Since previous thread has been locked for an obscure reason,
i decided to comment in a new thread.

I assume the perfection of skills is a very psychologic matter.

Let us take for example, a thief with the blackjack skill.

In many cases, for a weaker race thief, a failed blackjack will lead
to a painfull moment of lag. After encountering this situation, the
first thing which comes in mind is making sure the the blackjack attempt has the maximum chance of succeeding.

Solution: Perfecting the skill. (even tho there are other factors)

This will give the (perhaps wrong) idea to a player that this solution
applies to every skill. Perfect knife ? less chance to miss. Perfect
steal ? less chance you get into trouble. perfect cheapshot ? .. , by now you should get my point how a certain majority thinks.

I do understand that with certain experience the stats and percentage
does not count anymore (you Imms tried to make that clear), but i am sure that for new players (and maybe veterans) it gives (perhaps a fake) sense of security.

Now, what i wish to get as feedback is: Is it worth taking (depending of race) quite a few hours off to perfect the majority of skills ?

The questions "In what way is it beneficial ?" and "Is it worth the time" comes to mind.

Let us hear your opinion to this.

>Now, what i wish to get as feedback is: Is it worth taking
> depending of race) quite a few hours off to perfect the
>majority of skills ?

Depends on the skill, really, and how efficient you are at practicing it.

Also, if you're sufficiently diligent while ranking you can usually perfect some things that way. Good example: kot and kans for assassins. If you're not going to rank sit, there's little reason to practice them since they perfect themselves through normal ranking.

As a newb, you are probably going to die even with all skills at 100%. Also, you stand a good chance of dying whilst you "spam in the mists" or whatever you do to perfect your skills.

So, let's say that you do perfect all your skills and don't die in the process. This takes, say, 5 hours for all the skills you want to perfect.

That's five hours you could have been using to get to know the layout of the entire past perfectly (subject to a few exceptions), knowing that no one in your pk range is going to look for you in areas like the battlefield and Aridhol, because you are lvl 18, say. All you need is a few teleport potions and a recall potion and you are unlikely to get pk'd whilst doing it.

That five hours will probably save your ass more than the 100% skills. Not only that, but when you delete your character, you will retain the benefit from that 5 hours. However, if you just spammed skills for 5 hours the benefit is lost.

The only way spamming could really be worth it is if your survivability increases so much that you have extra time to do stuff like explore as a result. However, my impression is that the explorers are not the skill spammers.

The thing about many players is thinking that by perfecting their defenses, or 'special' skills, they will stand out more, be more well-known, survive better (which it does to a certain extend).

My point is this :
When you have a group of three with a bard or necro who sleeps you, you ain't going nowhere for quite some time. Knowing your area, your limitations, your enemies, your preparations like potions, pills, etc. can greatly improved your survival rate. It's not only about defenses and special skills.

And all this while, the IMM staff have been throwing up ideas and suggestions with many updates to the game against perfecting skills and ganging. Sleep with maledictions awakening you (it used to be sleep forever. Imagine drow necro. Never knew who killed you!), 'anti-gang' codes, legacies, etc all greatly improve your chance of survival. There is no need to focus on the numbers. Just enjoy your play here.

I agree there will be people who will still want to see numbers. That's all right with me. We are all IT-savvy. We like to see 1s and 0s. However, when it comes to crunching it with practices, it defeats the whole purpose of playing here.

I agree and I don't agree.

No, having lots of 100s won't make you a powerhouse. Nor is it even remotely as important as such things as knowing how each class works, how areas are laid out, understancing the nuances of certain skills, etc.

But it *does* make a difference. I can remember at least one PK encounter where I escaped with about 20 hp. It's likely that if I hadn't perfected defenses, hand to hand, and unarmed defense that I would have been killed.

You just have to decide how much the skill percentages are worth it to you. For some skills, all practicing does is shift the point of perfection somewhat earlier in a character's life. Defenses for tank-ish characters are a perfect example. In most cases they'll be perfected by the time you hero even if you don't bother to spend any extra time on them. Perfecting them early is only really useful if you plan to level-sit.

For other characters and skills, though, this is most certainly *not* the case. Consider defenses for non-tank characters. An invoker or transmuter will have a much harder time mastering parry if they don't do it early. So there's added incentive for them to work on it as early as possible.

