Duck and Weave/saved posts
Release
Topic: Developer's Corner - Rogues
Message #: 1478314
Author: GS4-OSCURO
Date: 07/11/2012 02:49 AM EDT
Subject: Rogue CMs
With the release of Monks comes a bevy of new Combat maneuvers. Note that some of these fall into the new type of Combat Maneuver called a Martial Stance. Martial Stances are relatively strong, passive abilities that last four hours once activated or until another Martial Stance becomes activated, thus a character can only have one Martial Stance active at a time.
Three new combat maneuvers are available to Rogues. Thanks goes to GM Finros for coding them, GM Oscuro for designing them, and to GMs Mestys and Estild for review and QC. The CMs are:
Skill Name: Duck and Weave Mnemonic: weave Hostile: No Stamina Cost: 30, with a 5 minute cooldown period during which the reactivation cost triples to 90. Other Requirements: Training in Dodging and Multi Opponent Combat is recommended. Available to: Rogues, Monks. Prerequisites: Evade Mastery (at rank 2) CMP Cost: Rank 1: (Squares) 4 Rank 2: (Squares) 8 Rank 3: (Squares) 12 Description: A 30 second boost to one's evasion chance, with lighter armor granting a higher bonus. Upon evading an attack, there is a chance that the attack can be redirected against another enemy in the same room. This redirection chance is based upon ranks in this maneuver, dodge ranks, multi-opponent combat ranks, agility and influence bonuses, and being in a more offensive stance.
Skill Name: Slippery Mind Mnemonic: slipperymind Hostile: No Stamina Cost: 20. Other Requirements: None. Available to: Rogues, Monks. Prerequisites: None CMP Cost: Rank 1: (Squares) 4 Rank 2: (Squares) 8 Rank 3: (Squares) 12 Description: This is a Martial Stance. While under its effects, you have a chance to avoid the effects of warding spells outright. This chance is 9% per rank while wearing cloth armor, 7% per rank in leather armor, 5% per rank in scale armor, 3% per rank in chain armor, and 1% per rank in plate armor.
Skill Name: Predator's Eye Mnemonic: predator Hostile: No Stamina Cost: 20. Other Requirements: A melee weapon with Base Weapon Speed 3 or less. Available to: Rogues. Prerequisites: None CMP Cost: Rank 1: (Squares) 4 Rank 2: (Squares) 6 Rank 3: (Squares) 8 Description: This is a Martial Stance. You have deadly aim when ambushing with light weapons. Your chance to hit the body part you aim for increases by 4% at rank 1, 7% at rank 2 and 10% at rank 3.
GameMaster Oscuro
Duck and Weave Q&A 1
Topic: Developer's Corner - Rogues
Message #: 1478457
Author: GS4-OSCURO
Date: 07/16/2012 08:46 AM EDT
Subject: Re: Rogue CMs
>I'm not quite clear on how weave works... It's duration based or activation based? If it's duration-based (seems like it), what's the duration? If it's activated, I suppose I have a whole series of questions.
- You activate it for a 30 second duration with a 5 minute cooldown period (which begins upon activation). It is not a Martial Stance like the other two CMs.
>Would it be possible to make duck and weave a fully passive skill?
- No. The evade bonus and redirection chance are far too large for that to be balanced. It'd be going from an up-time of 10% to 100%.
>Right now as a rogue, even with that, there is no reason to not be in full plate, it is simply an exercise is masochism to not be. The CvA bonus and the pure ability to stop damage just makes plate too good to not be in. We need some more incentive, Oscuro.
- Did you mean for this to argue against something else? I don't see how this is relevant to Duck and Weave being active vs passive.
>Just guessing, but Duck and Weave appears to be another melee only skill, not for ranged or hurling?
- It is independent of the activator's combat style. Duck and Weave doesn't make you attack, it makes attacks that would normally target you target other creatures in the room similar to Sympathy (1120).
GameMaster Oscuro
Duck and Weave Q&A 2
Topic: Developer's Corner - Rogues
Message #: 1478565
Author: GS4-OSCURO
Date: 07/16/2012 02:33 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Rogue CMs
>Are you going to give us any indication of the chances that CM WEAVE has to trigger for given training plans?
