As far as I can tell from my mini-thief experiments (none to hero) the two paths I think lack the most potential are...

The Binder path and the Trapper path.

Both rely upon the situation too heavily. A binder has to successfully blackjack someone (which now has a shorter timer) and the trapper needs to be very specific in knowing that a target will walk past before a friend, while remaining stealthy.

My ideas -

Either, make the the 'better' paths slightly weaker, and allow thieves to take two paths to near completion. This means taking out some skills but it also means thieves become twice as versatile. Which to me sounds awesome.

Or... Make a combination between the trap and binder paths.

This means the binder can use 'knock-out' techniques to catch his prey unconscious, as well as blackjack (with its very short timer). It also gives trapper thieves much more to do above manipulating their environment only to have traps fail, or someone unwanted setting them off. As it is, the traps path can be made to have very few skills in it at all and easily mixed with binders. I see this as being a great chance to replace and mix old skills into new ones too.

Throw whatever you got at me, I'm passionate about the second change.


Yhorian.

Some questions I have, however...


1) Will a cabalmate ruin your trap if they walk through the room?
2) Can you set traps inside cabals?
3) How much lag is there on traps, ie if there's a group hitting the blademaster and I set a trap in the council chamber (assuming that's possible) will I step out and be in this wicked lag that assures my death?
4) etc.

Personally, I still don't like a 2-tick blackjack. That's the way it is. I can deal.

Sure, a binder has to successfully jack someone. Unless it's an axe spec, you should be fine. If it is an axe spec, you'll need to prep enough so that you can survive out the blackjack + pincer lag while in melee.

If you DO land the jack, you stand a very good chance of completely owning any non-communer (and most communers if you can prevent them from recalling).

The benefits in my opinion far outweigh the negatives. Giving them more skills via the trapper path would make a binder overpowered.

Check the higher level skills like tie, truss and drag, if you've not had them. I have heard negative comments about shadowdrag but am waiting to see for myself before forming an opinion.

In general, I could get some nice things going with the low-level binding skills. at about 33 you can hog-tie anyone effectively and laugh at them struggle.

However, this is a very 'necro-like' approach. You do depend on getting that blackjack to do ANY of your skills. This means you have almost no practical use in things like raids. In fact, the presence of ANYONE out of your range or even in your range then means you have little to no chance of using your mad binding skills. Without a way to fix this, your left being a very 'one-trick' pony. Albeit one that can do some really neat tricks to an uncoscious person.

Thats why I thought traps would versify them a bit. With the combination of the utility skills like waylay and so on, you also have shield block, for failed jackings, and some handy damage traps.

Now you can do the direct jack'n'tie or the indirect sleep'n'hog'em. There's also a number of varying tactics involving glowing traps, damage traps and your utility skills that you can have at your disposal. Not overpowered, since you'll still get bitten toe-to-toe and have to put up with failed bindings/traps/others walking into your stuff.

Just my view on it.

Yhorian.

Remember that towards hero you get people with a lot more health. Less time to prepare them while they're jacked combined with longer fights needed to take them down, means your binding skills get less and less effective towards the hero range.

Don't forget, your still vulnerable because you can't heal effectively and you rely heavily on stealth+silence to complete your tasks. Hero's will be able to have help waiting nearby, even a quick gag gives them time to call for help before you can stuff it in.

"even a quick gag gives them time to call for help
>before you can stuff it in."

Don't I know it.

I see where you are coming from in that you are basically a one-trick pony that relies on blackjack to land your kills. Playing a straight binder means you can dirt/disarm/kick in combat which is kind of lacking in the variety department, though those skills are useful.


The thing is, making them more versatile with traps will likely cause a downgrade to their binder skills, and I don't want to see that happen.

You mentioned adding shield block, which I think would be reasonable.