Several balance issues:

The acid trap that blinds can deal no damage due to oozeshield, but still blind you despite the oozeshield. That seems like a bug.

Hero warriors boneshatter for -7/-7 on an invoker with Demi-Elemental Transcendence. Traps boneshatter for -11/-11. The impales of traps also seem to ignore mitigating effects such as Demi-Ele Transcendence, or Calcify, whereas warrior impales work fine. This also seems like a bug.

Neurological poison can last 50 hours. During those 50 hours, you occasionally get blinded for short durations, you move in random directions half the time you try to walk (thus forcing you to stay at the same spot for 50 hours) and you fail spellcasting about 40% of the time.

Mind control poison lasts 20 hours or so. During those 20 hours, you get 'forget' effect frequently for short durations, and fail spellcasting often. The spellcasting failure chance of neuro and MC poison stack, thus making it nearly futile to cast spells under the effects of both poisons.

Those effects are incredibly powerful - overpowered in the nuisance they cause to players (no-one likes wasting 30 minutes in real life because they got hit by neurological poison). But, they are completely nullified by a certain creature's blood.

This doesn't seem balanced either - to have an entire skill-set completely made useless by one effect. (On that note, the jade brooch of abjuration has a similar effect of rendering specific classes useless. Also Grinning Devil Shield for APs.)

Is it possible to reach a middle ground? We could have the blood not grant full immunity to poisoner poisons, just regular poisonous bite attacks and regular poisons. Perhaps it can reduce the chance/effect of the poisons.

At the same time, something needs to be done about the ridiculously long poisons, and how debilitating they are. They're not very fun to play against.

Other players who agree on this, please post replies stating so. Thanks!

Which stats are important for poisoner and/or trapper skills?

The thief class sucks. I hate them, and they make me log off out of frustration.

When I roll a thief, it's to grief people because I'm feeling anti-social.

Bad bad bad.

Thieves are all about arpee. If you are playing one as a griefer, you are playing it way wrong.

Quote "I secretly wish you would get raped or something. I feel like I lose IQ points everytime I look at it." Gaplemo

Probably you should get out of your head that trap affects and stat modifiers should look anything like similar warrior skills. The numbers for them aren't chosen with that in mind and I don't think they should be.

Overall, I don't think poisoner or trapper thieves are all that crazy powerful. It's very hard to name a PK-successful one of either.

One variable that's missing here is what ingredients are producing these poisons or traps. For all I know the dude(s) you're fighting feel like they just can't beat you any other way and pull out crazy poison ingredients from Hell to compete, in which case it wouldn't bother me if they were at that point able to make you run away. Certainly poisoner and trapper thieves aren't running all that roughshod over the tougher invokers in the game.

I'm inclined to take a look at durations, and I'm inclined to put in some better logging around what ingredients are being used in fights so I can get a better sense of the difficulty of managing these feats, but I can't say when I'll get to either.

>I'm inclined to take a look at durations, and I'm inclined to
>put in some better logging around what ingredients are being
>used in fights so I can get a better sense of the difficulty
>of managing these feats, but I can't say when I'll get to
>either.

Iit's not really about whether you beat the person or not, but how long you prevent them from playing the game. A 10 hour neurological/mind control poison will pretty much make you win any given encounter. The extra 30 ticks just makes you sit around having no fun.

It's true that the poisoner thief has to invest a lot of time to make this happen, but I don't think that matters really. I think it should be possible to spend a ton of time making other people die with greater certainty, but not to take away their ability to have fun for a longer period.

Personally, if I was looking at consistent 45 tick neuro, I'd rather it be twice as deadly and last half as long. Sitting out long incapacitating effects is just annoying.

See: "I'm inclined to take a look at durations"

I've tweaked how the durations on the weapon-delivered poisons is determined. This isn't strictly negative for poisoner thieves; durations on these could be really, really low (like near dirt kick) before in some cases and that shouldn't be the case anymore, either. I'm guessing durations will mostly be in the 5-10 tick range once this bit of code goes live.

I'll try to keep an eye on this; if it seems like the duration is still off (high or low) I'll tweak further.

I am very curious about the timing on this, and reasoning behind the change.

5-10 hours? I was getting 45 hour neuro poisons with the ingredients I was using consistently. Taking 40 hours off of that is a little excessive, how about reconsidering it to make it more like 15-20ish hours. 5-10 hours is way low, especially after seeing Flaaayin play to age death and it stay untouched, and now its basically nerfed through the floor. You can't do much with a 5 hour neuro, it should be re looked at to be at least 10+ hours, if not closer to 20. 5 hours of neuro makes it basically almost worthless now unless you are chasing in an immediate fight. It also would make it have the shortest timer of any posion there is, I know I get at least 15 hour mind control and fear poisons, no reason neuro should not match that timer.

I hope you reconsider the timers on it, because I basically feel like my character just got kicked in the balls.

when its 40 people won't even bother with you at all because of the annoying factor they experience when in all likelyhood you don't kill them.


If they are only annoyed for 10 minutes instead of 40 they will be more inclined to fight you, which means they are more likely to take risks, which means more opportunity for you to actually kill them.

