Magery grants 64 options You can do 2 things with a weapon, attack and special move. But a mage with eval/meditation AND Melee skills: endless variety and options. Balance is found in the duel arena, you can literally chase a mage, preventing fast mana recovery, and they are almost completely defenseless. That can be done with a +10 force non-runic weapon. If you want to play an advantage, yes, use runics. Just like a mage that uses wands vs a mage without, their amount of gold invested into their gear will grant them more options meaning a higher kill potential. If you think that just double clicking a target once and setting/preparing/practicing/tweaking 15 spell hotkeys and knowing how to use them is unbalanced, i'd have to argue. Equally skilled players would seemingly find their consistent winner based on amount of items on their person, answering to multiple weaknesses. When considering ZERO skill, a melee character would win imo against a 7xgm mage. Mage won't know wtf they are casting, who to cast some of them on, what is meditation again? lol But honestly if a dexxer could just WHOOP ASS guaranteed 3hit kill any other build with standard magic weapons, Every mage would be posting their frustrations as well. Melee is literally a double click and then chasing. That is so simple and rudimentary it SHOULD be inefficient to a certain degree. But hey if you want to 3hit wtfpwn people just carry a 800k weapon
from stratics: Combat Ability is equivalent to the Skill corresponding with the weapon wielded in combat, or the wrestling skill for unarmed combat, increased with Skill Modifiers where appropriate. The Hit Chance modifier is further increased by the attacker's Hit Chance Increase item modifier and decreased by the defender's Defense Chance Increase item modifier, both of which are capped at 45%. not sure if that's like Age of Shadows terminologies, so here's some photo references. If i'm holding a fencing weapon, and have 100 fencing, and swing at a mage with 100 wrestling, while unarmed, the chance is 50%. This is why you don't equip runebooks while on pvp toons holding runebooks will consider you a combatant with 0 combat skill! If i'm a fencer and am not holding a weapon, a mage (with gm wrestling) has a WAAAAAY higher chance to stun punch me, because my skill isn't in the chance to hit equation (i don't have my spear equipped in this scenario, meaning their chance to hit goes from like 50% to 90-100%)
Indeed. Old school tank mages used to take wrestling on their build instead of anatomy. Now-a-days Eval and Anatomy grant "defensive wrestle" so when they swing on you while youre holding nothing, they only have a 50% chance to hit. This is a good thing because once weapon specials/stun punch were introduced you didnt have to gimp yourself to play a tank. Id vote more along the lines of Parry + ??? = "Defensive MagicResist," while the shield is equipped.
Melee can be a lot of things. my favorite build on osi was a katana/parry with a boat load of potions. remove shield, use potion re-equip shield. but a 1 handed weapon does so little damage a mage could just sit there and cast heal, slow enough that they never run out of mana. a mage with healing skills could just heal and not even use mana. its like holding your hand on the head of a little boy whos trying to punch you but can't reach. im not saying they have to be "equal" but shouldn't all fighting styles have at least a chance in a fight?
In a perfect world yeah it’d be nice! I got wrecked 2 of 2 fights last night against a poison fencer covered in bone armor. Certain builds just click better than others in certain eras of UO. Some are better counters against certain builds. Melee builds are good duelers, but every build has a build it will rarely defeat and vice versa.
After reading the scenario you depicted, I'm not entirely sure it's the games fault your duel was so endless. Only using a spear against an opponent only using a q-staff and both being GM healing would most likely result in a "boring" stalemate. Even something as simple as precasting poison, re-equiping ur weapon, and using it after 2-3 good strikes connect might have given you two the chance of killing one another.
i fought someone with a verite short spear and my gold i had valorite medium archer he had invulnerability it lasted 25-30 min noone died gave up kaput! Sometimes theres not a winner, im surprised you had armor left if it lasted that long
“Opens sarcophagus, peeks out” It’s been awhile nilmer since I did any UOR pixelated poke-a-dope, especially with anything sharp and pointy but I can still remember the woes of the dexmonkey. The problem with dexxer vs. dexxer (or anything else for that matter) is that you have to overcome healing, either magical, potion or bandages with what could be considered nominal damage output over a less than optimal amount of time. There are a few ways one might compensate for these seemingly random and often times less than favorable circumstances imposed upon the wielders of lunky bumpers, sharpy slicers or pointy stabbers. First is to mix some Eval Int and Magery into your template. This gives you some options, you can do a little pump and dump with buffs and mind blast in the hopes that your opponent has not balanced his stats and he takes enough damage that overwhelms his healing attempts. You can use a short spear in conjunction with this and hope for a stun, then unleash a volley of mind blast or explosion/mindblast, explosion/e-bolts etc….etc…. If magery doesn’t tickle your pickle then lumberjack/swords might be your thang. You want to get the BEST axe you can possibly find/afford, then buff up STR, DEX and swing away, hoping that you get those huge random hits that occur one after another and land just in time to put your nemesis down. This tactic can also be done with a good Warhammer, but it had better be an AWESOME Warhammer or you’ll just be wasting your time running in circles playing whack-a-mole. With the above being said, the other mandatory piece of kit you’ll need to bring to a mono on mono is EXPLOSION POTIONS, the high end type, toss these suckers every opportunity you get when your target tries to get distance to heal, it’s a great way to knock off HP’s, then run in with a big melee hit. Finally, there’s poison, put a little green stuff on your blade, swing away and hopefully any healing attempts by your enemy will be interrupted. With enough interruptions, your opponent will eventually keep losing HP’s faster than he can get any back and take that final dirt nap. Basic stuff, I’m sure there are numerous other tactics and combinations that I didn’t cover, but basically it all comes down to preventing your opponent from successfully healing themselves. Oh and one other thing that applies to dexmonkies, you need to field the UBERGEAR if you are to have any chance at surviving out there. Good luck. “Lays back down, closes stone lid”.
