As for the ability, let me explain how it works...

You hide, get to melee and backstab. First a series of stealth and backstab checks are performed to determine if you succeed with the backstab. If this succeeds, you get several bonuses:

1). Large to-hit bonus

2). Large damage bonus

3). Higher damage-cap than a normal attack

Subsequent backstabs lose part of #3, but continue to see the bonus from 1 and 2.

Assuming the backstab is successful, that attack's experience route to backstab with an added bonus. Last I heard this bonus was 5000x what it should be, and folks were locking backstab in 3 hits. Not sure if that is fixed (I don't do much exp work), but it was left in to give folks a chance to catch-up who had difficulty training this past week.

A failed backstab is just a THRUST. Nothing else.

Now, I tested for 2 hours last night with a player who was frothing mad over how overpowered BS was. In his case the backstab was hitting harder than a claymore due to a combination of variables and manipulation of the data to support his argument. Leather armor that is 60% damaged, a 100% damaged shield, no defense buffs, capped offensive buffs, etc. These combined to make a bad day for the defender.

I am going to fix headsplitters tonight. I've posted repeatedly they are a bad creature for comparison because they have such poor defenses and no armor. Just about anything can kill them in 2 hits, and for some reason everyone uses them as a comparison point because its easy to get the data they want off of them.

Now, if you could post the stats, ranks and weapon appraisals for what you are using, along with what abilities are up (in an email if you don't want to post it), I can duplicate your test and see what is going on.

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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

>For critters that you can't backstab, you can't learn backstab? Sounds...working as intended to me?

Backstab, the verb/attack, only works on bipedal humanoid critters.

To stop punching theives in the nuts, a bypass was put in place, so that you could, from hiding, attack (body part), and learn backstab. I believe it lacked a lot of the bonuses of backstab, but it made the skill trainable, and didn't force theives to hunt 1 single sub type which is typically sparsley populated throught the ranks, and rarely skinnable.

It sounds like this is now either disabled, or not granting the backstab exp it used to.

Note that only a thief, attacking from hiding, and targeting a body part, would learn BS this way.

So if I walked over to sows, and hid, then went 'attack head' I should get some BS exp for it.

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.

Sorry for the double post, I should also add that I've been Mind Locking Backstab by ambushing in celpeze just fine since 3.0 released. So it's not "turned off" or anything.

Gonif,

I'm not sure is Backstab is considered a Stealth check, or is checked against Perception, but maulers/warklins are the most perceptive bunch. Try MARKing them and see how challenging they are?

In other regards, warklins/maulers teach defenses up to 600s, weapons still going strong in 500s.

GENT

>I am going to fix headsplitters tonight.

Thank you! And thanks for all the work on Backstab experience, it's much more enjoyable to train now than it was in 2.0. Still think it could use a damage increase though as it doesn't seem to hit very hard.

>Subsequent backstabs lose part of #3, but continue to see the bonus from 1 and 2.

Why? My first backstab is going to be reduced by my opponents full vitality, which means I'm wasting the damage bonus if I open with a backstab. Any chance you could reconsider this part? Might help fix the seemingly low damage of backstab.

Blegh, what a hack :(

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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

>>This... seems like a terribly monstrous hack that's the result of a narrow design for Backstab. While it'll probably make it back in the short term, know that finding a more holistic solution is near the top of my list.

I can understand that some fixes may come to make the skill less odd. All I ask is please do not make the skill only trainable with the Backstab verb. The creature ladder is very unforgiving as it is. I do not need wild exp gains, but I would like to continue training it with Ambushing.

>>Keep in mind that a more holistic approach may mean removing the biped humanoid requirement for backstab. To me, that would be the most reasonable way to resolve the situation.

As long as it's trainable on all creatures(at level, of course) I'm sure everyone would have no problem with that.

<<Going solely off the most common strings in both, which was 8 out of 8 landed attacks for backstab(no misses) and 14 out of 14 attacks for Attack verb, the time involvement was roughly:

<<5 second delay per Backstab meaning each kill was roughly 45 seconds.

<<With Attack it depends more on the type of attack, but the highest delay is 3 seconds per swing(for me), which still comes out to roughly 42 seconds with 14 attacks AT WORST. Which was never happening, half of my attacks were 1 second attacks. Thus my average kill time with simply Attack was roughly 28 seconds.

<<I am killing faster with simply Attack than I am with Backstab.

