Howdy everyone.
Since 3.1 went live I've been getting emails and reading forum posts of at-circle combat resulting in 1-hit kills from backstab. I'm not really sure what is up. After digging into the code, I found an old 2.0 bug that was resulting in one of the damage bonuses from backstab to never apply, and another to probably never apply, and another to overwrite one even if it did apply. :sigh:
I went and rewrote the mechanics behind these in hopes that maybe they were both always applying in some odd situations and causing the undesirable behavior. Really don't know what to think...
Can you please test and let me know how it feels? The first backstab on an enemy should be 3-5x as potent as a thrust. All subsequent backstabs should be about 2x as potent as a thrust. In my testing against a player with similar skills to my thief, I was hitting for about 20% vitality on the first hit, and 10% on each subsequent hit. My to-hit chance was extremely good due to the defensive penalty and offensive bonus the move provides.
And for what its worth, BS gives less of a defensive penalty than thrust. It is a small, even penalty applied to all defenses. So, I'm unsure why folks would be seeing problems there either.
As for Tenacity and other Barriers - I know they have issues and it is being addressed in 3.2. Maybe sooner if I can find the time. I'd appreciate if you tried to keep barriers out of your testing, as they may be a cause of some of the problems.
Please don't freak out if it gets too weak/strong. I intend to continue tweaking this over the next few days.
"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
