Leafiara (prime)/Mechanical Musings/Frequently Asked Questions (and Ones That Should Be)

Preamble

As a mentor and also just as a player, I see and hear a lot of mechanical questions from people who feel that they've done something wrong with their training. Sometimes they've veered far off track from what they intended, but sometimes they've accomplished exactly what they wanted and just never knew that. Other times there's no right answer at all.

At first I was going to name this page something like "New Player Pitfalls" or "Common Mechanical Misconceptions," but while I started making my list, I realized that's not quite what I'm reviewing.

The most important thing I can say is that if it works for you, it works. The only mistakes we can truly make are when we both A) don't know why we've done what we've done and B) don't like the result. So my hope is that, when that happens, that's when you can come to this page and many others on the wiki to figure out what's gone awry.

On with the questions!

Do I Need Dodging on a Character in Full Plate with a Tower Shield?

This is one of the most fascinating questions I hear. There's so much packed into it, yet it's usually treated as a one-dimensional question--and, even stranger, the aspects of it that I believe are the most important to consider almost never get discussed.

So what am I talking about? Well, usually, when people ask this, it's because they've heard or read that evade DS, which comes almost entirely from training Dodging, gets cut into by heavier armor and heavier shields. So they ask a completely logical question:

If I'm wearing the heaviest armor and carrying the heaviest shield, does Dodging help me enough to be worth it anymore?

I've found it pretty rare that people do the math; they just see a double penalty and don't necessarily ask how severe it is. Ironically, I actually agree--albeit for entirely different reasons--that it's not worth doing the math, but I'm going to anyway for the sake of completeness.

Here's the Evade DS formula taken straight from the Evade DS page:

Base Value = Dodging Ranks + (AGI Bonus) + trunc(INT Bonus / 4)
Evade DS (Melee) = ((Base Value × Armor Hindrance × Shield Factor) - Shield Size Penalty)) × Stance Modifier

That's to calculate total Evade DS, but that's not the question we're asking--it's whether Dodging is worth training. That means we can actually ignore some of this, as Agility, Intuition, and Shield Size Penalty would all have exactly the same impact regardless of whether you had 0 or 303 Dodging. Once Agility and Intuition are out of the picture, this also means that Base Value = Dodging Ranks for our purposes.

So, to re-frame and simplify this:

Evade DS (Melee) per Dodging Rank = Armor Hindrance * Shield Factor * Stance Modifier

Let's say we have various characters in offensive stance and plug in some numbers. (These also come from the Evade DS page.)

Robes and Buckler Monk = 1 * 0.78 * 0.75 = 0.585 DS per Dodging rank
Full Plate and Tower Shield Paladin = 0.83 * 0.54 * 0.75 = 0.33615 DS per Dodging rank
Full Plate and Large Shield Paladin = 0.83 * 0.62 * 0.75 = 0.38595 Ds per Dodging rank
Brigandine and Medium Shield Ranger = 0.94 * 0.7 * 0.75 = 0.4935 DS per Dodging rank
Augmented Chain and Buckler Bard = 0.92 * 0.78 * 0.75 = 0.5382 DS per Dodging rank

I realize that including shield monks is odd because almost nobody trains that way, but you'll see why since now I'm going to invoke warriors and rogues, who have additional considerations of Light Armor Proficiency or Scale Armor Proficiency giving (respectively) a 120% or 115% multiplier to the end result.

Brigandine and Medium Shield Warrior = 0.94 * 0.7 * 0.75 * 1.15 = 0.567525 DS per Dodging Rank
Robes and Buckler Rogue = 1 * 0.78 * 0.75 * 1.2 = 0.702 DS per Dodging Rank

So what's the takeaway? Well, even if you're looking purely at the DS numbers of two extremes such as a light armor and buckler rogue (or warrior) vs. a full plate and tower shield paladin (or warrior), the paladin is still getting about 47.88% as much DS benefit from Dodging as the rogue. I believe that's more than what most people imagine when they hear about getting doubly penalized.

Like I said, though, this is all sort of moot because looking purely at DS numbers doesn't tell the whole story or anything close to it.

A point of DS isn't merely a point of DS because this isn't nearly that linear a game.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole of what in the world that means, have at it and I'll see you in four hours, but the short answer is that full plate (regardless of shield type) is also piling on low damage factor multipliers, which reduce raw damage, and high crit divisors, which increase the amount of raw damage an enemy needs to inflict to deal stronger criticals.

What that means is...

If you're just trying to philosophize your way through without even looking at the math, then the same logic that would say "I don't want Dodging because Evade DS benefits get doubly penalized by full plate and tower shields" gets cancelled out by identical logic that would say "I want Dodging because Evade DS benefits get doubly reinforced by full plate damage factor and crit divisor." 

But we still haven't actually answered the original question of whether you need Dodging while wearing full plate and using a tower shield, because it's such a multifaceted one. From a DS standpoint, you might very well not need it. Just because it adds extra DS--and possibly more DS than you might think--doesn't mean that extra DS will be helpful. Maybe you're already impenetrable to enemies' AS attacks, either in the literal way where they can't possibly hit you, or in the functional way where your DS is high enough that enemies' AS attacks do minor damage that doesn't slow you down.

