ToA and assassins, what is your thoughts?

[Jox]

Goa have said that ToA will arrive in at end of feb, which is much faster than I had expected. And I was wondering what your general thoughts about this add is. I look forward to it, even if ToA will make the life for stealthers much harder. A new world to explore, more abilities, more items, a brand new challenge, both in PvE and RvR. But I get the feeling that its a massive time sink to tweak your char with ToA, in other words; you will prolly only have time to focus on one char if you want to max him out(especially if you not are a powergamer). So what will you do? abandon your stealther for another char, stick to your assassin or perhaps even quit? I will prolly keep on playing Jox.

So what can we expect when ToA have started to sink in a bit?

Prescience Nodes

Stealth Lore, which means that we need 1, or prolly 2 Stealth Lore items to counter.

Mages will be harder to kill with MA's like Bodyguard, Brittle Guard, Grapple, and then add all traps and storms that will infect all mgs when the hibs get bored :>

If you are going to keep on playing your stealther, have you decided what path you will take? Battlemaster(Stormlord for nightshades) or Spymaster? and why?

And both casters and archers will cast/shot faster, there have been reports of cast times below one sec. So if a archer/caster makes a drop on you, you will go down faster. No question about it, but yes, you could perhaps counter with Cermonial Bracers(demezz/destun) or Throw Weapon(a MA) but dont count on it.

Another thing to consider; it will be very hard for assassins to make good templates, at least comparing to other classes. We have 5 spec lines, tanks 2-3 spec lines and mages 1-2.

Have you started to glare at the artifacts in ToA yet? I have :>

Belt of Sun/Sun Axes(feels overestimated)

Bane of Battler + Malice's Axe(almost feels like a better option)

Goddess' Necklare/Shades of Mist(Stealth Lore items)

Golden Scarab Vest(procs Nearsight!)

Cermonial Bracer(demezz, destun)

Band of Stars(dd)

But many of these items are still bugged and take ages to level up, but one can always hope that Mythic will fix it.

 

[Celery]

Well people have been moaning about stealthers in RvR for a long time now, so I'm not surprised Mythic have done something about it.

Personally I'm happy about this kind of stuff if it stops the noob stealthzergs camping the milegates. All it's going to mean is that assasins will need a new place to hunt instead of Amg Emain.

Having said that, I think Mythic need to seriously look at the RVR groupability of assasins . . . and I don't mean grouping with other assasins

 

[Loxleyhood]

Life for Stealthers is hard enough, despite what you other folk mistakenly think.

 

[Auriel]

I'm looking forward to 'legendary weapons', the pre-SC'd and alc'd elemental damage weapons that legendary weaponsmiths / fletchers will be able to make. Not only will I be able to choose crush / slash / thrust arrows with a regular bow, I'll also be able to use these new bows that override the arrow type and do heat / cold / matter / spirit damage 1 weapon type - 7 flavours to resist There's also the new adze piercers (ice picks) that come in 4 elemental flavours. After ToA, it's going to be hard to ignore any resist. Oh yeah, the legendary weapon's proc debuffs its own damage type. Just though I'd mention that

 

[Nalistah]

gonna be tough to get all uber stuff :C

 

[bigmammas]

The end of stealthzergs???


Not likely as soloing as a stealther will be a lot harder with toa anyway

 

[Marczje]

I havent really checked the artifacts yet, but I have checked hunter's ML's. They both do amazingly suck

 

[Loxleyhood]

I havent really checked the artifacts yet, but I have checked hunter's ML's. They both do amazingly suck

Nooooooo! Archers get throw weapon! How incredibly useful!



Who's up for sending Mythic the heads of a dozen decapitated kittens?

 

[bigmammas]

I know I worked long and hard to exp my nightshade (before there was even a thing called focuspull) and being low realm rank and not having a buffbot is very frustrating indeed...

Generally I only kill peeps in df cuz emain and odins are too zergy anyway...

Was hoping Toa could improve the situation and indeed spymasters look like fun and it would be worth doing all the masterlevels for all those abilities.

But I fear it will be very unbalanced again

 

[Loxleyhood]

Right, I'm going to rant.

