Shattered Kingdoms

From the thread on weakest class Ive seen a number of people saying rogue and swashbuckler. Which is a shame because these two classes work amazingly well together. Which is one of the reasons I feel both are lacking at the moment. For now Im going to look at rogue because we still dont know how the changes to swashbucklers will turn out.

Issue. One trick pony. Rogues have backstab and circle stab/hamstring. Which basically means they are counted by group formation and a number of other tricky ways. With tribunal membership on the rise it does make their trick weaker as most fights will involve a formation of some kind.

Backstab is their big move... which also means they are going to be face down in the dirt for most of combat as their foe will always get the first bash/trip. Their are ways to help limit and mitigate this but it is an issue but not a significant one given the advantage you can get from it.

Random ideas which could serve as a solution well hopefully keeping game balance in check. Keep in mind I do not think all these ideas are the solution just that a sub set of them could be.

If Duel backstab is trained it can take effect on people who's pulse is racing. You can not land a duel backstab but get a single stab off your duel backstab skill. This would make backstab useful for cabal/tribunal defense. Hopefully with out breaking the game by the flee backstab combo, it would not be use able if they where already in combat.

Tumble. This skill would make rogues more able to circle/hamstring in combat as they could avoid being targeted.

Fake skill <appearance> <ability>
Fake skill lets a rogue look like they are performing a skill from another class well actually only performing their own skill set.
This is a critical skill to a rogue making others not sure if they really are a rogue.
The idea behind this is that if people know a rogue is coming then they can prep for it easy. If they arnt sure what class you are then they might not prep for a rogue. This would be amazingly powerful with an unmentionable skill as well.
A few example:
Fake bash trip <target>. Emotes the emote for bashing but performs the action of trip.
Fake castpriest recite <target>. Emotes the emote for a priest casting but actually recites the scroll held.
Fake retreat flee. Emotes a failed retreat well the rogue flees.
Fake dance. Emotes as if the rogue is dancing has no effect.

Change to disguise skill. Where by you can have 3 fixed disguises with full descriptions. With set adjectives you can always disguise as something different (not using the 3 prewriten descriptions adjective) or change your disguises once they become known by discarding an old disguise. This would make the disguise skill more interesting across the board for all classes also make the counter to disguise look X less effective. Although does make it closer to a unmentionable skill.

Counter strike damage on a rogue backstab is a bit over the top. Backstab is meant to be their key ability against a barb it is instant death not even given them a second stab. Leaving them with recite as their only way to deal with barbs which also is common for them to be playing MR build giving a rogue no options. Its not a huge deal to have one class that is your bane but it would be nice to at least stand a chance of winning against them by turning down counter strike damage to not instant gib a full HP trained rogue.

These are just a few thoughts from playing a rogue. Having recite does make them a lot better than people give them credit for although I do feel their strength is actually a liability against anyone who has even an idea its coming.

What's to stop rogues from writing a description to use with their disguises?

I know sorcerers that write full descs for their polymorph forms. I guess I just don't see the difference here.

You could make a macro to do it all for you. However if the server side supported it, it would always revert when the disguise failed to save on random description changes. Would enable quicker switches between disguised and not disguised. I know a sorceror who I have looked at and they where a black cat in their description because they had forgotten to change it back, if the code was added for disguise it could also be added for the polymorph spell for sorcerers. Yes Meissa you can do it manually but it is prone to human error and mistakes. Also I dont know what your typing speed is but I know I would struggle to type a 3 line description in the time it took someone to move 3 rooms from a gate to an Inn.

I handled this in two ways. First, I had a Word file filled with lots of descriptions, fully colored and ready to go. I even had .c .f and @ tacked on to the descs, and line breaks so that my client would send carriage returns. It was pretty fast, and was in no way an indication of my actual typing speed (which is pretty fast). Later, I learned how to turn those same files into aliases set up in my client to instantly change my character's description even faster with a one-word input; if I could type "human" faster than someone could travel three rooms, I was golden. It was fantastically easy and took zero coding effort from Dulrik. It also didn't chew up server bandwidth.

I didn't ask to put you on the defensive about your idea. I asked because I was genuinely curious about why you thought that it would balance out rogues or make disguise more viable. Regardless of whether or not this ever goes in, there is still going to be human error involved.

There was two parts to the ideas. Powering up rogues to be stronger. The second part was making it harder to tell rogues are a rogue. I dont know if that is truly a viable option given how experienced people are with SK but if people dont know its a rogue is coming for them they are less likely to be ready for it, making their one move more likely to actually work.

I actually had a question to put to the staff regarding quick changes for descs and the like (see polymorph). My old sorc had actually had aliases (and triggers at one point), for her polymorph changes. Before anyone with disguise or polymorph access uses this method, I kinda would like some verification that it's not going to get me (or them) deleted for botting.

Aliases = fine.

Triggers = not.

This isn't the sort of trigger that would get you into trouble. The type of trigger you want to stay away from is the sort of trigger that would give you a combat advantage over another person.

Any trigger that sends information to the game without your input based on output from the game is illegal.

Like, for example, blink;blink;blink based on "Your elemental flickers slightly."

All triggers, no matter how harmless are subject to a no tolerance policy and will result in deletion.

@cordance: I'm liking your ideas. Rogues do seem to be lacking something and a stealth skill would be nice. Disguise has it uses, but I think it would be more attractive if there were a chance that law NPCs could not actually see through the disguise every time.