So with all that said, the final answer ironically has nothing to do with any of that. The final answer comes from an underlying question that often isn't being considered by the person asking the original question, and that answer is:

If you wear full plate, you need to train something to mitigate the impact of enemy maneuvers unless you either avoid every enemy that uses them or don't mind getting consistently nuked by them.

That something could be Dodging. It could be Physical Fitness, Perception, or Combat Maneuvers. It could be overtraining Armor Use. Ideally it's several of the above, but if it's none of the above then you're probably in trouble. Out of these five options for improving maneuver defense, Dodging also adds DS, Physical Fitness also adds stamina and stamina regeneration, Perception is (for most professions) the cheapest, Combat Maneuvers also adds melee AS and maneuver points, and Armor Use adds armor specialization points. You decide which route suits you best!

Should I Play This Profession, That Profession, or The Other Profession?

Yes!

This question gets raised a lot by two types of players: 1) those who have just started in GS and typically don't even realize how deep a question they've just asked, and 2) those who are starting a second (or third, fourth, fifth...) character and are looking to accomplish a specific goal based on their experiences with a previous character. For my purposes here, I'm only concerned with the first type of player.

So let's go into the common wisdom answers. I wouldn't say any of them tell the whole story on their own, but you'll get closer if you understand the reasoning of each and take them all together.

Common Wisdom Answer 1: Anything works, so pick what you want for RP purposes.

The "anything works" part is right, but also a bit simplistic. Any profession does have at least one build that works, if by "works" we mean "has similar or better efficiency and risk/reward to the most efficient build of each other profession against the average creature."

There's a ton of unspoken implications in that, though. Is efficiency what you're after in the first place? Even if it is, do you want it within a specific style of play? How about risk/reward--do you prefer high or low?

Even if you've figured those things out, the entire premise of this answer has its flaws because you're never hunting hypothetical creatures that have the average stats, skills, and spells of all creatures in the game; you're hunting specific creatures with specific stats, skills, and spells. Meaning, for example, that even if you can hit 50% of all creatures in the game with Tackle at a 98% success rate, that 50% figure could still be 0% or 100% in your specific hunting ground.

Empaths' Bone Shatter spell is one of the most extreme examples of why this matters, as enemies without bones--such as ghosts or elementals--are outright immune. A less extreme example would be, say, areas where the enemies are all so large that setup maneuvers like Sucker Punch and Swiftkick that might otherwise have been staples of your playstyle won't work.

Being effective against almost everything doesn't mean much if you primarily hunt the "almost" part.

With all that said, there's still wisdom to be found here. It's true that as long as a profession has even one build that works somewhere in every level range, you can make it to level 100 and beyond. Will you enjoy that build, though? That's up to your tastes and it's something you'll need to dig into more deeply.

Common Wisdom Answer 2: Pick [insert profession]!

If you were to poll ten players on which profession to play (or play next) out of two options and get a 9-to-1 answer, it can sometimes be helpful. Does it mean much, though? At best, it might mean that the people who answered love the winning profession; at worst, it might just mean that they hate the losing one and could still dislike the winning one.

If you ran that poll with a choice of three options and got an 8/1/1 answer, that's the next step up. At least it's more likely, though still not guaranteed, that they like the winning one and it's not only a lesser of three evils.

All that aside, though, other people liking a profession doesn't mean you'll enjoy it, nor does it mean you know their reasoning. Are they drawn in by that profession's offensive strength, defensive strength, subjective fun, playstyle, flavor, silver-making ability, flexibility in builds, or something else entirely? Probe further and ask what they like. Otherwise, when they say they like being a wizard, they could mean anything from casting bolts to swinging a maul with Celerity in effect.

Personally, I think that surveying people is mostly useful for getting a sense of what not to play. An answer about which profession to play might only mean that that player likes that profession. Most players realize that fun is subjective, though, so I think it's more telling when they still give an answer about which profession to avoid. Even then, ask for clarity on why they think so.

Common Wisdom Answer 3: Play everything to level 20.

People pick level 20 as the benchmark because you have fast skill migration before level 20. This basically gives you free reign to change build around at will and try anything within a profession's capabilities that sounds even remotely interesting to you.

On the face of it, this might seem like the best answer yet--and, in some ways, it is. At least this answer encourages self-discovery instead of pure theorycrafting. There's a lot you can learn about your tastes and tendencies from taking every profession to level 20.

However, there's also a lot you can't learn and, in some cases, can even wrongly learn from taking every profession to level 20.

Even within the same profession and build, not many playstyles at level 100 resemble their own level 20 counterparts. You'll typically encounter at least three of the following: expanded options for what you can do offensively, expanded options for what you can do defensively, the ability to do the same thing much faster, the ability to do the same thing for a longer period of time before running out of steam, and discovering that options that worked fantastically at lower levels fall behind other options at higher levels.

Let me break that down with a more concrete example. Let's say we have a warrior who uses two handaxes. Someone might like the simplicity of the basic stance dancing attack routine and their overwhelming AS as they hunt giant rats, sea nymphs, death dirges, and other low level enemies--but it's not going to carry on like that forever.