10 hours still encompasses most pk engagements very easily

Its a total slap in the face. Its not even long enough to finish a raid under the poisons effects, which was the point of poisoners. Its less than half the duration of every single other poison I am able to apply. If you're going to make changes like this, than cut the quaggoth blood timer to 40 hours max from the 130 it is now. Because as a poisoner, It gay that they can sit for 2-3 RL hours immune to my poisons as it is, let alone when I finally do get one off, it wont last the duration of a damn raid. 5 ticks? Totally a terrible change.

5-10 ticks is almost insulting to poisoners for one of their clutch skills. I could see 12-15 ticks like the other poisons, but 5 ticks? Come on, thats pathetic. Please come to your senses and reevualate the timer on this to make it more appropriate. 45 ticks was way overboard, I agree. But 5 ticks is like 2 minutes, and thats just not right at all. Did it need adjusting? Yes. But you nuked it into the dirt and now its going to need readjusting to around the 15 tick mark like every other poison we have. I don't think thats an unreasonable stance.

I'm not really the kind of person to be persuaded by freaking out about something. Be especially careful that you don't accidentally talk me into making all the poisons 5-10 ticks.

5 ticks is something a poisoner probably won't see currently unless their fairly low level and using not particularly great ingredients. A hero's going to be more consistently around the 10 mark.

Nonetheless, I'll think about it.

And if I gave that impression, im sorry. But in the history of cf, there has been a history of overcompensating adjustments sometimes after something fairly overpowered is found, and it tends to hurt the player of that build sometimes. I do respect the hard work you all put in, and I love the #### out of this game.

That being said, considering it would be awesome. Its not a huge bump, but i think 10-15 ticks is fair on both sides, having fought poisoners and being that im playing one with some success now. It gives the poisoners some room to work, raid, and possibly chase the victim to their recall before it wears off just from the walk. Its like 5-7 minutes real life time, thats really not that bad to deal with a poison. Things like rot, power word decay, plague, crimson...they all have timers for a reason, to let the attacker work with it a bit. 5 hours is basically impossible to work with at hero levels. 10 is decent enough, but 15 I think would give any poisoner a fair shot at doing what he wants to do, without making it an unfun waiting situation for the victim.

Just something to think about, and this poisoner won't be my last character, when I roll my next one I will have to deal with poisoners too, and I still think between 10 and 15 is a fair duration Poisoners are pretty limited as it is, and the quaggoth really limits them more. Let em get a little love!

The less time it takes you to get your point across, the easier you make it for coders and the more likely they will sympathize with you.

Timing: I said about a month and a half ago (see above) that I was going to look at it when I had time. I've been finally making some progress on my CF coding list the last two weeks or so and yesterday I finally got to it.

Reason:

1) 40-50 ticks, IMHO, is too long.

2) I realized that I had been inadvertantly jacking up the durations on these poisons without meaning to, and once I understood that I wanted to correct for it.

When I first started tinkering with poisoner thieves, one of the common complaints by people who had played them that I thought was pretty valid was that the timers on the poisons/antidotes they concoct were too short -- you'd have to concoct and use the poison almost immediately or it'd evaporate. I think I also gave poisoners an edge to jack the poison vial's decay timer up even further if they wanted to.

It turns out, and I did not know until yesterday, that for some bizarre reason the affect duration on the weapon based poisons was directly proportional to how much decay time was left on the vial, so if you did concoct and use right away it'd be crazy long, and if you didn't it could be really short.

I didn't think that was good design and didn't like the implications of it, so it's now proportional to the strength of the poison instead. That will probably remain true through future tweaking.

40 to 50 ticks was to long. Way too long. Obsurdly.

5-10 ticks max? Thats just not really gonna cut it man.

10-15 ticks like basically every other maledict in the game/the rest of the poisons that can be applied? Perfect number. Its fair on both ends.

Not saying it didn't need adjusted, but I think you overdid it by putting it in the 5-10 tick range instead of the 10-15. They're not thugs man, they're poisoners. Give them a little room to work at least.

I kind of like the whole "fresh poison" = longer duration and "old poison" = shorter duration mechanic. It makes sense, and it rewards risk-taking.

I almost think there should be a compromise - the strength of the poison itself first determines the rough duration, and the "freshness" of the poison has a chance to add or take away from the duration as appropriate. An extremely fresh, strong poison might get you 20 ticks, and a stale, weak poison nets you 5ish.

At the same time - I think this opens up opportunities for adding some detail to the chemistry of the poisons being made. -Some- poisons might actually get stronger as they age, for example.

Then again, this sounds like a non-trivial thing to code.

Splntrd

Nice catch and fix.

Since this change drastically changes the way poisoners will be played, might I suggest a re-evaluation of the thief point cost in the poisoner path. 5-10 ticks will make the path a bit more utility than it already is and 63 points for a full path (more expensive than every other path) doesn't really seem worth it any more.

DAWWWW

Besides, wouldn't I have done it two weeks ago if that were the case?

nt

RUMORS ARE MY FRIEND

Seriously though, I don't think Nep could play a char to Age-death these days even if he wanted to

Plus, I PK'd Flaaayin. And we all know I could never PK Nepenthe (but I certainly tried the last time we battled a lot...my invoker vs his rager scout thief...fights ended up with me running like a scared twelve-year old).

Hah! I got old. People PK me all the time now.

