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I tested my own question yesterday in the Jhelom Fighting Pits. Pau, completely unbuffed, fought a Titan. The only thing he had on was magic reflect, and as we all know, it doesn't take long for a Titan to drop that. He used his bow until the Titan was done casting, then got up close and personal. He did have to retreat once when healing failed.

In the end, Pau won, which was not the outcome I would've predicted. He then got called away to help with something and couldn't repeat the exercise against other big and bads.

I just thought I would let everyone know. Buffs may not be needed for tanks. Maybe.

Atei wrote:I just thought I would let everyone know. Buffs may not be needed for tanks. Maybe.

You may want to add the word "veteran" or "experienced" before the word "tanks" in that declaration. I can also beat a Titan unbuffed, but there are many many who can't, and won't be able to until they have played for a while and learned some decent tactics.

Good point, Orion. However, one of the best ways to gain experience and knowledge is failure. Telling someone how to do something is much less effective than allowing someone to try it and figure it out for themselves. This is true in all things, not just fighting in a game. What's the old adage? Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and they feed themselves for a lifetime.

Also, I'm not suggesting that new players run out and find a Titan, but I think that Drocket's point about tanks depending on buffs is a mindset that needs to be altered. Buffs are nice to have, but not necessary with good tactics.

Atei wrote:Good point, Orion. However, one of the best ways to gain experience and knowledge is failure. Telling someone how to do something is much less effective than allowing someone to try it and figure it out for themselves. This is true in all things, not just fighting in a game. What's the old adage? Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and they feed themselves for a lifetime.

Not true my good man, it should go something like this, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and a US nuclear sub is sure to spring up beneath you both and sink the boat!"

I'm in a slightly crabby mood today, so I apologize in advance for anything I may say after this...

As I mentioned before, tanks were once considered the powerhouse of WoD. Since then, there has been very little done that would make them any worse (most of them more psychological than real. The biggest one was probably the reduction in silver weapon damage, and you got a bonus to hit to make up for it), and a lot that's been done to make them a whole lot better (The big ones: I've increased their chances to hit, not just once but twice. I've increased weapon speed - again, twice. I increased weapon damage.) I feel quite confident in saying that tanks are, right now, the strongest they've ever been.

The question, then, is what exactly has changed? The answer is the measuring stick by which tanks are being measured. Mages are currently too powerful. That is a problem with mages, not tanks, and mages are where the fixes need to be (and will be.)

There have been several other threads where people want areas where you need a group to get through, and very few people disagreed with that. New areas, of course - god forbid that any of the existing monsters or dungeons be a challenge. Every single existing monsters should be defeatable by a single player. And now we've come to the point where its just not enough that the 25 foot, 2 ton, fire-breathing dragon should be defeatable by a single player - it should be defeatable by a single <i>not very good</i> player?



What's that? You occasionally miss while you take down the 20 foot, spellcasting mass of muscle that's swinging a 500 pound hammer? How terribly, terribly sad. Let me go fix that right now. We certainly wouldn't want to have you miss sometimes against a monster who has a weapon reach that's longer than you are tall.

Point taken, by me anyway.

My last statement on this matter for a while: I don't see a reason to change anything right now. Let the changes that were put into place recently stick around for a while. There is no reason why game mechanics should have to change every 2 months because of player whim.


Oh, and by the way:

Drocket rules! (I haven't said that in a while.)

Orion Michaels wrote:My last statement on this matter for a while: I don't see a reason to change anything right now. Let the changes that were put into place recently stick around for a while. There is no reason why game mechanics should have to change every 2 months because of player whim.

Just to clarify, major game mechanic changes don't happen around here very often at all, and certainly not every two months. The last "major" change was to melee weapons (improved) and polymorph (nerfed) which was done in Sept. of last year. Every other change has been gradual in nature, and I'd aruge that almost all of them have been "positive."

Drocket wrote:Every single existing monsters should be defeatable by a single player. And now we've come to the point where its just not enough that the 25 foot, 2 ton, fire-breathing dragon should be defeatable by a single player - it should be defeatable by a single <i>not very good</i> player?

