I was just giving an example why GM's might be hesitant to make it useful for certain purposes, also, when these skills were created DR was a very different world and evasion was the primary defense. Like I said, I think parry should change for sure, its outdated. I think it should have some limitations to it though, because of the issues I brought up. I ATM play a survival prime, while my evasion is useful, its become less useful and that's reasonable, though i'm tert shield and parry which balances things out.

>Parry - best vs melee
>Shield - best vs ranged
>Evasion - best vs spell

This is what the above made me think of:

You and your friend are going to have a race against two other people, you and your friend have three cars from which to pick two.

A car that has tires that are good for agile maneuvers and an engine with good acceleration.
A car that has tires that are protected against blowouts and an engine with moderate acceleration.
A car that has no tires and an engine with excellent acceleration.

Care to guess which one is parry?

Lets just put tires on all the cars so we can drive them.

I probably shouldn't be allowed to post at 5am.

Goodnight.

I think it was well said because his statement highlights the fact that a comparison of what the "best" uses for the defenses are leaves out an enormously important variable--how bad each one is against other types of attack.

The table that Codiax responded to suggests that each defense has a niche that it's strong against, this is true, but if you flip the table, you notice a glaring disparity in the defenses:

Evasion: Some situational disadvantages, but generally effective against every attack.
Shield: Some hinderance disadvantages, and potentially bypassed by rare DFA, but generally effective against every attack.
Parry: Modified (upwards and downwards) by weapon balance and totally unusable against two of the three attack modes in the game (TM and ranged weapons).

Whatever parity there is the "best" of each defense, there is none in the "worst" of each defense.

>> Parry - 80% against ranged, 100% against melee, 80% against spells
>> Shield - 100% against ranged, 80% against melee, 80% against spells
>> Evasion - 80% against ranged, 80% against melee, 100% against spells

I like this a lot.

---

IM: Dannyboy00001111

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

> Parry - 80% against ranged, 100% against melee, 80% against spells
> Shield - 100% against ranged, 80% against melee, 80% against spells
> Evasion - 80% against ranged, 80% against melee, 100% against spells


Obviously I agree, since that's what I've said twice in this thread already.

;)

60/80/100 seems like it could be a bit harsh if you aren't quick enough to change your stance on the fly.

I really like the 80/80/100 idea. Sounds like a great balance.

---

>befriend clear all
You are now friendless.

As an addition: the defending skill would be the average of shield, parry and evasion all the time, it wouldn't be set to the average then gain ranks as you train, it would be a skill that just sat in the background and recalculated itself as shield/evasion/parry moved

>> Parry - 80% against ranged, 100% against melee, 80% against spells
>> Shield - 100% against ranged, 80% against melee, 80% against spells
>> Evasion - 80% against ranged, 80% against melee, 100% against spells

>>>I like this a lot.

I find it odd that you all seem to like this idea so much. I find it too simplistic and unrealistic. Although it does get the basic idea right -- that there should be balance.

Here's what I would do (or something roughly akin):

Defense	Distant Ranged	Close Ranged	Light Melee	Heavy Melee	Spells	Total	Bonuses
Parry	40	100	100	40	40	320	2
Shield	100	40	50	70	100	360	-1
Evasion	60	40	80	100	60	340	0

Bonuses:

Parry -- Bonus to maintaining/increasing balance while defending, which in turn increases offensive capability. Large bonus to defending vs. multiple attackers. Also may be enhanced with dual wield (if you give up shield).

Shield -- Penalty to evasion while in use (i.e. hindrance).

Remember that of course you get to pick two defenses at once. Close ranged means the enemy is shooting you from point blank range -- parry would be able to knock the bow/crossbow away. May want to split up by spell type too.


-- Player of Eyuve

>> I find it odd that you all seem to like this idea so much. I find it too simplistic and unrealistic.

It's consistent across the board, gives each defense a specialized function, allows for prioritized stances(melee/ranged/spells, ranged/melee/spells, etc...) and equates to 1:1:1. Also allows you to stance in all three at once EG: 70/70/64 without fear of getting rolled by one particular type of attack.

The beauty is in the simplicity.

IMO, your suggestion is too lopsided in certain areas and too specialized in others.

---

IM: Dannyboy00001111

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

If it requires anything more than a plan for "ranged, TM, or melee," it won't work in PvP (or invasions I'd argue) without pretty complex macros and/or scripts. I don't want to re-stance when I retreat to optimize my defense against an opponent using the exact same attack style. I agree that the simplicity of that idea is the best part.

It definitely doesn't have to be 80%, but that general idea is a great one.

The issue is, currently, parry 'sucks'. It's not better than shield in its own special niche, and has more wildly varying modifiers.

The solutions many of you are proposing because the 100/80/80 proposals are 'too simple' do not fix the base problem, in that parry continues to be utter crap compared to evasion and shield in 90% of the cases. So you've introduced completely pointless micromanagement and tedium which still doesn't solve the original problem.

The game needs to tailor to both how people are using systems, and how the GMs want people to use systems. Needlessly complex systems are simply going to be ignored, or be driven by scripts that make it a one-touch solution anyway.

I like that idea as a general improvement to smaller weapons, entirely independent of the defensive stance changes. Whatever happens to parry, it would be cool for smaller weapons to have a bonus vs shields.

