I wanted to post a similar sticky for Combat as I did for Magic

Offense:

- Appraise your target. If it shows up as 'a harmless opponent' or easier, you're not going to learn very well from it. 'harmless' is where the difficulty starts to fall off.
- Getting yourself an advantage and dealing more damage will net you more experience as well.
- Make sure to keep your attack stance at 100 while attacking. Lowering your attack stance doesn't increase your experience.
- Buffs help! Higher attack scores let you hit for more damage (and more experience) as well as hit them before they hit you.

Defense:

- Appraise your target. If it shows up as 'A less skilled opponent' or easier, you're probably not going to learn very well from it.
- Each skill learns individually. If you have 300 shield and 100 parry, going against something that trains your 100 parry well is not going to train your shield very well.
- Stances play a direct factor in your experience. If your Parry stance is 60%, you'll get 60% of the experience you would normally get by parrying with 100%.
- If all you're doing is defending / trying to learn defenses, stance your offense down to 0 and use those extra 20 stance points. You'll increase your survivability and the amount that you learn. Don't forget to stance back to attacking when you're done though.
- Buffs help! They increase your survivability without increasing your base ranks, which means you gain more experience.

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"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

Taking stock of its offensive abilities, and defending with an illuminated oval shield and a smooth brass parry stick with supple leather straps, you are certain that the sky giant is a less skilled opponent.

Your silver glow flares.
The air around you solidifies into a pale yellow haze and intercepts the attack with a shower of coruscating light.
* A sky giant sweeps low at you. You badly fail to block with a smooth brass parry stick with supple leather straps. The greatsword lands a good strike to your left leg.
[You're battered, solidly balanced with opponent in strong position.]
>
Your silver glow flares.
The air around you solidifies into a pale yellow haze and throws off bright waves of light as it resists the attack.
* A sky giant slices a rusty iron greatsword at you. You attempt to evade. The greatsword lands a good strike to your right leg.
[You're battered, solidly balanced with opponent in superior position.]
>
Your silver glow flares.
The air around you solidifies into a pale yellow haze and throws off shimmering light in the wake of the attack.
* A sky giant slices wide at you. You badly fail to parry with a smooth brass parry stick with supple leather straps. The greatsword lands a light hit to your left leg.
[You're beat up, solidly balanced with opponent in superior position.]


nyuk nyuk nyuk :\

>Does this factor in the penalty of having 3-4 on you, as far as danger goes? It's easy to have something be not much of a threat singly, but dangerous in groups, and we basically only pack hunt in DR.

I believe one of the big players was testing Unbuffed hunting last night .. not sure what he found.

Yamcer did post a critter appraise that was with AND without buffs and the buffs pushed it into harmless.

What is that verdict?

Deadly force, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm. Deadly Force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort,

The critter difficulty appraisal includes buffs, debuffs, balance, position...Can you explain how the qualitative levels of training are intended to equate to real numbers?

Example:

If you attacked with a kertig javelin, you are certain that the enemy would train rather well.
If you threw the javelin at the enemy you are certain that it would train acceptably.
If you defended by parrying attacks, you are certain that the enemy would train very poorly.
If you defended by evading attacks, you are certain that the enemy would train quite badly.
If you defended by blocking attacks, you are certain that the enemy would train somewhat poorly.
If you attempted to beguile the enemy with tactics, you are certain that it would train acceptably

>> DR-SOCHARIS, is it possible for you to supply more details with this statement? In current DR, it is better to do low damage, fast RT to earn experience. It never pays off to do high damge with higher RT, it just doesn't pan out. In 3.1 is this changing? If so I like that, but currently damage experience does not scale to be worthwhile.

I have always wondered this as well, and meant to post a message about it, but never done it. I've felt like my small weapons train a lot easier than the heavier ones.

Am I better off switching to feint or similar instead of harder attacks?

>>>In current DR, it is better to do low damage, fast RT to earn experience. It never pays off to do high damge with higher RT, it just doesn't pan out.

>>I'm surprised to see this; my sense was that xp was awarded as a function of damage, not of hits. Is this wrong?

Oh it is, but I think it doesn't scale well. For example you can feint with 1-2 seconds and there is a minimum amount of experience granted, that minimum amount at 1-2 seconds per swing (even if NO damage is done) seems to be more 'efficient' experience than doing higher damage with greater RT.

high damage hits need to have higher experience so characters 'try' to get highest damage possible

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

>I have always wondered this as well, and meant to post a message about it, but never done it. I've felt like my small weapons train a lot easier than the heavier ones.

