the joys of being a mid stealther... (only for professional whiners)

[Straef]

See ?

lol

 

[bigchief]

little update, what happens if I use a Heat LG against Biggie

500dmg PA

~180 dmg for CD/SS/Garrotte/AH each

+90ish offhand (if it hit)

...didn't really look like you were about to die after that.

You didnt notice my bp chain proc'ing heals then? Or was that another convenitantly overlooked thing? Went off ~5 times in 4 swings, then you fled.

 

[Cylian]

...as a pincushion...

 

[Araudry]

Chain evades are pure luck for an SB. because we face a larger penalty from enervating, higher weaponskill on our enemies (infils) and to round it off. Higher AF on our enemies.

AF is a determining factor in your hit/miss rate, higher AF = less likely to get hit.

Considering SB's have lower AF than Infils because of spec AF which coupled with MoTA 5 and 25% bonus means you will always have higher AF than us no matter what we do.

if you would like to test this out i'll gladly borrow a friends account to get onto Gorre and test it. Think 500 odd swings should be sufficient to tell who much AF affects hit/miss rate.

since when AF affect miss rate ?
thats bs miss rate isnt affected by AF in any way
so more AF = more evade for u? hahahaha always some funny post here trying to find excuses lmao

 

[Cylian]

Hah! finally beat Thugs flame thread!

more posts, more views!







(on page1 atleast)

 

[emma]

since when AF affect miss rate ?
thats bs miss rate isnt affected by AF in any way
so more AF = more evade for u? hahahaha always some funny post here trying to find excuses lmao

Use your head Arauddry!

Higher AF means YOU are less likely to get hit.
Lower AF means I am more likely to get hit.

Because AF/Weaponskill are calculated into your "TO-HIT" rate because YOU have higher weaponskill and AF, means I wont hit you as often as YOU hit me.

MY hit rate could be counted as either a straight out miss or an evade.

 

[Vermillon]

Hey Vermillon, do you think the SB vs. Infil balance is as it should be? And, how do you rate the assassins in effeciency to each other?

I will be clear on this, yes infils are actualy better than SB, no bulltshit on that. Never played much time with one tho, only few times i played with Rambo, and some other friends infils. Rambo was a machine, even for me that i had just a litle expirience with stealthers back then, but i belive it was his RR because with the other infils i tried was ok. Still infils are better than SBs, not from NSs tho. I'm sure any infil will find hard time agaist any hight RR NS with all the apropriate RAs. NS only got access to AP, and druid haste and i belive is a great advantage. The only problem for NSs is the usualy Hibs dont hold strength rellics, wich are very importand for the stealth wars, so they cant clearly undestand how good they are, here at Prydwen at least.

So for me is like NS>inf>SB , tho in our server might be inf>NS>SB due to relics and the absence of high RR NSs, but surely SBs are always at the end
of the chain.

Tho i cant say i feel sorry about them, Shadowblades where unlucky to have the same spec line as zerker, LA nerf weakened their class. But is only one of the many balance isues this game has, and is the only one that Midgards cry about. That was the reason i made more general posts in this thread and didnt focused on the title of it. Plus the stealth war doesnt effect the majority of the players, speccialy those that want to play with opted groups like i did. And for me it is good to know that Albion is better on one thing than the others, as an opposite to the many imbalances i was faceing in our displeasure. So 1 imbalance in our favor and many on your favor, realy you sould be crying about it.

 

[Araudry]

Use your head Arauddry!

Higher AF means YOU are less likely to get hit.
Lower AF means I am more likely to get hit.

Because AF/Weaponskill are calculated into your "TO-HIT" rate because YOU have higher weaponskill and AF, means I wont hit you as often as YOU hit me.

MY hit rate could be counted as either a straight out miss or an evade.

AF has nothing to do with the chance to hits i think u better go test urself and see u are wrong ^^

 

[Vermillon]

Now i feel sorry about Cylian becasue this is suppoused to be a whine thread and i made a compromised post. Sorry for spoiling the whine fun

 

[Dorin]

New Frontiers moved in the right direction regarding stealthers in that they will be much easier to avoid and only those with the patience of a saint will continue to solo due to NF's size. But as a side effect to that alot of stealthers will group up and "camp" area's where people/groups have to move through.

agree with the rest but this wont be a problem for alb stealthers, hiya mincer - hiya owning shitloads of keeps etc etc :-o

 

[Dorin]

