I have a barbarian and thief that wear LC instead of leather armor. With the combination of LC and HC into Chain, where does that leave my characters that wanted a little extra protection without hindering stealth too much (especially my thief)? I don't want to be left with characters that need to backtrain leather armor or something lighter because of the chain combo.

>>Mrdahjr1971: I have a barbarian and thief that wear LC instead of leather armor. With the combination of LC and HC into Chain, where does that leave my characters that wanted a little extra protection without hindering stealth too much (especially my thief)? I don't want to be left with characters that need to backtrain leather armor or something lighter because of the chain combo.

Unless you're training multiple armor classes, the armor skill merger shouldn't affect you. Your light chain armor will have the same stats; you'll just be learning "Chain Armor" instead of "Light Chain."

Keep in mind, however, that in Armor 3.0, the worst possible base hindrance for leather armor is better than the best possible minimum base hindrance for chain armor for non-primaries.

You will need to keep your armor ranks roughly on par with your evasion ranks if you want to maintain your minimum hindrance.

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> chain armor skill HAS to be near equal to evasion? Having more in chain armor than evasion will hurt just as much as if you had more evasion then chain skill?

At least near equal. Having more armor won't hurt.

One important thing, particularly as far as stealth and hindrance, is that heavy chain pieces have a larger stealth penalty than non-heavy chain pieces. you may also be looking at a hindrance bump due to density. Just keep those things in mind as well.

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>>There goes the "no back training" promise right out the window.

Any rational reason why you say that, or just doing your chicken little impression?

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

>>Did you read any of the thread? I trained LC for the same reasons stated: better protection while still being able to hide.

I think you might actually need to go back and re-read. Nothing about stealth hindrance is part of the skill merger. LC/HC will remain distinct "types" of armor. They will both just teach chain. (In fact that was said in the first, and the second reply!)

>>The skills will be combining, but the armor pieces will remain the same. So if you're happy with your LC armor now, you will be happy with it when it becomes Chain.

http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Combat%20-%20Weapons%20and%20Armor/Chain%20Armor/view/1086

>>Unless you're training multiple armor classes, the armor skill merger shouldn't affect you. Your light chain armor will have the same stats; you'll just be learning "Chain Armor" instead of "Light Chain."

http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Combat%20-%20Weapons%20and%20Armor/Chain%20Armor/view/1087

>>People are saying leather might be the better choice for that effect.
>>That means if I want to stay where I am (my ability to hide) I'll need to back train leather (something I've tried to do for years, and I don't much care for).

That is a truism NOW. This has nothing to do with the skill merger.

>>I'm wondering if the game will survive if even more people stop playing characters because of back training. That is a true concern, not hyperbole.

Only if you have no idea what's going on.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

>>I'm pretty sure all chain armor in 3.0 will just show up as "chain". I think the entire reason why the chain armor book in armorsmithing tends to be a bit wonky with what ends up light and heavy chain is explicitly because there wasn't supposed to be two distinct "types" of chain armor.

I'm not sure if they will appraise as "light type chain" or "heavy type chain" or if the distinction will be back end (or just readable from the stealth hindrance), but I see no reason why armor template types would be treated different than weapon, which we already know will still have LE/ME templates, even though both teach small blades.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

>I think you might actually need to go back and re-read. Nothing about stealth hindrance is part of the skill merger. LC/HC will remain distinct "types" of armor. They will both just teach chain. (In fact that was said in the first, and the second reply!)

From the post you quoted:

>The one thing to potentially worry about is the new functionality that armor skills will have in 3.0. You will need to keep your Chain skill pretty high (close to Evasion) in order to achieve your minimum possible hindrance. If you don't think you can keep an armor skill close to Evasion, you might want to switch to a less hindering armor so that you can deal with it not being at minimum hindrance.

Ok, maybe you've had good luck with simu. I have not. Time after time changes to the game have made it less fun. Other players have quit playing characters because the back training isn't worth the bother.

I guess I'm jealous of your optimism.

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You're a moon mage: death should come as no surprise.

