Skirmisher; How I Learned to Stop Living and Love the Void

[StarKeep]

Skirmisher npcs hit like trucks, capable of killing players in a single turn with no chance for response in some cases.
Skirmisher is not fun to play. (imo)

This is a scary combination for a class, meaning it has almost no place in the game.

While fun is objective, their power level is not, so heres some random kinks people were talking about in chat.

Toss any opinions or ideas below.


Everything in Called Shots is silly.

They all bypass meatshields, and are generally overstuffed in value.

The 1st one pins and slows movement.
The 3rd one is a (potentially) massively long stun. That increases the duration of already active stuns as well.


Bombardment is a scaling nightmare. Its horrible unless its great. And npcs scale better than players.


The entirety of Tireless Combatant is booooooooooooooring, and uses a stat that no player would ever put a point into, so this is just a free npc healing category.

Bash and Smash is a 300% weapon modifier + knockback. So even if you reach them, they can knock you back, and still crush your skull.

[dadito]

Suck Fkirmishers honestly

[rift42]

I think you mean that fun is subjective, not objective.

Looking at the vault, skirmishers arn't the most played, but also are far from the least played, so I'm skeptical that people think it is terribly boring. I got my only (so far) nightmare win on a skirmisher and I don't think it was a boring run.

I suspect where I'd agree with you is that they mop the floor with melee only characters. I generally don't play melee, but when I came across any melee only NPCs, they presented basically no challenge at all and I'd just ignore them until they were near by, and then subsequently dead.

Corruptors, though. Now there is a class that I hate to see and hate to play .

[HousePet]

There appears to be a bug somewhere in Called Shots that paralyses the player when attacked by a Skirmisher rare.
Its either Kneecapper or Noggin Knocker or both, I haven't worked out what is going wrong.

[ratbuddy]

In the meantime, maybe removing skirmisher rares would be best.. Just until the bug is found/fixed?

[HousePet]

Already done.

[jenx]

There appears to be a bug somewhere in Called Shots that paralyses the player when attacked by a Skirmisher rare.
Its either Kneecapper or Noggin Knocker or both, I haven't worked out what is going wrong.

+11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

I HATE skirmishers with a passion, and most of my insane roguelike characters die to this class, which has consistently have buggy code.

[Doctornull]

In the meantime, maybe removing skirmisher rares would be best.. Just until the bug is found/fixed?

Or they could just be removed forever.

There are probably ways that a Shield + Sling class could be done right, but this isn't it.

[Razakai]

In the meantime, maybe removing skirmisher rares would be best.. Just until the bug is found/fixed?

Or they could just be removed forever.

There are probably ways that a Shield + Sling class could be done right, but this isn't it.

Have we ever outright removed a class before? While I'm not utterly opposed to the idea, I don't think there's much precedent. Maybe a serious rework is in order, if anyone could come up with a good enough idea.

[dadito]

Well, looks like our wishes got granted

[HousePet]

DarkGod appears to be against removal of a class. (He'll say this isn't DCSS...)

I think we should examine the themes of the class. Is sling and board the only theme it has? Is that sufficient for a whole class?

[Micbran]

Sling + offhand weapon, perhaps? So, maybe make them fit their name better as a hyper-mobile hit-and-run melee ranged hybrid like TW?

[Atarlost]

That would be more interesting. Getting full dagger damage as if it were a mainhand weapon when wielding a sling would be a good core mechanic for a class.

The skirmisher as it now exists is stealing stuff that should be the archer's.

[Razakai]

Yeah, that's kind of an issue. If you look at their unique trees, we have a Combat Veteran replacement, a shield tree and 2 sling techniques trees. It probably wouldn't be that hard to merge half of the better active sling attacks into the existing Archer sling tree/general archery tree, and then make a locked skirmisher tree focusing on the shield/other active sling stuff. Finish it up with giving them Acrobatics and you'd have Archer being in a far stronger place while also preserving the playstyle of Skirmisher albeit as a sub-build of a class.

No idea what you'd do with existing Skirmisher though, although sling/dagger is interesting.

[Doctornull]

For the existing Skirmisher: make it an actual *skirmisher*, which is to say a light infantry with ranged attacks, and thus has talents that work at range and in melee.

That means: Str + Dex, with Cun as a secondary stat.

Drop the idea of using shields without the requisite Str. Instead, give them some Sling talents which key off Physical Power, so they're rewarded for building Str. (Building Cun is already kinda rewarded for melee, but throwing in some Cun scaling on some melee talents would be nice.)

Let it be a Sling + Shield <-> Dagger + Shield class, which might trade for a one-handed weapon.

- - -

IMHO the Dagger + Sling should be an option for the current Rogue.