OCD

Everyone has Nodeka quirks, right?  I delayed enhancing my "pools attributes" (attributes that improve your pools gains while leveling) so that I could be sure to end up with a 0 as my last digit in each of my base pools.  This probably leaves me with the lowest possible pools (I think that ideally, you'd want to have 9 as the last digit in each of your pools), but I think I'm happier this way.

Do you have little superstitious (such as followering Vai-shan when waiting for reward) or OCD things (always capping before converting) that you do?  Do you prefer "looker" uniques or plain gear?

Have Fortitude

With the pwipe, changes to classes that arose from the crafting system are now obsolete and should be reviewed. As usual, we'll start with a less controversial topic and work our way up to the big ticket items. This installment will address constitution as it is implicated with fallads.

1. Holy Hammer: This ability was toned mightily as a result of a single player's strength with stacking constitution on crafted gear. (Well done, Rheal, for you have left your mark upon Nodeka's history.) As it is, the prevention time on holy hammer is much too high. If there is a concern about further constitution stacking, a minimum prevention could be placed on it. As it is, canon of the second hammer is rarely used, because it (a) overlaps with guided canon of mending, and (b) isn't going to see use. Holy hammer's prevention time needs to be dropped back to in line with its pre-crafted incarnation.

2. White Flames of Prayer: This issue actually predates crafting altogether, and seems to have been left behind with the changes in design direction seen in other preventions. White flames of prayer receives no benefit from constitution training, which is unusual for preventions that are affected at all by constitution. The player must sacrifice a lot of his burst damage flexibility when finishing trains, because each 100 constitution trained increases the prevention of this ability by 3 minutes. The prevention time of this ability should not increase with constitution training; or at the very least, the downtime should be kept constant, such that a 2 minute gap between uptime and prevention remain constant, and training constitution at least increases the proportionate uptime.

There are other abilities that need to be addressed in the same vein. The next installment will likely address these abilities/features, especially those related to fallads.

Back in the Swing

There's so much to talk about, in terms of game design and balance.  There appears to be a clear hierarchy of classes and races (the distribution is quite poor), there are lingering issues on overarching mechanics (e.g. endurance as a terrible fighter bonus/money sink, intellect and wisdom being separate attributes), and there are in-game systems that everyone agrees should be addressed (e.g. Christof being overwhelmed, citadels are outdated).

But right now, with a new beginning, I'm going to shy away from controversy and ease back into writing by sharing a short piece of personal information:  I've finally upgraded mud clients.  I'm now on UMC, specifically created to work well with Nodeka, and it really does.  My botchecks are once again captured, which is nice, but mob tells are not, which is baffling (since they are usually more important than the crap that we spew when gabbing with our friends).  I can finally read past character #80 when you send me tells, so yay.

I do have questions, though, and since I'm a newbie, maybe someone can help me out:

1. Is there an equivalent function to #tabadd?  If not, would it be hard to add in this function?  The #tab function was incredibly useful for creating accuracy when dealing with difficult to spell names (Zqxm) and long names (follower_of_). 
2. Does anyone have a second window written up?  I'd love to push output for trials and the info channel (##) onto another window, for at-a-glance status.
3. Is there a way to use variables in #substitute functions?  I'm used to having battle output of "## Grim was just defeated in battle by Grim's gesko!" shortened to "## Grim's gesko killed Grim!".  Right now, everything is backwards and it's making my eyeballs itch.
4. Is there anyway to #highlight?  I've shoved stuff that used to be highlighted into my output window, but that's not exactly what I prefer.

It turned out that most of what I needed to work for me in a tintin environment was translatable to UMC, and the remainder (see above) seems like it should be pretty straightforward.  But I don't really know, since I'm not a programmer of any kind.  

Bad at Martial Arts?

After much delay, here are some bottom lines to consider. Thanks to Grim for his contribution of fact-checking and analysis to this post. Special thanks to all the folks that reported on their class kung-fu. Based on our research, kung fu moves per minute (doesn’t include special moves such as spirit-talon and witching frostband) for each class are as follows:

Fallad & Daja: 4.5/minute = 4 (psychic shock) + 0.5 (bolted lightning)

Druid: 5.16/minute = 4 (psychic shock) + 0.5 (bolted lightning) + 0.33 (breeze of hand) + 0.33 (cyclone of the guild)

Witch: 11.33/minute = 6 (mental blast) + 4 (mental tempest) + 1 (star of the green flame) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

Poliir: 12.66/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

Paladin: 13.33/minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (spiritstone) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative)

Monk: 13.33/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.5 (yikwon hand form) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

Hunter: 13.83/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick)  + 0.33 (breeze of hand) + 0.5 (bolted lightning)