Some skills almost *have* to be intentionally practiced since they're of very little use while ranking. Examples: trip, disarm.

Anyway, back to the main point: just decide what those percentage points are "worth" to you. If you figure out a really clever way to practice a particular skill, maybe that skill is now "worth" your time to perfect. If some other skill gets tinkered with so that it becomes much harder to learn, maybe that skill is no longer worth your time. Etc.

When necro's have to only land 1 spell to wreck you it's kinda lame to be sitting there as a warrior failing 10 dirt kicks in a row.

Perfected skills are good.
Perfected skills don't prevent you exploring.
Perfected skills don't prevent you from knowing preps.
Perfected skills don't prevent you from rp'ing.

Gang bangs still exist, ass raping powers still exist. I'll maximise my chances against that thanks. That way there's less variables then when it comes to understand how things work.

You have to understand that lowbie killing means squat really, so we're more talking about ranks 30+. At level 15 you can two round people with straight 75% across the boards, or you can die in two rounds with all 100's, for comparitive purposes you have to assume midrank or higher to really be able to judge things. At rank 30, if you're failing a dirt kicking on a necro, its probably because he's got 6 ranks on you or earthshield as opposed to you having dirt kick at 90 instead of 100. I think the immortal's main point isn't that having a 100% in something is better than having 90%, I think their point is that all in all considered your pk pattern isn't being controlled by your skill percentages but rather the massive amount of skill factor variables. I can have 100% in parry but if I wield an axe/whip/flail against a sanc'd paladin chances are they will kick my butt if not for the fact that I'll take more damage from their two hits a round then they will take from my 4 hits a round.

Its like this, if you knew swiftness would aid you dodge lets say 10% better, would you spend 5 hours getting swiftness potions or would you simply find other ways to reduce the amount of damage you're taking? Some of us take the five hours of practicing and instead pump it into 5 hours of figuring out better ways that will work with every character we have instead of just the one we're on at the moment.

>At rank 30, if you're failing a dirt
>kicking on a necro, its probably because he's got 6 ranks on
>you or earthshield as opposed to you having dirt kick at 90
>instead of 100.

His 6 ranks are meaningless, glad to see you didn't waste your 5 hours learning about game dynamics. Necromancers with earthshield are highly rare and dirt kicks is a notoriously fickle skill at the best of times.
Take 2 enemies fighting, if both are clones of me, both with same gear and same preps, same everything, the one with more reliable skills will win. I'm sorry but even the best guys in the game die horrible deaths when they try and pull things off only for them to fail miserably whilst their enemy is chopping through all their own moves.

>I can have 100%
>in parry but if I wield an axe/whip/flail against a sanc'd
>paladin chances are they will kick my butt if not for the fact
>that I'll take more damage from their two hits a round then
>they will take from my 4 hits a round.

Presumptous and incorrect in my view and not to mention why oh why does having 100% in skills mean you become a tactical retard?
Why is it unfeasible that you can have 100% in skills AND be of sound tactical mind?
ie. I didn't see dwoggurd doing so well with his 12% h2h and 16% sword skill.

>Its like this, if you knew swiftness would aid you dodge lets
>say 10% better, would you spend 5 hours getting swiftness
>potions or would you simply find other ways to reduce the
>amount of damage you're taking? Some of us take the five hours
>of practicing and instead pump it into 5 hours of figuring out
>better ways that will work with every character we have
>instead of just the one we're on at the moment.

Some of us have been playing for at least 6 years and thus spent 10 hours doing both... or spent the 5 hours practicing first so that they had a more successful time in the next 5.
And why do you compare a limited duration prep vs exploring, surely the whole point of exploration is to find those little extras like preps - not permanent skill additions.

Personally the moves towards making warriors worse doesn't encourage me not to learn the skills, it encourages me more not to play the class/game. Unpracticed warriors vs unpracticed mages become an ugly fight - there's a reason why people started to learn their skills - otherwise they'd leave them at 1%.

Hehehe. I never learned about game dynamics but you haven't figured out that dirt kick is level based? I wasn't stating that you would always choose the poorest tactics but rather that the percentages aren't going to save you. If you haven't figured out that dirt kick is level based I wouldn't put choosing a poorly parrying weapon beneath you.

