Warrior Mages dont appear to have anything in our repertoire to directly defend against stealth oriented guilds.

Rangers, Paladins, Necromancers and Thieves.

Everyone can use WATCH, for a bit of a perception bonus. And we have Rimefang, Shockwave and Ring of Spears.

But to me those are for you use up close, melee, pole range.

Do we have anything that will help mitigate for someone sicking a zombie on you, or sitting back at ranged and sniping all from hiding?

We do have Frost Bite and Thunder clap but neither of those knock the player from hiding or help you find them.

Also with the addition of items that mitigate stuns, Thunder Clap is rather useless.


Thanks!

Does fire rain/etc. have a 'cast area' option that hits hidden?

I think, on paper, it looks like 'vs. stealth' is a pretty big weakness for most guilds, isn't it? Especially if the stealth guilds have some form of pulsing invis?

>>I think, on paper, it looks like 'vs. stealth' is a pretty big weakness for most guilds, isn't it? Especially if the stealth guilds have some form of pulsing invis?

Most guilds have ways to deal with stealth users, or Thieves/Rangers/Necros would still be on the top of the PvP food chain like they were pre-3.0. It takes some testing to figure out what works best, but if those do not work then you are just outmatched.

>>So it boils down to a contest of your TM versus their shield and evasion? Keep spamming AOE TM attacks until something lands, which will pop them from hding?

Pretty much. Be aware that casting an AoE as area will also hit everyone else in the room too though.

>can give them significant leg wounds

When fighting steal-people, is it worth the accuracy hit to simply do 'cast legs', assuming you're not using AOE?

> Warrior Mages dont appear to have anything in our repertoire to directly defend against stealth oriented guilds.

Can't fire rain/chain lightning kick someone out of stealth at range? If so, is there a period of time where they can't re-stealth?

I wonder if that could be a feature of MoA. Invoke mark to make it flare up and reveal your target, assuming you can hit them with it to begin with.

> We do have Frost Bite and Thunder clap but neither of those knock the player from hiding or help you find them.

You know what would be nice? A utility spell that extends the function of ice patch to an entire area. Anyone advancing or retreating has to make a reflex save or fall down (and out of hiding). For fun, let it be strengthened with repeated casts of frostbite and weakened with casts of fire rain.

Also they may be inviso rather than hiding, in which case good luck.

Mazrian

>>Whats the difference between simply hiding and being inviso?

Invisibility is reforming, so even if you hit them and even stun them, they can be put back into a hiding state without any actions on their part. It also allows them to move in and out of the room without RT. The reforming can be anywhere between instantly and I think 20 seconds.

Okay so you knock them from hiding and give them a leg wound and manage to stun them but they slip back into hiding due to inviso ability in effect.


Just keep spamming spells? Or leg it?

I guess I dont understand the inviiso thing. Is it a certain guilds only ability or is it item induced?

I have a ring that invokes invisibility. Casting a spell releases invisibility.

-Dartellum Waddle

Okay, why is it a different conversation entirely if your opponent is moving rooms? Im guessing because they just stalk away, wait for you to blow your AOE then stalk in and attack? Or does it reset the inviso timer?

Cast nuke all
___________________
You make a few adjustments to the Zoluren, and you feel confident that it will recognize you as its owner.

Is the only other option to somehow trap them in the room? And if so how would you hypothetically go about doing that with our current arsenal of spells and abilities if we even can?

>>Is the only other option to somehow trap them in the room?

Have more ranks than them.

The honest answer is that you are not going to be able to do this against a stealth user who knows what they are doing and REALLY does not want to be caught/killed.

As a PvP Thief I'll freely admit that every fight I've lost I lost because I chose to stick around.

>>Im all for lighting things on fire, but it seems like there should be some sort of common ground where each guild could have an equal chance of winning or losing in a rank for rank all things equal kind of way.

The real issue is that when you are talking Survival tert vs. primary it's not going to be equal ranks if other combat skills are close to each other. This is why you use your TM in place of your perception. But for the most part most guilds have some way to deal with other guild's strengths. WM's way is just a bit more crude than others.