Footpad: 14.5/per minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (glancing pierce) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.5 (one of four, pivot)

Valkyrie: 14.83/minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (glancing pierce) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (one of four, pivot) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative)

Ninja: 15/minute = 12 (kick) + 1 (glancing pierce) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.5 (yikwon hand form) + 0.5 (one of four, pivot)

Wizard: 19/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 1 (winged arc-bolt) 
Necro: 18.83/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 0.5 (unhallowed scathing) + 0.33(spectral windstorm)

Sorcerer:  19.5/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 1 (star of the green flame) + 0.5 (bolted lightning)

Marauder: 23.83/minute = 12 (kick) + 6 (mental blast) + 4 (mental tempest) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (unhallowed scathing) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick)

Warlock: 24.83/minute = 12 (magic arrow) + 6 (mental blast) + 4 (mental tempest) + 1 (star of the green flame) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 1 (winged arc-bolt) + 0.33 (oblique pattern)

(*)Barbarian: 15.83 = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative) + 1 (ishtl’s thrashing) + 1 (knee smash) +1 (elbow)
[kick, striking fist, bash, isth thrash, band smiting all cant be used while insanity]

(*)Nojohr: 13.3/minute = 12 (kick) + 0.5 (striking fist) + 0.5 (ashi barai kick) + 0.33 (banded smiting initiative)

Analysis and Conclusions:
We previously touched upon the idea that kung fu moves needed to be buffed generally. We explored the idea that certain kung fu moves needed to be buffed much more than others. This listing helps us discern which moves need to be improved more.

The first general trend we notice is that casters tend towards having more kung-fu, in addition to stronger kung-fu as a result of sixth sense. This is largely an acceptable balance, because casters' physical attack damage is reduced by having poor weapons, less +dam, and the option of a high-dammage spammable (fireball, anyone?). Therefore, it is not as ridiculous to grant casters the possibility of "additional rounds". This is also perhaps one of the main reasons witches were not granted the single most powerful kung fu (magic arrow) witches have a high damage weapon and higher hit/dam than traditional casters. Nothing really explains warlocks; warlocks have two strong weapons, many attacks (speed and class), sentinel dominance, physical intensification, lag reduction, sixth sense, and usually have alignment freedom. Short conclusion: We need to be careful not to buff warlocks.

Barbarians have a strong incentive to not open with kick or any of their low-damage kung fu moves, and due to their high damage boost spammables: berserk, insanity.  Additionally, they have the best combat initiative readiness.  Nojohrs have a second-place combat initiative readiness, but their alternative opener is rage, which is much crappier than barbarians. Short conclusion: We don't need to buff barbarian kung fu, cause they don't use it and don't need it.

Working from that loosely brings in valkyrie/nojohr + their kung fu + lack of traditional spammable abilities for some discussion. All the other classes have spammables, druid might be particularly exceptional with regular damage from decaying touch. And valk/noj are traditionally limited to kung-fu + rage. Exceptions being fire goddess and magos/lernen with spammables studied. Despite the exceptions it serves to identify a little bit of a weakness in the base class. (Perhaps a discussion that we can take up in the future.)  

Druids, Dajas, and Fallads, are so far behind, we're tempted to ignore them entirely. Their reliance on pets reduces the usefulness of lagless entry. However, druids in particular might benefit from an improved uptime on decaying touch with more options for lagless entry.

The classes with the highest frequency are vastly superior in kung fu frequency but also excel in other areas, as well (read: pvp). It is the medium frequency classes might be worth looking at further via kung fu, but overall utility might need to be taken into consideration. Short conclusion: Monk, Hunter, Footpad, Nojohr, Valkyrie, and Ninja are classes that should be up for consideration. Therefore, kung-fu that is unique to these classes should be most up for improvement, and no, inscriptions don't count. As it is, the "additional mechanism" for inscription slots haven't been implemented, so we basically have to ignore inscriptions as a reasonable method of improving kung fu. (Or anything. We'll get to that shortly.)

Discussion is welcome. Any factual errors should be emailed to the author.

Let the Qi Flow

I’m accelerating my specific suggestions to avoid receiving anymore suggestions on a system.  My analysis will be slightly out of order in that it will follow this post, instead of preceding it.

Specific Suggestions:

No Buff To Prevention Time: kick/magic arrow/mental blast/mental tempest all have low enough prevention times that they should probably remain unchanged (although kick is way worse than magic arrow and it evokes great tears of sadness from the author).

Should be Buffed Even Before Training/Constitution:  glancing pierce, bolted lightning, striking fist, unhallowed scathing.

Glancing Pierce should have a baseline 20 or 30 second prevention time if it’s to be used fairly often, according to the helpfile.  (3 or 2 times per minute is not bad.)

