IDEAS FOR RYZOM

I came to this idea since both Feint and Aim stanzas are underused and don't provide game.

Aim effects only apply if a critical hit is triggered (5% chance). With the simple addition of a 50% critical chance when an Attack After Feint stanza is used Aim stanzas will become meaninful and Feint useful. Damage increase is not a problem since feint requires two hits and the first one deals no damage.

Having a 50% chance of triggering the Aim effect (in case you hit) would make RICH COMBAT TACTICS possible. This number could be tweaked afterwards, making it either higher or lower depending on player feedback.


Thanks for considering it. Ryzom still has potential.

Aim is actually quite powerful in pvp to hit areas with less protection and get stuns by critically hitting the head.

I have tried Feint a few times, and it is usually not better than dodge or parry credits, and because it requires a fake attack before each credit your hpm is essentially halved.

So I see that they are less often used, but 50% chance of a critical hit is probably too fantastic of a bonus.

By "areas with less protection" you mean head I guess, on those with LA or MA who try to keep malus at bay by not using helm, which also refers to stun. Having a coin toss every two hits to stun the enemy could be overpowered but I wonder if problem is the 50% chance or the stun itself.

What I would try to avoid is this scenario: "It's only worth using aim to the head, and in case of target not wearing helm (being stun a nice random bonus)". That is a fair call, no helm no head, but the other effects should be meaningful too in order to have combat tactics.

So we first need to ask ourselves if that 50% would be interesting for combat effects in general, and in case of need tweak down those that would become overpowered. Stun, for instance, could have less duration and become more like an action breaker instead of a kipee-like target disabler.

My personal preference would be 75%-100% critical hit chance for Opening After Feint and have Aim effects balanced for regular use.

We would have months of evolving strategies in both PvE and PvP. Even daggers could become a serious combat option given their high speed and low cost per hit. Not to mention the trascendental decision of "should I chain another effect or use Opening After Critical? *looks at the stamina pool*".

The stanzas system is awesome and macros complement it very well. But it looks like it was never taken to it's full potential.

NOTE:

I didn't realize that critical hits apply effects even when not using Aim stanzas. This could make a high % critical chance problematic.

All in all, it's possible that the system I propose is not the best aproach in order to improve combat tactics.

You are half right- Feint stanzas aren't used and they are rather useless however aim stanzas I use constantly. (I will just quickly add that feint can be used effectively when you run out of hp/stam.)

An example of using aim stanzas effectively is with tekorn weapons. Tekorn raises critical chance by 10% and critical hits on certain body parts apply different effects. A critical hit to the head applies a stun and therefore tekorn weapons+ aim for head are good cc. (I can give more details if you'd like).

I should imagine quite a few pvpers would be massively against you raising the ability to do critical hits, when used properly you can stun people every 3-4 seconds already.

I proposed this change because it was easy to implement, but it brings more problems than solutions and doesn't fully address the matter.

Let me share my motivation. I am a bit over level 50. Right now most of the fight skill points are meant to be used into Aim stanzas like if they were an important part of the combat system. But mobs seem to have the same armor rating in all body parts and those interesting effects only apply 5% of the time unless you have access to elite gear along the leveling process, which would make it 15%. And even then it's mostly used to smash heads. The feeling is that combat tactics were planned but never finished.

What have you been doing all these years I have been away?????

Don't say grinding! :p

if you want a high chance that your aim succeeds, you have to fit the aim level to the quality of your weapon, like you have to do for a power attack.

at your level you've better learn invulnerability, melee aura, counter-attacks, etc.

It's true that aiming on mobs is quite unusefull. It would have been great to discover that a given mob has a weak part on its body and another part for another mob...

Indeed, if you are not a melee master, or multi-master, use your points for increase damage, the hp and strength upgrades, accurate attack, and maybe dodge/parry credits. You will still need to purchase bleeding and ignore armor before you even worry about aim or feint!

Telling Madre which stanzas to use is helpful but slightly beside the point. This is a good discussion about where development might have left off:

Animals and plants could have weak spots in their armour to make aim stanzas useful here. Only then it would make sense too be able to learn them at those quite low levels.

