Why would anyone want to pk you guys?

[Rhys]

What I really don't understand is why rogues and stab have been upped recently

[Jestin]

All petty and childish insults aside I think most if not all of us agree that stabbers need a strong looking at. It's my experience that the staff on this game likes to come up with creative solutions to problems that are not necessarily what we suggest, so I think the best we can do is just present a united front that something major should be done.

Many of you need to breathe and remind yourselves that this is a game with like 30 active players - it shouldn't be that hard to be nice to each other and avoid the personal attacks. :)

[erulak]

My main gripe with stab isn't it being OP, it is that it encourages a playstyle that is absolutely garbage for the other side and to a large degree for your own side.

Nothing worse than leading on DS and having 2 rogues going for stabs, nothing worse being the only basher having the other rogues going for stabs while you're taking dmg that could so easily be avoided if the rogue would sit and melee. Nothing worse than chasing a rogue around a footballfield while he spamflees around at hurt trying to get a stab off for the n'th time. Toss into the mix snow covering tracks or just ranger sneak residues messing with tracks and it gets even worse. Nothing worse than, as we saw in the original log, being an abser having to pk two rogues who for whatever reason just don't want to melee.

Agree with most of this, but are we reading the same log? The guy literally got meleed dead by rogues. Half the engages were the rogues coming back and engaging. I (and apparently you) think the most annoying part of fighting stabbers is how incredibly moves intensive it is. Costs moves to move around with notice on, costs moves to kill h.target, costs moves to track, etc. etc. etc. There's nothing quite like it. Either remove move costs on some of those things or all of those things and I think it gets less annoying in general. My problem is you guys keep saying you (experienced players) don't die to stabs and it's not OP, but "it's annoying to fight", without really seeming to ever get to what you're actually complaining about. The above is an issue of how annoying stab is to *fight*, not how annoying or overpowered it actually is offensively. Which is what makes the OP log such a joke to me, it's the kind of death you'd expect out of someone who doesn't know how to play this game.

I'm 100% in agreement with making it less annoying to fight, but we sort of hit the floor on how low-powered stab itself can be when it was doing 250-260 HPS damage on average (which is what it should go back to) and I think we're sort of at the floor for melee output.

I think the main reason I don't have an issue with channelers etc. is that at some point or another the channeler will generally have to go on the aggressive if they want a kill, they'll have to chase, they actually have to complete their timer in your room, giving you a chance to complete your timer and take them out. For stabbers, this isn't so. Even pkers who are usually good fun on their non stabbing chars, become incredibly boring just by virtue of the setup itself.

You seem to be comparing a certain style of aggressive channeler with something other than their rogue equivalents. Yes, there are channelers who do those things, but the vast majority of channelers also just sit in groups and spam weaves. Same deal with the rogue equivalents -- you're nuts if you think aggressive rogues don't have to do literally all of those things to take people out, despite plenty of them playing less aggressive and just taking whatever kills land in their laps.

What I don't understand however is the people who also agree that stab is god awful to play against, then go and play it themselves. At some point you just gotta ask yourself, would I have fun if I pk'd myself? A little self constraint goes a long way. Same way if there's already multiple channelers up north, ask yourself, would me joining pk as the 3rd or 4th channeler up or down the quality and enjoyment of the PK. If not then go long a basher or alt to the other side.

What I don't understand is why some people think set up fully determines how fun they are to PK against -- it does to a certain degree (nobody really enjoys fighting fleebies with fencing blades or pking with unreliable channelers fleeing around with 19 wil dead silent and pulling PK somewhere it doesn't need to be until the inevitable 'lol i rip' tell), but it usually comes down to the players. But again, that's a player-empowered-by-class/setup thing, not a class/setup-specific thing. I think the takeaway is stop being overly concerned about "fun" because and focus more on "balance". If there is something potentially unbalanced (the MV intensity of fighting rogues/stabbers vs literally anything else in the game) it usually translates to less "fun" anyways, but you get to the actual root of the issue.

[erulak]

Many of you need to breathe and remind yourselves that this is a game with like 30 active players - it shouldn't be that hard to be nice to each other and avoid the personal attacks. :)

Oh, sorry, I forgot the disclaimer:

(This is mostly just me talking dung and shouldn't be taken seriously)

[Fermin]

I'm in the camp that upping the other classes would probably be better then downing rogues...

Add rogues to the 30% bonus against humanoid would be a possible fix. That makes charges huge on warriors vs rogues and takes the mean damage when vs. a rogue from 35 --> 45 (heron greatsword).

I'm feeling the notice changes a bit on a trolloc rogue and has long been the downside of playing a LS rogue.

Another change that would highly effect(down) trolloc rogues while upping ABS is making high survival a key moves component to DS. If warriors and hunters with lvl 7 survival are getting a straight bonus to movement cost then rogues are going to be left in the dust and pk will move at a faster pace (this would be good). Currently the warriors are the ones that feel this way. This is more of a DS fix though as LS are probably all already getting lvl 7 survival.