Bolted Lightning, Striking Fist and Unhallowed Scathing should have their 120 second preventions dropped to 60 seconds.

Improvement Contingent Upon Training:  psychic shock, ashi barai kick, yikwon hand form.

For various reasons (such as inscription incentive, already low prevention time), these abilities don't need to be improved immediately, but could stand to have reduced prevention times with training and/or high constitution.

Suggested baselines:  Constitution and training should probably have additive effects on the prevention reduction of kung fu moves.  That way everyone has access, although training remains highly desirable.  As a side effect, the maximum reduction should be reachable either by training or by constitution, the maximum benefit will need to be capped.  For example:

1500 constitution (800 over 300) can be neatly divided into 8, 10, or 16 parts.  Every 100 constitution could reduce prevention times for [standard] kung fu moves by 10% for a maximum possible reduction of 80%.  However, more readily achievable levels of constitution (500 constitution, for example) would result in a 20% reduction in prevention time.

605% training (505 over 100) is an incredibly awkward number, so let’s use 600%.  Every 50% training could reduce prevention times for standard kung fu moves by 5% for a maximum possible reduction of 50%.  At 250% training, this would be a 15% reduction:  not bad, but not game-changing, probably how it should be.  At 400% training, a 30% reduction is seen, which seems reasonable.

The prevention reduction could be additive, so that someone with 400 constitution and 250% training would see 25% reduction in prevention times on his or her kung fu moves.

Notes:

1. Obviously, balance is a very difficult; the author has no concrete way to judge the effect this has on total damage output.  Likely, only Nijlo has the ability to run exhaustive tests for balancing purposes--but does he have the time?  We can hope.
2. Endurance drains might be extreme in certain cases, although this is really only a problem for fighters (endurance bonus and fighters is a separate post--suffice it to say that one hopes fighters are NOT balanced around having a hit/dam bonus up continuously by not using their endurance).  Perhaps endurance costs for some of these abilities should be lowered, particularly for abilities that should have short prevention times, such as glancing pierce.
3. Certain abilities have added incentives, already.  For example, ashi barai kick, yikwon hand form, and banded smiting initiative have inscriptions that increase their utility.  These abilities will likely need to be “held back”; perhaps their prevention reducions be halved compared to “normal” kung fu moves.
4. Bash and Trip are the subject of a future post and/or suggestion.
5. Winged arc-bolt is not a trainable kung fu, and given it’s scaling, it probably doesn’t need to be.

A more detailed analysis of kung fu moves will be in the next post, and will include a class comparison---with the understanding that we are NOT looking for parity, and with the realization that each class benefits differently from kung fu moves.  For example, the harder someone hits, the more valuable using kung fu as a lead-in will be (valkyrie will benefit more than any pet class).  In the meantime, let me know the prevention times for breeze of hand and cyclone of the guild.

Bruce Lee Disapproves

“A unique aspect to glancing pierce is that its recovery time is nearly nonexistent. This makes glancing pierce a highly used skill.”  - helpfile for glancing pierce

“Unhallowed scathing has a very short prevention period. Basic mystical patterns can be used again after the skill's prevention has worn off.” - helpfile for unhallwed scathing

Has anyone here trained glancing pierce or unhallowed scathing?  The recovery times are 60 seconds and 120 seconds, respectively.

Introduction:

Kung fu moves go largely untrained, and this is because their prevention times are too long.  Kung fu moves are the attacks that every class has: these are the attacks that are limited by a prevention time and deal damage, but offer no side utility.  They have two uses:  (1) damage and (2) to allow lagless entry into combat (and therefore, lagless exit if no lag-inducing abilities are used.  Without exception, all kung fu moves are trainable.  But the players by and large eschew their training, and I believe the reasoning is due to the factors set forth below.

Discussion:

The lagless combat-entry portion of kung fu moves is powerful in very specific circumstances:  because an entire combat round is attached to kung fu moves when used to initiate combat, they become extremely powerful when combat ceases for that round.  Used this way, several rounds of attacks can be performed (against different targets) during 2 seconds (the normal combat round).  In this way, kung fu attacks are basically a weak version of “combat initiative ready”.

With respect to damage, kung fu moves represent a very modest portion of a player's total damage output, with the exception of two moves (kick and magic arrow).  If we say that a player is in combat with the same enemy for 1 minute, then that player has 30 rounds of normal attacks per minute.  Let's say this player has 15 attacks, which is a very conservative estimate (remembering we're not counting spammables such as fireball).  That's approximately 450 attacks.  An ability such as striking fist (60 second prevention), even if it does approximately 3x a normal attack in damage, is worth 0.66% of that player's total damage output.  In contract, even though kick (5 second prevention) is worth only approximately 2x a normal attack, it's used up to 12 times per minute, allowing it to be an impressive 5% of that player's damage output.