On a similar note why do you assume not practicing means leaving it at 1% or 16%? Even 75% isn't what I'm talking about, through natural progression your relevant skills should be in their 90's and the spam is only required to get them there earlier or to gain a few percentage. A few percentage gains don't make or break fights in most skills.

In addition, I recently played a fighting class. Through tanking through the early ranks I had 100% parry, 100% in two more skills which are made difficult to train, 98% in another and my attack %'s were in their 90s and perfected. My other relevant non-combat skills, two were perfected, fast healing and meditation were perfected and in the 90's respectively. This is without stopping for one minute to spam ####, without sitting in sands of sorrow, virgin forest, prosimy or barovia mists, etc. I didn't spam one, they just went up by naturally ranking and that's with 23 pks while they were less then 80 and 90%. My non-wielded weapons were in the 80's from the ranking code as well. My level marks on perfecting those things were higher then 15, but its not like it hampered pk'ing at all.

I'm just not seeing where the gripe is about? Likewise, why is it so hard to understand why we think you're wasting your time when we can look at our practice lists and boggle at the pointlessness of your endeavors?

>Hehehe. I never learned about game dynamics but you haven't
>figured out that dirt kick is level based? I wasn't stating
>that you would always choose the poorest tactics but rather
>that the percentages aren't going to save you. If you haven't
>figured out that dirt kick is level based I wouldn't put
>choosing a poorly parrying weapon beneath you.

A: players aren't mobs, therefor dirt kick is not level based. (I even bothered to get someone elses words since you'd ignore me Mr Nepenthe says... )

B: You may not have noticed but Paladins don't know how to use flail or axe

blah blah "beneath you" blah blah *smug look* etc.

A) I don't buy Nepenthe's argument on everything. He also said the only spell that factors level is PWK meanwhile the entire save system is based on level.

B) If I hit you twice with a sword and you're taking MASSACRES and you hit me four times for injures I'm still winning the fight, quoteth a paladin.

I'll add this :

- If you're failing dirt kick constantly, its not because you have it at 90 instead of 100. You will never fail dirt kick ten times in a row if you use dirt kick ever, your point is still moot because you're assuming that having 10% less in a skill causes you to constantly fail when in reality thats something you are making up in your head.

>A) I don't buy Nepenthe's argument on everything. He also
>said the only spell that factors level is PWK meanwhile the
>entire save system is based on level.

While i don't buy everything the wee guy says, that's blatant misrepresentation:
5) Saving throws. This is the big one, mattering for some spells, communes, and songs. Still, this is far from insurmountable and I'd be willing to bet it doesn't make as big a difference as you'd think.

6) PWK. Level matters quite a bit, but this is one spell. On the other hand, it is (almost) never easier to land a killing power word than it is to land sleep.


>B) If I hit you twice with a sword and you're taking MASSACRES
>and you hit me four times for injures I'm still winning the
>fight, quoteth a paladin.

Swords are easy to parry, and i fail to comprehend why you think that using a weapon that the paladin knows equally well to you will win you the fight in straight up damage doing.

If the damage difference is MASSACRES to injures i'd be bailing, he's obviously resisted up the wazoo, i'm evil or he's geared to his toes for his level

>I'll add this :
>
>- If you're failing dirt kick constantly, its not because you
>have it at 90 instead of 100. You will never fail dirt kick
>ten times in a row if you use dirt kick ever, your point is
>still moot because you're assuming that having 10% less in a
>skill causes you to constantly fail when in reality thats
>something you are making up in your head.

No, my point is that dirt kick is fickle as hell at the best of times (and appears dex related) and would miss all the time, the improved skill gives you a higher chance of it landing than you otherwise would. (of course in most situations if you stick around for 10 attempts you're nailed)

Of course i also still remember fighting D_X's arial warrior in the Galadon bar @rank 20'ish. I'd perfected everything, he'd perfected nothing but all his skills worked straight off the bat and nailed me while mine all failed miserably.

>Take 2 enemies fighting, if both are clones of me, both with
>same gear and same preps, same everything, the one with more
>reliable skills will win.

