Shattered Kingdoms

It is probably more sensible because of the first round factor. If saves become too hard to make, then people just start getting autoganked again when someone swarms in on them 3 on 1 out of nowhere, and we're back to the situation of nobody ever wanting to be front row and nobody ever wanting to stay logged in if a gank seems imminent. This is exacerbated by 'order all bash' making an increased difficulty of reflex saves vs. going prone essentially a nerf to melee classes instead of an improvement for them. If some impairment has to happen first before knocking the target prone becomes a high probability event, then it gives the victim a chance to escape and return with better odds. I think there is a sentiment that people want to be able to land kills in pitched battles but don't want to make it so that newbies and casuals are forever getting steamrolled in autoganks that last all of 1-3 rounds, where the victim was prone the entire time. New impairment options for melee types have the potential to strike the right balance, especially if they're the types of things that are harder for people using pets, charms, controls, elementals, etc. to take advantage of than they are for PC melee classes.

Misses no longer suffer critical failure - next reboot.

It seems like like an improvement over the current functionality of bash/trip, though. Is dirt kicking reflex based, too?

RE: newbies and casuals getting rolled, honestly, people need to keep in mind that getting ganked for loot can be perfectly valid (the 'oh i'm a rper-only but i'm going to hold onto this limited and useful loot and cry if someone kills me for it' thing is completely asinine) and being a part of factions, cabals, and certain alignments, classes, and races are opt-ins for PvP. Faction leaders should remember their responsibility to make this clear to people they induct.

As a player primarily interested in RP and exploration, I'd still rather see any changes to mechanics to make PvP more competitive and interesting for PKers instead of protecting those newbies/casuals who make the IC choice to paint a bullseye on their forehead.

What this?

Glad you asked! It’s an experiment.

If you connect with an ability that could knock the target prone, but fail to knock them prone, then you will knock them off-balance instead. Off-balance is a minor reflex save penalty which stacks with itself, meaning you can continue to worsen the targets reflex until they finally get knocked prone. As this is a penalty to reflex, it also can help make it easier for reflex spells to do full damage.

This is similar to the impairment system but not exactly the same. Off-balance does not last for long unless you keep stacking the affect. Also, when the target gets up from being prone, the affect goes away and you have to start over.

Off-balance can be generated by bash, trip, gore, dig, and earthquake. There may be one or two other ways as well which I won’t mention here.

Combined with bash miss not generating a critical failure, I think this should make the bash crowd happier, hopefully without tipping back to it being too powerful. Note: An outright missed bash does not knock the target off-balance.

Please play with it for awhile (e.g. a few weeks) before attempting to provide feedback.

Definitely noticed it being a lot easier to bash or trip people now. Interesting to see it help with reflex spells too.

Thanks, Dulrik. It's nice to see some changes based on our feedback. Looking forward to testing this out.

I’m pleased to see that our feedback resulted in a positive-looking change.
Thank you, Dulrik.
Bash nerf has been an issue for quite a while.
I think this is the exact change that was needed.

Certain cabal skill is still negated pretty easy with high reflex.

A few cabal skills are. What's your point?