With both uses of kung fu moves (damage and lagless entry into combat), perhaps the clearest indication of usefulness is uses per minute.  Kick has 12 uses per minute.  Mental blast has 6 uses per minute.  Glancing pierce has only 1 use per minute.  So while improving damaging abilities is usually done by increasing the damage dealt, here, prevention time is key to improving their desirability.

In contrast, increasing the damage dealt by kung fu moves too much with training is not an ideal, because doing so would increase the burst damage potential (relevant to pk) without touching the utility of an attack.  Players already die very fast in pk, and having significantly more burst within the first 2 rounds of pk combat would only serve to shorten pk combat.

Additionally, there is the problem of certain kung fu moves which simply have too much prevention time, even as a baseline.  These include the two examples cited above, and a couple others as well.

Summary of Problems:

(1) kung fu move prevention time is too long in most cases

(2) kung fu move prevention time reduction based on constitution is capped at a low constitution.

Summary of Solutions: (more than one solution may be appropriate, depending on each move):

(1) kung fu move prevention times reduced outright

(2) kung fu move prevention times reduced by constitution

(3) kung fu move prevention times reduced by training %

Due to the size of this post, an overview of the current state of kung fu, and specific suggestions, will be separate posts. Suggestions attached to this post, especially those with numbers, are likely to be ignored.

Fallad Races Breakdown

Three years late, here's quick review of logical race candidates for Fallad.  I'll evaluate any races you request in the comments, and the next post will discuss the direction of posts for the near future.

Onillin Ti:
With no subclass to provide any augmented healing, and the main healing output of fallads unaffected by time-walk, this race is not nearly as powerful for the fallad as it is for the daja.  However, the attributes remain viable, so this race is medicore rather than alarming.

Sun Kedoeji:
The time-walking remains a less than ideal racial choice, but the increased personal attack bonuses for Kedoeji cause this race to pull ahead of Onillin.  Additionally, the sights, 48% 1/2 NR and extra dex/hit (due to more attacks) become more useful than for daja.  Sun kedoeji is a strong utility choice for fallad.

Storm Wielder:
While the physical resistance and massive size have limited use, the lightning dominance fits fairly strongly with fallad 4-second cooldown on falladian holy analgesic, unlike Sun Kedoeji's time-walking.  The constitution will help with preventions, although that is less relevant in today's Nodeka because the key prevention of holy hammer has been nerfed to the point where no amount of constitution will make it more than a novelty in most situations.  The extra damage and dodge/parry suppression aren't bad for regular attacks, but conversely this race does not have much by way of reliable additional attacks.  Nevertheless, +20 damage on the race may be worth almost an extra attack's worth of damage, depending on individual circumstance, so this race appears to be a fine choice, especially for running.

Silver Elf:
As with daja, a strong choice for fallad.  While fallads are not the best healers on Nodeka, they are a clear second place.  And with no subclass option for healing amplification, silver elf is one of the few ways that a fallad can boost his healing.  The combat bonuses are very similar to Sun Kedoeji; the utility bonuses, however, lend more towards emergency situations rather than quality-of-life.

Ryfe:
Omitted from my daja post, this race is included here for defensive potential.  The continuous physical regeneration from ryfe combined with a fallad's heals can make this a tough race.  Add in willpower, 15% anti-offensive, 60% magic and mental resist, you have a decent race.  Given the new ability of static charge to cause the caster to almost never run out of mana (and fallads can heal while regenerating mana thanks to lagless healing), this is one of the most durable fallad racial choices.  However, this race has only moderate offensive bonuses, so it's more relevant for fallads who want to run areas that are "too big" for their pools.

Lads Here

My overdue post on fallads necessarily follows my posts on healers (dajas), as they share the same fundamentals.  In fact, many years ago they were nearly identical classes.  These days, they are similar but distinct classes, with the following major differences concerning fallads:

1. Fallad's version of holy analgesic is a 4-second lag prevention, rather than a 2-second lag spammable.
2. 1-2 more attacks than dajas (depending on training).
3. An option to use spiritual attacks.
4. No invis/cloak sight.
5. Holy Hammer.
6. Fewer healing/defensive spells (rain, nova, palladium, prayer of mental restoration, unearthly rapture).

Therefore, while the attribute analysis remains largely the same, the emphasis is shifted slightly when making gear choices.  A fallad has the option of using using holy analgesic and lightning in the same round, allowing them to heal and dish damage at the same time.  Naturally, the healing output is suffers from this setup; a fallad can output perhaps 60% of the healing of a similarly situated daja.  Additionally, a daja can glean additional healing output from time-walk lag reduction, whereas a fallad's healing is unaffected by time-walking.