>>I sure dont want to take away someones ability to hide and stalk but on the same note there should be some sort of common ground to bring the warrior mage advantage, magic, to bear.

There are plenty of ways if both parties are willing to fight. I've been rocked hard by several WMs, and I've rocked of few of them myself. Moving around is more of a problem when the stealth target does not want to fight and is avoiding/drawing out the fight. Survival prime guilds (especially Thieves) have tools to escape fights, so they are much better than other guilds when it comes to hit and run, or just plain running.

At this point it comes down to player knowledge and tactics. It is not impossible for a WM to catch and kill a fleeing stealth user, it's just not easy to do and it shouldn't be easy to do.

>>If thats accurate, im wondering how you were clobbered by a warrior mage at all if you were infact not kinda throwing them a bone?

Heh, mainly because I don't shy away from taking a death. To answer your question though, it was good player tactics that usually got me. They would have a debil prepped and waiting with BG loaded up, or land a nice stun that allowed them to go to town since I don't wear stun hiders (I honestly think these are cheap, but they are part of the game). When I PvP I try to keep the other player's enjoyment in mind so I try not to make fights needlessly hard and frustrating (as long as the other player is acting in the same manner).


>> And if they did catch you on the flee and dont mind saying, how did they?

The only time I've ever been caught when I was trying to not be killed was on the rope bridge between Rossman's and Theren or when I am hunting, otherwise I'm not going to let someone kill me when I don't want to be killed. There is just too many tools at my disposal to let that happen.

I think you are getting wrapped up in the details though. Most players who are open to PvP these days realize that this is a game to be enjoyed and don't tend to make fights frustrating. Is it possible to run into a situation where a target gets away from you? Yes. That's PvP though.

I mean if you want the simple answer of whether PVP is weighted unfairly towards survival people(mostly thieves) then the answer is yes. There are ways to mitigate this and plenty of attention has been drawn to it but yeah, factoring in inviso weirdness, stun hiders, primary vs tertiary skillset, a good number of our spells not revealing people in hiding(hearing a thud and not seeing where the person is when rimefang hits is just silly)...if the thief is good you're fighting a steep uphill battle.

If ring of spears had a meta where a person had to do an evasion vs TM check to get out of melee I'd pick it up so fast.

I don't think putting TM vs Stealth is a fair enough matchup. Although they are primary skills to their respective classes, in my experience with Survival primaries (albeit pre 3.x) it is easier to train Stealth than TM. Therefore relying on TM vs Stealth or even Debilitation vs Evasion isn't as much an equalizer as I think we would like it to be. I think utilizing Augmentation and Utility skills in contests as a means to enable a TM attack might be more creative, fun and fair than just buffing TM and TM spells to negate the advantage of stealth.

I like the Fortress of Ice idea mentioned above. Additionally, shouldn't something like elemental earth magic permit us to sense seismic activity? So perhaps a high enough cast of Sure Footing acts as a "radar" for a short duration permitting us the chance to cast on a hidden target, or will detect them advancing or loading arrows? Follow up attacks would require an additional SUF casts (if still hidden), but with a high enough mana requirement (as well as the time to prep it) for this effect it wouldn't be so cheap as to completely negate the benefit of hiding.

I think across the board War Mage spells should be adjusted to include a combat utility type quirk. This would compensate for the overlapping and redundant options that exist across the books.

Some ideas:
-Shockwave knocks down unless Pathway Potency which will make it push things out of the room
-SUF to assist in short term hidden/invis detection (could/should make it harder to hit the person with a follow-up TM spell perhaps?)
-Tremor pulsing effect causes a contest resulting in either staying hidden, RT to stay hidden, fall out of hiding, and fall out of hiding with RT.
-Zephyr boosts potency of other Air spells when active in a room
-PW could be used with any thrown type weapon rather than just naptha, or hey, could be used to knock people from hiding
-CL could do more damage/more hits based upon the number of targets that are available. Perhaps also a small chance to make them drop their held items. Makes it a good choice for clearing rooms full of creatures but not always for hunting?
etc

Aradar