Concussion blow and other stuff

[Lefty]

I been out of game for quite some time and I just read that concussion blow is going to be nerfed. Let me guess this is probably do to the fact that the call of the nerf is based on the dismount tamer template, otherwise no nerf call has been called for this since AOS launch.

It was the same for armor ignore. AI went years before a call for a nerf on it. The main reason why it got nerfed was because of the revamp of the archer swing speed changes made by Speedman and MrTact. Then all of a sudden it was a major problem.

As I see it, Pets should be nerfed vs players. It is just to much damage in a 3 second window. You compile pet damage + the tamers damage there is little chance for a fair fight. If any think this is balanced, then I would say lifting all the caps would be fair.

Other stuff

I find that the last PvP balance sweep - such as requiring 70-90 tactics in conjunction with a weapons skill to do special moves really hobbled the versatility of viable templates and that covers both sides of the playing field.

 

[WarUltima]

Sup lefty. Long time no see. Yea I agree with you. But nothing will be done to tamer/dismount/archers. Everyone knows its gimp, and knows it takes almost no skill to play. It packs so much punch. There's also a way to "store" a dread's fire breathe attack. If done right then everytime you jump off that horse and say all kill fire breathe will be the dread's first attack then it will continue chaining spells.

Sometimes if you store the fire breathe and use it and RNG rolled another fire breathe right after the stored one, its a nearly instant double fire breathe that's capable of doing 45 to 55 each, and we wont even get into that damage the tamer did when he dismounted you, moving shot you and all the flame strikes the horse might throw at you.

We all know its overpowered rightnow, and only way to fight such a char is use the same type of char or you run a crap load. Concussion is not a problem here, its the combination of super gimp pet and the godly stats you can get on a ranged weapon.

 

[Madrid]

I was about to come to stratic and post my disgust with the current PvP system but I'll chime in on this thread as the OP seems to be pretty level headed whereas I'm totally hot headed when it comes to this subject.

My thoughts from an old school PvP'er:

Dismounting in any way shape or form is garbage. Once a player loses mobility in PvP your as good as dead. It's totally frustrating to see how PvP is today compared to UO:R. During UO:R all I did was PvP. These days I strictly PvM...

Pets and heavy crossbows dismounting is total garbage. How PvP got to what it is today I'll never understand. PvP is absolutely pathetic to how GREAT it once was...

I can only guess that the constant change, nerf, change over the 10 plus years has lead us to the system we have in place today without anyone having any real vision or understanding that at a certain point just leave it be hence UO:R. You could not have come up with a better PvP system that what we had there.

The introduction of special moves have destroyed PvP from what I see and compare it to which was the days of Precasting Mages with halberds and katanas and you had to feed your horse apples or it'd run out of stamina. For PvM the special moves are fine for PvP they've destroyed the PvP system and taking out any real skill required.

PvP needs a total overhaul in my opinion. Until they remove dismounting and some of these other ridiculous special moves I refuse re-learn PvP. There is nothing competitive PvP today. PvP is the poorest part of UO in my opinion...

I hope things can be done to make it more 'skill' oriented like it once was but right now it's so far off the mark.

I refuse to partake in any aspect of PvP until some changes are made to make it like it once was where skill was required to slay your foe.

I apologize for the rant and not having much positive to offer other than UO:R . However it's extremely aggravating to see a part of the game I very enjoyed (PvP'ing requiring skill) completely gone.

 

[Splup]

I was about to come to stratic and post my disgust with the current PvP system but I'll chime in on this thread as the OP seems to be pretty level headed whereas I'm totally hot headed when it comes to this subject.

My thoughts from an old school PvP'er:

Dismounting in any way shape or form is garbage. Once a player loses mobility in PvP your as good as dead. It's totally frustrating to see how PvP is today compared to UO:R. During UO:R all I did was PvP. These days I strictly PvM...

Pets and heavy crossbows dismounting is total garbage. How PvP got to what it is today I'll never understand. PvP is absolutely pathetic to how GREAT it once was...

