Locken wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 5:38 pm
Geoff wrote: ↑Tue Nov 09, 2021 5:17 pm
I get why newer players might get the impression that abs is bad from all the discourse on balance.
Important to note is that much of the discourse around the effectiveness of abs vs combo vs dodge playstyles is in the context of higher level PK, and even in that context there are situations where abs work well and where it does not.
A few reasons why newer players are often pushed to play abs
first (note, not forever) is so they can 1) survive longer generally due to being hit less hard, 2) reeq more easily (since abs doesn't rely on trinkets to be effective) and 3) get an idea for how long they can survive with full abs eq, which will help them adjust to playing combo/dodge down the track (instead of, for example, playing dodge first then getting confused as to why they blew up against one bash).
Theres a balance though. I played abs, had all these extra pracs. I could rock 7 survival, 7 ride, hell i could make an abs back stabbing rogue. Later on you switch to a different play style and you have to relearn where to put those pracs. Okay, i cant have 7 ride and survival anymore because i need dodge, or shield parry. So how much do i absolutely need to be effective? Okay i can drop to 4 ride, horses will always follow me, but if it gets attacked it can die without me intercepting it. Ah, can't bash either. So lets take some pracs out of bash and maybe a little shield parry and okay, i can bash from horseback now. Getting hit more often cause i didnt max dodge and my shield parry is too low.
Do you see how confusing this can be for somebody who is completely new to the game? Like I've searched, i cant find baselines anywhere. You would think somewhere there would be a simple cookie cutter build that you can break down and trim to whatever your needs are. Starting a fresh character Clive even tells you, Go get level 3 ride to fight from horseback, and level 1 survival so you can butcher wildlife for meat. For the rest of it i'm dumped on my ass and told "Pitter patter, lets get at 'er!" You search the wiki, can't find the information you're looking for - so lets ask the chat. Darn, they're linking me to the wiki site that has a very brief base game description...
So the reason nobody posts a cookie cutter build, is because your pracs are generally extremely based on what you are doing on that character at that time. I could put up what I think is standard right now and the first five people to read it will instantly disagree with me because they play differently or value things differently. Personally i usually am playing a drastically different prac setup every week even on the same character. So how you prac it should rely depend on what type of activities that you are planning on doing as well as what types of activities you tend to fall back on. This is where a thorough knowledge of things that you do a lot is extremely important. If i am deciding whether to get pick or not, I am going to base it off of how many pracs I have with everything else thats going on, and balance that to what i normally go to. For me on most of my characters im weighing the opportunity cost of what else i could be getting against 3 bars of value, 47% gets me into baerlon, kennel keeper, and armored sentry, 79 gets me into roland, passgate, and jafar. Im not caring about anything in between, or that i need higher to get into ruined keep even though for other players that may be the only reason they are considering pick. But the only way i figured this out was to experiment and find out what I needed to do the things that i like doing. So i spent a few repracs with way more than i needed to explore and find what i like having access to, and then spend a couple repracs with a lower % and check what i could get into with that amount, which left me a bunch of less than ideal setups where I either had too much and i coulda used those pracs elsewhere or not enough and it was wasted, but eventually was able to zero on what i need to be most efficient.
So every reprac is generally a balance weighing the various opportunities, and the only way to effectively make those tradeoffs if you have tried all the skills at various levels and see what each gets you. That knowledge that you can only get through trial and error helps build your knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of each setup so that you can leverage your own abilities better. I get that it can be frustrating not knowing where to start but there really isnt a standard thing that anyone uses.
That being said there are a few generally accepted practices:
*there's really no reason to get anything in the middle of 1 rank of notice and 89%
-1 rank notice lets you see rats, 89% lets you hit a hidden target 100% of the time if notice is on and you hit k h.target, some people prefer 90% to get one extra % chance of a stab bricking on you when notice is on, anything higher just gives you a better chance of hitting a hidden target with k target (while notice is still on) saving the moves from not having to type k h.target
*level 4 ride is pretty standard if you are not bashing, lvl 6 is pretty standard if you are.
*lvl 1 survival to butcher, lvl 6 survival for extra moves over rough terrain (with side bonus of not eating/drinking as often), lvl 7 survival if spending lots of time flying over rough terrain (like the blight) at top spamming speed, generally everything else is worthless
*Unless you know what you are doing and have a reason to then dont pk in dodge on anything thats not a channeler unless you have 99 dodge, 19 dex, and a full dodge set without missing any trinkets
-even if pracced for dodge, if you are a couple of trinkets here and there you can use heavy combo or something until you get all the pieces you are missing
*very, very, very loose rule of thumb combo generally wants 92%+ dodge with 85% shield parry, with dodge usually being more important than shield parry
search get what you need in order to do the things that you want, search and pick are both ones that you will want to test on your own, and find out exactly what you need for your favorite stuff even if you are inefficient for a little while that knowledge will help you make better prac choices later.
92% in any skill or weapon is usually enough to be useful, in order to do something poorly. 99% is better in anything that you use a lot. An example is when as an FC i can afford to get 92% bash and staves, or i can get 99% staves with no bash, im going to have a good chunk higher pb and ob with just staves (compounded by the fact id be using fb staff instead of leatherleaf), 92% bash and staves will mean im not hitting as well or bashing particularly well but it opens up the option to be bashing which I want when facing an abser or saving sps in an smob.
1 rank in rescue allows you to spam rescues until one lands, helping a zerk teammate, an afk person, or certain cases in smobs
if stabbing hide > backtab > sneak and sblades, but is not recommended any of them is under 90 and obviously the higher the better
dont get swim. or bows. ever. for any reason. canoes are next to every spot you need to get across water, and even fully pracced has chances of drowning, and theres really no reason to ever need it. In a similar fashion unless you have a good reason for it its probably worthless to prac any amount of palm, steal, ranger sneak, or cover tracks. Theyve been used somewhat successfully by a couple players before, but generally there is no need for it