You're right about one thing, though: I haven't taken a character to age death since Nepenthe. I just don't think I have the attention span for it anymore.

nt

nt

Quote "I secretly wish you would get raped or something. I feel like I lose IQ points everytime I look at it." Gaplemo

I like the long-term effects, and I don't like to play poisoners. I think that the longer the effects, the more feared poisoners can be - this offsets the aggravation and time it takes to gather ingredients. I find the poisoner to be one of those classes that make you want to avoid them.... even if you can kill them.

It's kind of like winning a fight and getting your nose broken in the process. You won, but you're going to get laughed at the next day.

Or perhaps our friend -1 hour insanity?

>I like the long-term effects, and I don't like to play
>poisoners. I think that the longer the effects, the more
>feared poisoners can be - this offsets the aggravation and
>time it takes to gather ingredients.

Why not just reduce the time and aggravation and have neither person be frustrated? Why is two people being aggravated a good idea? The game is supposed to be fun, remember?

Within reason, I think there's a strategic benefit to the game in having maledictions last well beyond kill time - within reason. Personally, I think an uncurable 45 hour neurological poison is not within reason, but unless I experience that (I haven't) or see a log of it (I haven't), I'm not convinced that this thief regularly drops 45-hour seriously-debilitating maledictions on people.

But as the hours start reducing towards something like 20, um yeah I think there's a game benefit to something like that. You're not just twiddling your fingers waiting to play again - you're resting out debilitating effects praying no one comes and finds you while you're in a weakened state. And if someone does find you, you're desperately trying to survive. I'm not saying this as a perma-battlerager or anything, in fact, I think something like this is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more deadly on something like an imperial.

I also think there's benefit to having stat-crippling maledictions last past death (so people can't loot you if you die and throw out a bunch of them).

So yeah, I don't think people have to go overboard and propose throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.

To me what you described isn't the aggravation part, it's interesting game mechanics for all the reasons you listed.

Tbe guy I replied to said that he likes the longer maladictions to offset the aggravation of getting ingredients. To me aggravation kicks in somewhere around 25-30 ticks. 20 ticks of debilitation is frustrating, but not unreasonable.

Basically, if I feel like I would rather suicide off the affect than wait it out, the effect is too long.

Have to basically jack off and wait for a fifty hour equivalent of halt person go off. Sorry, just saying how I feel.

Quote "I secretly wish you would get raped or something. I feel like I lose IQ points everytime I look at it." Gaplemo

So I really think most of this hullabaloo is because of one edge enhanced thief that uses high end ingredients. I don't think he should be the basis for any kind of change but I do have one complaint.

I managed to kill said thief with my rankin group. We were stuck waiting until after he unghosted to let the affects wear off and he was actually able to come at us again befor we were fully recovered from killing him.

Hence the ghost rule.

Their should be a duration cap on any affect to make the max possible the ghost timer - 3 ticks. This should also apply to plague a well as trap/poisons. I don't think anything else other than power word decay lasts that long and I think the power word could be one exception to the rule.

I'll note that this is not very constructive to the point of the thread. I'll also note that this is purely observation. I'll save further comments for the death thread of the thief in question.

1: The success ratio of poisoner/trapper or any combination of is pretty limited. In one breath, players are complaining about how successful thieves are for being able to cripple their enemies, but if he was out-meleeing warriors it would be another story entirely.

2: I played a shifter with no wands. Not once did I feel threatened by any poisoner thieves in game. I was actually able to use my skills to escape rather easily in fact.

3: I like the uniquenesses of the class path. I like the uniquenesses of specific items. It paints a nice red target on the back of those individuals, which in turns villainizes (is that even a word) or turns them into a unstoppable hero, making people gun for them.

4: I can't help but think this is the pussification of CF. Are people seriously calling the thief class griefers? This isn't WoW. In fact, we should put that on our website. You don't retain all of your gear when you die. You have a chance of losing what you aquire. Thieves contribute to this. As is the same with Assassins, there are many ways to avoid thieves.

This and the following thread reminds me of DAoC. People complained so much about a specific class that they made it completely irrelevant to the game. That's a shame, because I feel CF's thieves bring quite a bit of depth. On that note, several classes do have the ability to pose a threat to the class as well.

>1: The success ratio of poisoner/trapper or any combination
>of is pretty limited. ...
>3: I like the uniquenesses of the class path.
>4: I can't help but think this is the pussification of CF.
>Are people seriously calling the thief class griefers?

Totally agree. poison and traps really aren't that deadly except in very specific situations. But I think you're overlooking two important aspects of what people are saying.

First, the problem isn't that the poison thieves are too deadly overal. The problem that started this thread is that if you get affected by certain abilities you don't get to have any fun until it wears off. Which is fine if the length of the affect isn't that long, but who wants to spend 20-30 minutes sweet fuc-all. If your RP is highly talky I guess you can spend that time tells to people from your hidey hole, but otherwise you may as well just walk away and do something else.

As for thieves that steal a lot of stuff I think what you're seeing isn't the pussification of CF but the prepification of CF. A prep bag represents over an hour of work and if you want to compete with the best players you have to prep too. I bet that if you could buy sanc potions and haste potions in galadon then people would be a lot less butthurt about thieves stealing their bags. But as it is, it really is kind of a griefy move to steal and sacrifice an item that is perceived as critical to success and takes an hour to get.