Anyways dunno why alb stealthers bother to reply to threads with the "everything is ok" shit, when i got pwned twice by rr3 thrust dwfiltrator as rr6 ns while doing the pa chain on him once, but he evaded around 40% hp and stuned me with prenerf DF (purge was down) and chaining the odd 300-450ish hits (caped resists, guess he was lucky...) + i didnt want to use AP3 against a myrmidion kinda described there is some problems with infiltrators (as i recall it was lothifers infil, well one of the fight anyways), aint talking about my camlan DW infil... its pure "ownage", sure everything is ok if you are on the bright side of it. I wasnt teh best wtfpwn stealther player on prydwen, but teh myth of NS being the übör stealther would be true maybe if:

+ 3 str relics which wont ever happen on pry
+ ap3 is up (Not exactly sure Remedy makes up for the loss of AP in NF)
+ alb stealthers would solo pre-rr8
+ would have patience like balthasar ><
+ spec AF buff + haste proc >>>>>>>>>>>> haste buff + af proc, sbs dont have either if not 2 bots, realm specific specline buff is a joke...

dont need purge that much if mincerpet is not there thanks to DF - nerf.

 

[Azathrim]

Ok Vermillion, so you admit Infils are better than SB's.

So by the line of thought you have displayed here in this thread, you won't be angry -when- Infil's are nerfed backed to hell - as they had it coming for being arrogant bastards? Right?

 

[Mordur]

tbh , what most sb's are saying is they wanna be zerks with stealth and critstyle ... why not just group with ml10 spyguy as a zerk?

 

[xxManiacxx]

dunno why ppl always say that stealth war is a small part of RvR when 90% of the time there are more stealthers RvRing then regular ppl

 

[bigchief]

...as a pincushion...

your own fault for jumping me on our side of a mid camped mg which noone could pass through then isnt it >< If you expect stealthers not to congregate there till theres an opportunity to pass you need your head looking at

 

[Melachi]

for those that think that Realm Rank matters:

dual heat thruster against something like 50% Heat resist (just outside mpk)

best of it: Infil got a whooping 2k RPs! ... well, now 3k I guess.

Hmmm, clear something up for you. You were heat debuffed, when the big hits came rolling in.

Ok so you did have Heat resist buff, but that dont make an awful lot of difirence once the debuff goes off.

The debuff aint as simple as taking a certain ammount off everytime. If you arent Buffed with heat resists, it will only debuff like 17% or so, if you do have a heat buff, then it can take 35% off. So once the debuff fires the resist buff is only giving you an extra 5% ;/

Im gonna make a post now about the whole Infil -v- SB thing, Ive put alot of work into figureing out how to maximize a SB to improve chances versus infils.
Putting it in another post to make it easier to read.

 

[Melachi]

The balance problem between Shadowblades and Infiltrators does exist but it is much smaller than most make out in truth.

First off the reason most Shadowblades do crap against Infiltrators.
They try to be Infiltrators.

Shadowblades get it through your heads, your not an infiltrator, you cant effectively dual-wield and crit strike, those specs suck, stop trying to spec like Infils. There are only two specs Shadowblades should use in my opinion, unless very high rr. Shadowzerker or Critblade. Go Critblade for casual fun, taking out casters in keeps ect, ect. For any sort of competetiveness, or for playing in emain, Shadowzerker is the only reasonable spec.

Left-Axe is a weakness to the class, if your silly about it. Sure its going to be crap if you want to be a 5-spec or critblade. Its actually in truth better than Dual-Wield, especially for Assasins.

Why? Off-hand procs (get a Malice in your off-hand now!), more consistant damage. Higher DPS if you use LA haste (which is hard these days I know with off-hands like Malice). Anyone who says Assasin fights are not about DPS but frontloading is wrong (except a Soulblade :e).

The hit-point bonus SB's get is shit and not worth writing about tbh, It would be better if it was actually a hit-point bonus and not the constitution value bonus it is. If it actually gave a SB +200hits at lvl 50 it would be nice, but as it is it just makes our Constitution give us more hps, which is silly since if we get Str/Con debuffed it just ends up taking more HPs than it does off an infil.

2-handers, hmmm not my thing, never gave them much tought but on paper they look very inferior to LA.


Heres my advice to Shadowblades:
Take a Shadowzerker spec: 50Sword/39LA, or 44Sword/44LA, one of those, FORGET Critical Strike (your not an infil). Get the last Str/Con its a fight winner.

