Shattered Kingdoms

Kick dps doesn't stack up with the ridiculous dps you could be doing with your oversized phallic instrument of ownage. It's a better idea to just trip to knock them out of their stance, and laugh heartily as they die a horrible death.

Unless kick does more damage than quaffing a potion could heal, it's a very simple mathematical situation: you're better off quaffing a heal potion or putting your opponent in a position to not be able to do so than kicking. Instant burst damage isn't what either of the classes with access to kick are mechanically positioned to do. The job of kick is performed by zapping and reciting: will kick do the damage of a triple harm scroll, ever? Of a triple finger of death scroll? Of a fireball wand?

Command denial is such a tactically superior metric in every way to damage. Death itself is nothing more than a RP-rich form of command denial.

If blitzkrieg had a chance to force targets out of their group as determined by a reflex save, that would be a new form of command denial and would make blitzkrieg be something people thought about using.

If kick had a chance to apply a mild confusion to victims and randomly re-assigned targets of commands and base attacks for a few rounds as determined by a fortitude save, that would be a new form of command denial and would make kick be something people thought about using.

While I agree with a lot of this, I would just go for a working blitzkrieg. As per kick it was attractive enough for it to target the movement pool. It doesn't really matter if a target is armored to begin with as concussive forces tend to travel straight through armor plating. I don't think I ever made an argument where it needs to do more damage to be viable.

Still, knocking someone prone is 1000% more effective than most other actions.

Combat on SK is very rarely 'close', that's why I find kick/blitz to be useless. It's also why the various items that heal you 1-2% randomly every X amount of rounds are unimpressive.

Dulrik disagrees with you. He's of the opinion that hp regen is so overpowering that it cannot possibly be overcome.

... seems kinda like a flame.

HP regen is really great for scoring perfect melee victories against newbies who'd otherwise have taken you down to 95%.

i've tested it all and kick is bad (except for some lulz during leveling). i don't know how much more clear i can make it, but if ur kicking then ur front row which means ur tanking. if ur not tanking, u should be second row and doing real damage with a polearm and using trip. the only other scenario is that ur fist and then u should be doing anime throws and breaking armor and weapons.

otherwise, u should be quaffing healing potions (ur tanking remember?), retreating or dirt kicking enemy casters - all of which r better than lulz kicking.

just an fyi i still play frequently, but don't advertise my characters these days. my last two characters scored 200+ pkills with no pdeaths.

Like I said, I was just curious if you were drawing on new data or older data. I don't disagree with the assessment. I've actually advocated for a number of kick-buffs over the past couple of years. The one buff that it's already received was basically a result of that, although it's short of what I'd like to see made potentially available for kick-improvements/variety. Hopefully the other ideas will still be able to come to fruition someday.

As it stands now, the skill has some use for lowbie-training in PvE, and for that occasional time that you just want to squeeze out a tiny bit more damage every round. I'd agree with the assessment made that typically, if you're in front row in a situation that you CAN kick, it's preferable to be wearing armor on your feet, rather than a weapon-item knuckles/claws/etc. The occasional centaur barbarian with toughness + kick may be the rare exception.

The only success I could see with a character using blitzkrieg was when training. Example: Down in the Blasted Chancel with a warlock in tow. A warlock could bring in the enemies (offensive ranged spell), and then the merc could hit them all at once, standing in front of said warlock. But if the only point of a skill is to use it during training, but not actively in PvE or PvP, I'd say it's a skill in need of a tweak.

When used against (an) enemy formation(s) and:
- Other enemies are in the front row, should hit each of them.
- Some of the enemies are not yet engaged, they should strike against the merc who hit them.
- Some of the enemies are already engaged, there should be a check (existing code) to see if they perceive the merc as a greater strike, and attack the merc

Because of the momentum of the skill (I mean, hitting multiple enemies, big swing sort of a deal), perhaps the damage should be increased as well, or at least, the possibility of an increased hit should be considered. Or perhaps significantly more to the first target, and then less so down the chain (but a slight boost to the overall damage).

Just some thoughts.