You're also seeing an aging of CF I think. I've recently been able to spend more time playing, but for years I wouldn't get more than an hour at a time a few days a week. The less time people have to play, the less easy it is to shrug off an hour's wasted time.

nt

Quote "I secretly wish you would get raped or something. I feel like I lose IQ points everytime I look at it." Gaplemo

My character always fights Flaaayin and we have a respectful enmity. He doesn't grief me and I... well, let him rob me or kill me on a regular basis by trying to fight him.

However, you cannot compare a shifter with other magi, because a shifter, if in form at the point of ko, is not hugely threatened in melee. A conjie probably wouldn't be either apart from pepper dust possibly taking one servitor out of action. A muter or a voker basically just stands there and attempts to melee since they lose everything (including brandish/zap/pugil etc.), quite possibly without any protections since the ko timer is quite long.

One thing I do like though is that a rager actually made an anti-mage build instead of an anti-warrior build.

There are always going to be counters to great combinations. While a shifter might not be quite so threatened by a poisoner thief, something that stands toe to toe with it might be threatened.

This might be a poor comparison but I see invokers that have worked very hard for shields, wands, protections stand toe to toe with 3-4 melee classes and take grazes and hits while still blasting out on top. Hard work "should" pay off.

To see someone play a class well doesn't mean the class or skills should be revamped. To see multiple people excel at the class should probably warrant some reviews.

About the counters appearing not to work.

e.g. Resilience not reducing the boneshatter effects.
Edges to help resist poison never seeming to enable resistance.
Allegedly the demielemental transcendance not working against it.
Possibly the strong memory edge not helping against the forget effect. (I'm guessing on the last one.)

Also, the only thing stopping the class being a major major issue is the fact that the way to make them unbalanced is not common knowledge. I did make the same point earlier in that I said that as soon as this stuff became common knowledge then it would be a major issue for the game.

If I had managed to resist inhaled ko poison just once in many many attempts on me, I might consider it balance. There's no skill I've seen ko with such reliability, and it's longer duration than most others. Calling in others is not something Flaaayin is prone to do, but just imagine if he was? You'd have a thief able to ko people, wait for their effects to drop, with enough time for a gank to arrive, and then a gank where the victim has no skills (and can't run either). The build has the potential to create exactly this situation, and even a necro (the nearest comparison) doesn't have this kind of success rate or duration.

Imms are talking about ingredients from hell, but the reality is most of these ingredients are not from hell. I'm pretty sure of his main gathering grounds as I've noticed him going to certain areas repeatedly, and they are basically risk-free.

******EVERY****** time someone rolls up who a) can't be killed, b) is effective at stopping others from steamrolling the playerbase, or c) steamrolls the playerbase themselves, people complain. How many people complained about how hard it was to fight Ravon? Yet, before a drow AP started kicking ass, people would have laughed at the combo.

If anything, we should be applauding Flaayin. He took a combo no one else wanted to try and made it successful. That he makes it look as effortless as he does is a further kudos because both of those paths are insanely hard to play by themselves let alone together. Here's a quote or two:

"Trapper: Quite possibly the most funky or useless path to play depending on who you ask. Your traps have high failure rates, but long durations when they work (except knock-out traps). Your traps also all double as a poor man's snare, since they sure as hell don't tell you when someone stumbles into them like a ranger's snare does. The incurable blindness and broken bones are nice, I guess. Seriously, you want to see how trappers fight and how bad they are, log search Maethron the Tribunal provost thief trapper. The ONLY thing that guy had going for him was permahasted lieutenants, circle stab, manacles, and that his traps were mildly annoying to raiders but hardly fight turning... ...You don't even start traps until the last half of this path. This path probably needs to be deleted from the game, or revamped with a ton of edges. " - Scrimbul, Thief FAQ, Dio's

"Note: You might have to be completely insane to play a half-trapper half- poisoner thief, but should you do so, this edge is there for you." - Thief Edge List, Dio's

Despite it had been said many times 'by design'. So this is a bad example imo.

He played a combo no one wanted. Now after he was gone poisons went through a major overhaul.

Things get changed when:

a) people bitch about them to the point where the imms want people to STFU about it already.
b) an imm wants to play them and abuse the privilege first and then change them.
c) it's just the popular flavor of the moment and maybe there's a slight balance issue when a really, really skilled player is proving they can be deadly with a previously thought laughable combo

If it was truly something overpowered, they wouldn't bother waiting until after the current character dies before changing it. They'd do it during that character's life. For instance, I had a beastmaster once who found a tamable mob at level 30 with an insane amount of hp and dam redux. I used that pet to tank while getting the fetish back just once and the mob was changed the next day.

He basically suggested people quaff pwk potions all the time, from what I recall.

Everything is overpowered.

Poisoner thieves
Giants with Greeting legacy
Svirf axe specs (except when I play them)
Neurological disruption
APs with big unholies
Liches

I remember back in the late 90s when people complained that DAWN was overpowered.

Seriously? Dawn?

Don't look at it from an is it overpowered perspective. Look at it as how does this feel on the funstick? Even if you kill said thief you are stuck with 30 real life minutes of zero abilities. Who wants to do that?

I found it fun and I liked the fighting with the poisons omg i may have died but hell it was damn well entertaining. though again i dont back off a fight because I might lose.