I sure hope you didn't read my last post and took my statement about killing ancients out of context. Taking things out of context just happens to be on my top five capital sins of msg board posting

In case the point wasn't clear, I wasn't complaining that there are mobs out there we can't manage to kill on our own. I have no problem with this and the fact that I was in favor of providing more difficult areas for group-oriented hunters (even suggested the kinda mobs that should be in spawned) should clear all claims to the contrary.

My point was that if you take away any kind of buffing (a good buff can increase some of your stats by 30-40 points!) quite a few mobs out there would follow under the category of not-really-smart-use-of-your-time-and-reasources level. Let me explain. I bring up the vampire lieutenant example again. With Joram, I can take one of these no problem, but this is mostly thanks to the fact I have henchmen to help me. With Camus, on the other hand, it takes me quite a while even when he is buffed. Now if it takes me a great deal of effort to take one of these down WITH buffs, I can only imagine how much longer and more difficult it would be to try to do so WITHOUT buffs.
The "interesting" (to adopt an Eldricism ) point here is that vampire lts are not even all that tough when compared to some other mobs.

Again I must reiterate that the issue here is NOT whether I can kill these tougher mobs without buffs or not. There are lots of things that are possible for me to do--I can shave my scalp with a rusty table knife while bath myself in ethyl alcohol; I can set my house on fire while I pour a gallon of gasoline all over my body; I can jump out my window with a fishing hooked pierced in my nose. The real question is not whether I can do these theses but would I want to.

My not wanting to kill an ancient dragon has very little to do with whether it is possible or not. It has EVERYthing to do with not being a reasonable way to make a living (excellent method of shorting it, though). Once a mob falls under the unprofitable/undesireable catagory common sense dicates I would try to avoid these. I don't make my own pizzas because with 90 cooking I fail a lot, thus it is not only a waste of time it becomes and uncessary waste of money as well.

By the same token, since I do not solo ancients with my tanks I tend not to go to despise at all except for rescue missions. If I were not able to kill vampire lts with a reasonable proficiency, then Famine would be off limits as well. Etc, etc, etc.

Another interesting point you bring up is the "good" vs. the "not very good" player. Just what exactly does that mean? What makes a character good and the other not so good?
As I explained in my previous post the so-called tank "tactics" are not much more than the universally adhered to hit-and-run method. I have yet to see a tank who has improved much upon this basic strategy. Game mechanics just don't allow for much diversity here.

Then if tactics is not what makes a good tank better than the not so good one, it follows that the scale of skillfulness is determined not by player who plays the character, but by the character itself (bear in mind I'm strictly speaking about tanks here). In other words, it all comes down to whether I have acquired the invulnerabilty plate suit and the sword of destruction, how many skills buffs I've found/bought, and whether I'm wealthy enough to afford a sufficient supply of wands, scrolls, potions, arrows, bolts, etc or I have the right skillset (parrying/resist/healing at 90 or 110? are henchmen available to my characters? do I have a bybrid skillset like lockpicker tank that lowers my stats and takes the place of a good fighting skill?)

What's that? You occasionally miss while you take down the 20 foot, spellcasting mass of muscle that's swinging a 500 pound hammer? How terribly, terribly sad. Let me go fix that right now. We certainly wouldn't want to have you miss sometimes against a monster who has a weapon reach that's longer than you are tall.

Umm, an argument from realism? Let's don't open that can of worms

Atei wrote:Drocket's point about tanks depending on buffs is a mindset that needs to be altered. Buffs are nice to have, but not necessary with good tactics.

Thank the Virtues! Yes, I Marius, thank the Virtues to see people realise this point. This is not sarcasm. One of my major upsets is the traditional 'buffing ritual' that goes on before any quest or hunt of import. I mean, I'd understand that it was important to 'power up' if we were in some Anime MMORPG and had names like "Goku" and "Vegeta", but we aren't and we shouldn't and it's about time that people didn't.

Now that we have established that buffs are unbalancing, as is the mindset behind them, maybe we can address the issue of scrolls? Not so many people naturally cast, I would guess, than equip 10,000 scrolls and kill everything to death. Drocket, if you want to regulate mages, address the issue of scrolls. Make them less useful. There's a point why they're a great commoditty and essential in battle and everyone has them.

Still, this is just my perspective. And I'll be cameo-ing this week in the shard as my Bard character, so be nice to Neophytes.

- Marius the Bard(?)
Mysteriously Appearing on a Shard Near You