Shattered Kingdoms

Eh? Since when was my post convoluted to one piece of the overall picture? I believe I covered every part of the Taunt discussion, including it in retrospect to even pk aspects. The INT effects of taunt do have relevance to pk even more than the "snaring" ability. D already fixed the "snaring" effect months ago when he didn't make it last for the entire fight until a victor was determined. If that's the whole argument, then the thread should have been locked down ages ago. D knows how to fix that and doesn't need this many pages to remind him. The OVERALL effect of taunt does impact pk, especially in regards to casters as well as fighters. The solutions I presented were to fix the OVERALL effects of taunt, which included the "snaring" effect AND the INT loss.

The entire reason why taunt is so good is the ability to halt fleeing. The int loss is completely meaningless compared to it. The !flee affect has not been adequately balanced/fixed, that's what this thread is about.

How about adding a willpower check to the Taunt effect when trying to flee? The more willpower you have to break the 'supernatural' effect of your opponent throwing rage-inducing wit at you, the easier it will be to break the 'spell' and hightail it out of there?

Yes, well, that is one of the proposed solutions. Some veterans argue (such as Konge) that making that specific change will eliminate the real reason for having taunt, which is to kill tribunal priest/warlocks who are otherwise nearly impossible to gank.

This has some merit. Still, Rial's proposed solution to buff swashbucklers in exchange for losing the absurd noflee affect of taunt is a good one, but it will require coding. Taunt should cause someone to target a swashbuckler, and for every pc or npcs that target the swashbuckler he should get dodge bonuses, parry bonuses, and damage/accuracy/speed bonuses.

It would make the class extremely interesting to pk with and experiment on tactics with, and add a cool new facet to the game.

There are many skills which bypass row and do very powerful things.

However, they all have fairly simple universal counters (i.e all classes have roughly equal access to them) which can be utilized by a prepared player to defend against the ability.

Taunt does not, and remains extremely powerful. That's the issue, in part. If you really think they need something like this, at least make it something which is as defensible as everything else. True taunt counters are very specific and not available to all classes.

If you want to talk about prepared players then 12 out of the 13 classes can deal with the taunt. Be it with scrolls, staves, cleaves, backstabs, wild fighting, NPCs that can wild fight, maledictions, etc. Still I'm not against of changing the swashbuckler class. But if you want to wimp the taunt try to propose something for the class that loses it. Not just "add a will save". And not just you. Everyone who makes such threads. Weren't enough classes wimped? All the classes apart from the hellion, the rogue and the warlock have been wimped since I started playing and one was really buffed. I doubt the imms had in mind to wimp so many things. It was just the qq of everyone who was dying and creating a thread.

Ok, I am talking about defensive measures Johnix... don't be absurd. "Cleave" isn't a defense, it's just another skill, and it doesn't stop you from being taunted. Cleave is no more a defense to taunt as it is a defense to bash. You're simply listing weaknesses of the swash class that in no way stop you from being hit with a no-flee skill. I am suggesting that some similar measure be implemented. At the moment the only classes with a true counter are scroll/wand classes, and this is an extremely limited counter even still.

Also, I have never died to taunt on my character nor was this in response to anybody else dying of taunt. I even mentioned I have a veteran level swash right now. So enough with the QQ arguments, please.

If you haven't noticed, this entire thread I have been advocating giving swashes new command skills or other buffs to make the boring class more interesting and extend their skill list, etc. Other people have made a handful of suggestions for buffing the class as well. However it's a little pointless to start proposing ideas about buffing and new skills without establishing what the state of taunt and swashes are right now. This thread is about taunt. If we can establish that swashes need new and interesting skills, as I've already said, there can be another thread after this one. That's a whole huge [REDACTED] ballpark that could easily be twice as long as this thread right here, but there's no point if we can't establish that it's needed.

Of course it takes people making threads and qqing to get things changed. Backstab, maledictions, staves, cleaves, wild fighting, NPCs that can wild fight, are -not- counters to taunt, I have no idea how you could think that they are viable counters. I did offer a change to the swashbuckler class in exchange for losing taunt and it puts swashbucklers back in the role I think they were meant to fill.


Enishi also missed one other to counter, the pro wimpy 100/disband counter. You know a skill is overpowered when a lot of the time the only counter is wimpy 100/disband.

So you want every class to have access to counter every skill and spell in the game?

Every offensive skill in the game already has a defensive counter for every class, whether it happens to be getting EQ with better saves on it or placing yourself in different parts of a formation. The only exceptions, like maybe dirt kick, aren't that big of a deal since the consequences are 100 times less serious than being taunted.

Obviously a costless nigh-saveless skill that breaches any row for no-flee deserves real counters for every class, just like bash deserves real counters for every class (and has them). How this can be argued otherwise, I have no idea. This is really not something that should be given to ANY class, because of its place in the game dynamic, and handing it out to a class simply because "They are a bad class" is not justified.

Especially when you consider it's really just making up for bash... a powerful skill with obvious prevention methods. Why don't you just give swashes bash. It's not like mercs or barbs ever bash/trip anybody in 2nd row, or that polearms actually kill people in second row almost ever.

I'm not a PK pro or anything like that, but I understand how it works. The objective against anybody who knows how to play is to get people into first row so that they get killed by bash (prevention of flee or quaffing word), or in rarer instances chop up their legs, etc. The entire PK game revolves around preventing people from means of escape (flee/WoR) by forcing them into first row: dispelling their elemental, killing/luring/summoning their pet/lawmob, whatever. If you are unable to do this, then your enemy, as long as they are not idiots or unequiped, will escape. Rogues in particular can circumvent this (their specialty) but their skills are easily countered universally by simple formation changes, being combat-excited, various spells, the list goes on and on etc. The other killers are of course the "I-Win" spells that exist, all of which involve saves which any player of any class can amass.

Most importantly, none of these skills cause a noflee situation except bash which is countered with obvious all-available methods. Taunt is an important exception to this otherwise decent system in that it completely bypasses it and takes a big, smelly [REDACTED] on the dynamic. People cannot skirmish against a swash (not the skill), because any person meeting one is immediately trapped with the only recourse being to fight for your life or disband your group and pray two people hit you and don't bash you... the latter being what will generally happen.

Furthermore the argument that "you don't see swashes flooding the game and ruining PK!" is another silly one. We have like 30 people on at a time and like 5 minor battles a week, maybe if we had 100-200 players we would be able to "observe trends" as being evidence of anything. As it stands, silly things that should be changed can exist in the game regardless of how many people are doing them. Gilgon regularly makes himself into the sole abuser of various inadequacies in the game, however that doesn't mean those things shouldn't be changed.

If you want to look at the effects of row-bypassing noflee abilities, just look at deep-elves. Among other reasons, one of the main reasons they aren't played is because they have to worry about the BoG nimbus completely ruining them in PK. BUT, at least that skill has a cost, casting time, and can be avoided with saves... it also can only be used against certain people.