I've got a single #### to give...and it's just for you.

####ing awesome.


I did too.

I rocked an animist and a kobold shaman on a pk server.

Though the immunity thing actually probably accounts for at least as many (and probably more) kills than it has ever cost him:

1- If characters are in there, that probably means they are currently vulnerable to the poisons.
2- It's a dangerous enough place/fight on its own that being surprise attacked in the process of trying for immunity, against a character you don't feel comfortable fighting without immunity even under neutral circumstances (hence why you are there trying to get immunity in the first place), can easily turn into a real cluster-f for the victim.
3- Having a location that is a magnet for your enemies is the perfect complement to trapper skills. Outside of their usefulness in raids, I'd imagine the hardest thing about traps is getting people to walk into them.

If the Imm's are able to track pk's by area, I'd bet that over this thief's lifetime this area would be up there with cabals/galadon for most pk's in the mud. And the better/scarier he gets, the more the immunity draws his enemies right to this place for him, like moth's to a flame.

That aside, if the immunity can be acquired, it does have to be a kick in the junk for poisoners, and especially so against ones who might not have village/defender/trapper skills making them a lot tougher.

All that said though, I agree the poisons are unbalanced. The knock-out is so successful that there's just very few characters where the risk/reward is ever in favor of fighting him without immunity.

Warriors with entwine?
Duergar warriors w/Avalanche?
In form tigers?
Maybe conjurers? (I admit I don't know much about them)

Anything else probably has limited odds to ever make him pay for going after the (highly) successful knock-out, and once you're knocked out, losing inventory, 10hrs for spells to fall, and failing a good percentage of anything you try via mind control effects (which only even applies if you've saved against the forget that tick) that is enough combined to put the majority of characters at significant risk of dying. And we haven't even considered neuro poison landing after the fight starts, or that for this particular character, there's a bunch of traps waiting when you flee.

So like people have said, the problem is that there's still a low but real risk of dying even for the builds best equipped to survive him, a fairly high risk of dying for everyone else, and not many builds at all that have a better chance of killing him than he does of killing them.

I personally think it'd be more balanced to reduce knock-out chances significantly, and cut the duration of all the poisons down to around 5hr KO, 5hr MC, 5hr Neu, and then find a way to make it so that those changes don't force thieves to burn through preps and have to spend all their time prep gathering. They'd still be as deadly as ever for 5hrs and they'd still mess people up in drawn out raids since the thief can just engage/poison again, but people wouldn't be stuck resting off 20+hr effects, and with more engagements there is at least the sense that you have more chances to turn the tables on him.

So maybe like someone said, 3-4 uses from a poison ingredient instead of one, and then have durations cut down to ~5hrs. This character has a lot more going for him than a regular poisoner (trapper, village resist, defender) but I really think that would make things more balanced against both him and regular poisoners too, and reduce the amount of "immunity or I'm avoiding him at all costs" class dynamic.

I agree with everyone else that posted. I'd also ask that the Watcher be looked at again. He immediately (very next round) draws people back into combat when they are rescued. He also dispels every other round.

I concur. Who the hell wants to go kill that thing every 150 hours or risk being completely F'd up by this combo. I've never seen the inhaled poison fail, and you are basically screwed after that. This really needs to be looked at and addressed sooner rather then later instead of Yaneck stylee.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

There is no reason for the affect to last much longer than the PK encounter would. After 12 hours the player would be dead or safe. It's also more than enough time to raid if that's the goal. It's possible thieves would like shorter durations as well so players aren't hiding out for 20 minutes. Downtime in the game sucks.

Fear poison is fine the way it is in terms of effect and duration.

However the other poisons probably would need a shorter duration (3-5 ticks across the board on average, except Emetic which probably also needs a duration nerf but still needs to be as dangerous as plague) and a re-evaluation of their effects within the new durations.

There also needs to be a way to cure these poisons so that the imms are allowed to make them more powerful within the shorter durations.

I am only speaking of poisoners in isolation however.

Bard Repertoire Clarifications:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=23735&mesg_id=23735&page=

Knockout, apply everything inhaled. Don't even need blackjack. Being poison resistant and able to see the thief makes no difference whatsoever. Not sure about the resilience skill or certain warrior legacies.

And yes, durations are ridiculous. Very funny how it takes 3-4 times longer to overcome poison than for shattered bones to heal!

I've played a poison thief but not a trapper.

You are dealing with a thief who has two full thief paths but little straight damage ability.

Poison path if anything by itself is underpowered, especially with how *long* it takes for neurological poison to apply it's best effects. You can die in melee in the time it takes for that to work or the target will get back into their cabal or into a town protected by tribunal.

Grenade poison application rates are also horrid, check all the logs where Flaaayin uses a grenade... typically he's tossing it and standing there with his thumb up his ass doing an AOE massacres, if that, and may or may not have wasted expensive ingredients creating the grenade. They also blow up in your face.

Fear poison is great for what it does and mind control poison is niche with the exception of the forget effect. But if you think you're going to land all your poisons on a target as a run of the mill poisoner, you're insane.