High constitutions levels will reduce holy hammer prevention times to ~10 seconds, and decrease proportional downtime on useful abilities such as creed of the gods volition, so constitution becomes more useful than time-walking (although the two may certainly be combined).  A fallad's personal offense is proportionally more important than a daja's (when considering the output provided by their pet).  Therefore, offensive bonuses such as hit/dam are more important when selecting a race for a fallad.

Daja Races Breakdown

Logical racial choices for the Daja class are presented here.  As usual, mention any other races you want considered in the comments.

Onillin Ti:

With very strong attributes including high wisdom and willpower, with high dexterity and speed with two 100% winged slash racials to boost the daja's physical attacks to acceptable levels, onillin ti is another obvious race.  22% difficult to hit isn't terrible, although the % isn't high enough to actually make a daja "difficult to hit".  But those aren't the reasons that onillin is a standout race:  The very high % time-walking and 15% time-bending are.

Dajas are the only class with a spammable, powerful heal.  Field aid and compelled rejuvenation have nothing on dajain holy analgesic.  A 20% reduction in lag results in a direct 25% increase in healing output and lightning output.  When combined with a subclass such as dajain healer, the healing output potential of this race is amazing.

Sun Kedoeji:

For the most part, sun kedoeji is a "light" version of onillin ti.  While some of the benefits offered by this race are useful (18 quick, 60 agility, 5 more NR, 12 hit, 48% 1/2 NR, 24% mental resistance), the attributes offered are much weaker.  The racial attacks are stronger as well, since 100% radiating sunbeam is bound to be very powerful on any wisdom-stacking character.  However, the dip in willpower/wisdom/speed/dex and loss of time-bend and some time-walking make sun kedoeji not quite as flashy.  It is, however, a more well-rounded choice.

Silver Elf:  An obvious choice for any healing class, silver elf comes with 28% augmented healing, which translates to 28% more healing output.  9% free movement will help protect against impairments, one of the primary sources of frustration for a daja in pk.  When combined with 11% lateral deterrence (the only race recommended that has lateral deterrence), and high quickness/agility, and decently powerful racial attacks, silver elf is a decent choice for dajas.  It's not particularly flashy, but it gets the job done.  The only caveat is that the augmenting healing provided by the race does not overlap with the augmented healing available to the Dajain Healer subclass, which is disappointing to say the least.

Storm Wielder:
This race offers decent wisdom, some willpower, high NR and damage and even a little bit of massive size, although massive size is less valuable to a daja or fallad than another class, since blessing of the meek's ability is flatly superior to massive size.  The main draw of this race is the 50% lightning dominance, which translates into +50% lightning output.  Combined with the damage (and extra damage from str), this is not a bad running race for a daja.  The added 66% !dodge can be a nice advantage as well, although the defenses of this race are not strong.

Svirfneblin:
This race, along with frost dragon, is an obvious choice for newer dajas.  High int/wis (along with good willpower, solid racials and some quickness), and "doesn't run out of mana" are very strong reasons to choose this race.  The counterattack racial is also a welcome addition to the strategy of "let them beat themselves to death on my face".

Medic!

Let's take a look at the Healer class.  We'll call this class Daja, since there are multiple classes with healing capabilities, and "healer" is so generic of a term as to invite confusion.  Dajas are the class with the highest healing output potential, both in terms of burst and long-term healing, although certain Fallad subclass preventions can rival Dajas abilities in raw healing.  (Fallads will be our next class.)  Over the long term, and certainly without the use of very long preventions, dajas have the greatest amount of raw healing.

In addition to their healing, dajas have several key defensive and utility-style abilities/buffs, and are a pet class, with one powerful same-stat pet (angel) and one very special pet, the gesko (willed protector before major remort).  They rely heavily on their pets for offense, with their only offensive spells being lightning and mini-lightning (static charge).  Let's take a look at the attributes:

Strength: 0 (ostensibly a part of lightning damage, but largely considered irrelevant)
Dexterity: 0
Agility: 0
Speed: 0
Intellect: psychic shock, white flames damage, casting damage, regale, sixth, buffs if cast, pet if cast, certain prevents
Wisdom: same as intellect plus all heals, ascension, meek, the shielding prayer, light shield
Constitution: moderate degree of reliance on preventions
Willpower: evasion, bestow vision, some spells in conjunction with int/wis

Primary Attribute: Wisdom
Secondary Attributes: Willpower, Constitution, Intellect
Trash Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Speed


Of special note is that the angel (a daja's best pet for running purposes) uses the character's best stats.  Therefore, while it is never advisable to wear physical attributes, if you have the sun stones to spare, putting them into willpower followed by the physical attributes will boost your angel.  One might be tempted to suggest that int/wis/wil gear is the de facto best gear for dajas based on this list; however, that misses two characteristics of crafted gear that I will introduce here:

(1) All item bonuses have a set value, and the difference lies in cost.  Therefore, an int/wis/wil piece will necessarily have less int and wis than an int/wis piece.  And given the supreme importance of wisdom, it may be advisable to force wisdom higher.
(2) Crafted gear has many bonuses available, including hit, dam, nr, quick, and significant pools.  Because heal power is based on the size of the total health pool, wearing hp/wil gear can yield significant defensive bonuses to the daja.

