Riposte Skill

[Cerelum]

Seems like a pretty cool addition.  I just was wondering if it could be added to those classes that have slashing as a weapon type.

Maybe have it branch after they get to whatever milestone, but it seems odd that I don't see it in many skill lists.

[Hauwke]

To my knowledge, The reason only a handful get it is to set them apart. Fighter doesn't get a whole lot except, well, fighting. But they are very, very good at it.

It's the same reason why not everybody gets backstab. It is a powerful tool for those who have it.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Yeah Riposte is about as deadly as disarm was when the only dudes who had it were legacy warriors. Just like backstab and disarm it doesn't necessarily hardcounter anyone, but boy can it be used to great effect if you build around it.

Hack too is surprisingly strong, and incidentally, does hardcounter certain opponents. Fighter is a surprisingly strong class, and with the addition of the perma-dodge chance, it's now possible for an average player without some crazy ooc knowledge to realize the fighter's full potential. Honestly? My favorite of the new classes.

[Nile]

Seems too OP imo. Only encourages loads of poison usage to avoid any sort of real fight.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Seems too OP imo. Only encourages loads of poison usage to avoid any sort of real fight.

It requires you to be in a "real" fight to use it. You have to properly parry a strike to proc it, so unless you're taking hits it won't work. Poison popping is not a given. You may as well be saying bash is overpowered because people can't use flee when sitting. Riposte is a great skill.

[Cabooze]

Seems too OP imo. Only encourages loads of poison usage to avoid any sort of real fight.

It requires you to be in a "real" fight to use it. You have to properly parry a strike to proc it, so unless you're taking hits it won't work. Poison popping is not a given. You may as well be saying bash is overpowered because people can't use flee when sitting. Riposte is a great skill.

Honestly, from my experience with Riposte, it is almost too OP. It can make it so your barely competent fighter can take out just about anyone in a straight up fight as long as you have the movement points to spend, high enough riposte/parry (you dont even need decent slashing or strength), and the other person isn't being arguably abusive/gamey to circumvent the clear advantage riposte gives literally anyone using it (IE repeated sap/backstab usage, disarm or poison use, but disarm is barely a counter because if someone has riposte, chances are they also have disarm, which also makes having riposte even more OP).

It almost completely nullifies anyone's advantage of being faster than you, or stronger than you, or more skilled than you, because the faster they are, the more consistent they 'would' land a hit that results in a parry, the more you parry, and the more you parry, the more you riposte and the more damage you do in combat (unless they also have riposte in which case it's a complete shitshow). I feel like the Riposte skill needs a lot more work to it with fewer upsides. As it is, if you're planning on having your character just stand and fight, all you need to do is grind up riposte to high advanced/master and you can fight just about any long-lived character or nasty NPC and probably win as long as you have the parry for it, the movement points, and a little bit of HP cushion for the times your opponent does hit you.

As examples of ways to balance it out and discourage gamey behavior:
-Make it so you're less likely to parry when in the Riposte stance, or..
-doing so requires your focus so much that it lowers your total stun like scanning or listening does
-Make it cost more movement points.
-Make it easier to dodge because your opponent knows what's coming when they get parried. (?)

[Cerelum]

I don't have the skill on my current character and have played with it a bit.

I have noticed it's pretty much useless and just wastes your stamina then tells you a message of you failed to riposte due to it not being a humanoid or something.

Maybe when you have the skill it's useful but otherwise it's sorta just a waste of movement points.  Though I didn't see any downside outside of that.

[Is Friday]

Having a moderate amount of experience fighting against riposte (although not using it much myself) I found that it did not gain you anything unless you were of similar or greater skill level than your opponent. It seems like a "win more" ability. With that being said, it's nice to have something different to consider for sword wielding fighters. I was sick of seeing clubs be the default for anyone without poison.

[ABoredLion]

Having used Riposte quite a bit, I can say a few things confidently:

First off, there's only 2[EDIT: 3] ways to get it outside of special application, and that's worth thinking on. Extended subguild Swordsman, and the class 'Fighter', and the slightly lesser combatant Soldier. I won't address the former, but I will address the latter, as I'm fairly confident it factors into why riposte is as it is.