The problem with Flaaayin is his traps, not his poisons. And the trap problems were problems ever since the blue dragon lair went in with half-kobolds spamming stackable traps and the imms never paid attention either to the bitching of the groups navigating it or the boards. They stack and last too long, that's it. It's fine for them to do the debuffs they do but they either need to be weaker and keep their durations or stronger and have half the durations of their skill/melee counterparts. (speaking primarily of boneshatter/impale traps)

If you want to specifically #### up a poisoner's day without using explore area X monster blood, grab the Ancient Hide of the Green dragon or play a poison resistant race. The poisons will fail often enough for you to get your licks in.

But I think you are probably using less effective poisons.

Inhaled k-o poison has got me, hmm, maybe 10 out of 10 times now? And in theory I resist poison!

Neuro poison has also got me nearly every time.

I have also rarely known it to fail on others.

It needs to be, when dealing with straight poisoners or poison hybrids. They are giving up blackjack for #### sake. KO poison is like having one-time use disposable blackjacks in your inventory. Imagine if your blackjack disappeared after every time you used it and your blackjacks cost twice as much as normal blackjacks, that's KO poison.

Neurological poison by itself is not dangerous until you've spent more than 10 rounds in combat. Neurological poison is like rot, if you get hit with it, you should word. (it's duration may be a little long, I won't argue with that, but if you are going to cut it's duration to 1/5th, the skill needs to be designed to drop it's best affects in a matter of 1 to 3 rounds after application, not every couple of ticks)

Neurological poison would be both more useful to the thief and more balanced for other players if it was a 2 or 3 tick poison that randomly applied it's affects extremely fast every few pulses but 3 ticks would be long enough to guarantee it's not necessarily all of it's effects. Also ditch the forget effect and up the success rate on mind control effect. Neuro doesn't need to immolate people.

Neurological poison also has to be applied by weapon nick unless you're fooling around in the Inn wearing poisoned gear. Weapon nick is a 2 round lag skill with no damage intended solely to up the application rate of weapon poison.

You are all retarded. It's not the poisons, it's the traps combined with the poisons that's actually killing you.

Both poisoners and trappers have needed a rework in durations, affects, success rates, and skill mechanics for a long time. This is nothing new, it's just as irritating as the rot shaman.

Bard Repertoire Clarifications:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=23735&mesg_id=23735&page=

as you think you do.

Neuro can be applied to the ko'd person.

Then the poisoner can wait for the forget to kick in before starting combat, because the ko is very long duration itself.

And actually, if you read my post, I did refer to the combo of traps + poisons. That's why I said it's like being able to FORCE DUEL someone who can't use their skills/spells.

(Or I don't know poisoners as well as I think, but I am 100% certain that you can be ko'd with inhaled and then poisoned again with whatever it is makes you forget stuff, while you are still ko'd.)

You cannot apply neuro when the victim is KO'd. You would never survive any fight with Flaaaayin if he did that with KO poison at it's current timers. You would get it applied and he would happily wait until you were both at least blind and unable to walk straight before ever waking you.

I'm going to just leave it at this for now, but neuro can only be applied by weapon and contact poison (and grenade, any poison can be applied by grenade but application rates from grenade are completely awful in all situations when grenade should be UPPING the success rate in a similar fashion to weapon nick), and unless you like griefing ghosts or have planted the appropriate item on an inattentive player beforehand, contact poison isn't really viable. You might be complaining about the fact that sometimes neuro gets applied during normal melee, but normal melee poison application rates are abysmal given how quickly you need to kill most people as a poisoner.

I've been through the ringamarole with this path three times. Twice full, one hybrid. I've been on both sides. Poisoners in isolation are underpowered. It's the traps that are making everything hell because the normal disadvantage of traps (opponent's free will, complete ignorance of or potential semi-awareness of their ocation) are gone when KO poison lasts so long you can trap both sides of a 2 exit room.

Poisoners by themselves are underpowered without imm given points because you are put in a situation where you are investing in the most expensive path of any thief path with few direct damage options to actually take advantage of it. Grenade is a horrible damage option when emetic poison application rates are as low as they are from it. It is, along with trapper, somewhat dependent on area knowledge and EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE to keep yourself viable.

Also if people would actually loot and sac his ingredient bag, it would take him potentially 1-2 RL hours to become semi-viable in combat again. No one does this when they do in fact manage to down him due to his own mistakes.

nt

If it is the thing that gives 2 hour forgets (that can come on the back of each other, meaning you may go 4 hours in a fight with no spells or skills -- no so bad as a warrior but not so good as a casting mage).

nt

It's immolate/forget effect really needs to go once the skill is tweaked. There's no real reason for it.

And that character's poisons rarely get the knockout.

So, since this complaint is always against Flaayin, let's address that. Whomever the player is has spent TENS OF HOURS UPON HOURS of *game time* perfecting skills that are really expensive and annoying to try to perfect on a race with only 18. Your complaint is that he's taken his time as a player to do awesome things, but because your "bash;bash;bash;get all corpse" doesn't work, he should be nerfed?

There are lots of ways to counteract his trap effects/poison effects. You're either not thinking creatively or you're too lazy to do them, in which case, favor should go to the guy with patience to play a combo no one thought would work.

But it basically means not really trying to kill him, which isn't fun for either him or me. (We've pretty much discussed the issue.) So instead I try to kill him and EVERY time I am ko'd on the first attempt.

