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Post by Rekov on Jun 7, 2017 14:48:17 GMT -5
Sneak Attack currently strikes me as having problems on two different levels. The first is that the two methods of triggering sneak attacks (from stealth, and while flanking) do not synergize, and in fact work against each other. Secondly, I contend that sneak attacking from stealth is underwhelming considering its enormous opportunity costs. I will leave it to someone with more experience with flanking to address the topic, should they so wish. All sneak attackers will take the Sneak Attack tree, and then either the Hide and Move Silently trees or the Flanking Attack tree depending on how they intend to trigger Sneak Attacks. At present, EoA's mechanics disincentivize building for both approaches. In order to sneak attack from stealth, a character needs to remain undetected long enough to build their sneak attack pool, which basically means light armor. Light armor poses a problem if you also want to flank enemies, because it isn't sufficient defense against being engaged in melee, and requires positioning in places that are generally unsafe, especially in group situations where tanks typically attempt to form a choke point in doorways. In order to safely position for flanks, you typically need at least medium armor, which in turn makes it more difficult to remained stealthed.
Sneak attacking from stealth on its own currently carries an extraordinary cost for mostly underwhelming results. It requires investment in three full trees, which is about a fourth of a character's abilities *, but that aside, it doesn't actually seem to be worth using from a mechanical standpoint. Everything about sneak attacking from stealth takes time. It takes time to build your sneak attack pool, and it takes time for the sneak attack damage to apply. In a group situation, that time is paid for in the HP of other group members, and at the opportunity cost of the damage you could have dealt. The rounds spent building sneak attack would be better spent simply attacking. In order to be worth using, the sneak attacking character would need to constantly advance ahead of the group in order to build sneak attack (again to the consternation of the group's tanks), but even this limits it to one chance at a sneak attack per encounter that doesn't carry an extraordinary cost in time, which equals damage not dealt and group member's HP lost. There would never be a reason to reenter stealth to build another sneak attack, because attacking deals more damage, never mind the cost of using a smoke grenade or stompers every time you need to enter stealth. The only reasonable circumstance to sneak attack from stealth is while soloing, or with a henchman. The henchman doesn't care if you hold him back while you build your sneak attack pool, and the time spent doing so isn't being paid for in HP. There is still an OOC cost in time, but it is actually mechanically advantageous to wait for the chance of a slightly better attack. In short, it isn't worth investing in three ability trees in order to get the occasional chance at a better attack, especially when it is mechanically disadvantageous to do so in many circumstances.
As I said at the outset, I don't have a lot of experience with Flanking Attack. It seems like it could be okay if you build specifically for it. Thematically, I don't necessarily see why it's rolled into the Stealth skill though. Flanking Attack doesn't benefit from stealth, and the supporting gear you need for Flanking Attack to be safe and effective works against your ability to Stealth. * EDIT: According to this post by PE, a character can expect to gain only 50 abilities from leveling skills (10 trees). Additional abilities can be gained from quest and boss xp.
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Post by Lugwy on Jun 7, 2017 16:08:45 GMT -5
I've been exclusively mainlining light armour and it's viable to build around flanking attacks with it. It mostly relies on maneuvering and knowing where you are in relation to your enemies and your allies, to know when to hit, when to run, and when the enemy's attention is turned away so you can resume poking holes in their backs, and your ability within the group play to effectively use the style (since I've noticed that it's uncommon for groups to deliberately build around allowing flanking bonuses for teammates unless the environment gives them no choice). Speaking of which, Flanking Attack allows you to continue making Sneak Attacks even when you're not stealthed and the enemy is aware of your presence, as long as you are attacking the enemy's back. In that respect, it's extremely useful if you want to deal more than one Sneak Attack per battle and you have someone to keep the enemy attention towards them and the enemy's back facing you, and to remove the need to lurk in stealth to build a sneak pool.
The only part of your post I agree with is the observation regarding the opportunity/DPS cost of waiting for a sneak pool to build. Without Flanking Attack, when you're stealthed and building a pool, you're not attacking, and most of the time, even the wounding damage from a Sneak Attack with a maximised pool and all pool-enhancing modifiers is not on par with the damage you could have dealt if you opted to eschew stealth and start attacking anyway.
