As I am now getting re-acquainted with this world, I wonder how much has truly changed for this guild.

I know of some of the major changes good and bad, but I wonder most about armor.

When I left this game, I remember that one of biggest complaints of all Paladins (and rightly so) was the irrelevance of Armor skills (besides Shield of course) beyond a certain rank. I don't remember the point at which advancing the skill brought exactly zero benefit, but I believe it was somewhere around 150-180.

Is this "skill" still worthless or have improvements been made?

The more armor skill you have the better it protects you. You won't see it in the appraisal but it's there.

I have found with the current damage scaling(Semi-broken). At higher levels, I survive better wearing Light chain over heavy plate. Simply because the amount of offense a creature or player generates means getting hit equals death in whatever armor your wearing. So I personally go with the less hindering armor to improve my evasion which equals survivability. Since unhindered is a range, wearing the light chain amount of unhindered is less hindering than heavy plates unhindered.

Evasion is king and now Perception is Queen. Shields are great until you come across all the high damaging attacks that are not block able i.e. Backstab, DFA, etc...



Crusader Taghz

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...", William Shakespeare.

<<Crusader Taghz

The gosple by Taghz. Remember it oh weary of heart, for it is the truth and the light, and it shall give you enlightenment to relieve your yearning for change.

For thou must align yourself to the training and exertions of odd feats to offset your disadvantagous limitations. Do not lament them good sir, for they will be with thee until your dying days until all is ash or you seek succor in other associations.

Sorry for the poor "gosple speak".

P.S. Oolan (and others) are working on scaling. No idea on timing. I would not expect it anytime soon because of (i) the Thing, (ii) the other Thing, (iii) forging re-write and (iv) overall lore re-write. Although, I have no idea where it falls in relation to those things mentioned.

Madigan

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.

Arthur Ashe

** Evasion is king and now Perception is Queen. **

I am curious about this statement. Can you explain to me how perception plays into this? Are you referring to creatures that hide, etc?

Also, what does DFA stand for?

Please forgive my myriad questions. I have much to catch up on.

Evasion is your best defense against anything, generally speaking. It is always checked, some attacks will bypass parry/shield, none of them bypass evasion(with the exception of the few SvS/whatever spells still in existence that deal lethal damage).

And given commonly used stealth is in your typical spar/whatever, chances are you are going to need Perception to spot your average thief/ranger/moon mage/barb.


-Landros

While outwardly armor primary lacks a lot of the flash and flare that magic, survival and weapon primes might experience it does have its advantages in training.

Compared to my heavy plate wielding friends I get open rolled much much more frequently. While this is only anecdotal evidence I would invite anyone in the 100+ level who hunts malchata and wears plate to keep track of their own open rolled deaths. I will pretty much guarantee that I'll beat any plate wearer hands down in the death count. :P

I suspect after the damage model rewrite (god willing) that the importance of plate armor will go up even more.

That being said - remember we are talking about armor. Your armor itself (outside of shield) will probably never kill anyone nor will it create grand fireballs of dewm. There definitely could be more perks however one such being in the field armor repair, shield spikes, imbuing armor with glyphs and wards for various effects, and so on.

- Galren

No trophy, no flowers, no flashbulbs, no wine,
Hes haunted by something he cannot define.
Bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse,
Assail him, impale him with monster-truck force

>>I am curious about this statement. Can you explain to me how perception plays into this? Are you referring to creatures that hide, etc?

While there are some creature that hide the statement is intended for primarily PvP situations. In PvE situations, short of reaching armadillos you can easily make your way to the top never fighting a creature that hides or ambushes you.

If you want a further explanation about why perception is Queen in regard to PvP I'm sure other folks here won't mind explaining :)

>>Also, what does DFA stand for?

Death From Above. It denotes spells which are unblockable by shields. Hence, you evade or you get hit. There is no second defense to contest.


- Galren

No trophy, no flowers, no flashbulbs, no wine,
Hes haunted by something he cannot define.
Bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse,
Assail him, impale him with monster-truck force

<<I am curious about this statement. Can you explain to me how perception plays into this? Are you referring to creatures that hide, etc?

Perception was approved as the "fourth defense" (the other three being shield, evasion and parry). Since most offensive "actions" contest against two defenses, the inclusion of a fourth defense is of importance. So, instead of testing against...ohh say evasion and shield or evasion and parry, attacks can be approved contesting evasion and perception.

Evason and perception = Survival Skillset
Shield = Armor Skillset
Parry = Weapon Skillset

In my mind, this cemented the paladin guild as not the "masters of defense" (skillset wise) in the realms. In fact, we are pretty much middle of the pack with regard to defensive skillset placement. My simplistic review shows rangers and thieves better setup skillset-wise with regard to defense than paladins. Irony eh?