If I have to illustrate how stupid that is for balance I will do so with this:
It becomes near guaranteed that if I use any of my own skills I will be ko'd when he flees and returns. Even me using a 1 round lag skill will enable him to do this.

nt

>>My character has the tools to avoid dying to him

But it basically means not really trying to kill him, which isn't fun for either him or me. (We've pretty much discussed the issue.) So instead I try to kill him and EVERY time I am ko'd on the first attempt.<<

So do you take the same approach when you try to kill a lich or an A-P with a lot off charges? Is the game somehow less fun because you would be trying not to really kill an AP? You fought a great thief and a great player. He took advantage of the game mechanics. That doesn't mean that they need to be nerfed so that a combo no one wanted to try before will now never, ever try it in the future.

>>If I have to illustrate how stupid that is for balance I will do so with this:
It becomes near guaranteed that if I use any of my own skills I will be ko'd when he flees and returns. Even me using a 1 round lag skill will enable him to do this.<<

So, balance is just you being able to run around and whoop on anyone at any time and you have a 50/50 chance of beating them. That sounds boring and gives no incentive for a player to try to really shine.

In that other stuff that ought to be doing something against poisons appears to do nothing.

That said, the grinning devil shield doesn't nullify ap's. It just means that ap's need to have weapons without charges in for fighting the guy with the grinning devil shield. That's not a big ask.

I can imagine it. I walk on the east road and i have 3000 hp, 300 mana, 300 dr, 300 hr. I have played for the last 700 hours without making any single mistake and my rp was excellet (i spent 50 hours writing roles and got the quest spell for the role contest win).

But suddenly i see that guy with the grinning devil shield. Well ... he knows the way to 1 area and the way inside that 1 area and it is to be respected of course.

But there is no way i will remove by uber weapon, wield fake weapon and fight this guy. I will better spam where every 5 seconds and teleport away whenever i see him near. And some time later i will simply never log in when he is on.

The power of exploration?

All my ap's have been willing to remove their best weapon when there's a good reason to and no thief around.

C sleep shieldbearer.
If unsuccessful, walk away.
If successful, spell up and kill (or not, if the cavalry are coming -- if that's the case, use cleave spam instead).
Take shield.
Wield uber-weapon.

I can think of few ideas as well.


But even the IDEA itself of having the risk to loose the character you spent 500+ hours on just because someone knows how to get 1 item IS STUPID. And even more important question - WHAT FOR?

I'm verry sorry Scarab, i have big respect for You and Your Areas and for the exploration itself (it's the third element after PK and RP). But the items like talisman of utter evil, this devil shield, that brooch against conjurers do not really fit into the current CF situation i think. The best way i think about is to increase the amount of different shiny things from the Hell (so every group member of the group who goes there gets at least few shiny things), but decrease the most overpowered of them a bit. The mask with detect hide is questionable too in my opinion, go on and play duergar with evil vulns if you really want detect hide :p

For example if devil shield was 50 hp, 50 mana, 5 dr, 5 hr, 10 svs vs spell, 10 svs vs para, 10 svs vs mental, 3 str, 3 dex, 3 int, 3 wis, unbreakable and undisarmable then it wouldn't be less cool than now. However i am not really sure here myself, perhaps mask of Anazu is good the way it is now, perhaps not. But what about the evil talisman what kills paladins and druids for no obvious reasons?

I am sorry again if you saw any agression here (there was no any).


P.S. By the way i was never good explorer myself. Perhaps i only write it all because i can't get uber eq myself, perhaps not. I am not really sure here myself.

What are the names of those ap's willing to remove their best weapon and fight instead of running away like the rest of ap's?

P.S. I remember someone ever saying that someone heard one day that Tongni told on IRC that Cabdru deleted the next day after Tongni's invoker got this devil shield from the hell.

>P.S. I remember someone ever saying that someone heard one day
>that Tongni told on IRC

Then it must be true!

Espesially since a lot of people know that Ravon lost his own weapon to that shield during his own explorations of the Hell.

Why would it happen few years after Cabdru deleted because he already "possibly" had that angry shield?

Go look at Victoria's pbf for one example.

I quite regularly swapped out my charged whip for a spear. Same with Dartis.

The ap is at no real risk against the current owner of the devil shield unless he pushes things to the wire.

There's absolutely no need for the ap to do that when making a move for the shield.

1. Victoria wasn't an example of conservative a-p who could potentially ever become Cabdru or Ravon (i speak about these 2 because they are "golden standart" for now before anybody can beat them). And i think most people think about other anti-paladins (not Victoria) when they think about anti-paladins at all.

2. I would never even thought about ever wielding any whip for PK before you gained at least 100 charges. And you only swapped it out sometimes. Spear is much much much better weapon overall before you gain at least 100 charges. I did an a-p too - Soidel, you can also look on the PBF.

3. The real thing is that noone of you or me can discuss this topic. Because we didn't play strong enough anti-paladins and don't know what does it really take to learn Hell very good.

But for some reasons Hell was always a no-no theme for Daevryn and Twist. I respect every Immortal of CF and i really LOVE CF, but i simply can't understand it why cannot they (game balance team) at least discuss the most overpowered of EQ what basically ruins other characters since Scarab is back.

But I've more than done that subject to death.

That aside, I don't see how you can argue that it wouldn't make sense to remove whatever your preferred unholy is, go with a chargeless unholy spear (or spears), and try to land the sleep, or go with a chargeless sword and try to land the cleave.