- The Evade bonus is 1% per rank, per AG less than 6. So at 5 ranks in robes, you get +15% Evade. This makes 3x dodge, 3 rank Evade Mastery, 3 rank D&W Rogues/Monks have a 57% Evade chance in offensive stance and higher in more defensive stances.
- In offensive stance, you'd see a little over a 50% chance of redirection for your average Rogue w/ 3 ranks in Duck and Weave, 2x dodge, 0x MOC and 25 Agi/Inf bonuses. This increases to a little over 70% if the Rogue has 3x dodge and 100 ranks in MOC, which is pretty atypical for a Rogue, but certainly likely for a Monk. The redirection bonus from Dodge training is a rank per level check, whereas it's a flat bonus for ranks in MoC.
>I like all of the concepts. There has been a long-standing request to have some way to offset CvA, slippery mind is a step towards that. Many will probably find predator's eye to be interesting. I like that it factors into hurled weapons.
>On to CM WEAVE... I think one issue is that these duration-based cooldown maneuvers can be exceedingly annoying as a concept. It's a very tedious concept. Power-wise it's obviously a balance: in its current state you can make it much more likely to trigger than if it was passive. There are so many factors to consider (as a player) when determining which model you'd ACTUALLY prefer when playing the numbers (I'm not here to write a book so I won't go on enumerating). I'm honestly not sure which I'd prefer, especially not having a clue about how likely it is to go off. I can see that this idea is to, while hidden in a room full of creatures, CM WEAVE right before delivering an attack. It will obviously have great value there.
- Personally, I'd rather leave it as a defensive cooldown ability with large success rates than water down the values to make it persistent. It's meant to be used just as you suggested, right before you attack when in a swarm.
>To me, the main issue with maneuvers like duck and weave is that it has to be compared to 410. That's the crowd-control gold standard for light-armored rogues. Obviously the power scales with the cost but as a player I always weigh it against 410. It is practically a 100% evasion maneuver that gives you a relative offensive boost as well. 410 costs less than double the cost of duck and weave in TPs. Without even seeing the percentages on duck and weave, I'd put 410 in the "at least ten times as effective" category.
- E-wave has been in the "too good" column for a long time.
>I think there's a big issue with releasing CMs is the fact that we have to spend hard points to try it all out. This really does set you up for knee-jerk armchair analyses of new releases. If we got a 30-day CMP migration period, it would be great. We could try them out, give feedback based on experience, and everyone would be less prone to giving sour responses to new dev. If we want to test slippery mind or duck and weave out with 2 ranks, we're looking at 240,000 post-cap exp each just to play around (pre-cap players might have a greater disadvantage since they have the load of primary training goals). That's a good month of work just to try one out if you are a pretty solid and continuous player (>50k exp/week). If it doesn't work out for the player, that's several months of migration.
- We've done a 30-day CMP migration period in the past for large CM changes (the first CM review done by Coase and Ildran), but not for smaller updates (when one or two CMs were released at a time). I'm honestly not sure where this release falls in that spectrum, so I'll have to bring it up to the team.
>Hi Oscuro
- Greetings, Wolfloner. :)
>I seem to remember a GM ( might have been you ) floating and idea for feedback concerning making Shadow Mastery and Surge of Strength martial stances. Is this still being considered a possibility? I was intrigued with the idea.
- It was me. Surge of Strength has never been a contender as a Martial Stance (MS) - it's bonus is not something we want persistent without a significant stamina expenditure. Shadow Mastery is one that we did ponder making into an MS, but we decided not to go that route for two reasons 1) it would mean that pretty much every Ranger would have it up all the time as it'd be their only MS option, and 2) its bonuses would have to be retrofitted into the MS structure (i.e. nerfed) as they'd be persistent. I think it might be possible to do it if/when we get more MSs available, but I'm not sure if the benefit would outweigh the negative. As an alternative, we'd be open to ideas for a different stealth MS if you have any.
GameMaster Oscuro