First of don't ever use the term Stealther. We do not exsist as one unit, the differences between the stealth classes are huge. Just because Infiltrattors are overpowered doesn't mean the rest of us are having a big party. Most of the time it is immensely hard for a stealther (a real stealther, not some usurping alt) to play. Most stealthers who have their stealther as their main toon will play in groups ranging from solo to three people. I myself solo 90% of the time and duo the rest.
Stealthers of all realms have the problem of everyone else making a stealther alt and thinking they can play it. They of course cannot and end up zerging, making life for the other stealthers very hard.
How many times have ye, oh holy group characters, come across a solo stealther unstealthed, or two stealthers having a one on one, and just zerged them? More to the point how many haven't you zerged? We are always being zerged by groups yet every fucking day I hear the whining of some pampered group character saying, "Oh noes! I got stealthzerged!" Well, if you don't like it, think carefully next time you encounter a solo stealther in that full group of yours.
Finally, for archers this is an absaloute kick in the fucking teeth with a Nazi boot. I am one of the few Scouts that remained active throughout the archer nerfs and the period of See Hidden. A period of time, ladies and gentlemen, where any Shadowblade or Nightshade could see me in stealth in clip range. I could not tell you how many times I saw half a dozen Shadowblades suddenly pop and run straight towards me, or a Hibernian group with a Nightshade steam rolling me. My arrows never hit. My melee sucked. I fought against overpowered opponants. My entire stealth spec line was made redundant by an eight point RA. For archers who have only recently been fixed, ToA might be an absaloute travesty. We get shitty ML's, and the archery bonuses on artifacts? T h e y d o n ' t f u c k i n g w o r k.

 

[bigmammas]

nice to see other realmchars have their frustrations as well...


NOT, give every character a chance of surviving in rvr not just group chars or fotms uke:

 

[saks]

my stealther is only a alt for when no grps for my main, love to play my NS.. most fun when buffed.. but as i dont have a BB i often run aournd unbuffed.
Think i will retire my ns when ToA arrive untill i have reached the ML i want, but im not even sure that i will keep playing when ToA arrives.

 

[solidus]

I like some of the Spymaster abilities. Nothing too overpowered, just fun stuff to play around with
Stormlord seems pretty useless for a shade though.

 

[Takhasis]

Right, I'm going to rant.

First of don't ever use the term Stealther. We do not exsist as one unit, the differences between the stealth classes are huge..... etc etc

/agree with u Lox, i'm original from day 1, main char always been hunter, all the way thru SH and beyond.

/me is not lookin forward to ToA really unless hunter gear gets sorted...

 

[Marczje]

Fully agree Lox. SH period was undoable solo, and even when duoing with a sb you only brought the infilzerg towards him, later on they thought of the incredibly good ability Camoflage which ignores sh, when you haven't been in combat for 10 minutes. this actually is funny, as the ability only is usefull in RvR and yet you can hardly use it while doing so.

Now the Sh is nerfed really few assasins still have it, and we get people at Mythic thinking, hey lets create Stealthlore... omg. Besides that archers are given incredibly crap ML's, and stealthers overall are nerfed due to the Prescient Node.
Great ;(

 

[Arindra]

I'd come at from this angle....

1) Most stealthers seem to wish to solo or small-group

2) Mostly everyone else expects to be in a balanced group

3) Balanced groups > solos or small-groups

4) Therefore everyone else > stealthers

5) Therefore stealthers mostly fight each other

6) All stealthers seem to get about the same abilities from ToA

7) Therefore no balance issues change.

And personally I can't imagine many group characters wasting much time and xp on stealth lore artifacts, all classes can get better and more useful overpowered artifacts than stealth lore.

Presicience nodes have been nerfed into near uselessness.

And while mages get some help - *all* melees (stealthers included) get truly insane artifact weapons (if you are willing to level them).

/shrug

 

[Arindra]

As for bow artifacts, you can get Braggart's Bow, which gives you infinite arrows and a charge which turns your arrow shots into aoe arrows with a 1000 (one thousand) radius.

Or Fools Bow, which adds a poison to your arrows, and hits keep doors for 15x standard damage.

 

[stubbyrulz]

artifacts lil over the top me thinks

 

[Arindra]

T h e y d o n ' t f u c k i n g w o r k.

Then they'll get fixed.

I'm sure we all think that Mythic launching ToA with minimum testing in order to allow 'player discovery' was a mistake. But they are burning up the bugs pretty damn fast.

 

[Glorien]

No matter what TOA brings u'll still be whining jox

 

[bigmammas]

Would love some groupfriendly abilities for stealthers in general though, even a stealther has to exp to get to 50 first

 

[Stranger]

my scout on prydwen and infi on camlann are in big trouble... Play them as offhand chars for fun, dont have time to MLevel them or something..