There's nothing the shaman can do to put you or your weapon at risk. You're only at risk if there's a thief on you don't know about, and that's not hard to verify beforehand. (I'm assuming no presence of conjie with monkey familiar or shifter with racoon form.)

Also, you seem to be underestimating quite how strong Victoria's unholy was when I lost it:
1) My whip was capable of one-shotting people when I used lashes on them.
2) The fact I got 80 odd charges in it before I blundered (basically by forgetting that my dam redux would be wearing off without me being able to tell) shows that I could have gone further.
3) People (mainly the gankers) were complaining on the forums that it was impossible to kill me. (So I'm glad Jichii went and did it solo.)

I doubt that's true, but if it is, it's a complete coincidence.

Because Ravon came after Cabdru, and Ravon lost his whip to the shield. So if he knew about it before Ravon, and then lost his whip that way as Ravon....

What is true is that Ilix went and got that shield and used it on a couple APs after Ravon died. And Ilix = Ravon.

Cabdru deleted because we all knew without the armadillo of Doom, he wasn't doing anything worthwhile anymore.

>Cabdru deleted because we all knew without the armadillo of
>Doom, he wasn't doing anything worthwhile anymore.

Shhhh! Don't give away the secret!

I don't think any single affect that cripples you and is nearly uncurable should last more than 30 ticks at the outside. 20 seems like plenty to me.

I've never played a poisoner/trapper nor am likely to ever play one, but I think that poison immunity is too strong against poisoners. My suggestions would to make poison immunity act like poison resistance against thief poisons, and only confer true immunity to poison damage and basic poison.

However, I don't think neurological poison needs to be nerfed in its effects. It is a very strong ability, but it's about on par with something like forget or deafen. It's a death sentence for non-melee classes if they can't get away, but mostly just causes people to flee/quaff. And it's not like poisoners really have a lot of power otherwise. Sure, when combined with stealing and long knockouts it's extra nasty, but a worn container with a potion in it will solve that problem. Unless you're also blinded, but at that point so what if it is a death sentence?

Just to throw out a wild idea, I'd like to see the poison path rebalanced (in terms of cost and effects) around not having to regather ingredients constantly. They should still be necessary, but have 10-20 charges per ingredient. The current grind/time-sink dynamic makes things fair balance-wise, it's just incredibly anti-fun. If the main thief paths were just thug, binder and city ties, and trappers and poisoners were nerfed to be expensive adjunct paths, that would be a better design it seems to me. I'm making a pretty big assumption that the current way traps/poisons work is that the ingredients are consumed every time. If that's already not true, well then ignore this (and maybe I'll try a poisoner sometime).

Problem is that fleeing isn't a viable option when a thief can stack a lot of traps too.

And that's before you consider what would happen if the thief chose to call in an accomplice during the very long ko periods. Flaaayin can take many magi solo.

It's a lot worse than deafen. If deafened, you can use a wand to recall.

It's worse than mage forget, because unless I'm mistaken, the anti-forget edge does nothing against the forget effect (same as I think the anti-poison edges do nothing against the poisons to begin with). I could be mistaken on this though.

Effectively it's forcedual on a person who can't use their class abilities.

I generally like the idea of the ingredients but the problem with such an approach is that once these things become common knowledge there's a massive balance issue (unless some counter also becomes common knowledge).

Pepperdust for 11hours incurable blindness?!!?!?

You can gouge my eyes with claws and I lose vision for 6 hours or so, but a little pepper dust and I lost sight for twice as long and no healer can figure out a way to wash the stuff out or do anything. If it's a physical effect, which it is, you should be able to wash the dust out of your eyes.

Pepper Dust should be a much cheaper skill than it is (I think it is the last trapper skill) and function like assassin blindness dust in my opinion.

Then again, I'll say it. Trapper and poisoner thieves generally suck. Flaaayin however, does not. There is a huge difference between him and most every other trapper or poisoner.

>Problem is that fleeing isn't a viable option when a thief
>can stack a lot of traps too.

It depends a lot on where you get caught and what condition you're in. I've been able to run from him plenty of times, and word from him with my own class abilities several others. There's a luck factor there, My personal experience is that I've been knocked out 6ish times and each time I either succesfully worded immediately (because I hadn't gotten the random forget) or I just ran away on foot easily.

>It's a lot worse than deafen. If deafened, you can use a wand
>to recall.

Well yes and no. On the other hand, neurological isn't guaranteed cast denial, and generally you're not really taking such huge damage that you won't get a couple tries in. As long as you realize that you're not going to try to fight him, it's nothing like a forceduel without skills.

>I generally like the idea of the ingredients but the problem
>with such an approach is that once these things become common
>knowledge there's a massive balance issue (unless some counter
>also becomes common knowledge).

Well my thought was that it wouldn't be a massive balance issue because the abilities would just be nerfed. Instead of being a high-power high-effort secrecy-based skillset it would be medium power, medium-effort skillset and it would be fine if everyone knew about all the ingredients.

Since it's typically not until then that the fights start.

>Since it's typically not until then that the fights start.

You mean that third parties can tell? I don't know about that. I found Flaayin woke me more than once when I wasn't under forget, but it may have been due to nearby allies or something.

He always seems to attack me the tick after it first kicks in.

.