Yes, this is a problem, and was among the first things I worked on while rewriting combat. The need to stance down one defense to learn others will be going away. This should help immensely.

- GM Dartenian

Is this days, weeks, or Months away from happening?


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Kertig Heart Magdar Bluefletch, Transcendent Barbarian of M'Riss

that is freakin' awesome news.

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You've seen life through distorted eyes;You know you had to learn;The execution of your mind;You really had to turn;,the book is read,The end begins to show,The truth is out, the lies are old, But you don't want to know - Black Sabbath

> So wait, if I can dance safely with 3 leucros, but the 4th kills me in short order...


No one claims the current system works well. Quite the opposite. On the other hand, the game was not intended for people to be dancing with 4 or more critters, so if you are, you probably should expect to die. Combat was intended to be ACTIVE (ie you kill things!), not dancing. Yes, I realize learning MO (and sometimes defenses) doesn't always allow for that, but when hunting "at level", you "should" actually learn fine (including MO) with two enemies, and start killing anything that tries to add in so that 4 never becomes an issue and three does't last long. Keep word: should. I know it doesn't always work out that way.

But seriously, if you can handle 3 indefinitely, you are underhunting. It really doesn't matter if a fourth will kill you or not -- the reality is that three is already at the point where you should be fighting for your life. If you are not, you aren't where you really should be. At least that's the intent. Again, I realize that isn't the current reality in call cases (but it is in many and many of the people who are creating spawn issues are safely dancing with 4, which is a serious problem). Working on it. Promise.




- GM Dartenian

Though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night! - Sarah Williams

I think what he is striving for is that you can constantly be swinging your sword/mace/shooting your bow etc and keep defenses moving while offenses at the same time. So you naturally can move up when defenses and\or offenses start slowing.

There is going to be some descrepencies. Like weapons terts are probably going to have to be held back to some degree because defenses go faster and weapons prime are going to have to wait a bit to let some defenses catch up. But what we have now is a situation where people can dance with immunity, but it's also a situation that makes sense to do in a lot of situations.

Problems:

- Game allows you to dance with immunity and STILL learn great.
- Offensive factor outpaces defenses, so at higher levels if you are actively killing things everything dies in 1-2 hits and you gain no defenses because you kill TOO fast! (in most hunting areas).
- If you move up to an appropriate level, you die way more because of instant death crits.

Fixes: (IMO)
- Secure lower HARD caps on defenses across the board for critters (offenses aren't as much as problem but some tweaking may be in order).
- Make learning AT LEVEl increase, so when you're at level, you learn great defenses\great offenses.
- Balance the offensive factor/damage scale with defenses making the 1 Hit instant death a rare thing, maybe you have to be OVER-hunting for this to happen (yea combat 3.0) This will help both 1 hit instant deaths and also make critters survive longer to teach defenses at level win/win.

I think that is the general gist of things at a high-level look. Obviously there are many other things going on too, like how defenses will be calculated making a 2 handed parry stance viable or a shield/parry stance viable, making armors an active defense.

It couldn't come sooner honestly

Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

>> Like weapons terts are probably going to have to be held back to some degree because defenses go faster and weapons prime are going to have to wait a bit to let some defenses catch up.

Now, you only mention weapons as the tert/prime skillset. I've recently noticed on my weapon/armor tert character that his weapons still cant keep up with his shield/armor when both skillsets are tertiary because of the time it takes to train multiple weapons (and by multiple I literally mean more than just 1.) This keeps him constantly underhunting in order to let his weapons catch up.

Is this what Tactics and Masteries are being added for? I understand that they are supposed to make backtraining easier, and they will have to be trainable somehow. I would figure that your relevant mastery will constantly be learning in the background of whatever weapon you're using so when you train multiples, you're still training your mastery as well.