Isn't it ironic that samurais are the best Defensive+Offensive fighter?

[sean_lo]

Disclaimer: This is more of a rant, than an attempt to nerf the samurai.

First of all, don't get me wrong.. I have a necro/samurai/pally. It really rocks.
I have tons of fun playing it because it's overpowered. However, a lot of samurai concepts bother me because it is not intuitively pleasing to my senses.

Here's some examples:

1) A Samurai with a 2 handed sword parries better than a pure defensive fighter with a shield.

2) A Samurai gets to parry energy bolts and dragon fireballs with a 2 handed sword. A fighter with a shield.. can't.

3) A samurai gets LUCK! From honoring his opponents? Wtf?

4) A samurai gets additional damage from honoring his opponents and landing perfect blows after one another. This i like!
However, combined with vampiric embrace and life leech weapons, this means that this is the BEST possible DEFENSE available to all fighters.

It's not the offense that gets me irked. I like the offense.. It's very samurai-ish to deal lots of fatal blows. It's the best defense part that doesn't make much sense.


As i said, this is more of a rant. Not an attempt to nerf things that are fun.

Though, if i had one change to make, i would make it so fighter-shields can parry MUCH better than samurais.

 

[eolsunder1]

Well samurai's were introduced later, and usually when you have new class's introduced, they make them a tad better in order to have people play them. It would be hard to sell a game if the new class's were sucky.

Trouble is, they gave samurai too much power compared to other things. Each class should be special in one area, thus you can pick and choose which you like. Sadly, Samurai are the tops in both offense AND defense, which kinda makes them the warrior of choice. This is because of both the skills of the samurai, and the unbalancing of normal skills.

For instance, you would think that a regular warrior with 120 tactics, 120 anatomy, 120 healing, 120 weapons, etc would be a powerhouse. Nope They are just a tad better than a warrior with 120 weapons and 100 in tactics/anatomy/healing. That extra 60 points is pretty much a waste in skill points. Its much better to put them into another skill.

Thus, when legendary status in skills are worthless, you tend to vary your chacters. So, no more pure warriors. Everything has to be a samurai something. Not much you can do about it until they fix legendary skills in comparison to class skills. 120 tactics should be doing more than 2 points of extra damage compared to 100 tactics. Cept it isn't.

 

[Ravenspyre]

The strength of bushido was it's defense. However, as twinks always look for the ultimate combo, and the ease with which the skill system allows for that in UO, it would of been highly miraculous someone didn't find the total destruction template sooner or later.

 

[sean_lo]

As i said, it's just not intuitively pleasing.

Guy with shield, protects himself less than guy with big damaging two handed sword out to deal damage.

That part really kinda irks me.

 

[sean_lo]

Just had an idea.. maybe the solution is to give shields special moves. Hmmm... now that's a thought.

 

[eolsunder1]

No the thing to do is have each class with a strong point and a weak point, thus you can pick and choose which you like.

Pure warriors should be the damage dealers. They need to up the strength of higher than GM tactics and anatomy so that having a pure warrior is beneficial. As it is now, a pure warrior is worse than a cook. (not quite, but in comparison to other class's, it is).

Samurai should be defense.

 

[Ravenspyre]

Samurai is defense. Again skill based game which easily let's you mix and match set ups to get the most power. Plain and simple. There is nothing that can be done about that unless the devs swap UO over to a pure class system, which I doubt will ver happen. And it also doesn't help that cheesy skill jewelry was introduced to the game either.

 

[Ravenspyre]

And I will note, upfront, that samurais, for the longest time, were considered absolutely horrible power pick. Everyone wanted to be a ninja. Then some people figured out what bushido could do, and all the sudden samurais were all the rage.

 

[sean_lo]

I was there when samurais first came out and i gave it a try on a pure samurai template.

Back then the template of the week was the paladin/necro vampiric embrace combo.
Then came even more equipment that lets you shove in more skill points.
Then came the paladin/samurai/necro combo.

Though i have to say i find it odd why you would argue that the idea of a samurai should be defensive.
I mean.. why? Is there any logic behind this? Some sort of history relevance behind samurais being defensive? <---- honest ignorant question.

 

[eolsunder1]

No, only that THIS game has their power as defense in nature. Skills that are parry based, evasions, self healing, etc. Except they added in other skills that also make them offensively strong, such as lightning strike and honor. They really should have did them one way or another, not both. Doing both makes them both offensive powerhouses and defensive powerhouses. They should only be one, thus giving another class the abililty for the other.

 

[imported_Anakena]

When a character has high defenses, he can spend more time in offensive actions. This was always the case.

Take a parry mage : Against a dexxer he will be hit less (like 3 out of 10 instead of 5 out of 10) and less interrupted. He will also have lesser needs in healing himself. So he can cast more and focus a lot more on offensive spells. Actually parrying is increasing his DoT.

The same is true for the Samurai but in a better way as he can also parry spells (evasion was of course nerfed, but it is still true as it can be well timed too).

 

[sean_lo]

Eolsunder1,

I don't really care if they're strong both offensively and defensively. Monsters in this game are way more powerful anyhows.

The only thing that bugs me is that they are better defensively compared to a defensive fighter with a big chunking shield using a 1 handed weapon, doing less damage.

 

[sean_lo]

<blockquote><hr>

When a character has high defenses, he can spend more time in offensive actions. This was always the case.

Take a parry mage : Against a dexxer he will be hit less (like 3 out of 10 instead of 5 out of 10) and less interrupted. He will also have lesser needs in healing himself. So he can cast more and focus a lot more on offensive spells. Actually parrying is increasing his DoT.

The same is true for the Samurai but in a better way as he can also parry spells (evasion was of course nerfed, but it is still true as it can be well timed too).

[/ QUOTE ]

A more valid comparison would be to imagine a scenario where lifeleech and manaleech effects exist on slayer spellbooks.

 

[Ravenspyre]

Umm sean, your whole argument is going down the tube, because the skill jewelry has existed since AoS. It's nothing new. Not by a long shot. The skill jewelry has always been the biggest beef of mine in this game since it's introduction with AoS. But that's a Pandora's Box that can not be closed. Quite frankly, it isn't the skill of bushido that's overpowered, it's the loopholes that the devs leave for the players to exploit in their template builds.

Skill jewerly is the one thing that should of never been introduced, but thanks to that, that's where you are getting these paladin/samurai/necro/mages from. And quite frankly, before the samurai, there was the paladin/bard. and before that, there was the tamer/bard... the list can go on and on. Making up a half baked and, quite frankly, over-tired excuse to try and pin the blame on one skillset in the game is showing a lack of foresight and hindsight.