Get ML(4?) the one where poisons can stay on your blades, and higher ML for the DoT trap if you can be arsed.

Get Malices for your off-hand, and a Heat LW for infils/Ns, and Battler for everything else.

Get a Haste bot, 20% haste owns, simple as.

Get +25str cap on your suit, +10% to melee speed/damage & style damage, or close too.

Get heal potions and end regen potions, (use liberally).

With these things done you will win against infils more often than you lose.

Most Shadowblades suck because they play to their own weaknesses. Infils are too easy to spec and setup and thats why even the muppets win .

 

[Cylian]

are you still playing ?

 

[Yeke]

Think pretty much most SB's do all of those things and more but tbh so do infils, so hardly an advantage just making the best of your char.

Post still going strong though ^^

 

[xxManiacxx]

The balance problem between Shadowblades and Infiltrators does exist but it is much smaller than most make out in truth.

First off the reason most Shadowblades do crap against Infiltrators.
They try to be Infiltrators.

Shadowblades get it through your heads, your not an infiltrator, you cant effectively dual-wield and crit strike, those specs suck, stop trying to spec like Infils. There are only two specs Shadowblades should use in my opinion, unless very high rr. Shadowzerker or Critblade. Go Critblade for casual fun, taking out casters in keeps ect, ect. For any sort of competetiveness, or for playing in emain, Shadowzerker is the only reasonable spec.

Left-Axe is a weakness to the class, if your silly about it. Sure its going to be crap if you want to be a 5-spec or critblade. Its actually in truth better than Dual-Wield, especially for Assasins.

Why? Off-hand procs (get a Malice in your off-hand now!), more consistant damage. Higher DPS if you use LA haste (which is hard these days I know with off-hands like Malice). Anyone who says Assasin fights are not about DPS but frontloading is wrong (except a Soulblade :e).

The hit-point bonus SB's get is shit and not worth writing about tbh, It would be better if it was actually a hit-point bonus and not the constitution value bonus it is. If it actually gave a SB +200hits at lvl 50 it would be nice, but as it is it just makes our Constitution give us more hps, which is silly since if we get Str/Con debuffed it just ends up taking more HPs than it does off an infil.

2-handers, hmmm not my thing, never gave them much tought but on paper they look very inferior to LA.


Heres my advice to Shadowblades:
Take a Shadowzerker spec: 50Sword/39LA, or 44Sword/44LA, one of those, FORGET Critical Strike (your not an infil). Get the last Str/Con its a fight winner.

Get ML(4?) the one where poisons can stay on your blades, and higher ML for the DoT trap if you can be arsed.

Get Malices for your off-hand, and a Heat LW for infils/Ns, and Battler for everything else.

Get a Haste bot, 20% haste owns, simple as.

Get +25str cap on your suit, +10% to melee speed/damage & style damage, or close too.

Get heal potions and end regen potions, (use liberally).

With these things done you will win against infils more often than you lose.

Most Shadowblades suck because they play to their own weaknesses. Infils are too easy to spec and setup and thats why even the muppets win .

euro_sceptic?

So u are just saying we need 2BB acc´s, not use one of out class defining skills, cap everything, use charges and pots.

And what makes u think infils can´t do the same?

U do know that to be able to get 99% of basedmg u need to be RR11, 50la and DR5. But hey. DR is no more in NF so there goes alot of dmg

and btw... Battler is just sooo good against rangers with slash resistant armor....

 

[Succi]

Dunno why you do such gimped dmg cylian, most sbs do fine if properly toa'd

 

[Marath]

There isnt so many SZ sbs out there atm with higher rr... if it is so good like you say why is that ?

Its is frigging boring to play !!! Most are forced to do sz or cb up to rr5-6 as sbs suck even more trying to 5spec at low rr's. After getting there they are tired of it. Also it limits your target choises really lot. Even majority of casters rvring are out of target lists. With pa+cd you might have a change but most times not even then.(Really love toa... really).

Without getting PA chain in to targets like minstrels,scouts and rangers and infis with any decent rr you are kinda screwed only ns is a juicy target and only when ap is down ... after thats its even more fun. Fights I havent gotten PA chain in or used Malice/Battler charge and I actually won against some1 rr4 or higher with any good gear doesnt come to mind this fast as Im typing this. Even that solo encounters are as rare as they are atm. (Had to use malice/battler many times even after pa chain and lost many times em/arti timer down).