I can only guess that the constant change, nerf, change over the 10 plus years has lead us to the system we have in place today without anyone having any real vision or understanding that at a certain point just leave it be hence UO:R. You could not have come up with a better PvP system that what we had there.

The introduction of special moves have destroyed PvP from what I see and compare it to which was the days of Precasting Mages with halberds and katanas and you had to feed your horse apples or it'd run out of stamina. For PvM the special moves are fine for PvP they've destroyed the PvP system and taking out any real skill required.

PvP needs a total overhaul in my opinion. Until they remove dismounting and some of these other ridiculous special moves I refuse re-learn PvP. There is nothing competitive PvP today. PvP is the poorest part of UO in my opinion...

I hope things can be done to make it more 'skill' oriented like it once was but right now it's so far off the mark.

I refuse to partake in any aspect of PvP until some changes are made to make it like it once was where skill was required to slay your foe.

I apologize for the rant and not having much positive to offer other than UO:R . However it's extremely aggravating to see a part of the game I very enjoyed (PvP'ing requiring skill) completely gone.

I PvP:ed a lot preAoS also, and I thought it was great. Now I went to pre AoS freeshard to try it out... Dunno, dexers just running around specials coming on random? I mean, now that you can decide when to use your specials I think it's more about players irl skill then Pre AoS. Pre AoS it was about luck, running naked with tribal spear, if I hit paralyze (by luck) at right time my opponent was dead, if I didnt he just ran..

I have nothing against being able to use specials when you feel like it, what I think is bit sucky is that game is more itembased now. I'm glad faction items balanced that a bit, you don't need to super rich to get great armor pieces, you can get em with silver. Keep on bringing armor prices coming down! Only way to balance this game between IRL money users/scripters and normal players who has to work, take care of house and try to play in the middle Well, I have super armor already but I know what it's like when you don't have.

About dismount, there's many ways to fight dismounters. With a mage you can keep teleporting the dismounting time and then jump on mount again (Either invis ethy, jumb back on ur faction horse, or invis summon new pet). Or you can add 90 ninjitsu to ur temp to use running form, or you can have friends around you to keep ya alive, or you can use some stealth ninja smokebomb thingy to stealth away when dismounted. There's many ways to survive, it's not dismount = dead. If you are fighting 3vs1 then you will prolly die... Except with smokebomber or runningform char.

 

[Violence]

Specials used when the player decides is a very good thing. Balancing them is at least something.

For the record, AI was insanely powerfull. I could run with 0% DI from items, 0.0 Anat and just 120.0 Tactics and deal with a 100% Poison Damage(that lessens the effectiveness of AI) Kryss a real lot of pain with AI.
And Concussion might appear to be a pain only on Archery because you see it used more often(there are that many more Archers) and the fact that it is RANGED. Wait 'till you get hit by a Longsword or a Mace with the right Stats on the right template.
Moreover I suggest that Archery itself is what needs some looking into, not the Specials.

On the other hand you mention that everyone runs away(Archery solves this fine with Ranged Damage and Moving Shot, hence everyone runs an Archer). That's a problem.
No Specials to slow someone down for a bit over time? That's a very bad thing. Paralyse and Nerve Strike don't even begin to address this. Those two can be the most useless or the most usefull depending on the situation but are not able to keep someone from running away against a melee template. I bet if there was a "Slow" type of special move, melee would draw a lot more attention. It should not be usable by ranged weapons or it's all pointless.

Archers have "Balanced", "Velocity", can imbue their weapons with unique mods like HCI and can eliminate Archery's disadvantage very effectively via Moving Shot on top of having whatever a melee weapon can have. They rended 2Hand weapons ineffective and require expert skills to deal with in PvP while needing low-level of skill to fight on an Archer.
So I suggest that to compensate, ALL melee weapons get abilities that slow down the target for some time, making them unable to run.
On top of that, 2Handed weapons should be buffed up with "Balanced" and an equivalent of "Velocity". Maybe damaging Stamina or Mana on every hit by default, WITHOUT A SKILL REQUIRED.
And third, let 2Handed weapons be imbued with HCI and so on, like Archery.
Adding pure damage at this point is un-needed, everyone can easily cap damage already.

