acid runes: disarming is too common and too hard to resist

[grobblewobble]

In the latest versions acid runes have a disarm effect, with the goal to make them more attractive.

Unfortunately, this made all classes relying on weapons very annoying to play. Acid runes are very common on monsters.

For classes like berserker or archer, being disarmed will completely lock you down. Just like confusion, stun, freeze and blindness do (but arguably a little worse than these, even).

With confusion, stun, freeze and blindness, there exist many skills and items that make you immune to it. That balances things out. In the past, disarming was a rare effect. That made it fine, too. But now it is a very common effect and there is no way to prevent it. This is very bad. The way things are, I can't stand playing any melee classes except brawler any more.

And worst of all, in my opinion acid runes are still not even worth using, because the most dangerous monsters (casters, breathers) are not affected. In other words, the change did a lot of harm and no good.

So please, either:

a) give acid runes some different effect, something that actually makes it worth to use and is less disruptive for melee classes, or
b) introduce new items and skills that make you immune to disarming

[Radon26]

problem with disarm?
use wild infusion that deals with physical, or heat beam rune who is always physical.

then there is ghoul retch. even if you are not undead you can find lantern of retching.
preservance from the light tree can remove one phisicall effect.
Vile transplant will let you send it to the enemy.
and i believe there are a few other things that you could use.

so the fault is really yours for being unprepared.

also, its rogue like.

if you happen to be acid waved every turn for 10 turns cause literally everyone have it... well HAPPENS i guess.

[grobblewobble]

It isn't that simple.

I never play without at least 1 physical wild infusion, or heat beam if undead.

The thing is, you can only use these so many times. Disarm falls in the category that you absolutely must remove immediately. In big fights I often get stunned / blinded, remove it with wild, then get disarmed, remove it with the special "super-wild" from lady Aeryn, and THEN get disarmed again.

I hope you see the point? If disarming happens really really often, it gets annoying. Should I run around with 5 wild infusions?

[edge2054]

I put some disarm immunity on a few glove egos.

Aside from that physical save should help. On the high end they hit about 80 apply power on normal difficulty and that's assuming the monster has 100 stat and gets the right ego. Generally 50 physical save should really cut down on how often it gets applied.

[Atarlost]

The real problem is probably that disarm disproportionately harms some players. Lots of NPCs are animals or monsters or mages or brawlers that just don't care about it. Something like that is a really poor choice for trying to make a rune attractive to the player.

On the other hand for NPCs it's either a wasted inscription slot if the player is a brawler or mage type (though it'll slightly impair oozemancers) or horribly overpowered if the player is reliant on weapons.

Yes, highly discriminatory effects like disarm and silenced shouldn't exist at all, but in the short term the fix for this specific problem isn't to make disarm immunity more common, it's to put something that doesn't discriminate against certain classes on the acid wave rune. Or get rid of it as a bad job.

[Davion Fuxa]

I see no reason for why the Acid Wave rune should get removed just because a few classes aren't as hurt by it as others, or due to it not being as useful to the player.

Acid Wave Runes are very similar to Sun Infusions. They are both slightly more useful for the enemy to use against the player. In the case of Sun Infusions, they are at their most beneficial against characters that lack ranged, aura, or AoE properties. Against characters that do have mechanisms like that available, they are less effective. Acid Wave Runes in comparison are useful against characters that make use of weaponry to fight. Again, against characters that don't use weaponry they are less effective.

However, Acid Wave Runes aren't just a disable enemy button - personally I've found that unlike Heat Beam or Biting Gale, Acid Wave Runes are useful for the most lacklustre property of Offensive Inscriptions - Offensive Damage. Acid Wave Runes fire the ever so powerful Acid Property, which many enemies don't have resistance too. I've made good use of Acid Wave Runes just to eradicate enemies outright.

As for the problem with Disable and there being a lack of resisting it, that's really more of a problem with character design. Redesigning some classes to have more Disable Resistance is likely a better way of going about fixing that problem and one I would encourage.

[ghostbuster]

I agree that disarmed is one of the worst effect for some classes.
Why not give a chance to recover from disarmed whith unflinching resolve? Most warrior classes, that are the most penalized by disrming, have access to conditioning and it would more useful than recovering from bleeding for instance.

[grobblewobble]

Generally 50 physical save should really cut down on how often it gets applied.

I play on normal difficulty and tend to reach this value in the East. I still get disarmed tediously often. What is worse, some weapon classes do not like to build str/con (skirmisher, for example).

Yes, highly discriminatory effects like disarm and silenced shouldn't exist at all

I'm fine with them as long as they aren't too common. Silence as it is now is okay in my books, since it happens rarely. If silence was a rune effect like disarm, now that would be bad.

in the short term the fix for this specific problem isn't to make disarm immunity more common, it's to put something that doesn't discriminate against certain classes on the acid wave rune.

Originally, didn't acid runes have some other sort of side effect? In any case, this would also be my preferred option. But if too many people are against it, including an anti-disarm measure in a skill like unflinching resolve would be better than nothing, I guess.

[edge2054]

We evaluated the apply power on inscriptions last night. I've made Sun Infusion and Acid Wave easier to resist as they both were too high. Sun Infusion wasn't getting rescaled at all so it was really really too high

[grobblewobble]

That is cool, thank you.