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Post by Lugwy on Jun 11, 2017 23:01:17 GMT -5
After some thinking, I could suggest that while the Sudden Strike can remain as is, the Precision Attack line may need some love due to its gimmick revolving around characters hanging back and not really contributing to build a proper pool, at least if they don't have the Flanking Attack line.
Maybe give Precision Attack a feature that converts a portion of the sneak pool from wounding damage to physical damage when a successful sneak attack is dealt? (Base sneak attack damage isn't converted.) Something like 20% conversion at III, 40% at IV, and 60% with Grievous Wound? This has the issue of making it flat-out superior to Death Attack in most cases, though.
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Post by Fuzz on Jun 12, 2017 2:11:33 GMT -5
Yeah, the locks solution to this is to front load scam attacks from stealth damage too something more like default D&D, where it's an alpha strike. Maybe not all of the damage, but increasing portions with successive levels of Talents is basically the perfect solution.
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Aug 27, 2017 3:32:57 GMT -5
After discussing the topic with a new player, I realized that there is no-way a classical assassin would work in Engines under the current rules. The closest I can deduce is a flanker with Thousand Cuts and Death Attack, but that requires a very high Stealth rank (80) in order to kill anything outright with wounding damage, and even that will take significant combat time trying to ramp the target's wounding pool.
I'd like to restart this conversation, if anyone else is still interested, because it seems that the current paradigm for Stealth-based characters is largely that one a one-shot per encounter pony.
I think the primary issue with balancing sneak-attack comes from the different paradigms of in-combat and out-of-combat pool building.
Out of combat, any pool built is a strict damage increase, because its damage saved from a round that would not deal any damage. In combat, any time spent building pool is a strict damage decrease, when compared to what one could be doing simply by attacking that round. The difference in value of the two otherwise-identical six-second time-spans is vast, but is not accounted for in the stealth-pool system.
One option that came to mind is granting either a damage or sneak-tick multiplier based on if the party is in combat or not, or if the target is engaged (and therefore distracted): this would reduce the reliance on stealth-pool-based chars to sit on their haunches while the party sits around/gets beat up while waiting for their sneak pool to max out for their only damage shot of the encounter. It would also mean anyone using smokes to re-stealth isn't removing themselves from combat for a full minute before dealing only nine-to-twelve seconds equivalent worth of damage. I'm aware that the back-stabber ability already works similar to this, but I feel like it's too critical of a utility to avoid for a pool-based sneaker, particularly when considering 'sniper' type characters who are unlikely to get into the rear arc in stealth mode. Back-stabber only partially mitigates the issue, since you need to be rank 55 stealth minimum, and chances are a full round attack will deal more than the 25% extra damage you would have built up.
Another option could be that something like Taunt allows allows to re-build stealth pools against the target, or that one of the two stealth-trees could allow for keeping a sneak-pool against another target per ability investment - allowing the PC to build a pool against multiple opponents, and activate each in subsequent turns.
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zilvai
Just Wandered In
Posts: 21
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Post by zilvai on Aug 27, 2017 4:08:30 GMT -5
Hey guys,
I am one of the on and off players of EoA. Never really made it with any of my characters to go beyond level 20 in a skill. I have found that my affinity to sneak type characters is misplaced here. As a new player I can barely manage to tackle things by myself, even with henchmen more often then not. Let alone the henchmen soak up so much gold that my progression is nearly impossible. Grouping with players has not proved fruitful either as everyone is beyond my level and the dungeons are just too hard for my characters to ever handle. So opting to solo, even with pet and henchies, I find that the sneak abilities give me absolutely no advantage, especially at low level and instead seem more problematic then anything. My party of henchies or the pet take way too much damage before I actually do my engage and more often then not I am left to fight for myself as my companions get downed. As a sneak character I can only utilize my sneak ability once in every fight. Of course that will change at 15 as I get the option to take flanking strikes but it still feels so worthless compared to all the other options that are out there at that level and beyond.
