Revamped Skirmisher

[HousePet]

Could be the Crit Mulitplier reducing with range?

[scul]

Could be the Crit Mulitplier reducing with range?

I thought about that. But it should still say I crit in the log though, right? I am going over the log and just not seeing the crits where I expect them, but now I am examining each enemy before I attack and seeing if they are targeting me in any way and then seeing if I crit with the normal shoot while close. I will have some results soon.

[scul]

Also....

Code: Select all

error = "Lua Error: /data-skirm_revamp/talents/techniques/skirm.lua:327: attempt to call global 'skirmPreUse' (a nil value)\
  At [C]:-1 skirmPreUse\
  At /data-skirm_revamp/talents/techniques/skirm.lua:327 on_pre_use\
  At /mod/class/Actor.lua:5044 preUseTalent\
  At /engine/HotkeysIconsDisplay.lua:194 display\
  At /engine/HotkeysIconsDisplay.lua:285 toScreen\
  At /mod/class/uiset/Minimalist.lua:1765 displayHotkeys\
  At /mod/class/uiset/Minimalist.lua:2006 display\
  At /mod/class/Game.lua:1856 "
seen = true
reported = false

This only happens if I try to add points to bombardment. Same hard crash, screen flashing, task manager quit, no error in game, only in error reports.

[nsrr]

Blarg... more vestigial code. I should have just gone back to the previous version and updated with just the Breathing Room change, I just didn't want to forget about it and loose that code in case I came back to it or it came in handy another way. I thought I had it all scrubbed (twice), but clearly I missed something (twice)

It's an easy fix, unfortunately I'm on my way to work and won't be able to get to it until this evening.

I'll look into the crit thing, not sure what that might be. I haven't touched Stealth, Vital Shot or Shoot, so I'm guessing it's a base game thing, but if I can figure it out and correct it, I will.

[scul]

No worries, I assumed it was something you just needed to comment out. Unlike the other I can just avoid it until later. Even then just from a purely skill perspective it costs a bit too much stamina. In my opinion skirmisher needs something that hits more than one target. Ie there is only one skill that is pretty limited until end game and even then. I realize the class is run and gun(sling) but think some kind of similarly high cost skill like trick shot in steam guns or something like that that lets you do some crowd control. Oh, I guess there are traps but I have never liked them for some reason. Probably just a play style thing. But I think bombardment is somewhat uninteresting, unless it stacks with hurricane shot and called shots, even then I think it is somewhat questionable.

[Doctornull]

Here's a thought: how about getting Stamina and/or healing when you Block?

That's in the spirit of "breathing room" giving you regen for both when you have a moment to catch your breath, it incentivizes using a shield in combat, and it uses Block value for something decent when otherwise a Skirmisher would tend to neglect that value.

[scul]

Here's a thought: how about getting Stamina and/or healing when you Block?

That's in the spirit of "breathing room" giving you regen for both when you have a moment to catch your breath, it incentivizes using a shield in combat, and it uses Block value for something decent when otherwise a Skirmisher would tend to neglect that value.

Yea, that is not a bad idea. Only issue I can see is that skirmisher does not really want to be in the middle of a fight taking big hits. And we only have the one block. I think original skirmisher had only the one as well. But stamina regen is really an issue. I know you are a rogue so it is burst and then rest, but some active regen would definitely fit the theme as nsrr has already done. So perhaps more block skills, or perhaps tweaking the deflect melee attacks and deflect projectiles to give some stamina, ie you deflect an attack and it gives you a second to take a breath while your enemy recovers to attack again. Or perhaps more themed it increases regen significantly, so you still cannot sit and take hits like a warrior, but you can jump away and come from another direction and be right back in the fight (health/stamina wise)

Also I had an idea for giving more aoe. Perhaps bombardment should give you a chance for your normal shoot to hit your original target and then another shot for x number of other targets within y distance from main target. And if you have recently blocked a projectile that chance is 100%. (blocking a projectile gives you a timed buff).

Just throwing ideas out there!

[nsrr]

I'm still considering Bombardment changes, but for now I've reduced the cost again, down to 8 per shot. I think it had some potential and in combination with poison and scoundrel it might be worth a slot in your rotation with the reduced cost.
Also, I adjusted the damage scaling (a long with a lot of others), so that it starts at about 50% of max value. So you get more for your investment at lower levels, but it still maxes out the same. This was part of a scaling pass where I went over damage and stamina costs to bring things more in line with other weapon damage, stamina using talents. Most costs have been reduced at least a little, some quite a bit. Over all I may end up needing to tweak them up a bit, or nerf breathing room / dauntless challenger, but I need more play testing in that regard first.

V1.1.0
----
[Buckler Expertise ]
Now grants armor and hardiness in light armor. Values taken from 1.6 alpha.

[Swift Shot]
Adjusted minimum damage scaling value, reduced cost.
Fixed a bug in the vanilla code which allowed you to trigger the CD reduction infinitely, for free, by bumping a wall.

[Hurricane Shot]
Adjusted minimum damage scaling value. Reduced cost.

[Bombardment]
Adjusted minimum damage scaling value. Reduced cost.

[Kneecapper]
Reduced cost.
Improved pin and slow duration scaling.

[Kill Shot]
Reduced cost.

[Noggin Knocker]
Reduced cost.
Added scaling to stun/increase duration. Reaches 2 at ~tl 5 (tl 4 w/ 1.3 mastery).

---

Note:
The armor value from buckler training is handled with a callback, and those are register when you first learn a talent, so you won't see an effect on a current run. The handling for the hardiness is actually hard coded into vanilla already, it's just passing a value of 0 (don't ask me why). Anyway, that should actually apply just fine to a current run.
Similarly, the callback bug in Swift Shot won't be fixed for a current run (so abuse it while you can, if you are so inclined

I got caught up in this scaling pass and haven't had time yet to look into the stealth crit situation. I started with one talent and then realized there was crazy scaling all over the place. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was focused on the breakpoints initially and didn't look closely at the scaling formulas.