I won't even mention at least letting melee classes Dual Wield even if it requires a skill that gives NOTHING else(worst case scenario). For some reason everyone's against this without even giving the notion a shot, whereas in every single RPG I know of, Dual Wield and a 2Handed boosting skill(Bushido is not doing this) are A MUST. Oh and Parry actually DOES SOMETHING ACTIVELY, be it Stances or Active Parrying mode or whatever, instead of making you pray hard to the RNG Gods.

Furthermore item-based or not, it's only getting worse quantity-wise. At least you're right about prices and anyone would be wise to invest the least possible Gold before SA is a month old at least. That should allow some stabilization to make spending mass Gold worth-while.

Regarding Dismount, you cannot fight it. You can run from it(and in this case the fact there's no slowing Specials is very fortunate) but that's all.
Just to point out a few mistakes :

- Invi countered by Conflag, Explo Pot, JOAT Detect. And where are you going to go? The moment you pop out of Hiding, you'll be hit with another Dismount!
- Ninjitsu Forms is merely running away and the other guy can mount and be on your trail in no time. Without Stealth and Hiding where are you going to go? Even then, the timers for Conflag/Explo will be reset. Also you're suggesting to run a Stealth/Hide/Ninja/Mage which is doomed.
- Smoke Bomb scenarios? See above.
- And let's not forget you left the melee class out again, which has even less of a reaction window.

Noteworthy is the fact that the enemy has a lot more potential with Tame/Lore/Archer/Tactics/Mage/Eval than you do with a Ninja/Mage. And they don't go Archer/Mage/Tamer anyway, just for discussion's sake to show you Ninja/Mage is obsolete. [If they include Stealth/Hide as you mention, and without Stealth/Hide nevermind].

Best thing said so far in this thread; "PvP needs a total overhaul". This can be expanded so much that a post would need 2-3 screens of text blocks to put everything wrong with PvP together.
Our anti-cheating needs a total overhaul, as in we actually need an anti-cheating solution.

Worst fact about this subject; It ain't happening.

 

[Elric_Soban]

conc blow is getting nerfed likely for the same reason everything else has been getting nerfed for the last 5 years or so: somone with a god complex died to it a few times and spammed the boards until the devs finally got sick of reading the same stupid crap every day and caved. Conc blow has worked the same way for years now.. suddenly its overpowered?

Then we have the people who say things like, "..its overpowered cause once you get dismounted by the first guy, the second guy just has to drop [Spell/Move X] on you and you're basically screwed".. its like, ok.. rewind that... you're complaining because you feel you should've been able to take on 2 players at once?

Now don't get me wrong, if a tactic clearly has NO counter in 1v1 combat, then it probably needs a look at. But all im saying is, i think people's first instinct when they die is to complain, rather than think about why they died.

just my 0.02

p.s. don't increase the skill cap. that would be amazingly ********.

 

[mr.blackmage]

Just because you don't remember posts or complaints about it hardly means that the problem didn't exist, Elric. PvP had been relatively balanced a few times since AoS, but they always add in new **** which completely throws the balance in another direction, and pvp isn't touched for years again. I made posts (quite long ones, as have many other noted pvpers) years ago about pvp balancing, and special moves (concussion blow, AI, poison) all being addressed. From what I understand right now (and yes, I'm just going based on what I read currently, since it is way too painful to pay for the state that pvp is in), mages are obsolete. Pure mages have been technically obsolete for years, but at least they could still get kills (in the hands of highly skilled players), although there were templates that were literally impossible to kill 1v1. Now, faction bandies? No mage on this planet that has ever played could kill me if I am uncursed (and that's if I'm playing a pure mage). It has been impossible since AoS to kill a player that is uncursed in general ((as a mage, and if the person didn't absolutely suck or lose connection)... disregarding 4/5-5/6 era, sorry) due to the fact that 15 dps really isn't enough to kill people.

Bottom line is, when PvP gets attention, a lot of fuss is made over it, but it only happens once every couple of years, and very little is actually changed. There are many things that have been in need for balancing ever since AoS was released, but that's like what, 6 years now?

