Special move changes

Isn't the whole point of protection so you do not get interrupted... like for anything?

Mostly, but 1 Special that is on 1? or is it 2 weapons? Shouldn't be to game breaking for anyone who uses protection. Plus one of the major complaints are stone form protection casting, so this is a way to counter that....built into the game instead of players having to strategize(<isn't a word?)....

Maybe people will start using the Elven Composite Longbow now...

Correct. Force arrow is a semi answer to the protection stone form newbies.

Keep this at 5 if I'm over 300 points in the skills that reduce special move cost. Let the people trying to cram chiv/necro/bush/everything onto one template eat this nerf, or make the skill choices (parry over healing or whatever) required to avoid it.

Since it sounds like a change to the base mana required, that means that with 40lmc and your 300 points you should still be at 5 mana cost.

300 points do exactly squat in regards to this, I tested it on TC1. And I'm certainly not throwing away my 30 mil suit just to build another 30 mil suit but with LMC on it instead of something else. I'll eat the nerf or quit UO first.

Re:

Allow me to CopyPaste part of my Reply from Game Balance.. If it's not proper to do so let me know. I just want to make sure my questions are in the right place.

Block:
Bonus DCI scaled with Ninjitsu or Bushido.
> What if BOTH are present...
Penalty to their HCI and DMG.
> Okay, again what if BOTH are present and isn't this too punishing?
Block : Next DMG severely reduced. Parry 70+.
> Right. How severely, what TYPES of damage? All? Even DOTs?

Force Arrow:
20% DI. Target DCI -10%. Stacks.
> Woah, what's the point of DCI now then? Too many ways to reduce it which all stack. Items, Skills, Debuffs from one's own Abilities and now Force Arrow? And why did Archery need so much BUFF? (Pure)Melee did.. Not Archery.
Dazed : GUARANTEED Spell Interrupt even with Protection.
> Okay, all Cast Abilities then? So Archers will now have +1 to Mage Pwnery as if they didn't have it easy enough Vs. Mages?.. Like, Daze that last second Heal, just to be sure? Come on. Either give the same Ability to ALL Templates or forget the Daze part. What, a Melee can't sort of Daze? Or a Mage can't Daze another Mage? Doesn't make much sense in terms of Game Mechanics to me. I may be confused but I think this is too much.

Dual Wield
> Excellent stuff! Only this Move is on the crappiest weapons, chained to the crappiest AltMoves too.. Like Talon Strike. Please just implement LITERAL DUAL WIELDING with what disadvantages you wish and get over with this?

I only tested force arrow in this list, everything else seems acceptable and on par.

Force arrow seems ok, and i say this ONLY Because it is on the Elven composite bow, and serpents arrow isn't overly powerful, but effective if you just want to poison something. (i tried doing 100 poison with serps arrow, it still isn't all that great, and shouldn't be lol, ranged DP archer.. ouch)

If the force arrow special were on a weap with another effect such as AI, Mortal, the short bow thing, conc, etc, it would be overpowered. As long as it stays on something like the elven comp i'm good with it, works fine.

My thoughts here, from a pvm perspective.

Lightning Strike mana cost increased to 10:
That change will only really hurt newer players that dont have the items yet to get close to 45 hci and cannot do frequent weapon specials becuase of mana cost. Well equipped players have close to 45 hci anyway and can compensate for the missing critical hits by doing more weapon specials.

Dual wield is only on tekagi, for serious pvm that weapon can only use a wammie because it has low damage. I guess in pvp you would get more disrupts from that, for more damage you could use something that hits harder or double strike for same mana cost. I dont see much use for that special.

Defensive mastery sounds nice, but nobody will really use a lajatang so its only on kama, i see only few situations where it would give an advantage.
Its also another weapon special that gargoyles do not get, they are also missing a fast speed whirlwind weapon so its time to give gargolyes a kama now.

The block change sounds nice, its also on weapons that are used or one could use. Cannot really comment on that without hard numbers here.


Force arrow. Hmm according to stratics its 15 mana, uoguide says its 20. I got no archer to test it now. But i think for that mana cost it could be a bit op against mages. When taking the changes to healing into account i think pvp archers got a big buff here.

Having both Bushido and Ninjitus present does not increase the effects. (Those weapons that require Bushido, will use bushido and the same for the ones that require ninjitsu. For those that require either, they will use the higher of the two)

They forgot to meantion they altered para blow!

If you get para blowed your in perma paralyze!! 48 hours now and counting i think this is OP!

Cheers Storm it did make me giggle

With 40 lmc thats 3 mana vs 6 mana, with 0 lmc its 5 mana vs 10 per swing.
That is 24 - 40 mana in 10 seconds ( 8 swings ), depending on what i fight and how much damage i do i would sometimes love to have that ( i.e. champs without slayer and not getting honor ).