A bit of hit and damage are helpful for a daja to wear, in addition to quick/nr.  A dajas has very little class-based damage, and time spent healing is time not spent spamming lightning.  While lightning has a limited influence on the daja's overall run speed, time spent outside of combat spamming heals earns close to 0 plat.  However, it is vital that the daja have an excellent amount of wisdom in order to fuel all her preventions and special attacks and to the power of her gesko (assuming she has enough int/wis to cast her gesko).

When we consider races, we give special consideration to races with special abilities.  Time-walk/bend has an exceptionally important influence on dajas, since all of their non-pet power lies in lag and prevention-based abilities.  A good amount of wisdom is considered vital when selecting a race, but special abilities such as sights, flight, physical resistance, and even massive size are not because dajas have those areas covered.

My top choices and explanations in the next post!

Who's There?

The skill "hunt" and its progeny recently gained a great deal of accuracy by allowing a second keyword.  This change brought much needed accuracy to single-target searching, and it's really a fantastic upgrade.

I think it's time for many of the area-wide scouting abilities to also include one or two keywords.  Currently, the majority of area-wide scouting abilities are subclass abilities, subclasses which are never chosen for a main character, because of their highly situational utility.  The problem is that these scouting abilities are limited to player characters.

Why would a warlock give up the strong defense of battle learning or the all-around utility and power of reduced lag/prevention times for only the ability to sense the players in an area?  Especially given that warlocks already have a silent, instant spy and sixth sense, there's a very narrow margin of usefulness for a scouting subclass spell, especially one with a significant prevention time.

What if NPC's were searchable with scouting abilities?  The use of a scouting ability with no modifier would return players as it does now, but adding a modifier should return any NPC matches with a short description of the rooms:

a tangle tree -- In the Mudhole
a tangle tree -- In the Mudhole
a tangle tree -- The Wetlands

This additional functionality would greatly increase the utility of scouting abilities.  For example, a hunter of the right subclass could much more easily find a lost pet or a single NPC within an area.  She could enter an area, scout for its room name, and turn on hunt when she arrived in the general location.

My understanding is that the following classes have scouting abilities in one or more subclasses:  hunter, warlock, druid.  Obviously, the strength of each ability could be adjusted according to the class.  The casters might have room exits returned next to the room titles because they are actually "seeing" their targets, whereas a hunter's ability might only return the room titles.  Perhaps druids would only have the strength to scout for NPC's from their havens, with remote owls retaining the current limitation.

If an NPC ability would be too cumbersome from a design perspective to tack onto the current abilities, perhaps these could be new skills; they could be used for expansion upon current classes/subclasses.

Oh Master, My Master

The majority of master class mobs should not be master class.

There are many master class mobs throughout Nodeka which serve as traps for the unwary newbie. Merchants in Lycaeum, the questgivers in newbie zones such as Kobolds, Orc Town, G'kir, and the general in Ruushi are all flagged as master class NPC's. My guess is that master class mobs were originally introduced (Raash and various Guildmasters) as a deterrent. At that time, there was no mechanism to prevent NPC's from being attacked, even in safe rooms, and thus it was necessary to prevent key NPCs and trainers from being attacked.

However, Nodeka now has !attack mechanisms available. San'vestra is not attackable, even though she is master class, which means her status as a master is flavor rather than protection. This is how all quest mobs should be. Why is Sajha attackable, but San'vestra not? Why are the quest npcs in kobolds attackable? Various key merchants? If these NPC's aren't meant to be attacked, they should be unattackable, not simply master class. If the game has a more precise tool, why isn't the more precise tool being used?

This is not to suggest that master class should be removed from the game. Kiskr in the citadel and the Tabernacle Curators are examples of NPC's that have good reason to be master class. (I might suggest that the volume of damage is excessive, but that's likely to be a matter of so much contention and debate that it distracts from my main point.) But quest NPC's? In memory of my many rdeaths, please just make them unattackable.

Ninja Races Breakdown

The most popular races are presented here. I'll write-up any race requested in the comments.