>>The issue is, currently, parry 'sucks'. It's not better than shield in its own special niche, and has more wildly varying modifiers.

The solutions many of you are proposing because the 100/80/80 proposals are 'too simple' do not fix the base problem, in that parry continues to be utter crap compared to evasion and shield in 90% of the cases. So you've introduced completely pointless micromanagement and tedium which still doesn't solve the original problem.

The game needs to tailor to both how people are using systems, and how the GMs want people to use systems. Needlessly complex systems are simply going to be ignored, or be driven by scripts that make it a one-touch solution anyway.



How do the GMs want people to use the systems? The system is setup to allow you to adjust your stance, telling me the GMs who coded it want stances to be adjustable, for them to matter. for what defenses you have available and your skills in them to matter.

If the current regime wants to change it, they will(I hope they don't unless it's for a more dynamic solution without watering down everything)

Complexity isn't complex for end users. Complexity is for behind the scenes calculations. All a user needs to know is to use parry vs melee weapons, shield vs ranged weapons, and evasion against magical attacks. They should also know that parry is really bad against ranged attacks. Shield is really bad against magic attacks, and evasion is really bad against melee attacks.

If that's too complex, I dunno.

It's a great idea, but I hope it takes into account all the ranged attacks that happen from melee.

> Parry - 80% against ranged, 100% against melee, 80% against spells
> Shield - 100% against ranged, 80% against melee, 80% against spells
> Evasion - 80% against ranged, 80% against melee, 100% against spells>>

I love this idea.

Currently I don't ever used Parry stance in PVP, unless of course I want to get destroyed.
Parry Ability: 1233 26.82%

<<If people feel sad about 80% parry vs ranged (because it is less realistic), you always could modify the numbers.>>

Playability > Realism

Jedi's parry laser beams. We are supernatural... (barbarians at least)

> No way, 20% is already too high. I doubt anyone will ever have any problems penetrating 20% reduced defenses unless they really shouldn't. Equally at 1000 ranks that makes 800 parry vs. 1000 weapon, you will be destroyed defending at those levels.

I have a spell that provides a 20% buff to parry, have no access to shield buffs, and learn parry faster than shield. If it's only a 20% reduction, that's almost entirely offset by my buff*, and the better learning rate more than makes up for the remainder. Since I have no shield req, I'd drop it in an instant.

If a 20% swing is a combat-ender, that's a problem, since we get that much swing just from buffs.


* Almost. 1.2 * 0.8 = .96

Sorry all, I don't want to sacrifice playability for realism. I don't want to have to nerf myself for realism.

Nerf shield and evasion, fine with me. It will just cause more people to complain later about "how bad shield is vs magic" or "how come I can't evade their melee swings" Or however everything falls into "balance"

Balancing games for PvP is a Bad Idea. I'm terrible at PvP because I don't change my training style, and I don't want to. I'm here to fight monsters. Parry is great for fighting monsters. Shield is great for fighting monsters. Evasion is great for fighting monsters.

Parry is terrible for fighting other people (because people won't engage you in melee combat). Fight melee people or don't use parry.

Or GMs can use enchanting to make people happy, thereby giving the options without changing(ruining) the realistic system we have.

Can't wait to see what happens with enchanting. AFAIK that will come out before any core combat changes do. Here's hoping you guys are happy with the results and we can leave core combat alone.

I don't think we necessarily need to make all three defenses work against all attacks. Rather, we just need to make it so that you always get to use the two valid defenses against attacks that ignore the third one. The simplest (sounding) solution that I can see would be to just substitute the valid defense in which you don't have any stance points for the invalid one at the same percentage. So if you're stanced to use 100 Evasion and 90 Parry, for instance, and you get attacked by a ranged attack, that attack would proceed as though you were stanced at 100 Evasion and 90 Shield.

If that sounds too simple, we have the skills in place to make it more interesting already. By using an attack type against which the defender is not prepared, the attacker is effectively trying to obtain a tactical advantage. So, the above substitution could be modified by a Tactics vs. Defending contest, where the attacker's success applies a penalty to the swapped defense. This penalty should probably be smaller than the maximum allowable debuff potency, and a substantial success on the defender's side should probably apply a bonus (they've effectively baited the attacker into attempting to exploit a non-existent weakness that is actually a strength).

With this approach, "balance" between the defense types can be achieved by having the existence of attacks that ignore each of them. So ranged attacks ignore parry (I'd at least consider making parry flat-out work against thrown attacks, though), maybe melee ambushes ignore shield (or melee attacks from behind?), and melee attacks to an immobile defender ignore evasion. Or something. There's already maneuvers which ignore each of the three, so this seems to be a direction we're beginning to head anyway.

Thanks,
-Life Sustainer Karthor

<<I don't think we necessarily need to make all three defenses work against all attacks. Rather, we just need to make it so that you always get to use the two valid defenses against attacks that ignore the third one. The simplest (sounding) solution that I can see would be to just substitute the valid defense in which you don't have any stance points for the invalid one at the same percentage. So if you're stanced to use 100 Evasion and 90 Parry, for instance, and you get attacked by a ranged attack, that attack would proceed as though you were stanced at 100 Evasion and 90 Shield. >>

This is all that's needed IMO. Everything else is extremely convoluted and will introduce all sorts of side issues that will need to be addressed.