That's a fair point that I had not considered. Though if you're at level, one can be potentially learning from all of those stealth actions, no?

hmmm, I'm torn now. I don't think you can go can go and make backstab stronger, even if you do have to hide. Six attacks versus fourteen is a big difference when it comes to PVP or something you fight rarely (say a boss), but there needs to be something that balances training.

Ultimately I think Ucu's other thread post discussing about where the direction of the thief guild is heading needs to thought put into it. Are thieves (and I should phrase it like this but my mind won't allow me to think of synonyms) the maters of one-time devastating attacks? What makes them special snowflakes in the the grand scheme?

Nikpack

>Ultimately I think Ucu's other thread post discussing about where the direction of the thief guild is heading needs to thought put into it. Are thieves (and I should phrase it like this but my mind won't allow me to think of synonyms) the maters of one-time devastating attacks? What makes them special snowflakes in the the grand scheme?

I apologize for the double post, but, uh, ya. I'd really like to see players talking about this, just to see what everyone thinks is the direction teefs should go in DR. I don't want to just spam-flood the topic with my thoughts because I figure only nice-nick here actually cares.

I didn't really expect much from the GMs. They have to get a write-up done and into aproval before they can really begin talking about things, and playing fast and loose on the boards hasn't done anything but piss off players and GMs and board Mods.

Plus, 3.0, less than a week old...figure they should get some sleep SOME time.

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.

>>I believe the bulk of the experience comes from the fact that you're hitting a body part that's a lot harder to hit, so you get more experience from the increase difficulty of the contest.

Hm. This shouldn't be the case anymore, unless it's specific to backstab.

>>I'd hazard a guess that many thief systems are sort of the same kludgy 'made to work' situation.

Yeah, the glut of these kinds of bandaids is one of the things that floats Thieves to the top of my list of things to work on. We'll talk more about it later.

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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.

Today at 10am CST and now at 1:30pm CST my backstabbing gains are seeing a huge increase compared to the time period between 2005 - 01/24/2013 at 3am CST.

I'm not sure why it would take me 24 extra hours to see the 250% or 5000x or whatever it was exp increase that every one else had been talking about yesterday or if someone is currently working on it this morning and afternoon.

Now for the first time in the almost 8 years that I've been playing a thief, backstab is in a range with 99% of the other skills in the game, as far as training speed. I hope this reduction that Soch has mentioned doesn't just put it right back where it was.

p.s. I could really use an edit post button!

Socharis,

Thanks for fixing backstab experience. This is making a huge difference for me. Using my normal backstab routine (which includes thief ambushes, hunting, appraising, marking, offhand backstabbing) I was able to lock the skill in 21 minutes after killing 14 monsters.

In 2.0 after killing 200+ and 3 hours, the skill would not even be locked.

Since the conversion to 3.0, Ambush stun, clout, slash are not giving much BS exp and virtually zero weapon exp. Ambush is teaching a noticeable amount of light thrown, but significantly less compared to 2.0.

So nice to see some Red-names post in the folders, also great to hear that some real concrete fixes are in place.

Thanks for the working on the Thieves guild.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

Thanks everyone who has been working on this! Locking Backstab in about 15-20 minutes. Way way way better then it was before, cheers!

Yea the experience is pretty terrible. If it's supposed to be in line with other weapon-type skills(or close), should be doubled IMO.

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IM: Dannyboy00001111

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

I was having a really hard time with it at first, too. If you're ambushing, try changing to chest or head. I don't know about actually backstabbing bipeds, there are none in my range right now. Even targeting the head, though, it is slow. I was able to move it past 13/34, at least, which I was not able to do when I was aiming at the right eye or whatever. Stealth locks much, much, much faster still.

>>Ambushing backstabbing exp has not been updated.

>>Only BACKSTAB backstabbing exp has been updated.

Have to agree that this is the problem. Ambushing sucks now to learn, using the BACKSTAB verb though teaches great. I've gone from stopping at 20/34 to actually locking in about the same time from 2.0 > 3.0.

If you are using the BS verb instead of ambush, and still learning badly, then it's time to move up the ladder.

I'm also wondering, does backstabbing still reset the stealth timer like it use to? I seem to learn no stealth when backstabbing but learn it fine with snipe and shoplifting.

Wondering if it's the critters Im in being too low (thought they still teach it when I snipe) or if something is amiss?

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Sebestyen says to you, "Walk in the light."
You say, "I prefer the shadows."

>>There hasn't been a stealth timer for years and years and years.

That's true, and it works fine if I just hide/unhide over and over, or snipe repeatedly. When I start backstabbing though, stealth stops learning.