A further change I agree with is setting up a noticeable difference between combo weapons and ABS weapons ability to bash dodge...I liked that before I knew I wasn't going to be bashed by combo setups - this allowed pesky rogues to try to get on a specific opponent and buff without big bash fears. The situation now is I'm pretty sure everything can bash me on some % so I'm not interested in anyone getting a bash off once I'm lower hps...this kind of rock paper scissors mechanic with dodge/abs/combo was good and I do think we could revive it.

[Jaster]

I'm in the camp that upping the other classes would probably be better then downing rogues...

Add rogues to the 30% bonus against humanoid would be a possible fix. That makes charges huge on warriors vs rogues and takes the mean damage when vs. a rogue from 35 --> 45 (heron greatsword).

I'm feeling the notice changes a bit on a trolloc rogue and has long been the downside of playing a LS rogue.

Another change that would highly effect(down) trolloc rogues while upping ABS is making high survival a key moves component to DS. If warriors and hunters with lvl 7 survival are getting a straight bonus to movement cost then rogues are going to be left in the dust and pk will move at a faster pace (this would be good). Currently the warriors are the ones that feel this way. This is more of a DS fix though as LS are probably all already getting lvl 7 survival.

A further change I agree with is setting up a noticeable difference between combo weapons and ABS weapons ability to bash dodge...I liked that before I knew I wasn't going to be bashed by combo setups - this allowed pesky rogues to try to get on a specific opponent and buff without big bash fears. The situation now is I'm pretty sure everything can bash me on some % so I'm not interested in anyone getting a bash off once I'm lower hps...this kind of rock paper scissors mechanic with dodge/abs/combo was good and I do think we could revive it.

Point me in the direction of the troll hunters and warriors getting high level survival or even 7 for that matter and are competitive?

[Jaster]

Part of the problem is that some of the people in easy mode aren’t even rogues. They just play stab.

Great point, I think backstab should work *exactly* like it does for WB for everyone.

Perhaps you are being heartfelt but I’d lean more towards sarcasm. I didn’t claim backstab did not work for rogues “exactly” like it did for wbs. Backstab can work as a skill for anyone who practices it. But if your goal to reduce the ez mode is to cap just “rogues” hps as the problem, I’ll stand to my point the other half of the problem would not be solved. Interestingly enough, if you are saying all rogues should get outdoor scan, mv cost reduction in certain terrain rooms, increased mv regen, night vision,zone sense, autotrack( since most are actually hunters), ease of practicing high survivability sneak/rsneak combos etc… that would be truly generous.
However, I think we both know the difference between the two chars and it’s not needed to pander around it.

[Snorgg]

Melee rogues, remove stab wooo make it do like100-150 damage with 100% land. I personally hated stab. But I’m not very good at it. Bricked usually if I got one off at that. Projectiles are annoying as fk to. Remove them while we’re at it. Down the mud in general, specifically the lag. Up abs! Free Zarth.

[Fermin]

I'm in the camp that upping the other classes would probably be better then downing rogues...

Add rogues to the 30% bonus against humanoid would be a possible fix. That makes charges huge on warriors vs rogues and takes the mean damage when vs. a rogue from 35 --> 45 (heron greatsword).

I'm feeling the notice changes a bit on a trolloc rogue and has long been the downside of playing a LS rogue.

Another change that would highly effect(down) trolloc rogues while upping ABS is making high survival a key moves component to DS. If warriors and hunters with lvl 7 survival are getting a straight bonus to movement cost then rogues are going to be left in the dust and pk will move at a faster pace (this would be good). Currently the warriors are the ones that feel this way. This is more of a DS fix though as LS are probably all already getting lvl 7 survival.

A further change I agree with is setting up a noticeable difference between combo weapons and ABS weapons ability to bash dodge...I liked that before I knew I wasn't going to be bashed by combo setups - this allowed pesky rogues to try to get on a specific opponent and buff without big bash fears. The situation now is I'm pretty sure everything can bash me on some % so I'm not interested in anyone getting a bash off once I'm lower hps...this kind of rock paper scissors mechanic with dodge/abs/combo was good and I do think we could revive it.

Point me in the direction of the troll hunters and warriors getting high level survival or even 7 for that matter and are competitive?

Oh I don't think any are because I don't think there is any reason to...I'm just saying if there was a reason to get high survival for increased movement that the hunters/warriors (especially ABSers) would be the only trollocs who could afford it. Rogues would be cutting something to get 98 survival (maybe multiple things). Essentially the idea is to give a movement buff to trolloc absers because they are the ones that could afford 98 survival.

Another good change was that recent upping on stab landing % based on practices. I dropped some attack to get a higher % stab landing (which is good for absers).

[erulak]

I'm saying make the "backstab" skill work exactly how it does for WB for everyone. :)

I think what we do both know is that 1) WB aren't the only characters that have bonuses that make them good stabbing characters -- might not even be the best! - but those characters *are* far more effective in other set ups than WB are for a variety of reasons, which reduces the incentive and 2) any idiot can eventually get a WB or a fade, but the comparable effort of any idiot waking up one day, picking a dumb name, and statting/leveling a trolloc rogue and start stabbing people for 315ish HPs on average with common-as-dirt weapons as WB Lite is a little bit different.