Enemy DS gets higher and turtling enemies start to exist, so the warrior begins using setup maneuvers like Tackle or Cripple and pays more attention to stamina. By level 23, they'll have Flurry and will probably want to use it at least once every two minutes to sustain the Slashing Strikes buff, so now they're watching stamina and when Slashing Strikes expires. whenever they reach 30 ranks of Multi Opponent Combat, now Slashing Strikes is not only good for buffs, but also more efficient on speed than attacking.

At higher levels, it's completely plausible that the warrior never uses the ATTACK command and that it's all Flurry, Whirling Blade, Feint, Cripple, Hamstring, Disarm Weapon, and Tackle. They might even have trained more than one weapon type if they've found different weapons to be more suitable for different foes, such as creatures that are more vulnerable to unarmed combat attacks than handaxes.

Even if they haven't done that, they might still switch between a variety of edged weapons, like an anti-magic veil iron weapon to use against deathsworn fanatics or pale scaled shapers so that their Cloak of Shadows can't retaliate.

Other factors compound on the sharp difference between level 20 and level 100, like the relative survivability of builds as enemies use non-AS-based attacks progressively more often or the design philosophy for capped hunting grounds being different from pre-cap hunting grounds. I don't need to carry on, though. The bottom line is simply this:

The level 0-20 experience isn't necessarily representative of anything other than the level 0-20 experience.

Conclusion: All of the Above and More

Let's bring all these together into a cohesive whole.

If we tried hard enough, we could probably identify how the average build of the average profession performs against the average enemy. We could identify what the average player likes. We might even be able to identify the average reason why.

But you're not the average player. You're specifically you, only you know your tastes, and whether we're talking about tastes in food or tastes in games, the only way you're going to find out what you like is by trying it. That's the wisdom of answer #3 up above. You have to experience the profession yourself--and not just up to level 20, but beyond.

That's a problematic situation, though, because it's not feasible for most people to play every profession to level 100 just to know if they like it all throughout. So, to me, the unspoken question behind "what profession should I play?" is "how can I get the most enjoyment out of my time?"

However, I think that should be toned down to merely "how can I enjoy my time?" In other words, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is personal opinion now, but I think a simple process of elimination is good enough. That's the wisdom in answer #2 up above, but it's maybe less about what to play and more about what not to.

Sticking with the food analogy from earlier, maybe there are some foods you just shouldn't try. While browsing a restaurant menu, you can rule out certain foods if you have an allergic reaction to the ingredients. You can rule out others if you're vegetarian. While browsing the profession selection screen, you can rule out certain options if you're dead set on being able to kill enemies with magic. You can rule out others if you want a creature following you.

And if you've gotten through all of your criteria and still can't decide, the wisdom of answer #1 up above is that when all else fails, go with your heart and go what with what sounds most appealing to you (from an RP perspective or otherwise)--because there is a way to make it work. As long as you didn't already rule out that way in the elimination step, you're good to go.

Summing it all up:

• Set criteria for what a profession absolutely must have or absolutely must not have, then eliminate the ones that don't fit.
• Try what's left, or as much of what's left as you have time for, since you'll only know what profession you like if you play it.
• If all else fails, go with your gut instinct.

(...and if even that fails, hop on the test server when it's available and try various professions and builds at all level ranges using the LEVELUP command.)

Should I Stop at 24 Physical Fitness?

This one's a bit of an older mentality that I hear mostly from players returning after a long absence. 24 ranks of Physical Fitness, or somewhere around there, will max out the health increases you get from training this skill. Decades ago, that was probably the single largest benefit of training PF, but much has changed:

• Enemies more widely use maneuver attacks, which PF helps defend against.
• Combat maneuvers have gone through numerous revisions and finally arrived at a point where players are making heavy use of the active combat maneuvers--which means they need more stamina, and therefore more PF.
• Mstrikes, which use no stamina when they're outside a cooldown period, have largely given way to assault techniques and area of effect techniques, which always cost stamina but use RT more efficiently and typically offer additional temporary buffs.
• And if all of that isn't enough, every 10 Physical Fitness bonus now also reduces encumbrance by 1 pound.

So when should you stop?

Well, if you're extraordinarily selective about hunting grounds to avoid enemy maneuvers, don't use combat maneuvers or weapon techniques because you're a casting pure, and rarely get encumbered because you're a giantman or dwarf, then sure, maybe stopping at 24 still makes sense.

For everyone else, the benefits from going to 1x, 2x, or even 3x are large and many, so it's just a matter of whether other options competing for your training points are even better--and that's a question only you can answer.

Questions to be Added Later

• How Much Ambush Do I Need (when Not Using Stealth)?
• How Much Ambush Do I Need (when Using Stealth)?
• How Should I Split My Spell Ranks While Leveling?
• Is Converting PTPs to MTPs (or Vice Versa) Good or Bad?
• What Armor Should I Wear (for Defensive Purposes)?
• What Armor Should I Wear (for Spell Hindrance Purposes)?
• Which Society Should I Join?