In a duel, yes. But in practice, it will probably be whichever clone of you gets the jump on the other clone of you. Down to situation, more than defenses.

>Presumptous and incorrect in my view and not to mention why oh
>why does having 100% in skills mean you become a tactical
>retard?

Agree that it doesn't. However, if you NEED those 100% skills in order to have a fighting chance in the mud, then you are probably tactically naive. If you are a newb, then 100% skills probably shouldn't be your top priority.

>Why is it unfeasible that you can have 100% in skills AND be
>of sound tactical mind?
>ie. I didn't see dwoggurd doing so well with his 12% h2h and
>16% sword skill.
>

I like Dwoggurd 'cos he saved my thief's ass once, but he prepped more than any warrior I can remember, with useful stuff like spiderhands and haste. One skill that I bet he did well out of spending time on was lore, but he might have done that while ranking.

>Some of us have been playing for at least 6 years and thus
>spent 10 hours doing both... or spent the 5 hours practicing
>first so that they had a more successful time in the next 5.
>And why do you compare a limited duration prep vs exploring,
>surely the whole point of exploration is to find those little
>extras like preps - not permanent skill additions.
>

I think that finding preps is only part of the reason for exploring. Finding routes between areas that others don't use, rooms where "where" won't find you (I'm not too hot on that and it has got me killed before), walls you can pass through, and just general familiarity with areas makes a big difference. If you get someone to chase you into an area they don't know well, you gain a big advantage in most match-ups.

>Personally the moves towards making warriors worse doesn't
>encourage me not to learn the skills, it encourages me more
>not to play the class/game. Unpracticed warriors vs
>unpracticed mages become an ugly fight - there's a reason why
>people started to learn their skills - otherwise they'd leave
>them at 1%.

I'm of the opposite opinion here. To me, warriors seem stronger now than before. Legacies plus toning down of shifters makes a huge difference.

>Presumptous and incorrect in my view and not to mention why oh
>why does having 100% in skills mean you become a tactical
>retard?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn't mean that.

On the other hand, historically, a lot (no, not all) of the players that were categorically obsessed with skill mastery were tactical retards. They'd simply get outplayed and then come and bitch to me about how broken the game must be because, damn it, they had 100% sword and that meant they couldn't lose!

A lot of the "skills aren't everything, jackass" immortal attitude you see (or have seen... I think the nutty skill mentality is a lot less prevalent than a few years back, honestly) is a backlash to a "skills are everything, jackasses" attitude we've had to endure from a certain subset of the playerbase.

Skills are not everything, but some skills do matter. I rarely practice any skills these days because I'm lazy and end up deleting anyway. I do fine sure, but I stick to the skills I learn through ranking, simple as that. I wont offhand if offhand is 69%, because frankly it fails often enough that I could as well pincer.

If I have low percentage in my weaponskill and have a low disarm, frankly I would not disarm. Easy as that, because it just wont work enough time to be satisfying. And it should be like this, but skills do matter.

If I play a warrior that perfects his weapons and the buff weapon spec skills(like flurry), I will be much more potent than if I havent. I wont make different prep choises and suddenly fail to find my way out of the past just because I practiced. A 100% flurry is so much more deadly than a 80ish flurry, that is just the way it is.

And most of the buff warrior chars have been practice monkeys, but then again you dont have to do it. But I belive it makes a quite a difference, especially for fragile races like arial sword specs.


Anyway, dont really know what I wanted to say. Was just bored I guess.

>A lot of the "skills aren't everything, jackass" immortal
>attitude you see (or have seen... I think the nutty skill
>mentality is a lot less prevalent than a few years back,
>honestly) is a backlash to a "skills are everything,
>jackasses" attitude we've had to endure from a certain subset
>of the playerbase.
>

Fair comment, I don't see the all the stuff you have incoming so i can't use that to reflect the comments i see back.
Vice versa, the only reason i post my pro-practicing comments are because i see the anti-praccing comments.

Its also plausible that you would've wimpied out a round earlier at 90 hp *shrug*. When its 20 hp you can't really say that its a matter of 100% over 93%, but you *can* say that you got friggin lucky. Thats not to say you wouldn't have gotten lucky otherwise, or that living then and dying a week later makes all that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.