Shattered Kingdoms

If I had a consistent supply of scrolls, I would. The character is less than two weeks old, so I am not even finished gearing him yet. I have done a ton of PK with him, which I usually wouldn't do with a character that is freshly GM and under geared.

Just trying to figure out if I like rogue or not. It will be a lot easier to tell when my circles aren't bugging out so frequently.

I can confirm this bug happening for a very long time now. Spamming hamstring sometimes solves it but not reliably. It may not be related to a racing pulse since Dulrik changed the message after I reported the same bug a while ago (viewtopic.php?f=26&t=22480). The message used to be "They aren't fighting right now!" as opposed to "Their party isn't fighting right now.". There is another part of the code that's broken, which is already dead NPCs blocking access to circlestabs, also reported above. Both are crippling to a rogue and they need to be fixed.

I would have to disagree with a damage nerf of rogue special attacks though. They will definitely make group PvP far easier and probably deadlier but they will doom the class in any 1 on 1 PvP vs warrior classes when backstab cannot be used. It's already very hard to circlestab an appropriately prepared merc or barb to death before the pet dies and you go front row (and that's assuming they do not reach), if the damage is reduced it will become impossible to kill them with the special attacks (only with scrolls or suicidal front row fighting).

Hell yeah on having pet or NPC number when getting the block message. This is easy to do and will simplify things a lot.

I agree that the bug needs to be fixed, and the numbering component would be huge (and desirable).

However, I also agree with Finney that the damage from circlestab could also afford to be lessened. Rogues are an adventuring class -- they aren't supposed to be able to go toe to toe with a barbarian or mercenary any more than any other light armor class. When the barb or merc chews through your pet, you need to be running out and grabbing another.


I'm hoping one day that the group mechanic gets another big review in which overall damage output decreases as the number of party members / combatants increase, allowing for larger scale battles that aren't necessarily decided in the first two rounds of combat spam (this would have interesting implications for the "zerg" classes as well). However, in the meantime, rogues should know not to try and engage a barbarian or mercenary in direct combat, because they shouldn't be able to.

It would only be a nerf to burst damage, which is easily prevented by any player with half a clue. It would be a buff to sustained damage, since these attacks would become evasive or flanking in nature and bypass formations.

Obviously, if these attacks were made evasive, they would need a significant reduction in damage.

Next update will contain refactored code to determine whether a target and their party is fighting. It's actually a pretty large set of changes and I will be surprised if there aren't initially some undesirable side-affects. One side-affect that IS desired will be that anyone in the party will be considered fighting for purposes of whether or not they can walk away (AKA casters in the third row).

Awesome - looking forward to it. Thanks.

That's going to have a pretty profound effect on sanctuary as well.

How so?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't sanctuary break if you're not "caught up in combat?" Seems like this new code change is going to allow those back rank people to cast aggressive spells without dropping sanctuary, which is a pretty dramatic change.

Dude, that's so likely true.