 

[drinkbeerallday]

Forget PvP balance, the Dev team doesn't seem to be doing anything right now.

UO needs a bigger Dev team, but the game isn't popular enough to warrant it. Right now they are probably focused on the new expansion/event content (because that is likely what they pitched to their superiors), so other areas are being neglected.

Now, with UO, that's pretty much always the case. So as mr.blackmage said, every great while, there's a PvP pub and then (if we are lucky) one follow up Pub if there's any MAJOR problems.

 

[WarUltima]

Concussion blow is still pretty balanced for melee weapons. It was balanced for limiting it to crossbow only which was intended to have a much slower firing speed. Nowdays since the introduction of Balanced, Velocity, and Higher than normal SSI mods caused the possible overpowerness. Archery weapons can be crafted with much better mods than melee weapon and the free 10% MODIFIED damage from a quiver. Plus the ranged advantage and easy to play nature made archers one of the most powerful PvP templates.

I have rarely hit by a melee weapon concussion for over 35 damage(total), because the only melee weapon that might match the damage of a xbow concussion is halberd which is limited to a max of 35ssi and you can NEVER use a pot while using it. Making it much less viable in PvP (almost pos in PvP in fact). Melee dexers are most likely to resort to AI for a 35dmg hit. A decent crossbow can deal a good amount of damage on hit w/ the concussion it surpass AI very very easily. A double proc concussion blow from a xbow at the right time can often dish out 60+ damage. I would say you gotta be REALLY lucky to use a one handed weapon and consistantly score a total 35+dmg concussion.

Concussion isnt broken at all on all melee weapons. And that's IF the melee can actually HIT you (which isnt exactly easy nowdays for the reason that I am not allowed to say). If your target isnt a monster controlled by AI and actually runs from you then archery is superior to any melee skill in almost every shape and form. Swing speed advantage for the melee weapons is almost non-existance if you cant even get close enough to swing at all let along with good armor + good bows you can still shoot at max swing speed(or 1.5sec/shot) with a very very hard hitting ranged weapon.

Tamers were pretty balanced in PvP until they threw in super dragon and dread warhorse. A GOOD PvP tamer is an example of a template that cant be taken down 1v1 UNLESS you are one of them too. Yes tamers can be taken down if he sucks but RNG god couldnt. There's always a chance that RNG rolled for the pet to perform Double FS + Fire breathe instantly back to back. This is why that dismount shot from the tamer can sometimes instantly killing someone before they can even leave the casting range of the pet not mentioning also being chased down by the tamer with a godly heavy doing 24+ moving shot plus hit spell...

Pure mages are broken to a point beyond my imagination. I cant remember when is the last time I even see a pure mage in PvP and NO Necromages, stealth mages, tamer mages, tactic mages are NOT pure mages. It's simply that broken.

Well I dont know what can be done to PvP rightnow, but I truely feel sorry for many people thats playing on melee dexers and pure mages. Only I can say to the melee dexers is to pick up archery and make a disarm moving shot archer. And pure mages to NOT be a pure mage.

 

[Fox (Europa)]

conc blow is getting nerfed likely for the same reason everything else has been getting nerfed for the last 5 years or so: somone with a god complex died to it a few times and spammed the boards until the devs finally got sick of reading the same stupid crap every day and caved.

That might be it but its more likely that the dev team print off all the 'I died because of my crap template and/or lack of skill but want the other guy nerfed anyway' feedback reports, put them in a hat and take one out and decide to implement it. Its certainly not based on any of the dev team taking part in PvP on any kind of regular basis or no idiot would have added insult to injury by introducing tameable greater dragons.

Fox

 

[Dragkiris]

Conc blow is stupidly powerfull. A dexxer with the right dmace and setup can spam conc blows for 40-60 dmg easily keeping any mage on the defense the whole time. And when you figure in apples or 60 points of chiv to remove blood oath (the only spell a mage has to slow down the spam) its just stupid how overpowered dexxers are.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

I been out of game for quite some time and I just read that concussion blow is going to be nerfed. Let me guess this is probably do to the fact that the call of the nerf is based on the dismount tamer template, otherwise no nerf call has been called for this since AOS launch.