When it comes to fighter, let's see what you give, for what you get. Fighters as compared to Raiders, give up ride, dsense, charge, sneak, hide, and scan, to receive Riposte and Hack. Considering that the new methodology of balance in the game is to take away anyone's ability to keep up with another person's almost magical levels of stealth now, and fighters do not get 'watch' beyond (jman, to) advanced, you can literally walk up to a fighter, stab them, and if you can survive a couple of rounds of combat, flee and hide, and even if they were ICly studying you, keeping an eye on you <watching> you, you will break their watch as you go into stealth by the time they can assumedly arrive to reinitiate combat. And then you're a ghost.

Riposte does make it so that a slower opponent may use their opponent's strikes to get in a round faster, edge wise. It experiences its greatest benefit in the hands of half-giants, in this way. The strikes can and will be dodged or parried. They are harder to parry or block, but it is not considerably harder. A few points difference is all that's going to change, in my experience. There's a lot of randomization to these things, though. So it can be hard to judge it with a blind eye.

Riposte also costs a LOT of stamina. Hack is far more stamina efficient, by comparison. Failing to riposte a few times is enough to have you incapable of running away far, that's for sure. Success, the same. Another reason I think it was built with half-giants in mind.

Bearing this in mind, considering new-age fighters are weaker in every way than old school warriors, I think riposte/hack are just about the only reasonable way they could have been balanced, lacking the ability to watch (to master), and any sort of advanced weapon skills being gone from the classes.

[Brokkr]

Having used Riposte quite a bit, I can say a few things confidently:

First off, there's only 2 ways to get it outside of special application, and that's worth thinking on. Extended subguild Swordsman, and the class 'Fighter'.

Saying things confidently doesn't mean that someone is saying something accurately.  For example, the class "Soldier' also gets riposte.

We don't need to get into a discussion of where the riposte skill's weaknesses are.

[Synthesis]

Having a moderate amount of experience fighting against riposte (although not using it much myself) I found that it did not gain you anything unless you were of similar or greater skill level than your opponent. It seems like a "win more" ability. With that being said, it's nice to have something different to consider for sword wielding fighters. I was sick of seeing clubs be the default for anyone without poison.

If you're vastly better than the person you're trying to riposte, riposte will never proc, because parry will never proc, because you'll just be dodging all their attacks.

The way it's described, riposte will benefit strong, slow dual-wielders the most, and will be most effective in a DPS sense against fast opponents that are in the zone where they are too skilled for you to dodge.  Fighting two-handed will slightly increase the lower bound of that zone.

And the new fighter class isn't nerfed compared to old warriors.  Maybe 1 person in the history of the game has ever organically (special apps don't count) trained an advanced weapon skill to the point where it was more useful than the skill it branched from.  Even if theoretically the old weapon skills had higher caps, nobody ever achieved them.  Also (correct me if I'm wrong), I seem to recall that they increased the caps for the basic weapon skills on fighters.  If that's the case, then fighters are better than old warriors.  The annoying thing is not having skinning anymore.

[ABoredLion]

Oh, you know, I do stand corrected there. Soldier gets it! The point being though with that post is that everyone gives up a LOT to get it. Soldier is a way to get it and still keep many skills, but you do give up other things. So color me wrong on the bit about 'two ways to get it' but not on the other things. A short, clipped response doesn't change that.

As to the rest of it, I was discussing how it may or may not be considered OP, and why it may or may not have been given certain leanings for class usage.

As to the bit about organically training a weapon skill to be useful, that's ridiculous. Apprentice pikes, apprentice tridents, whatever, they'd absolutely destroy people they were used against, for good reason. That's off subject though. The point being -- the current equivalent to warrior is weaker than old warrior for the variety of skills there, having lost advanced weapon skills that no-one else can get (which have massive potential to make melee a terror on anyone who doesn't have their given skill), and not having the same watch which would let them target someone attacking them, and that person couldn't just slip out of sight casually.

In my opinion, hack and riposte being strong is a nice way they attempted to balance that out. Consideration for making them 'weaker' is unneeded. That was the point of what I was saying.

[Edited to clarify some things and give a response to a post.]

[Synthesis]

Oh, you know, I do stand corrected there. Soldier gets it! The point being though with that post is that everyone gives up a LOT to get it. Soldier is a way to get it and still keep many skills, but you do give up other things. So color me wrong on the bit about 'two ways to get it' but not on the other things. A short, clipped response doesn't change that.

