The Current State of PVM and Why It Needs Review

There is an unbelievable imbalance in PVM potential. I don't think that a perfect balance between all templates must, or should, exist; however, it should also not be the case that the only viable PVM templates involve taming and barding skills. Gideon hit the nail on the head regarding melee PVM saying that survivability is the real issue. With the appropriate slayer my LJ can dish out the same, if not more, damage than a single dragon.

The problem is that I'm usually dead or running for my life against anything more substantial than a lich after two swings. That may be a slight exaggeration but it's not far from reality and anyone who has played a melee in PVM a fair amount knows that this is pretty accurate. Pure melee mobs, no matter how tough they are, aren't really a challenge rather they require a bit of patience. The real worry for us melee (non-barding melee) are spell casters and breath weapon mobs. Even with GM resist and magic reflect up, the spell casting mobs are so aggressive and quick with the chain nukes (and have an endless supply of mana) that even at full health we already have one foot in the grave.

It's ridiculous how useless melee PVMers are with "end-game" content. Melee may be fairly easy and quick to build (aside from Resist) but any benefit from a short and cheap build time is quickly offset by their anemic performance for most content.

I believe there are probably dozens of ways that we can resolve this imbalance in PVM without affecting PVP, but here are a few of my ideas:

• Provide a type of armor or item that helps to mitigate some of the arcane onslaught that we have to try to survive.
  This could be something like magic reflect items that only work when a player is targeted by an NPC spell, or it could be armor bonuses that boost resistances in PVM.
  
  
• Adjust how well resist works in PVM, i.e. beef it up.
  
  
• Implement a system whereby the more kills you have against a particular creature type, the more of a defensive bonus you get against that creature type.
  I like this idea the most because it rewards a player for playing and it doesn't make the monster easier right away, you have to earn it. The system could be something like for every 100
  kills against a lich, you get a 1% damage mitigation against that creature up to a maximum of 10%. That's just an example and the number can all be changed to make it not so powerful.

More ideas, comments, or criticism are all welcome. I'd just like this to be something we're talking about rather than how can we make tamers even more powerful and alluring.

I made a suggestion a while back that parrying be buffed to where it could make phys damage from mobs more survivable


http://uorforum.com/threads/suggestion-parrying-buff.3546/



I'm not sure what all the implications would be. But I guess what I had in mind was being able to survive with constant bandages toe to toe against just about anything but possibly having to run because of certain spell combos.

It's era accurate for melee'rs to suck. AoS tackled this in a few ways: Paladins/chivalry and enemy of one(cast enemy of one, next thing you hit you do double damage to by type for 5 minutes.) Item enhancements like +chance to avoid hits on armor. Faster bandages.

I don't think any of those things are really ideal here. And I'm leery of changes that are too unfamiliar to this era, even a big parrying buff would be pretty unfamiliar. But I think it could be a good idea.

I'm also concerned about the implications of any changes. I don't mind having to run from spell casters when they drop a combo but a lot of the top tier mobs seem to never run out of mana.

What would be really nice is for melee to have a chance at actually interrupting NPC spell casters!

.

I want 3 second bandages

I play two peace dexxers and they're alot of fun.

But it's among the cheapest templates you can think of. Costs to train one are a joke if you make your own bandages.
And I can still farm elder gazer perfectly fine. Even single lich lords should be doable with a silver instrument.

But yeah I guess more slayer WEAPONS would greatly buff this template.

You should try out the discordance skill; it is VERY powerful against mobs and it remains in effect so long as you are within LOS. I believe it reduces and skills AND stats by 20%? Which makes a substantial difference. You're looking at taking mobs that cast high end magic to practically disabling their ability to do so, as well as lowering their melee hit % and damage, plus their dex/int/hp takes a nice drop as well. Combine that with a slayer weapon, decent AR, and options and you can farm just about any medium to high end medium level mobs with ease.

Run a template like this:
Weapon skill
Tactics
Anat
Healing
Resist
Music
Discord

While you won't have Margery to heal and what not you won't need it, however you will want to be able to recall in case pks come in. My suggestion would be to drop anat/resist to 80, pick up 40 Margery, and use recall scrolls in your runebook and use a hot key to recall to a safe spot in case of emergency.

Also, because of the skill drop discord creates on mobs your hit chance % will in turn increase due to said mobs melee skill reduction.

I'm not sure this is true here, since a GM warrior vs. a GM monster has a 75% chance to hit, rather than the 50% they would have had back in the day. Not sure how the custom formula here works.

Isn't this the case right now? I suspect you might even be able to add Balrons to the list, with the right setup and the willingness to use potions.

Anyways, hybrid templates are supreme on this shard. So if you're going into things with the mindset that you want to just have a pure warrior template and kill big stuff, you're not going to have a good time. Wodan has mentioned a peace-dexer, a bunch of people have beat the AMIBs in Ironman style with provo-dexers, Mandevu recommends a disco-dexer. You could certainly have an archer/tamer or even melee tamer, and be successful with either.

I don't see this ever being resolved. Even if changes are made to "close the gap", there will still be complaints that tamers and bards are better.

Either way discord makes a massive difference.

Discord > peace all day long.

I don't think that warrior templates are the out balanced personally. Slayer weapons bring them into balance by making their damage so high, but still having limited survivability. I regularly farm blood eles to daemons to ogre lords on a lumberjack dexxer, sometimes it takes some tactics but its deffinately possible.
Also with slayer weps I can out dmg a 2 dragon 1 nightmare attacking tamer on any mob bosses included. They are like a glass cannon in a sense, I do die alot in PvM and some people may hate that way of playing, but i have alot of fun trying harder things in a more uncommon way.
Check out this monster kill log http://www.uorenaissance.com/?page=m_player_mobKills&fn=398239 there is alot of hard stuff in there as a pure dexxer its deffinately possible.

