zomg nerf knives QQ

Zudrag · 05/28/2008 11:47:33

So, every now and then I stat for knives out of boredom. Long story short, I think the following things are imbalanced. Please remember, if you either add to, debate against certain points, or go "lol i dunno", keep it constructive and try not to insult people.

1) Knife moves should have a significant interlock penalty, similar to hackers. Throwing knives at point blank range and hitting a good majority of the time always seemed really silly to me.

2) Leg Sweep does more damage than Throat cutting throw. I don't know for sure if this is because the animation is technically longer, and the magic equation that calculates Damage/DPS makes it deal more damage or what. I think for such a low level ability, it does too much damage.

3) Master Shadow. If possible, make it to where a hit on the player instead of them taking damage drains IS and puts them in the combat state. Or, make the timer while master shadow is active to 30 or 15 seconds, and make the reuse timer 180 seconds. I believe Master Shadow is about getting away, not about walking around the people who just tried to kill you and say "lol i pwn u gud" for 180 seconds, only to return half a minute later to repeat.

Things like roll out abilities should, in my opinion, remain with the same bonus to roll out, maybe even given a greater bonus.

Thoughts/suggestions/"I don't know much about PVP/combat in general, but I think..."?

ThePigeonKing · 05/28/2008 11:59:38

Agreed, since we were just talking about this before you posted.

Spies in interlock make me rage whenever they leg sweep me for major damage and then outroll me in interlock with knives, despite the fact that I'm wearing UM buffs and, because of it, outroll a majority of other MAs or gunmen, the major offensive classes. Hell, their knives don't even damage me all that much, but they still outroll me with every ability in their hotbar, and make the IL session seem like hours long. I don't actually understand how that works, or what makes them able to do that.

**SolidRevolver**

/crackknuckles

Here we go SMILEY

1) I supose your right in this one if looked at realisticly, you hold the knife by the blade while throwing it, and it has to spin around with the weight of the handle before it hits the opponent. But looking at it from the MxO combat system, the Sneak attacks, argueable the biggest damage dealing moves force you into IL, therefor it is forcing you into a combat situation where you are taking a penalty which I dont think is fair. So possibly reduce the Interlock Bonus, but not make it a Penalty.

2) Leg Sweep should be a bit weaker, could even argue it being a melee attack rather than knife, but I will just stick woth it being a low level abil and it has a debuff so should be a little weaker.

3) I am rather happy with Master Shadow, boith used it effectively and gotten beaten while using it so I am indifferent on this one.

And I think Staggering Throw needs a Activation Timer increase, just watching someone get ILed and a MKT donning a disguise and in a second or two you have done masses amounts of damage.

**Skull101**

More balance is definatly needed for the spy tree. For one some of the abilities although powerful do miss quite alot.

I think that some of the spy abilities like reverse bull dog and a few others should be looked at they are high up abilities they should do alot of damage but they should also harm the person doing it for a short time, spies are mostly about getting quick kills which is why everyone goes spy but you need to hurt this class while leaving some good in it so people will not just go hahah that's a easy loadout to kill people with. I agree it's to easy sometimes to kill people, tone down the damage for all trees and make them more realistic. In my opinion Punt aswell as the other high damage abilities should all only work like MA abilities they should only work if and when a person is stated.

Also I really think that throwing knives at someone while they are interlocked is lame, it's pointless to fight someone that can sneak wait untill you are in interlock hit you 4 times kill you then jump away. That is *CENSORED* and really it's unrealistic. Solution to this would be add a accuracy bonus to the person the knives are hitting so they can get hurt but have some chance to kill the person they are in interlock with.

Don't nerf spies just make it so people are less drawn to the loadout cause it's a quick and easy killer...

**SolidRevolver**

Skull101 wrote:

In my opinion Punt aswell as the other high damage abilities should all only work like MA abilities they should only work if and when a person is stated.

You need to be in sneak and you need your opponents shield down, thats work enough for a Knifer.

**Ballak**

SolidRevolver wrote:

Skull101 wrote:
In my opinion Punt aswell as the other high damage abilities should all only work like MA abilities they should only work if and when a person is stated.

You need to be in sneak and you need your opponents shield down, thats work enough for a Knifer.

A lot of people are just lazy, but all you need to get a person's shield down is a Shield Jammer Device.

**Bayamos**

MA States have a 30% chance of occuring on a hit. It takes 2 to 3 shield attacks to break a bubble, and then a little further preparation. I'd say they're about equal in terms of effort involved; for both scenarios it's easy to pull off against an unready opponent, and can go horribly wrong if the opponent gets lucky or tries to counter what you're doing.