The lightning strike change is not sound at all.

Re: Specials

Nice to know we won't be doubly penalized for having both.. To be honest such things should have been mentioned. Oh well.

Ok so Force Arrow is allright due to it being on a particular weapon and all. But how about "True" Dual Wield? Sorry for pushing for it but what MMO or RPG actually DOESN'T allow it...?

Tie it to "Pure" Melee maybe(In the context of Skill Focus that seems to be the major change), have it as an "Ability" centered on the Characters, not the items is all I mean. Wouldn't have to change anything, not even art..

In essence all it is is an alternative DoubleStrike so maybe merge them and do something similar to what I suggest. How bad could it get? I could add that in fact that kind of Specs should have their own Skill(2Hand Weps should too), give some depth to it. If you're worried about Shield/Weap + Dual Wield then just have a No Shield restriction.

No-one notices a complete lack of Pure Melee attention?....

Re: Specials

The Lightning Strike change will be utterly ignored by the mega-damage mana leeching Sampires that Logrus wants to nerf, while completely screwing over anyone else who uses Bushido. The guy hitting for 200+ damage per whack with a 50% mana leech weapon is the LAST person in UO who would care about this.

If you want to put a template-crunch on Sampires who are stacking the benefits of Necro/Chiv/Bushido to raise their power level over 9000 and pwn infinity, then making them GM Chivalry was a good start.

However, the real solution is to scale the benefits of Necromancy forms off of Spirit Speak.

As it stands currently you can pick up the primary skills of Necro, Chiv, and Bushido and derive substantial benefit without taking ANY secondary skills related to those three. Chiv has none. Bushido kinda has Parry I guess, but everyone already uses that anyway and it's not like you can make them take it twice. The real problem is that Necromancy has a secondary skill that everyone is content to ignore.

Necromancy was given a secondary for a reason. When huge numbers of people are leaving that skill off their templates, it needs something to make it more important.

Necro has the leeches and Chiv has the ludicrously high damage. You want to get those two skills off of the same templates. Then melee branches off into high-leeching but lower damage Chivless Sampires and high-damage but less tanky Bushido/Paladins.

Resist the urge to mess up Bushido too badly or you'll just make room for people to keep the Chiv damage and Necro leech while stacking HCI and otherwise compensating.

Re: Specials

They would have to change layering and "some" art, or add art in for it. Not that these are terribly difficult tasks but considering they promised SA art upgrades I am not sure they want to try and add more work for the art team. They could perhaps limit it to certain weapons, there by only having to change some layering and some other coding sections (such as swing and damage) Which should all be part of engineering.

Re: Specials

I have started posts in the past about using both of the skill set together. I have come up with an idea about causing damage to the user of the lower skill set or make it so that if you cast a spell from one the other has a timer.
" You are infused with negative energy and can not find the focus to cast a spell of light." example.

Yes I agree! Wrestling too.

Re: Specials

Hahaha, terrible self-pitying "My class is so underpowered!" stereotypical MMO forum post. You're getting buffed, stop crying so hard.

ROFL! Remember kids, a given skill is worthless if any other skill or item in the game has similar effects! It can deal huge damage? Well slayer weapons exist so that doesn't count! It can heal? Well bandages exist so that doesn't count!

This is hysterical. By this standard virtually every skill in UO is totally worthless. I mean magery must suck in your view. Sure it can heal and do damage, but so can other things! Useless!

By the way, I love the fact that you offer up both minor slayers AND elemental damage weapons as alternatives. That's about a billion different specific high-end weapons you need to have made just to TRY to keep up with one or two low-end Chivalry spells.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and where's my Medusa-specific minor slayer? Oh yeah those don't exist. You know that's the kind of stuff we're talking about, right? And that no one cares who can kill... like... ogre lords or some other newb crap the fastest?

Honor depends upon:

A) Nobody else around using it first. I mean that right there is a huge drawback that exists for NOTHING else in UO. If people logged in one day and got the message "You cannot cast Consecrate Weapon against this boss because someone else already has!" there would be full-scale RIOTING.

B) The target not taking any damage first. Yeah if that mage's EV got to it first, or some archer pinged it, you're just out of luck for the entire fight. "You cannot use Enemy of One because you have reflect physical on your suit and this foe took 4 damage punching you!" Yeah THAT would go over well.

C) The target not buffing it's strength first. Tell you what, let's give every single casting monster in UO a first circle spell which prevents Chivalry from dealing damage to it, as long as the spell is cast before the paladin locks on, and see how everyone likes it.