There is a wide variation in abilities of spawning critters and I think that really causes experience to vary.

I have a script that kills one mob, changes weapons, kills another, etc. I frequently end up with one weapon at 3/34 when another is at 23/34. Sometimes it's one weapon, sometimes the other.

>My guess is confirmation bias, have you actually tested high damage higher RT moves against low damage low RT moves and measured the differences of time to lock?

No I usually just analyze and then use the tactics combo set then analyze again until critter dies. I will do a test with this jab/feint suggestion thanks.

Deadly force, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm. Deadly Force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort,

>This is in live, Codiax was questioning if this methodology has been changed in 3.1 since Socharis is suggesting damage may play a larger role now in exp gain on test.

yeah was going to test it in test but thanks for the clarity.

Deadly force, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm. Deadly Force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort,

oh good call didn't think about that...

Deadly force, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm. Deadly Force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort,

Howdy folks. Been in the hospital, again... 2013 needs to freaking end :(

Not well enough to get too involved for a few more days, but I'm going to patch something in for critters and I'd like some feedback on if it makes hunting/training easier, harder, or about the same. Please let me know what you think.

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"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

Well, I've crippled the ability for enemies to increase their OF beyond 100% like players can. For example, a CHOP attack gives about a 10% bonus to OF. A Charge might give 20% or 30% - I forget. Enemies would do something like... 85% OF, 85% OF, 100% OF, 130% OF, 85% OF... and because you don't learn better from the 130% OF, all it does is make the enemies eventually kill you.

This should make a difference for many players. Obviously, if you need a critter to hunt on that isn't available this won't do anything for you. Need a few more people to try going up a hunting area and see how it feels...

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"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

Cabalists killed me more slowly with the change. Drakes, with four are hitting me less frequently which made it easier to train more things rather than concentrating on surviving long enough to fill the pools of my mains.

~~~
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

>>I have to work harder to do damage so things are not stunned / off balance / dying as much

Can you please explain this? I don't understand what you wrote.

Possibility 1 - You do not believe off Balance/stunned enemies teach as well (they should).

Possibility 2 - Enemies die too quickly and easily (not sure why, I didn't change anything with their defenses).

Are either of those accurate?

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"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

>>>I have to work harder to do damage so things are not stunned / off balance / dying as much

>Can you please explain this? I don't understand what you wrote.

LE and Brawling damage caps are quite low.

Drakes makes them 10 times worse.

The cabalist survivability change feels better to me. I'm still getting beat up, but it's at a challenging not prohibitive level. Evasion and stealth learning is still way, way low (or for some post 1300, apparently non-existent). As survival secondary, I learn them both at a crawl in there and that should not be the case considering they are a challenging (sometimes deadly) fight with every boost I can muster up.

A couple other things to note:

It's especially harder for some mages at the new "at level" because of TM's relative bleh power. Since our TM stinks, relatively, our attacks aren't stunning/unbalancing opponents, AND we get no balance boost for our spells, unlike weapons. Second, our disablers rely on the same juice as our damagers so it's more difficult to disable/TM attack, in a sustainable fashion. This is a major drawback when you're forced to hunt things that really call for you to put every tool at your disposal into effect.

Is there any chance the defensive penalties to combat moves can be looked at and toned down a bit? It has the "feel" of of old lunging if I do anything but draw or jab/feint against these bad guys.

Hey, Kodius, sorry to hear you are feeling like crap. I am amazed that you are even working on any of this. Kudos to you! Still, I think you should rest. I hope you get better quickly so you can enjoy the holidays and time with your family.

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"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

<Let me know if this helps any. I down-tweaked the defensive penalties for attacking. Going to look into brawling damage a bit and see what can be done.

It seems like somewhat evenly matched melee fights came down to these drawbacks for the most part, how is this going to effect a good melee fight? I'm neither way at this point, but figured all the cards should be on the table before things become permanent. Guess it would just depend on how dramatic the downtweak was.

those are prime xp numbers, just gave em for rank reference.

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IM: Dannyboy00001111

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

>>It seems like somewhat evenly matched melee fights came down to these drawbacks for the most part, how is this going to effect a good melee fight? I'm neither way at this point, but figured all the cards should be on the table before things become permanent. Guess it would just depend on how dramatic the downtweak was.

In a truly even fight, both parties have a 70% chance to hit each other. I am guessing most "evenly-matched" fights really aren't so evenly matched..

On the PvP side I will be looking at hit points and armor and see if I can't reduce everything across the board to some extent. It is very difficult balancing this whole mess :(

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"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