 

[bigmammas]

That sucks mate

 

[Herjulf]

Assasains, it is somehow in the mind of every1 who dont have an assasain that they somehow are some sort of tank able to plow through armies of enemys.

This is not the case, even infiltrators how ridicilously powerfull they are have to use a "assasain":ish play style to survive.

Use the stealth and evasiveness.
What assasains lack in armour they make up in short time damage output, meant to be somewhat dependant on critstyle but due to critical strike line being sub par so is not the case.

What will TOA do?

It will make it harder for assasains, much much harder. Natural choke points such as MG´s will be difficult to camp, and moving far without speed and/or in stealth will make assasain life quite boring.

Casters, tanks and healer base classes will have access to true sight like powers.

Melee based stealthers will suffer the most, the ones without ranged capabilities.

We will se alot less stealthers, albion will still have the most stealthers, even more so since albion have minstrel and scout the first will certainly not decrease.

TOA is an attempt to make DAOC more like EQ1.
However with no though about realm/class balancing.

They just make a bunch of ML´s.
and say that they wont make much difference, someone without TOA will have a almost equal chance vs a TOA ML/item character.
Tests have shown that this is as far away from the truth as it can be.

ALL TOA is is a timesink, and of all classes in the game assasains will hurt the most.
The classes that perhaps are in highest need of a love of em all.
gets the worst beating.

Will i get TOA? i dont know, i am in serious doubt. i have been playing daoc for a very very long time.
Seen oldies come and go come back then go again.

TOA dont offer us enough, just some hippie underwater...

They should have added new contents, new frontiers more drops that is par to crafted items. Shrouded isles was a pretty nice addon.
We got those epic high lvl dungeons with great drops.
Smarter mobs, with random/high stats.

Improved gfx engine, to get a workaround to the lag issues.
Totally remove the option of old original daoc engine.

Totally overhaul the classes ingame.

 

[Fedaykin]

QQ tbh

assassins own emain atm

those who go up must come down

 

[saks]

think stealthers will get a hard time, alse becuase of all the things ToA artifacts give. and tbh some articfacts are overpowered :S

 

[Fana]

They should have added new contents, new frontiers more drops that is par to crafted items. Shrouded isles was a pretty nice addon.
We got those epic high lvl dungeons with great drops.
Smarter mobs, with random/high stats.

ToA will do exactly that, its not just about the Master Levels.
EDIT: well it wont add new frontiers, but that will come next in the Frontiers expansion.

 

[Marczje]

QQ tbh

assassins own emain atm

those who go up must come down

Assasins maybe yes, but archers are considdered stealthers too, and they will also suffer. Archer's ML's are worse then assasin's.

 

[Jox]

One good thing for sbs; we can leave out dex and save massive amounts of space. Dex does nothing or EXTREMLY little to Evade. And besides; Some of the items we will use gives dex anyway, then add buffs(So we will still have 250+ in dex).

So 4 stats becomes 3, doesnt sounds so much but belive me, it is.

More to do;

Switch to Envenom-boots(+8), so you only need +3 to Envenom on/in your set. 5 skills became 4,27.

Go SZ with access to the 47-debuff, CS-Styles costs way too much.

What does CS-Styles give; a 7-sec stun that are easier to land than Frosty.

What does it cost; CS 34 costs you 594 points, you will be better of raising your axe to 50, get better Weapon Skill which leads to more dmg over time and lesser Dragonfangs.

5 skills became 3,27.

BARA BING BAM BOM!

Now you got more space, so you can concentrate on all magical resists and raise your strength/af/hit-cap.

Have no clue why I write this shit, its so obvious, guess I am bored.

 

[Powahhh]

stealth lore is a big pile of shit...that unfortunatle HAVE to take them in order to survive and copete...(sp?)
and the saddiest of all is that this fucking neck has same stats as a lvl5 necklase
i personaly wonna take the unique spear from toa (i think it drops for all 3 realms?!) the 4,4 one and full respec to cs....well i want to see perfs with such a weapon
anyway ToA as most players expected it...is a tool for powergamers and if you are not ......get rdy to face a lot of dust until lvl the neclase to lvl10,farm 10 h uniques/artifacts lvl them 6 played days etc.......well at least i am rdy
Emain Grass Here I Comeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee



[Edit] As for MLs...i prefer the sprythingy one,not sthing really usefull...but i like the name