[scul]

Well, I will be giving it some play testing in mere moments. All the changes sound like good ones.

[nsrr]

Ok, so I went over some logs to try to see what was happening with Stealth crits. As best as I can tell, what's happening is that Stealth breaks as soon as you shoot and, because it takes at least a fraction of a turn for your projectile to travel, you no longer count as Stealthed by the time the projectile hits and projects damage, so you don't get the crit.

As things stand right now, we have eliminated this problem for Called Shots and Hurricane Shot because we made them travel instantly and the projectile lands before Stealth breaks (and you get the crit). As I've already said, I'm reluctant to make all projectiles travel instantly, but this does highlight another situation where projectile weapons are gimped compared to regular weapons due to projectile speed mechanics (nevermind the fact that Shadow Strike goes out of the way to gimp them already). I'm not sure if there would be another way around this or not, but I feel like the the problem is mostly negated already because it's quite likely that your first attack from Stealth is going to be a Called Shot. Kind of sucks for Vital Shot, though. I might go ahead and make that travel instantly, as well. It is a prodigy, after all; it's supposed to be good.

In other news, I've been working on a new version of Bombardment that I think will be a little more appealing while still maintaining the theme of a high-cost ability that lets you land some free shots. The implementation I've been working on has a 50 stamina sustain cost, increases your fatigue by 50%, and causes Shoot to cost 2 stamina. While active, any time you hit with an archery attack you instantly fire a shot dealing [30-60%] of the damage of the triggering shot. This can trigger up to twice per target per turn. The sustain cost in combination with the increased fatigue makes this very hard to maintain at lower levels, but should not be too restrictive at higher levels. My concerns right now are that it may be a little too restrictive at first, and that this may reward taking I Can Carry the World too highly. I'm going to experiment with it a little more before implementation, but I'd be interested to know what anyone thinks of the idea in the meantime.

Also, it's now a known bug that Dash and Crash and be used while pinned. I have it fixed locally, but I'm going to wait on updating.

[Arcvasti]

I'm not sure that having the bombardment thing be a percent of the triggering shot is a good idea. It should probably just deal 30-60% weapon damage straight-up. It'll still be pretty good.

And there's no way this makes ICCTW competitive on skirmisher. Their weapons don't scale with strength and they have really high stamina regen anyways. Even a 100% fatigue penalty probably wouldn't make it competitive. I said this regarding high guard and I'll say it again: You seriously overestimate how important fatigue is.

The "twice per target per turn thing" sounds like it'll make you run out of ammo with exactly one hurricane shot.

EDIT:

I should probably mention that I like this idea in general.

I'd probably increase the cost it gives to shoot to 5 and decrease the stamina sustain cost. The former to make spamming shoot + bombardment less efficient and the latter to make it usable earlier.

[Cathbald]

Obviously bring back old pace yourself so people can try and mitigate the 50% fatigue

[nsrr]

I actually started at 100% fatigue. It was basically impossible to use more than one talent in an engagement early on. But, that was probably due more to the sustain cost than the fatigue, on further consideration. I'll play around with higher fatigue and a lower sustain cost and see how that feels. Of course, the other option is to revert back to a per-shot fixed cost rather than using fatigue to increase the cost of everything. And, on typing that, I just remember that Mobility has some weird hidden interactions with fatigue. Like, if your fatigue is over 25% or so then your disengage 'jump back' range gets reduced to 1 or less and the talent will essentially abort after you choose the target to disengage from. Trained Reactions might take it into account in its damage reduction calculations, too. Hm.

Using a fixed weapon damage shot is probably best, for consistency, if nothing else. Getting a high power Bombardment from a high power attack feels good, but, on the flipside, those weak Bombardments from Swift Shot and Hurricane Shot are kind of lame.

Hurricane Shot does have the potential to empty your pouch, if you're attacking 4-5 mobs at once that can survive that many hits, which is probably a bad idea in the first place. I set it to a twice per turn per mob limit mostly because of increased attack speed. Missing a proc because your attack was on your 'bonus turn' or after a Swift Shot felt a little awkward. We'll see how it goes, but that particular interaction is already something I'm keeping an eye on.

I started with a cost of 5 on Shoot and went down becuase... I really can't remember why now. It was getting late into the evening at that point, which is why I stopped fiddling with it and decided to see if I could get some feedback on the idea in general. Which I have, now, and I greatly appreciate it! Thanks

[Doctornull]

One solution for fixing ugly drain costs is to make things into timed effects.

I think that might be viable for Bombardment, and you can set it up to impose a specific ratio of maximal uptime vs. cooldown (which might be fixed_cooldown if you care about not catching the eye of any tigers).

Also having more OP timed effects makes Shalore happy.

This message was not paid for by Shalore Citizens United.

[nsrr]

v1.1.1
---
[General]
Tweaked stamina costs back up a bit. Improved some talent descriptions.

[Swift Shot]
Increased cooldown to 6 from 5. Using Swift Shot now completely resets the cooldown of Hurricane Shot.

[Hurricane Shot]
Reduced cooldown to 6 from 7. Now only hits once. Damage scaling doubled.

[Bombardment]
Totally reworked. Costs 20 stamina to sustain, causes Shoot to cost 5 stamina and increases fatigue by 65%. While active, all sling attacks (from any talent) that hit will instantly trigger a shot for [20-40]% weapon damage against the same target. This can affect multiple targets, but each individual target can be struck at most twice per turn.