It was the same for armor ignore. AI went years before a call for a nerf on it. The main reason why it got nerfed was because of the revamp of the archer swing speed changes made by Speedman and MrTact. Then all of a sudden it was a major problem.

As I see it, Pets should be nerfed vs players. It is just to much damage in a 3 second window. You compile pet damage + the tamers damage there is little chance for a fair fight. If any think this is balanced, then I would say lifting all the caps would be fair.

Other stuff

I find that the last PvP balance sweep - such as requiring 70-90 tactics in conjunction with a weapons skill to do special moves really hobbled the versatility of viable templates and that covers both sides of the playing field.

1) Tamer/Archers in general are NOT using Conc Blow on prodo shards

2) Conc has been begging for a nerf for years now on ALL templates

3) Wtf was the point of the OP? Other then to prove how out of touch he/she may be?

Ohh wait... it is quite obviously a rant against tamers disguised as a Conc Blow thread. My bad. Carry on.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Just because you don't remember posts or complaints about it hardly means that the problem didn't exist, Elric. PvP had been relatively balanced a few times since AoS, but they always add in new **** which completely throws the balance in another direction, and pvp isn't touched for years again. I made posts (quite long ones, as have many other noted pvpers) years ago about pvp balancing, and special moves (concussion blow, AI, poison) all being addressed. From what I understand right now (and yes, I'm just going based on what I read currently, since it is way too painful to pay for the state that pvp is in), mages are obsolete. Pure mages have been technically obsolete for years, but at least they could still get kills (in the hands of highly skilled players), although there were templates that were literally impossible to kill 1v1. Now, faction bandies? No mage on this planet that has ever played could kill me if I am uncursed (and that's if I'm playing a pure mage). It has been impossible since AoS to kill a player that is uncursed in general ((as a mage, and if the person didn't absolutely suck or lose connection)... disregarding 4/5-5/6 era, sorry) due to the fact that 15 dps really isn't enough to kill people.


Hrmmm...

In your own words:
1) "No mage on this planet that has ever played could kill me if I am uncursed"
2) "From what I understand right now (and yes, I'm just going based on what I read currently, since it is way too painful to pay for the state that pvp is in)"
3) You replied to Erics post which was specifically about Conc blow yet what did you specifically add about the subject? Absolutely nothing.

To sum up:
You have no idea about current UO mechanics as in your own words you dont play yet when you did play you were invincible to other mages?

Please keep replying/posting. These boards need more well informed, non bitter posters such as yourself who have admittedly stopped playing Carry on!!

 

[mr.blackmage]

Um, uncursed I was invincible to other mages, yes. Even cursed I could live vs any 2 mages on the field if I was intent on solely surviving.

I don't need to play to know that a bandage that removes curse completely nullifiles the remainders of the pure mage template. Nor do I need to play to know that without significant changes to factions (which they didn't do), it's still a broken system. And since they never changed various aspects that screwed up playing a pure mage (rubber banding "fix" - .5 seconds added to all spells on the field, speedhacking, I could name 50 things but I won't here).

And why say I didn't say anything about conc blow? All he said is that it wasn't overpowered, that it was something "new" to be nerfed. I said it wasn't, that there were calls for it to be nerfed 6 years ago. I don't know how you didn't get that out of my post.

You play an archer, and really shouldn't EVER talk about pvp and balance in the same topic. At least I know what I'm talking about, and I respect my decision to not pay for a broken system, and I respect my right to protest at changes (or non-changes) to try and get the game fixed so the tens of thousands of people that quit due to pvp being dumbed down to the lowest common denominator might someday come back.

Thanks.

 

[WarUltima]

When I am on my mage I have never died to any other mages/necromages if they didnt curse me. Actually if I am curse-free I can hold off probably 2 to 3 mages thats dumping on me. Unable to curse a player (or having them removed at amazing speed) made the already not viable pure mage even more useless at least in ALL 1v1. If you dont see how faction bandaids nerfed necromages you probably have never used one. I know its working as intended but I can tell you its so useful that if a stack of 10 aids will cost players triple silver people will still use them.