D) The attacker not missing a few times. As anyone familiar with the UO RNG knows, sometimes you just seem to miss every other swing for no reason. Let's change Chivalry so that Enemy of One shuts off if you miss two or three times, that sounds fair doesn't it?

E) The attacker not switching targets. If you honor X then you cannot honor Y, and if you do honor Y then you can never honor X again. Really if there's more than one monster, you're NEVER going to get to honor more than one of them, for all of the reasons listed above.

You do not know what you are talking about. Honor is ridiculously situational when you're doing anything more than whacking ogre lords solo. Quite frequently you just don't get to use it. I know you took your little 'pure paladin' down to Despise and felt like a UO expert when you were done, but you're not.

Re: Specials

You do sound technically savvy so I hope you won't mind me asking how it would involve any art changes if it's merely Ability Icons off an additional Book such as those used for Ninjitsu or Magery..? Not to mention that nothing actually changes when activating Abilities, in the way a Character swings. It's mostly sounds, sparks and numbers. And I believe we're all far beyond wanting anything more, to go with our new Skills and Spells.. I did say it would't need to be tied to items at all.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt if you could Dual Wield only 1Handers and not using a shield. Then simply a "Ghost" duplicate of the equipped 1Hander could appear on a Character's Off-Hand when DUal Wield Abilities are used or Toggled /On. That item would be a "Dummy" either way..

Re: Specials

Perhaps I simply misunderstood what your request was. I thought you were asking for the ability to equip more than one weapon, and some weapons will only sit "nicely" (art wise) on the layer they are currently intended. If this is what you meant then I just answered it, if not then well Sorry I made a mistake in my interpretation.

Edit: Yup certainly missed that "not tied to items" part of your post, totally my mistake....oh well I guess now they have two ideas >.>

Re: Special Moves

^_^ Np

In case we wish to take this further it should be noted that one root problem with UO's "Warriors" is that Specs are tied to items, not to Skills.

Fencing, Swords and so on should offer those Specs. Not the weapons.. And exotic Specs such as Infect should be strictly offered by complementary Skills. For example Infect = Poisoning, Shadow Strike = Stealth .... And so on..

So the very basis of "Warriors" is completely OFF in UO in my opinion and attempts to fix non Warriors using those Specs always end up reducing Warriors' effectiveness.

Well, no more LS for me then! I'll just build a suit to Spam AI instead. Hurrah! The player who can afford a suit change wins again!

I could've sworn all current sampires farmed up all the ingredients to imbue a proper suit. Most are just too lazy to include LMC in their builds already.

If you're trying to tell me you don't already own a pair of mace and shield glasses, and a conjurer's trinket already, then you didn't have a proper samp to begin with.

Those 2 items + imbuing ingredients (which you already farm up with your current samp build) = proper suit.

The Lazy Stick strikes again.

Woah woah woah. What's with all the negativity? Lighten up. I solo nothing but DH. Why would I put LMC on my suit when I don't need it? DH is easy as pie with just LS. Now LS might not work so well, I will add on LMC. That way I can spam either LS or AI.

As for "If you're trying to tell me you don't already own a pair of mace and shield glasses, and a conjurer's trinket already, then you didn't have a proper samp to begin with."

I do have these two things, but this is the problem with this game. If a new player comes in and can't afford 20m in items, which is almost certain, he doesn't have a proper suit? Who made you the god of suits? I assume you have a Woodland suit all with HCI and DI? You better have or you clearly need to leave the game and evaluate your life.

What a fool.

Actually, since you inquired, I am the god of suits. You can ask anyone on GL.

You can also build "competent" suits not using mace and shield and trinket. Just not the most efficient. My "proper" samp suits comment was directed at samps that do not run 40 lmc in them. As you just stated, you do not have lmc in your suit, so you fit in the "improper samp suit" bracket.

You can fix that though, so no worries. Just go lmc 7 on your pieces so you don't need to spend "big money" on 10 essence of order for lmc 8. That's my "positive" tip of the day!

Re: Specials

Impaler is weak to fire but strong against physical, Abyssmal Horror is weak to physical but strong against fire. Greater Dragons and Stygian Dragon are weak to poison and cold but strong against fire, Skeletal Dragons are strong against poison, Wyrms are strong against cold but weak against fire.

Dread Horn and Oaks are fey but strong against poison, hope you didn't buy one of those fancy event swords that are fey slayer with lots of poison damage. Dread Horn is weak against Physical so if you're an archer you could use an Ironwood Bow, but don't use that at the Oaks spawn because Ethereal Warriors have tons of physical resist. They're weak to poison though, so if you have that poison fey sword then go ahead, just swap it out for something different when the champ pops.

Gee this is all much simpler than Consecrate.