>>>The one thing to potentially worry about is the new functionality that armor skills will have in 3.0. You will need to keep your Chain skill pretty high (close to Evasion) in order to achieve your minimum possible hindrance. If you don't think you can keep an armor skill close to Evasion, you might want to switch to a less hindering armor so that you can deal with it not being at minimum hindrance.

The part about keeping armor and evasion somewhat in sync has nothing to do with the skill combine (the only thing with which the no back training applies).

>>I guess I'm jealous of your optimism.

I'm also probably in one of the worst guilds for this change to be impacted by (survival primary, armor tertiary). It's not optimism. It's knowing what the system is planned for before starting with wailing and gnashing of teeth:

http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Combat%20-%20Weapons%20and%20Armor/Responses%20to%20GM%20and%20Official%20Announcements/view/522

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

I could be wrong, but it seems like if you can hide/stalk whatever you are hunting now with your current armor setup, you will be able to hide/stalk when LC and HC are merged. I havent seen anyone state that armor and stealth hindrance would be changing.

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>>Urutu: Did I miss an important (critical) GM update? My last information was that you won't incur a penalty until armor drops lower than 80% of evasion.

http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Combat%20-%20Weapons%20and%20Armor/Responses%20to%20GM%20and%20Official%20Announcements/view/522

(1) There is a 10% padding between the armor skill and evasion skill. In other words, as long as the difference between the two is 10% or less, you will be at zero hindrance -- if that were possible. It's not, and that leads us to the next point...

(2) No guild can work hindrance down to 0%. This means that you do not need to worry about getting to the point where you have 0% hindrance -- you just need to get to your minimum. Let's assume for a moment that the minimum hindrance on your leather armor is 10% (made-up number; keep in mind the minimum hindrance is skillset based). That means as long as your leather armor skill is within 20% of your evasion (10% padding plus the fact you can't get below 10% hindrance), you are at the lowest hindrance you can possibly achieve. The higher the minimum hindrance of your armor, the more wiggle room you have to maintain minimum hindrance. However, keep in mind that HP may be reducing your evasion by, say, 40% compared to that 10% the leather is reducing it, so don't just assume that having more wiggle room means the heavier armor is a better choice for you. This is doubly true because...

(3) All armor types will also have a maximum hindrance -- that is to say, a point at which the hindrance cannot possibly get worse. This is a very significant change on several levels, but the one I want to focus on now is that this means that some armors (cloth, leather, and depending on guild bone) will be less hindering at their absolute worst than (with paladins excepted) LP or HP. This is definitely not true in the live game right now, but will be with the changes. When combined with stealth hindrance factors, this means that the lighter armors will generally be a lot more friendly to survival skills overall.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

>>so my prime evasion doesn't get any further ahead than necessary.

FYI having more evasion will never hurt you. I.E. if you have 300 armor and 400 evasion, having 300 armor and 600 evasion will always be better despite the greater gap between the two skills.

~Leilond
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If you isolate the desire-ability of armor to just stealth, then yes leather is better - slightly.

But overall, LC's stealth hinderence is a laugh. Its still easily the best armor type IG cost to performance - by a long shot.

The only people 3.0 is gonna hurt are the fools who let their evasion and whatnot skyrocket way above all their other defenses - there is simply no reason for people to be running around with 800 evasion and 400 leather, regardless of guild.

I can't think of one, anyways.

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IM: Dannyboy00001111

"Fool proof system do not take into account the ingenuity of fools, nor the power of numbers."

<<there is simply no reason for people to be running around with 800 evasion and 400 leather>>

<<Welcome to life as a moon mage?>>

It's even worse for old school thieves. But in their defense there were GMs back in the day who promoted an evasion-oriented defensive scheme for thief RP purposes. It's just such an outdated philosophy today that even for RP purposes it would be hard to imagine sticking with it.

Kaxis

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"See? Dust. Just like the rest of them." -- Buffy

>The glass cannon setup is fading into obscurity. Like it should.

I'll say I agree, before I launch into a question.