While I have not any input on how it could be made better, I just wanted to share my experience with the skill. Things I have been reading here I can mostly agree to, especially Kitsunenotsume's latest post as I have talked with them about it.
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Aug 27, 2017 4:13:25 GMT -5
It sounds like the simple option there might be to adjust Flanking Strikes to rank 5 progression or earlier and switch places with Hide; given that Flanking seems to be generally agreed to be in a good place, but wait-and-pool damage is the paradigm in doubt.
When using Sneak with NPCs, it can also be rather important to know the Hold and Guard commands: tell them to Hold around a corner before sneaking up to get your pool, then Guard or Attack so they follow along and engage while you get into position to strike.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Aug 28, 2017 21:49:38 GMT -5
I've been working on some sneak improvements but it's been slow going lately. The main issue with flanking is to avoid making it an ability that simply adds damage. Now that I have better scripts to detect sneak attack hits (previously you just got your pool damage even if they saw you) I could move towards something that requires less pool accumulation time, or none at all. I'm also looking at an ability (maybe a move silently replacer) that lets you do some sneak attack through armor, but that'll require shuffling around the tier 5 things. Any more specific suggestions would be helpful for when I start going though it a bit more purposefully.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Sept 16, 2017 20:44:15 GMT -5
Made some progress on the design for the stealth shakeup. Right now the plan is roughly to do the following:
- Higher base PC sneak attack damage (untrained) - Sneak attack being flat damage instead of pooled, still maximum once every two rounds (full round of stealth first) - Hide/Move silently rolled in to hide, which will have stealth run as one branch - Sneak attack changed to one that lets sneak damage penetrate armor, and branches to several special effect options on-hit - Move silently changed to a more generic sneak attack ability that adds damage, similar to the +1s for weapons. - Flanking attack just straight wounding damage to flanked targets, bonus if you previously hit them with a sneak attack - Opportunist largely unchanged, some shuffling to remove pool references
I'd appreciate thoughts on the new layout before committing any changes. I'll have at least a few days of work on Sedis and trainers before I start this.
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Sept 17, 2017 2:25:29 GMT -5
By "- Sneak attack being flat damage instead of pooled", are you meaning to remove the "Wait for extra damage stealth-pool", or that it will no longer be wounding-pool damage over time?
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Sept 17, 2017 8:05:23 GMT -5
No wait to build it up.
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Post by Kitsunenotsume on Sept 17, 2017 10:44:27 GMT -5
cool. thanks for clarification.
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Post by Psionic-Entity on Oct 8, 2017 20:58:30 GMT -5
Started work on this today. There's a few changes since the last post, mainly in that I'm adding critical hits to sneak attack damage. I'm a little short on alternative effects for some of the branches so if anyone has ideas for new mechanics specifically related to stealth or sneak attack I'd be interested in hearing them.
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Post by electrohydra on Oct 8, 2017 21:28:58 GMT -5
Not sure I understand what the changed system is going to look like.
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Post by Serena on Oct 10, 2017 8:03:38 GMT -5
I think I like the changes explained until now (I was intentioned in suggesting something related to crit chances, but I was beaten to it, so it's even better), and I do think they will help improving the current situation of the stealth skill.
What I'm not sure about, however, is if the changes will improve the role of any stealth based character, since, as of now, they don't really seem to fit in any scenario that is not solo with henchmen/pet, or any party with less than four bodies able to trigger a spawn (this is also connected with the current incremental spawn system the dungeons have, and with the fact that the server lacks a character able to take and keep aggro through a fight, thus making any attempt at flanking just an inconvenience that is simply better to avoid).
A few suggestions I can think of to mitigate this problem, although I have no idea if they are even possible - mechanically speaking, would probably be the following:
Feint - an ability that, for a cost, will let the character perform a sneak attack even when not flanking/stealthed. Probably only viable for melee. Misdirection - a way to let the character redirect aggro to someone else when in need, or simply to be able to be disengaged as long as there's another ally in range. Opportunist (high level skill? Might be a stretch, but I'll list it anyway..) - exploit enemy distraction, being able to perform sneak attack on someone who is engaged in combat with someone else.
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