My necromage (my main) is taking a break rightnow because I havent gotten used to fighting against other factions where each and every single one of them has the ability to remove all curses quickly. I am mainly playing on my red faction 4/6 chiv healing stealth archer now which is just that much easier to kill, cheap shot from the dark or mount up and go pure archer style.

Mages are the least of my concern as I use the faction aids myself. Unless the mage is also riding a dread mare I can take them out pretty quickly and easily if my RNG made me hit them. Yea I hate it sometimes I whiff 5 times in a row but they mages will never catch me if they have to stop and cast ANYTHING. I can run in straight line, I can hide, I can smoke bomb, and can then dismount and stealth away.

I am sure I will adapt someday and play a mage again but rightnow I feel underpowered.

[Actual Test Result]: Uncursed all 70s target, with 120 eval and 15sdi and no scribe my explosion does 22 damage, and ebolt for around 19 to 20, lighting for 12... FS for 28...

If an archer is afk uncursed and whiffed all on his shots while I am dumping him it will take me 6 ebolts @1.75sec (assuming I ping 9 to my shard and casting perfectly with zero human error at 2/6 and he never moved a step and his auto attacks all MISSED) 10.5 seconds total to kill him if curses do not work. And I have an archer and I know how much damage I can do with 10.5 second. Which is 7 concussion blows... and if 3 of them lands, someone WILL die.

 

[mr.blackmage]

then assume auto attack hits 50% of the time, that time is changed into about 23 seconds (putting into account overcasting avoidance), plus you've taken, what, 150-200 damage in that time frame? Yeah...

 

[WarUltima]

Concussion, mortal, concussion is my combo when I play my archer. If my hit fire ball proc there is no way that gheal would get thru after 1st concussion. When the mortal lands and then I see 2 things happening. 1. Mage flee for their life (I chase with 2 moving shots) 2. Mage try to nuke me and that's a dead mage. Easy in concept, easy to achieve in reality.

If your archer can't kill a mage in 3 shots(4max) you don't have your archer setup right (template or items). I will take hit fireball or even hit magic arrow over hit harm/lighting anyday against a mage. While I don't have one myself I would love to have fireball+velocity on my bows. I am doing really well on my archer even tho I just started playing a dexer since 2 weeks ago. The difficult part for an archer is get all the right items, pvp on archer itself don't take too much player skill but praying to the rng god. If I ever get in trouble face a mage I run like chickensh!t and there's nothing the mage can do to me I don't care how skilled he is. I ping 17 to my shard, if I run I am running. Vice versa I have moving shot (at least I have a chance at kill a runner)

If archers aren't overpowered then mages are broken. On my shard most dexers are archers only mage that's "still" rocking pvp reliably are tamer mages. And the most powerful template imo is dismount archer tamer w/ dread warhorse. Which is reasonable for combining two most powerful templates(and relatively easy to play). Dismount tamer also effectively remove the only defense players have against all the stupidly overpowered pets and a huge gank. Only time my archer ever die is if I get dismounted or dismounted out of form.

Not trying to say archers are too powerful but mages especially pure mages really do need some love.

 

[ElRay]

conc blow is getting nerfed likely for the same reason everything else has been getting nerfed for the last 5 years or so: somone with a god complex died to it a few times and spammed the boards until the devs finally got sick of reading the same stupid crap every day and caved. Conc blow has worked the same way for years now.. suddenly its overpowered?

Now we all know that this is the same old reply we hear after something gets nerfed, its so dumb

No, "noone complained so much that the devs GOT SOOO SICK of hearing about it they caved in"

Get real

If that really was the case, we would of had hacking stamped out, and had pre AoS servers by now, your way of thinking is beyond flawed

Truth of the matter is,( I know it hurts =O) that concussion blow being spammed every 1.5 seconds from a 40 ssi hit velocity/hit fireball xbow with 100 DI doing a possible 50+ damage is *drum roll* OVER POWERED

Dont be bitter sounding, just go use a superdragon now, sounds like your cup of tea, if youre complaining about conc blow being nerfed