Doesn't this preclude more interesting RP choices (as backed by numbers)? The glass cannon is a staple archetype in every game from DnD 1 to modern MMO's such as SWToR and WoW. The character trades defense viability for overwhelming firepower. What we have instead is every character trained roughly the same, across most skills. Everyone (ok, almost) likes the idea of playing a ninja; a character who appears and disapears like the wind, strikes, and is gone, etc. But in DR, the ninja would also have to spend a lot of time sitting in front of critters training like joe-schmuck Paladin, because it's not viable (or even a remotely good idea) to play that way in DR.

Course I play healers in MMOs so I don't have to pay attention to more than 5 abilities and 4 life bars, so what do I know. I'm lazy.

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Let's save us all some time: I'm a troll who rarely has anything helpful. There.

>>The glass cannon is a staple archetype in every game from DnD 1 to modern MMO's such as SWToR and WoW.

There are no glass cannons in SWTOR at all, and I can't even imagine what class you might be referring to.

WoW used to have Mages as glass cannons back in the Vanilla WoW days, but it was a horrible design that pissed off both Mages themselves (I can't do anything I die in 2 seconds!) and people fighting against Mages (I can't do anything he kills me in 2 seconds!). Frost Mages have long been one of hardest classes to kill in all of WoW

DR is cool in that you could purposely train your character in such a way that you would end up being a glass cannon if you choose to RP that way, but I would hate the idea of having a guild that was designed to be a glass cannon (although tbh I'd trade "glass cannon" for the current Trader guild design of "benchwarmer")

Apu
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>There are no glass cannons in SWTOR at all, and I can't even imagine what class you might be referring to.

Sniper was the first thing to pop into my head.

It's not as pronounced as in most MMOs, but I would hardly call them tanks. They have a clear 'shoot it first to live' mentality; light armor only, low HP. First companion is a tank for very obvious reasons.

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Let's save us all some time: I'm a troll who rarely has anything helpful. There.

>>Snipers are definitely not glass cannons. A strong argument could be made that they're just overall not very good period (glass pistols?), but they wouldn't actually squishy at all except for the fact that they're stuck in one stationary position if they want to DPS. If you were going to give them a comparison to a type of ordnance, the better analogy would be "Turret".

I think you're taking some aspects of the metaphor too literally. They are a DPS class, and must remain stationary to DPS (what's the difference mobility-wise between cannons and turrets? Not much), which makes them squishy, which makes them glass cannons.

I'm not sure that any of the magic primaries would qualify. They are squishy compared to say, an at-level Paladin (almost everyone is), but well-trained they all have tools that makes it much more difficult to bring them down.
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>>I think you're taking some aspects of the metaphor too literally.

Not at all. Glass Cannon is not a metaphor, it is a standard MMO definition which means that you do a ton of damage but you are balanced by the fact that you die very easily. Snipers do not qualify for either one of these descriptions. They don't do any more damage than other classes, and they aren't any easier to kill than other classes (as long as they sacrifice DPS by moving around). This is why they would be better described as Turrets - which is another standard MMO defintion, but one that doesn't apply to DR conversations because there is no such thing as "moving around" (but maaaaaaaay potentially be relevant after Combat 3.0 when instant retreating goes away - that would be very interesting if true, but I don't know if things will be that complicated)

Apu
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http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/User:Apu

>>Did we understand what was meant by glass cannon? Does it matter which widget classifies as what in another game in another genre?

>>I'm sorry if we disagree about the meaning of 'glass cannon' and which classes qualify.

There is no disagreement about the definition of Glass Cannon. You used the exact same definition I used, in your post #1115 ("The character trades defense viability for overwhelming firepower"). You then went on to give examples of classes that do not even have above average firepower (much less "overwhelming") and which have plenty of defensive viability.

It may seem as if this is completely irrelevant to DR, but I would argue otherwise. The premise was that DR has moved away from the concept of Glass Cannon classes, but that the design actually works well in standard MMOs (which implies that it could work well in DR). However the truth is that standard MMOs (or at least WoW and SWTOR) have acknowledged that this class design is a failure and have basically copied the DR-style approach of having every class be mostly self-sufficient. DR figured this out well before WoW did, except for the massive mistake in DR where ALL classes suddenly become Glass Cannons once they engage in PVP (which hopefully will be fixed in Combat 3.0)

Apu
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