If they were only for PVP one might move their introduction up to level 100 or much higher.

Btw, if you are like me, sometimes parts of your armour fall apart unexpectedly. Then aim is a good stanza to have for opponents. However, i guess, PVP folks care about their equipment...

1. HP/stam > upgrades
2. Increase and accurate attack 
3. Speed, invul, melee protect, (magic protect)
4. Self heal HP (you can get self stam but not really that important)
5. Circle attack (to get you out of trouble
6. Weapon specific skills > bleed, ignore armor, slow (is slow on maces that usefull?)
7. after dodge, after parry, after critical credits > to safe loads of your HP and Stam
!!! If you mostly solo and don't pvp (wich a boob normally doesn't anyway) get 7 before 6 and learn to use the credits !!!
9. Aim humanoid head and rest of aim humanoid skills > usefull in pvp (but just pvp)

Learning all above will most likely take more then one master to get them all so you'll be busy for a while.

If you end up mastering all melee then go for it buy all the aim ones and stuff like feint to play with but they aren't really that usefull, same with stuff like shielding if you know what you do and do it rigth then it can be usefull but to meet all conditions to do it right is just not worth the time

PS. if i forgot any important ones let me know been ages since I got all melee skills

not a major pvp player here: had 2 masters before i got speed, invul, and the like.

hp/stam upgrades top priority
inc dmg would be next
credits for hp/stam
accurate attack
self heal hp ( self heal stam isn't as often needed but can be gotten on a limited basis)

when you focus on just these things, a single master will get you everything you want.

half the stuff listed on this thread had much testing was done to conclude that most of it's more for pvp then pve, and just because an option is open at level 50 doesn't mean it's a good idea to get, ryzom's good at getting you to waste points on things that are nearly useless outside a few very limited uses.

as with any advice given here, your results may vary and none of our styles may be like yours, take what's said here as a set of potential guidelines and then make your own choices. fear not because if you master EVERYTHING in the game, you'll have points left over with nothing to get.

talk

also: as you can see, we each have different opinions on what to get and how to do things, that's the beauty of ryzom, there's no wrong way, just "your way", and we're all entitled to our own ways.

Only Irtidel has understood the point of this proposal. It isn't about "how to play Ryzom as it is" but about the design flaws that show up early on when leveling. They are of course subject to opinion, and so are the different possible approaches.

I will make another thread for open discussion so we don't abuse Ideas For Ryzom subforum.


ps: the hints are very welcome, just "slightly beside the point" :)

Irfidel makes some good points about if some mobs are susceptible to certain 'Aim' attacks. I don't think BM site mentions that. I just go with the Generic attacks Ballistic Mystix tells about mobs.
But Suboxide is correct too, he pretty much has the order of things to get. Still not sure how to use 'Shielding' although it was one of the first things I 'Bought,' or 'Balance HP,' and I have been playing 5+ years!. Please tell me a scenario or situation I would use them Sub! All I can think of is a master player helping a newbie by protecting him? Or a group in dire danger?

Balance HP is a great skill :D > Just steal HP from team while running from KP, or when you tanking boss and they not healing you fast enough
(it's evil and only a one time hp fill up but it has saved my life quite some times while killing my team mates); but yeah if your name isn't suboxide and you aren't in GoS then don't get balance hp it will just piss off the ppl in your team and it's use case is quite limited.

Shielding > need to have shield (not usefull really with buckler or nothing from my old experiences), need to be within 10m or so of person you wanna help out.

Explination:
You are in HA+shield and run trough some agro with a nuker in la behind you and you pickup some agro. You decide to stop and kill it off then just tar the nuker hit shielding and let him nuke while you go on killing the mobs off with your weapon. It doesn't last long but it can be usefull to reduce the dmg the nuker takes from multiple adds.
(then again I'm all about 2h weapons in normal day to day hunting so I almost never hit this aura up, I migth do some tests next time I'm killing some kp's with a 2h sword)