If your gear is crap it doesnt really matter how op classes you play or how many you bring.
http://www.pori.tut.fi/~malm/kuvat/Albs zerg at night too.jpg
(Pic has really nothing to do with this but I love posting it as 1 of rare victory trophies I have left).

Also random generator as crappy it is in daoc playes a huge role also. Can win with 80% hp against a enemy you just lost. Remember attacking a mezzed rr5 infil with hitting only on PA and missing/getting evaded on every main hand hit. Fight that lasted 9 rounds of combat I hit only pa on main hand and 3 times on offhand is really nice too.

Already my best shot to get a kill is to jump a low rr caster/tank/healer-type.
Or any non toaed stealther. You zerk or you dont do crap (or just dont play) and if you do that it doesnt matter too much how you spec.

Wow thats a lot of crap in 1 post. But it like this. Any and almost all rvring stealthers have bigger change to win against me 1 on 1 that I have on em.
I attack almost all moving things as Im not a very good stealther (shock and horror). Solo my targets are few and would be even less without pa chain. Numbers >>> all. Spec really means nothing then. And a sb loses to almost 100% with purge down. Thank god there isnt anything with insta stuns, slams, reactionary/positionaly stuns straight up on our enemies.

 

[Cylian]

Dunno why you do such gimped dmg cylian, most sbs do fine if properly toa'd

oh, they do ?

 

[Marath]

And yes sbs do fine with cap buffs. And I mean bases, shaman specs and healer haste. Using a som+af-charge.

You have a good change on people that have worse gear than you do. Same and not good for you. You use a op arty that enemy doesnt have or use. (Read kill rr1-3 non toad crap that doesnt know anything yet and go out solo). Theres a lot of those left now. Lol.

You do fine when you group.

Playing any other realm you will have easier targets to kill. (Mainly sbs and hunters.)

We are balanced or even slightly better than others with relics. Without em we smell like the used socks you forgot in your training bag when you quit playing football 2 years ago and stuck the bag in your closet.

 

[Marath]

Dunno why you do such gimped dmg cylian, most sbs do fine if properly toa'd

Really would like to know who is doing so fine too.

 

[bigchief]

Really would like to know who is doing so fine too.

Can think of one rr5 sb thats a fking nightmare to fight atm. Also he solo's. Ppl that solo seem to be 10x as hard to kill as the zergers. Can figure out why yourself.

Also a solid rr7 one around but hes not much of a suprise to most ppl as its expected now. The rr5 one came as a bit of a shock

 

[behatch]

toa'd sb's do fine imo but they still get smack the fuck up imo...usually easy rps untill they learn how too play there char and get a haste bot

edit

i also think theres somthing wrong with your char...sb's do about 200ish...high rr but i also think high rr's should have a fairly large advantage over small rr's

 

[xxManiacxx]

la over 39 aint worth the pts. Maybe it will change abit when we lose DR but only time will tell.

Edit: dmg over 200 aint that common without str relics unless high RR and have some pts in DR

debuffed I tend to do around 140-150dmg against most targets. up to 170 against ppl with poor resists. After debuff though my dmg fly between 200 and 290 somehow. Have been like that all night. and I use a 99% legendary with 100% con

Not debuffed then yes 200dmg is quite common or atleast near those numbers.

 

[Melachi]

euro_sceptic?

So u are just saying we need 2BB acc´s, not use one of out class defining skills, cap everything, use charges and pots.

And what makes u think infils can´t do the same?

U do know that to be able to get 99% of basedmg u need to be RR11, 50la and DR5. But hey. DR is no more in NF so there goes alot of dmg

and btw... Battler is just sooo good against rangers with slash resistant armor....

Hehe no no, Im not Euro_Sceptic first off, I do post on VN from time to time, as Melachi-Euro- though.

Im not saying we need 2BB acc's, and im not saying not to use the class defining skills.

And yes infils can do the same. Infils can do the same, and some do, e.g. the 'good' infils (bigchief, arauddry[heal procs on nearly all armour i think xD])

What im saying is, your not Infils, dont spec like them and expect to perform like them. Play to our strengths if you want to do well as a SB, and that is as a Shadowzerk (some find it boring, I personally dont at all).