As to the rest of it, I was discussing how it may or may not be considered OP, and why it may or may not have been given certain leanings for class usage.

As to the bit about organically training a weapon skill to be useful, that's ridiculous. Apprentice pikes, apprentice tridents, whatever, they'd absolutely destroy people they were used against, for good reason. That's off subject though. The point being -- the current equivalent to warrior is weaker than old warrior for the variety of skills there, having lost advanced weapon skills that no-one else can get (which have massive potential to make melee a terror on anyone who doesn't have their given skill), and not having the same watch which would let them target someone attacking them, and that person couldn't just slip out of sight casually.

In my opinion, hack and riposte being strong is a nice way they attempted to balance that out. Consideration for making them 'weaker' is unneeded. That was the point of what I was saying.

[Edited to clarify some things and give a response to a post.]

I branched pikes, polearms, knives, and razors on a a single PC, and not a single one of those skills was ever as good at apprentice as bludgeoning, chopping, or slashing was at master.  You're just dead wrong about that, sorry.  Your perception is probably tainted by an oft-repeated line about how the code works that I personally don't think is true, and by the fact that you can etwo with incredibly high base O with zero weapon skill and still look like you're wrecking house on noobs.

[Is Friday]

It's not relevant since the skills have been removed from all but gladiators, so I'll post this.

Having played a glad who sparred with other glads, this is what I found:
Gladiator A has Tier 2 weapon skill.
Gladiator B does not.

Gladiator A wrecked B.

Gladiator A & B both have weapon skill, perhaps 1-2 days removed from above example.

Gladiator A and B are much more competitive.

So if we're talking about that--yes, I think it does work that way. Tier 2 skills were sort of borked anyway, though.

[Namino]

Oh, you know, I do stand corrected there. Soldier gets it! The point being though with that post is that everyone gives up a LOT to get it. Soldier is a way to get it and still keep many skills, but you do give up other things. So color me wrong on the bit about 'two ways to get it' but not on the other things. A short, clipped response doesn't change that.

As to the rest of it, I was discussing how it may or may not be considered OP, and why it may or may not have been given certain leanings for class usage.

As to the bit about organically training a weapon skill to be useful, that's ridiculous. Apprentice pikes, apprentice tridents, whatever, they'd absolutely destroy people they were used against, for good reason. That's off subject though. The point being -- the current equivalent to warrior is weaker than old warrior for the variety of skills there, having lost advanced weapon skills that no-one else can get (which have massive potential to make melee a terror on anyone who doesn't have their given skill), and not having the same watch which would let them target someone attacking them, and that person couldn't just slip out of sight casually.

In my opinion, hack and riposte being strong is a nice way they attempted to balance that out. Consideration for making them 'weaker' is unneeded. That was the point of what I was saying.

[Edited to clarify some things and give a response to a post.]

I branched pikes, polearms, knives, and razors on a a single PC, and not a single one of those skills was ever as good at apprentice as bludgeoning, chopping, or slashing was at master.  You're just dead wrong about that, sorry.  Your perception is probably tainted by an oft-repeated line about how the code works that I personally don't think is true, and by the fact that you can etwo with incredibly high base O with zero weapon skill and still look like you're wrecking house on noobs.

In my testing, apprentice tridents against someone with very high defense but no tridents skill of their own was significantly more likely to land than master piercing, though each hit appeared to do less damage overall, though the sample size was very small. This is conflated by the fact that there is only an etwo training trident and I'm not metal enough to go live-fire in the sparring ring. Though comparing etwo trident to etwo spear, the trident again seemed to land significantly more often for less damage. Also, the trident would melt gith because they presumably did not have the skill, unlike piercing, which they possess going by the categories of weapons they would carry.

What does this mean?

I have no idea!

But I also was testing quite enthusiastically for a number of months and that's my conclusion.

Edit: I might add that the character I got my final piercing miss to branch trident off of and the character I started testing trident on was the same individual and we concurred that the trident showed a noticeable performance differential.

[Synthesis]

From what I've seen, being good at a weapon skill doesn't increase your chance to parry blows coming from that type of weapon.  Being good at a weapon skill increases your chance to parry when you're wielding that type of weapon.