1 Elder Wyrm, ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Please tell me you had help, else I think it's safe to say you won UO.

ya it was tanked by Descartes Dragons and mare i just damaged

Well, my point was that the only successful pvm build include taming or barding. I just don't understand why all top-tier pvm templates must be centered around these skills. I don't think dexxer builds should be better than all else or even on par with them, however, as it stands right now the risk is way out of proportion to bard or tamer templates.

Take my advice and you'll realize how effective it is.

Honestly guys I don't play dexers whatsoever and if the community as a whole (or the forum posters I suppose) are happy with dex based templates compared to the rest then it won't really affect my playstyle or ability to enjoy the game.

If you asked me it's a tamer era, a tamer server, and a tamer's game. Yeah some variation of bard tamer is even more ideal in most situations I suppose, but that's the way I see it. I don't really care if you were able to combine the right slayer weapon and bard skill to kill a high end mob. I'd even give you that because of certain mechanics dexers can out damage tamers and bards with slayer weapons. But in my opinion, they make no practical sense to use compared to the tanking ability of tamers and very low risk since you don't have to tank with your low health(which is why if you ever leave this forum you don't see dexers past level 1 shame except for once in a blue moon. No really, hazy's archer that is probably a bard as well is the only one I've run into in months killing anything that isn't newbie stuff.)

There's a lot of warrior fans in this thread. If you guys are happy with how they work, then it's fine by me.

My personal opinion on PvM is that barding and taming are broken, always have been, and should be nerfed to make farming high end monsters less efficient. You actually have tamers and bards whining because working together to do champ spawns might make them less rich than solo farming. If that doesn't scream broken, I don't know what does.

You guys might also want to consider the fact that every MMO other than this one has no way to solo high end content. This is literally the only game on the planet that lets you take a week old naked character with a musical instrument to the depths of the toughest dungeon, and walk out rich. There's a reason for that.

Of course it's too late for this shard. Coming up with a solution that keeps taming and barding fun without being a monty haul at this point is just the established bards and tamers pulling up the ladder behind them. That being said, we might as well just leave the 2 PvM skills broken, and let the game be about the endless variety and tactics of PvP.

I like the parrying buff idea.

I also wouldn't mind seeing PvM-only spell resistance added to plate armor. That way, there's a trade-off (dex) if you want the extra survivability. It also gives plate armor an actual use, other than making you look like a baller at WBB.

I would agree that magically fighting anything beyond a Lich becomes difficult for the melee warrior without a significant number of potions and bandages. Personally, i've been able to successfully one-v-one as high as an Efreet and have come close with a Titan before giving up due to lack of potions and my weapons in bad condition. Melee wise I've been able to take on Cyclopean Warriors alone.

I would like to see a buff in parry as it seems to make very little difference overall when using a shield or opting to go one-handed for potion use or 2 handed weapons.

I do not like the idea of any item-based incentive. The slayer program for weapons was a nice touch (one that I thought should have the detriment of being physically weaker due to the infuse of magic over a man-made full metal weapon as an offset) and that (just in my opinion) is where it should likely end.

I will say however that I like the recommendation of Mel to include:

• Implement a system whereby the more kills you have against a particular creature type, the more of a defensive bonus you get against that creature type.
  I like this idea the most because it rewards a player for playing and it doesn't make the monster easier right away, you have to earn it. The system could be something like for every 100
  kills against a lich, you get a 1% damage mitigation against that creature up to a maximum of 10%. That's just an example and the number can all be changed to make it not so powerful.

This is actually a pretty cool idea in the sense that you develop tactics against monsters of a specific variety. It's not item based and it's developed through continual slaying of that creature type - you learn as you go and you have to develop the skill to be successful. I am not sure how difficult it would be to code a system like this but think that it should be implemented against AI opponents only leveraging their 'type' and based on the level of that creature.

For example, you could be considered a 'Hunter of the Undead' (similar to the titles granted for the Champion program) wherein your PVM speciality is geared towards undead creatures. To gain this expertise you must have successfully landed 'x' number of health decreasing hits versus creatures of that type, tiered based on that creature types difficulty. So for example, 25,000 successful Skeleton damage would be equivalent to 10000 Lich damage) or something - obviously this would take into consideration the monster's difficulty to strike, HP etc... and would be tiered so that people couldn't cheat by just hitting low level creatures unless they spent a ridiculous amount of time on them versus fighting more difficult enemies of that tier....

Lots of math!

Parry needs an overall buff/fix anyways, to be in line with 2000-2001 standards. I've wrote about this... somewhere around here.

And you were and you are absolutly right. Your suggestions about shield depend parry chances and shield AR absorbtions would fix a lot.
However warriors are still food for fire breathing high rank spell casting monsters.
Peace-Dexxers are fine.
Currently the lower skilling efforts of peace-dexxers against tamers do more as compensate with the very rareness of high end slayer weapons - and the risk to loose them.

I still think that a warrior with the right equip should be able to fight ANY monster (including bosses) in the world - not solo - but at least if he is healed by 2 other warriors in cross-healing.
Just another bad idea from my side:
Give warriors survivability by any special AR which absorbs a lot damage (on special monsters?) BUT on opposite reducing any healing source. This leads effecive in a faked higher life pool. So for example to heal against a boss mob with extreme damage there may be 3-4 healers needed. Bad idea? Maybe Because its another equip idea... but well.... it has its logical: Bandage through a full plate => Not very effective