Looking at the issue from defensive skill placement(assigning values of 1, 2 or 3):

Rangers: Evasion (primary) (3), perception (primary) (3), parry (second) (2) and shield (secondary) (2).
Total Score: 10

Barbarians: Parry (primary) (3), evasion (secondary) (2), perception (secondary) (2) and shield (secondary) (2).
Total Score: 9

Trader: Evasion (secondary) (2), perception (secondary) (2), shield (secondary) (2) and parry (tert) (1).
Total Score: 7

Bards: Parry (secondary) (2), evasion (tert) (1), perception (tert) (1) and shield (tert) (1).
Total Score: 5

Thief: Evasion (primary) (3), perception (primary) (3), parry (secondary) (2), and shield (tert) (1).
Total Score: 9

Cleric: Parry (secondary) (2), evasion (tert) (1), perception (tert) (1) and shield (tert) (1).
Total Score: 5

Empaths: Evasion (secondary) (2), perception (secondary) (2), parry (tert) (1) and shield (tert) (1).
Total Score: 6

Warrior Mage: Parry (secondary) (2), evasion (tert) (1), perception (tert) (1) and shield (tert) (1).
Total Score: 5

Moon Mage: Evasion (secondary) (2), perception (secondary) (2), parry (tert) (1) and shield (tert) (1).
Total Score: 6

Paladins: Shield (primary) (3), parry (secondary) (2), evasion (tert) (1) and perception (tert)(1).
Total Score: 7

Summary:

Rangers 10
Barbarians 9
Thieves 9
Paladin 7
Trader 7
Empaths 6
Moon mage 6
Warrior mage 5
Cleric 5
Bard 5

Some notes:

1. There are obviously other factors involved. The above is simply my method of showing skillset places concerning the four defenses.
2. People can train their characters in any method they want to overcome skillset placement issues.


Madigan

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.

Arthur Ashe

<<
Perception was approved as the "fourth defense" (the other three being shield, evasion and parry). Since most offensive "actions" contest against two defenses, the inclusion of a fourth defense is of importance. So, instead of testing against...ohh say evasion and shield or evasion and parry, attacks can be approved contesting evasion and perception.


Wow. Just wow. Perception as a factor in defense? Does perception get trained at all in combat? I have noticed none of this. If what you are saying about perception is true - that was a terrible idea, and I hope whoever thought of it has been sacked. :-D

A skill that is not trainable in an action should not be a determining factor in the outcome of that action.

I'm just stunned by this.

Thank you for the explanation. This very valuable information.

>>But isn't the problem with this that armor does not grow at the rate of damage.

I believe so but Paladins are still the only guild that can completely train off the hinderance of the most protective armor in the game (If you ignore YS)

<<I believe so but Paladins are still the only guild that can completely train off the hinderance of the most protective armor in the game (If you ignore YS)>>
Not arguing that, I lub it. Warmies having YS is a peeve of mine. ;)

My real main beef with perception is lack of training options in my opinion. Everyone is a stupid juggling clown.. everywhere I go juggling people..

Ackfer - Halfling in a Can, No Fillers Here!

>>Wow. Just wow. Perception as a factor in defense? Does perception get trained at all in combat? I have noticed none of this.

As a matter of fact, perception does get trained in battle- if you are hunting stealthy critters. Laches are among my favorite, and it doesn't take too long for me to actually lock in there.

As a circle 33 paladin, you might be better off trying the firecats around the gate of souls area: Often they do try to sneak up on you.

Ryeka


Sometimes the key to happiness is not assuming it is locked in the first place- Ziggy

A journey of a thousand SMILES begins with a single step- Ziggy

>>My real main beef with perception is lack of training options in my opinion. Everyone is a stupid juggling clown.. everywhere I go juggling people..


Lockpicking 2.0 teaches perception really well. Or at least it does for my new cleric. Juggling is still easier because you don't have to go into combat and get boxes first.

If you are going to add a 4th factor into defense, why oh why would you not use the actual worn armor skill?? Not only would that make more combat sense, but it would also offer some usage for our 89526975 required armor ranks. Perception makes no sense at all for this.

>>I believe so but Paladins are still the only guild that can completely train off the hinderance of the most protective armor in the game

The above statement is false.

unhindered is a range between 0 - (whatever). No one can train off any armor hinderance to 0. Paladins can just do it the lowest.

Spells like YS allow the caster to drop into the unhindered range. Where exactly in the unhindered range is unknown.

Crusader Taghz

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother...", William Shakespeare.

>>why oh why would you not use the actual worn armor skill??

Armor is pretty much always factored in once the blow gets past your evasion and shield/parry/whatever. The real problem is with the damage model.

- Galren

No trophy, no flowers, no flashbulbs, no wine,
Hes haunted by something he cannot define.
Bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse,
Assail him, impale him with monster-truck force

>>unhindered is a range between 0 - (whatever). No one can train off any armor hinderance to 0. Paladins can just do it the lowest.

I know that there is a range, I almost put that in my post then decided not to because it is known and the fact remains that paladins are the only ones who can train to unhindered

>>I misinterpreted Madigan's post to say that it was used in general as a factor in defense. My apologies.

No worries: For a very long time, the only really viable way most people in general had to train perception was to juggle- which, for a lot of characters, is very OOC. So needless to say, thinking of perception as an actual defense still takes effort.

Back to armor- I'm not a paladin prime, but I have noticed that with more armor skill I can stand up against stronger critters with relatively little damage. And having trained leather, both plates, and LC, the heavy plate does seem to protect the best. While I still get killed hunting, it's seldom from head damage (My helm is HP).

Ryeka


Sometimes the key to happiness is not assuming it is locked in the first place- Ziggy

A journey of a thousand SMILES begins with a single step- Ziggy

>>I dont believe this is correct. Galren can you get unhindered in all leather?

Ug you're killing me here with all the hair splitting, we were talking about heavy plate

>>The GMs don't want to defend their decisions or empower the players to make informed choices.

Yes, I've never really understood that logic. It's a game, not a top secret strategic nuclear defense system.

I like the fact that the numbers don't show up everywhere during gameplay. I think it is valuable to maintaining the theme of the environment, but I don't think it's necessary to make everything a secret.