Re: Specials

Also I just wanna repeat: Anyone using Bushido in PVM who ISN'T your stereotypical Sampire swinging for massive damage with a mana leech weapon is going to be REAMED by the Lightning Strike change.

The people who ARE running around leeching huge amounts of mana aren't even going to notice this.

Re: Special

Okay.. I have to ask now; Running Leechers is the ONLY way to PVM?

Re: Special

For PVM melee? Yes. It's a Sampire with bush/chiv/necro doing 300 damage with a 50% mana leech weapon or GTFO.

Let me guess.. That's because every single thing out there is just a step higher on the ladder towards 10000000000000 Health and equally crazy Dmg?...

It wouldn't hurt if the Devs came up with novel ideas for Mobs.

Yeah that's part of it. But players will always try to be as powerful as possible no matter what, so really things would look the same regardless of how monsters were designed.

Like I've said a million times over these 3 or 4 threads, they need to either make Necromancy forms require Spirit Speak to be effective, or make the forms constantly drain Karma and burn you when Chivalry spells are cast. Or both.

Ultimately the reason every PVM melee has Chiv, Bush, and Necro all at once is because they CAN.

If i think about it, the change to defensive mastery looks like a solution looking for a problem. Only usable weapon with that special is kama, and main application for that weapon is to whirlwind stuff at spawns. And physical damage is usually not a problem then.

Re: Specials

Yeah very closely to the reason why people cheat.. So should that be allowed too, officially? ;P

Re: Special

It's just easier than sitting there with 2 max damage dealing lumberjack/paladins that x heal with bandaids.

You could build a stone form pvmer but they just take forever to kill stuff. Almost impossible to die with though unless the mob purges.

Re: Special

I'm spamming this around because I just thought of it and want input.

Call the concept "Opposed Skills" or something like that.

Effective Chivalry = Actual Chivalry - Actual Necromancy
Effective Necromancy = Actual Necromancy - Actual Chivalry
Effective Bushido = Actual Bushido - Actual Ninjitsu
Effective Ninjitsu = Actual Ninjitsu - Actual Bushido

Skip the Spirit Speak changes, skip the Vampiric Embrace changes, skip everything. You wanna have 100 Chiv and 40 Necro, smartypants? Now you're casting like you have 60 Chiv and 0 Necro.

Re: Specials

I'd like that, Squeax. I'd love it if combining those, produced new Skills altogether but that's thinking too far ahead probably.

I see no great benefit in these changes to melee characters. Granted some of these sound nice, but in PvP we still have that 35 damage cap still in place, as well as all the pvp nerfs since publish 25.

So now when out in the field it is most likely you will be comboed quick, redlined in 2 spells, swatted like a mosquitoe. You wont be able to kill anyone because of healing stones, pots, speed hacking, etc.

Damage will be the same, only doing 22-25 damage normal swings with a maxed out LJ char with 120 anat, tacts for example, or trying to AI X 4 to make a kill, since everyone is running Max HP.

That cap has to go and bumped just like the SDI cap. That is my 2 cents.

That is the AI damage cap...you can be hit for more than 35 damage if conditions allow. *test hit myself for 41 damage*

Logrus: In the highlighted section, is that a hard capped penalty (ie HCI is 45%, it's a 15% penalty, leaving HCI at 30%) or can it be over capped (ie HCI is 60, it's a 15% penalty, leaving HCI at 40%).

Re: Specials

Why are you so intent on nerfing sampires? Does it really bother you so much that someone can solo something that your mage or tamer or paladin or whatever can't? Or do better in a spawn or something? Some other build is always going to be better at something you can't do.

The shards other than Atlantic are so dead now that you almost can't find a whole mess of people to do a big hunt anymore. The result of this is that people will find a way to make the perfect complimentary set of skills to make them as effective solo as possible. So nerf sampires, and another superclass will evolve. Nerf that, and another will replace it. Keep nerfing them, and we will be left with pure classes, so no mystic mages, no tamer mages, no unique classes at all. It will distill down to single, boring predictable cookie cutter templates. Wow, I can't wait to play a classic fighter and need a pure mage to back me up, because someone kept b!tching about bandaging yourself while in combat being unrealistic to the point of absurdity and they nerfed it...

I mean think about it, you just had Medusa pump several giant arrows in you, or got fried by a dragon's fireball, perhabs a sucking chest wound or 3rd degree burns over 50% of your body, and no problem, while I'm fighting, I can just slap a bandaid on that and poof, all better! Blood loss be damned! But I digress.

What fun would the game be if you couldn't pick and choose your skills to compliment each other?

Instead of griping about them, why don't you make up a sampire, and have some fun with it before someone takes your advice and nerfs it? It really is a fun build to play. You might like it.