Dupz

Isn't there a system message when you try to use "sneak" or "disguise" when a hostile npc or player is to close to you that prevents you from using the abilities?

System Message: "You can not sneak when enemy players are around you" .. something like that...

Master Shadow doesn't get this error message when used, correct me if I'm wrong here, please.
If what I just mentioned is the fact on this, I would say it should be changed.

As to MKT's in interlock. Well they annoy the #@$$ outta me. Thrown defense on! - uh no.. quick melee defense! oh outrolled! and again and again and dead.

Unless I'm the mkt at the time though, then they don't bother me so much.

The Leo

YES.
Ehherm. I agree on the IL penalty as it always seems so stupid with the sky-high acc that spy has and rarely misses already out of IL. Besides that I would only look to the move staggering throw which takes around 3 seconds and does same dmg as a bad snipershot/LC2 which I just find ridiculous.
That withdraw bonus that spies have on withdraw abs is fine, but abilities that enrage in IL should have bigger chance or 100% chance, as much as the various effects spy abilities got (stun, root, slow, states etc.).

/endrant

**MatrixRefugee**

Wow, for once we have a rational, carefully thought-out post on this topic, instead of the usual "OMG TOSE KNIFERS KILLE ME 2 FAST!!!!!!!111111 WAAAHH! NERF KNIVES NOW!!111111111" wailing that usually happens (Nice touch with using a little of it in the subject line: I clicked on the thread expecting lulz, but what I found was a welcome change). Very well-thought out arguments: I like and I agree.

Croesis · 05/28/2008 15:41:53

I have to agree with Zudrag, massive accuracy in both IL and OoIL yet being a spy class, I believe that they should be most effective outside of interlock.

SolidRevolver wrote:

But looking at it from the MxO combat system, the Sneak attacks, argueable the biggest damage dealing moves force you into IL, therefor it is forcing you into a combat situation where you are taking a penalty which I dont think is fair. So possibly reduce the Interlock Bonus, but not make it a Penalty.

What Solid says here is that they do massive damage going into IL, which is fine, but then they just outroll everything else whilst in IL. They have exit IL abilities which also deal some damage. So in my opinon Spy classes should be strong OoIL, deal damage going into IL but should be weaker or less accurate in IL. So while high damage sneak attacks help, they should not be done without being risky to the spy. When in IL spy classes should want to get out of IL as quickly as possible.

In my mind Spies are sneaky people attacking from the darkness and disappearing into it after dealing damage, not in your face, strong IL fighters.

I also agree on the other points.

**9mmfu**

My testing has shown that leg sweep and Throat Cutting throw do almost the exact same damage under the exact same conditions.

They appear to be with in 10% damage of each other. And yes the animation of each ability has something to do with it.

**Cadsuane**

It seems to me that the main draw of a Spy should be his or her sneak attack. Once the sneak attack phase has happened the Spy should have only mediocre ability in interlock. Martial Artists and Gunmen for instance should be able to defeat a Spy in a fair fight. The Spy's job is to make sure the fight isn't fair by surprising the fighter with a sneak attack to gain the advantage.

Obviously the basics need to be fixed first - Thrown Defence/Resist, Passives, that kind of thing. Next, my suggestion is to lower the base accuracy of the tree (MKT in particular) and instead give Spies a temporary accuracy buff they can use while sneaking or invisible. This will enable them to still practically guarantee sneak attacks but give them a proper handicap in interlock.

**Pylat**

Instead of nerfing spy I think the other trees should be strengthened and existing abilities should be expanded to encompass the new "Thrown" category that was introduced with CR 2 but apparently completely overlooked in a lot of trees.

- Add Thrown Defense to Hacker (Both Virologist and Patcher) and Coder.
- Fix Concealment Countermeasures Tools... again.
- Expand Hacker debuffs to include more Thrown Acc and Damage, especially lower level abilities like Overload and Despoiler.
- Fix Thrown Resistance % Bonuses.
- Expand Buffs in Force Multiplier to include Thrown Acc and Damage (This is only fair and consistent with the other proposed changes).

After this has been done you should take a look at the Spy tree itself, but because most trees lack the most basic tools in our combat system (Through bugs or oversight) to fight MKT's on even ground it's impossible to get an objective standard to compare the tree to while there are still these inconsistencies.

Zudrag

And those suggested "fixes" would be simply to reinforce the idea that the Assassin/MKT attacks people with sneak attacks, then slips away from close quarters whenever anyone catches them. They simply shouldn't, in my opinion, be able to spam knife move after knife move with such interlock accuracy as that. Out of interlock, leave that alone, it's fine in my opinion.

Shorter version: If you catch a Spy in interlock, they should try and slink away or be crushed, not litter you with knives.