With regards to not speccing the class defining skill Critical Strike, its pretty crap in my opinion for Shadowblades, for infils its ok with their points but for Shadowblades its crap. Why? Theres only really 2 good styles, Creeping Death and Garrote. Anytime snare is very good imo, highly underated mainly because by most people its just spammed by most. Creeping Death is I admit a good style, but Comeback is better imo. Why? Ok first off, who are the people you tend to fight most, (well I suppose this depends on where and how you play your SB) I imagine other stealthers, if so then your chances of getting an evade off during the fight is imo higher than getting infront of another stealther while stealthed and close enough to PA (except SL, but any smart assasin will never just stand still begging for PA's).

The rest of the CS line in my opinion isnt very good for SB's.
PA: Ok this is definetly gonna be argued, but Im not a massive fan of PA, sure it makes big numbers, but what are your average PA's like? I imagine somewhere between 400 to 700 depending on targets, well if you use the top level envenarating, thats between 300 to 500hps off a target instantly (without costing end!) so you have nulified a good portion of PA's damage, dropping it to roughly a standard styled swing. Ok so the follow up is great but as said your chances of landing FG should be around the same as landing CD on a target.

But what about casters you say, you cant evade agaisnt them! Yeah you cant, but any caster worth worrying weather or not youll land PA on more than likely has Brittle Guards, that are going to eat your PA & CD anyway (by the way this is a nice place LA mechanics come in, allways swinging both hands makes for a much higher chance of getting rid of Brittle guards and bubbles quicker than an infil who might not swing his offhand for a few rounds). The ones that dont have Brittleguards are usualy those who havent spent alot of time on their characters and are therefore going to go down pretty fast anyway, apply a crippling poison and just mince into them.

The evade chain, this is great if you can afford to spec CS to a high level, but most shadowblades cant so its not really worth it. Comeback(0.9?) and Frosty Gaze(1.1?) both have very high growthrates aswell!


U do know that to be able to get 99% of basedmg u need to be RR11, 50la and DR5. But hey. DR is no more in NF so there goes alot of dmg

What is peoples obbsession with the basedamage penalty LA gives. Its not really a penalty, your still doing more damage than you would with just 1 weapon.

You also do know that if you DID have 50+21la and DR5 and therefore hit for 99% basedmg (which you wouldnt, you need 110effective LA for 99/100% basedmg, and 50+21la + DR5 is about 96, 1 DR is roughly 5 trains in LA) you would be outdamaging an Infil unless he also had 50+21dw and DR5!

The LA mechanics have only one single problem. And that is Off-hand weaponskill being taken from LA spec rather than Main-hand spec, and until Mythic fixes this (if they ever do) your best bet is to take LA as high as possible to nulify to as much an extent as possible it.

The LA line itself in terms of styles is lovely imo, personally a front positional would be lovely, and a side positional, but the back chain is very uber allready.

Im not saying SB's are fine, they are below infils and nightshades, but the reason for most SB's feeling like they are so far below is not due to the class but them still maintaining that 5-specs/soulblades can still compete against other assasins. Those days are gone, we cant spec like that anymore.

I get to play my mates SB when im down on the weekend and up until playing his char alot I was a firm beleiver in the SB being totaly gimped, two fights that come to my head are me playing it fighting Jix(the highest rr of that group) while albs had relics, I had nothing go my way in terms of heat debuffs landing/ or artis proccing, and I only landed FG as the killing blow, but I couldnt believe it, I beat him comfortly. Or fighting Caester, who i got the jump on, he purged my envernarting the after my first hit and used AP, both our GoV's procced, his heat LW procced, and I won with 40% hp.

Im not claiming im any good at the game in terms of the buttons (mind you theres not alot to be good at ) nor am I saying my character rocks since its not my character. All im saying is a SB who takes a decent spec & suit can do very well.

[Edit] Ohh and Decent RA's too, Purge is the only active RA that is imo decent atm, unless you are very high RR.

 

[xxManiacxx]

Excercia (RR11 SB) actually tested the dmg with exacly that specc and DR5 and it was 99%.

And I can compete very well as a 5-specc
Could compete as a full CB also (50sword 50cs) I actually did 700+ mh dmg PA unbuffed against a fully buffed caster using GS and TD with 1+6 la
Had no problems as a SZ either but tbh couldnt be less fun specc roll a zerker instead.
Ran around with 44sword 44cs 20la also. Could compete well with that one also

Specc is only a minor thing there are some standard rules to follow as with any char but then u can switch around speccs as u like. Eq and the player controlling the toon is what makes the difference (can see that alot from all the infils spamming DS and DF and then wonder why the never land DS)

And there is a very nice way to handle casters with brittle guards.