Weapon Skills
(Melee Combat)

Weapon skills represent specialised knowledge in the use of a particular class of weapons. All weapons fall into one of four general categories: bludgeoning, chopping, piercing, and slashing. Stabbing weapons are merely a subset of piercing ones.

If one possesses, for example, the 'chopping weapons' skill, then one's usage of an axe is improved both in ability to land blows and to parry those of others, the degree of improvement depending on one's level of accomplishment in that skill.

Each category of weapon has its own characteristics, which should become evident as your character becomes more familiar with its usage.

I don't think that language means that you get better at parrying axes.  It means you're better at parrying while you're wielding an axe.  Having gone through the grind to master multiple weapon skills on a single PC, I can say with certainty that your parry skill is nerfed when you suck with the weapon you're wielding.  I suppose it's a possibility that both interpretations are correct:  that you are better at parrying when wielding your master weapon, and that you're better at parrying blows coming from your master weapon type.  I haven't noticed the second interpretation in action.

Like I've said...I think the misperception comes from the fact that a) by the time you branch a weapon skill, your base offense is massive and b) most of the weapons available to advanced weapon skills were two-handed.  If you're etwoing with massive base offense, even maxed parry isn't enough to stop you, and you're going to land head/neck/wrist bombs regularly even with zero weapon skills.  When I sparred at apprentice-level dual-wielding knife-type weapons, I was no better with the knife-type weapons than I was with any other apprentice-level weapon skill.

Now, there might have been some extra effect added to those advanced weapon types (like armor-damage for razors) that made them additionally superior in some way, but I'm not addressing those effects, only the basics.

The gladiator business...well...a gladiator is probably a special app.  Also, you can't control for the quality of sparring weapons or the quality of weapons being used in the Arena.  If everyone else is using a garbage-tier obsidian longsword, and the gladiator is using a mastercraft Salarr trident (because that's the only item in the database, because who the fuck is going to master spears to branch tridents, and then buy a shit-tier trident???), well...your data are going to be skewed.

[Namino]

My experience suggests that your weapon skill increases your ability to parry that type of attack, not parry with that type of weapon. This is relatively simple to test, to be honest. Just pick up a weapon you don't have the skill in and fight someone who is using a weapon you do have a skill in. If your parrying collapses, then weaponskill increases parrying for the weapon you're wielding. If your parrying keeps parity, then weaponskill defense is based on what the other guy is packing. To keep things steady, just do the treatments against the same target in succession and record the mean number of parries across a sample of like... 50-100 swings, four or five sets per treatment. THEN DO A STUDENTS T-TEST.

I'm not in a position to do this test nor did I think to do it before, but if other Arm scientists (cough, Synthesis, cough) want to check it out....   

[Brokkr]

The gladiator business...well...a gladiator is probably a special app.

Gladiators are sponsored apps, not special apps.

[Synthesis]

The gladiator business...well...a gladiator is probably a special app.

Gladiators are sponsored apps, not special apps.

You have an amazing ability to completely miss the point based on semantics, Brokkr.

My point is:  if a noob gladiator comes in sparring with tridents, they obviously didn't branch tridents organically, so there's no telling what else is modified about the PC. Thus, you can't use it for an apples-to-apples comparison, because there are a whole host of assumptions that no longer apply.

Ultimately, the Warrior vs. Fighter discussion is pointless, because most people never got beyond the jman plateau in the first place, and a goddamn maxed Laborer could probably mop the floor with a Warrior stuck on the jman plateau (not counting disarm).

[Brokkr]

I just didn't care to address the main point of your post, actually.  Or more to the point, care to clarify.

I was just making sure someone didn't read your post and think that a Gladiator would take one of their special apps.  It doesn't.  Gladiators are not special app'd.  They have their own class and two subclasses.  So, other than the two subclasses, there is no modification.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I just didn't care to address the main point of your post, actually.  Or more to the point, care to clarify.

I was just making sure someone didn't read your post and think that a Gladiator would take one of their special apps.  It doesn't.  Gladiators are not special app'd.  They have their own class and two subclasses.  So, other than the two subclasses, there is no modification.

Are advanced weapon skills, for the most part aside from gladiators, discontinued? Or are there any plans to reimplement them in some way.