Veldruk: Racial !spy is more valuable on a ninja than any other class, because antei of the clouded mind will be a total mindfuck to the caster. High agi/dex/nr/quick/hit/dam (counting the str/dex) and very highly powered racials make veldruk a top choice, even without physical resistance. The enhanced physical recuperation is also a strong selling point to all ninjas except the author (rank affect cheez), and the highest racial lateral deterrence are just bonuses.

Daimonikos: 57% physical resistance and flight are great starting points for a race with high speed, dam/hit, all around attributes, and small bonuses to NR/quick (on top of that provided by wil/agi). Blackened strengthens the stealthiness of ninjas. Throw in sustain and !spy, and the only weakness to this race is the holy/spirit vulnerability.

Weretiger Khan: Again, high hit/dam/nr/quick make weretiger an immediate top choice. Unlike veldruk, weretiger khan has speed in addition to its racial attacks for a strong boost to "white damage". Difficult to hit is great on any class with high quickness, and since ninjas are especially vulnerable to impairment, the 10% impairment invulnerability is helpful. Even the improved hunting speed (which works with shi-ku) and see undetectable movement (better on a sneaky class than on non-sneaky classes) are useful for ninjas. Another top choice, comparable to veldruk, although with mental vulnerability instead of mental resistance.

Sprite: Improved dodge and high agility/quick lean towards a ninja's avoidance strengths, but a complete lack of auxiliary defenses makes sprite one of the easiest to kill ninja races. Invisibility is a fun addition, as is having flight, but the lack of +damage and the weakness of hasted assaults causes the relatively low amount of combined dex/speed/willpower to be fatal to this race as a selection.

But Where's the Stabbing?

We start our analysis of ninja race selection by looking at overall characteristics. They have unseen motion, blended, and a short-term cloak, but no trackless movement. Ninjas have !spy at 100% which overlaps with antei of formation. They have stun, a basic step impairment, and dodge. They get 2 bonus attacks (after training), and lastly, ninjas do not fly.

Looking at attributes:
A 0 signifies that a particular attribute has no implications for this class, and as mentioned previously, no mention will be made of universal benefits of an attribute.
Strength: 0
Dexterity: hurricane kick, au-sem-mao, quickblade, stun.
Agility: dodge, vanish, strike from the shadows (on ambush).
Speed: 0 (limited quickblade).
Intellect: 0 (no, joufu's arc doesn't count)
Wisdom: antei of formation, whispering wind antei
Constitution: 0 (limited antei of formation, quickblade)
Willpower: convergence of balance, shadow cast

Primary Attributes: Willpower, Speed, Dexterity
Secondary Attributes: Wisdom, Agility
Trash Attributes: Constitution, Intellect, Strength

One of the key characteristics of the ninja class is the lack of attribute influence. Ninjas have only two spellups that can be reasonably influenced by an attribute, namely convergence and shadow cast. Neither of these spellups scale in a sharp enough manner to justify stacking willpower, although shadow cast is the closest thing that a ninja can call a "strong" buff. But without the additional defensive option of evasion, willpower remains inferior to straight NR/quickness when selecting defensive gear for a ninja. Hurricane kick damage does, in fact, scale with dexterity. However, it also scales with +dam to such a degree that strength -- an absolute 0 influence attribute -- will improve hurricane damage about as much. The influence of intellect on joufu's arc is capped below 200 intellect.

Due to this low attribute influence, ninjas are freer to pursue direct character boosts, which include resists/NR/quick defensively and hit/dam/dex/speed offensively. And it's a good thing, too, since the class itself has extremely limited incoming damage control. Quickness and dodge is where a ninja's defensive abilities begin and end. In a bash/trip/multiple attacker environment, this creates weak damage avoidance with no damage mitigation. Therefore, there is a strong pressure for a ninja to select damage mitigation in a race.

With the sole exception of footpad (and footpads are always an exception for reasons which should be saved for future discussion), ninjas are the fighter class with the least combined hit/dam/attacks from class. That is the reason that speed is considered a major attribute for ninjas, despite having almost no influence on class mechanics. Dexterity is then tacked onto speed to prevent degradation. Normally, the author considers attack degradation to be an insufficient reason to wear dexterity in most circumstances. Only a very large difference (e.g. 150 or more) and exceptional circumstances (e.g. pk) warrant worrying about dexterity. However, the boost to hurricane kick and au-sem-mao help lift dexterity to importance for ninjas, although not to the point of making dexterity a necessary attribute.

Given low attribute influence, the presence or absence of a particular attribute is not key to selecting a race. Rather, the direct benefits of flight, resistance (of which physical is of course the most important), hit, dam, NR, quick, and racial attacks will have relatively greater importance. With these points in mind, several races have been selected as notable and will be presented with brief explanation in a follow-up post. At this point, the reader should be equipped to make guesses as to particularly good or particularly inappropriate races for the ninja class.

