee.
b.) fear poison is also great for staying alive as it makes it very hard for them to re-engage you.


**6. Finally mind control poison has pretty much the same problem as fear poison, sure you can control them, but only once per hour and they can still do whatever they want, aka you poison them and try to stick around to suggest and they just go ahead and kill you, or run away.**

a.) Mind control is the best skill you get bar none it opens up soo many tactical choices that its kind of scary. Think of gear that you can make them wear to foobar them or things to make them eat/drink to foobar them. an old tactic was to make them eat fillets so they would hold person themselves or backbones to damn themselves. shrug go get the bad periapt and make them wear it to poison and plague them in one shot the list goes on and on and on.

poisoners are very very viable but they are not a cruise control class, be ready to try and mix in unique tactics to your fighting and you will go far. try to be a jack poison trip monkey and your mileage will not likely go as far. Remember as someone with hide you have a lot of control over when your involved in fights, use that to your advantage.

>a.)You don't need all poisons all the time.
>b.)You don't have to buy all your ingredients.
>c.)You are a thief, you should have a lot of control over when
>your in the middle of being attacked
>d.) fermalgahyde extends the shelf life of poisons, use it if
>your that concerned.
>e.)Your skill at concoct will make you concoct a lot faster as
>its near perfected

Knew B it's still time consuming to gather and in the case of some of the higher poisons hard to come by, the amount of time it would take to gather the amount of poison you'd need to actually get a good deal of skill advancement would likely be astronomical. C is easier said then done especially at the higher levels, at first you just have to deal with assassins, svirfs, and duergs but later on conjurers, shapeshifters are added to the mix, not to mention rangers if you need to go into the wilderness to gather ingredients. D I'll admit I did not know and is nice to know but unless there is a place to get it outside of buying it would make it even more expensive then it already is. E I knew that but it still would be much better, not to mention much more realistic to be able to make the poison far in advance.

>a.) try using mind control to get emetic on them if thats what
>you want to do (contact poison preferably on a piece of nasty
>nasty gear)
>b.) You would be surprised at how effective neuro poison can
>be at making running at stopping people from running into the
>wilderness... sometimes

I'll address the mind control part farther down but as for B your going to have to reword because I'm stumped on the point your trying to get across.

>a.) It also can drop your moves and a variety of other things,
>try combining it with fear so they can't control where they
>walk and they constantly wimpy and throw blindness on to make
>their life real hell and disorienting.

Besides dirt I don't see how you'd blind them and fear doesn't effect where they can walk at except if you managed to get at them before they get at you.

>a.)try combining knife or grenade with fear poison as you get
>free openers and they don't get a chance to hit you back as
>they flee.
>b.) fear poison is also great for staying alive as it makes it
>very hard for them to re-engage you.

A I'll concede though the chances of surviving to the point where you actually managed to poison them isn't very high. B the thing about fear poison is that it doesn't keep them from re-engaging at all by the time you hit them and they flee they'd have gotten 3-4 hits in at the least.

>a.) Mind control is the best skill you get bar none it opens
>up soo many tactical choices that its kind of scary. Think of
>gear that you can make them wear to foobar them or things to
>make them eat/drink to foobar them. an old tactic was to make
>them eat fillets so they would hold person themselves or
>backbones to damn themselves. shrug go get the bad periapt
>and make them wear it to poison and plague them in one shot
>the list goes on and on and on.

The problem is that the entire time that your trying to give them it and have them wear it (which suggest seems to fail around 50% of the time) they can just attack or flee very easily and there is nothing you can do to stop them.

>poisoners are very very viable but they are not a cruise
>control class, be ready to try and mix in unique tactics to
>your fighting and you will go far. try to be a jack poison
>trip monkey and your mileage will not likely go as far.
>Remember as someone with hide you have a lot of control over
>when your involved in fights, use that to your advantage.

To be blunt I haven't been trying to be a jack poison trip monkey as you put it. I've just been trying to survive and in that regard poisons are extremely useless

in the end I realize that there is usually a juggling between playability and realistic gameplay but in the case of poisoners it seems like it's gotten away from both of these. There is no way that any so called poisoner would be worth his salt without being able to use something like emetic on a blade. there is no way that a poisoner would use a so called neurological poison that has the potency of a just being buzzed on alcohol. and there is no way that given that their brain should be locked into flight mode that someone should be able to turn and fight unless they've been backed into a corner and flight is no longer an option.