Imagine This

Imagine you're the clan leader of a clan which shall remain totally anonymous, and you've been dragging an associate through another ogre invasion. You've run out of pellets and go off to buy new pellets when your associate notices you standing in the next room, and this is what you hear in rapid succession:

[ Group: Syveril ]: 'are you iding your pellets for unique?'
[ Group: Syveril ]: 'you are, aren't you!!!'
[ Group: Syveril ]: 'you're su'ing your pellets!'
( beat )
[ Group: Syveril ]: 'want to do my darts next?'

(apologies for the delay in my series; real life interferes with my capacity to form cohesive analyses)

Selecting Races: Begin With Class

First in a series of posts discussing the selection of a race.

When evaluating the race choices, the obvious choice is to evaluate the player's concerns vis-à-vis his or her class characteristics. The class itself must first have its mechanics evaluated, and only after a person's framework of class abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, can a thoughtful choice of race be made.

After all, a race is a selection of attributes, attacks, and special bonuses that for the most part affects not the overall abilities of a character, but rather the effectiveness of those abilities. Race is the clothes with which we choose to dress our characters up in; and therefore we look to the body of the class before we choose our clothes.

The first step we make in this direction is to establish how a class is evaluated. Keeping in mind that our primary goal is the selection of race, we are not concerned with how a class compares to another class, but only with how it functions with respect to the bonuses that a race provides: attributes, attacks, special bonuses. Furthermore, in evaluating the desirability of a particular attribute, we must focus on the bonuses that stat provides to each class. For example, agility provides quickness to all classes, and therefore, agility is not considered unless it provides some bonus particular to that class, because it has, for example, dodge.

While it is true that quickness has varying benefits for each class depending on the presence or absence of other forms of defense, such evaluation is perhaps too advanced for a series of blog posts and often too small/remote of a consideration to warrant specific mention. Mention will be made of notable exceptions, but on the whole, the reader that objects is perfectly capable of conducting his or her analysis without a detailed breakdown from me.

It is with these basic principles in mind that we will begin our discussion. I cannot guarantee the usefulness of my posts, but I can promise that the rest of this series will be less dry.

Chewing Loudly

I've been toying with the idea of doing a generalized review of races, and taking each one and evaluating its merits. However, this game is a class-based game, where a race is merely the uniform in which you perform your duties as a stealthy deliverer of stabby goodness.

At the risk of excessive navel-gazing, it's possible for me to begin by evaluating the ninja class's overall strengths and weaknesses, with an eye towards race selection. This method would allow me to cycle through the various classes and suggest races for each. If either of you (my faithful readers) has any input, I will consider your suggestions carefully.

Class Abilities

Playing a ninja means that watching ninjas in movies can be difficult. Recently, I watched the Japanese film "Goemon" while on an airplane. Movie ninjas have parry! Where's my parry, dammit. Although if I'm honest, it's rare that movie ninjas have the ability to draw on the power of their spirit to cloak themselves from sight.

Tabernacle Etiquette

It seems that Tabernacle is getting more and more popular these days, and since only one person at a time can run it, there seems to be some contention over who has the "right" to activate curate Sajha.

My understanding is that anyone who wishes to run Tabernacle stands at Sajha and toggles visible so that folks who use triggers to follow Sajha can have those triggers disabled upon seeing someone standing there, much in the way room skippers work. If someone is standing at Sajha, then they are "in line".

A lot of times Darth will complain about not getting into Tabernacle for 2 hours, which of course, is a little bit crazy to me, considering I've had curate Sajha affects wind down to the last day, and Rar's used his in the last hour. But if you want to run Tabernacle so badly, it seems you can do so by simply standing in line. Whomever is desperate enough to stand in line longer has the privilege of going next.

That's my current understanding of etiquette regarding Tabernacle. I wonder if the rest of my fellow "Tabernaclers" share this view.

On Choices

Augmented a few days ago, and didn't have enough plats to buy the practices necessary to cap out my practices after augmenting my intellect back to 270. That was slightly unpleasant; I've only managed to get stun to 280% today.

Folks will chain augment a character, but I never do. Before I hit 250% in all my essential skills, I had to agonize constantly over what to train next. How much benefit am I actually getting out of hurricane kick training? Would it be more efficient to train endurance? By raising my limits ever so slightly, I'm (usually) able to hit my practice and health cap in short order, which eliminates the choices, and therefore eliminates the agonizing over what to train next.

I wonder if anyone else uses this type of illusion to reduce the stress of decision-making.