The Dexxer: Should we make some changes? (Long read inside)

@Chris

Warning now: This will be a long read. I have been asked by a few people to do an exclusive write up on dexxers on this server. I was also asked to make some suggestions and see how the community feels about them, or to help assist me with some sort of compromise.

This is not directed towards the people playing a tamer/stun mage exclusively. If this is you, please bypass this thread. Don't be "that guy" trying to derail the thread because you don't want another template to rival yours. Just skip it. Or, if you have some evidence or suggestions, feel free to put your input. The server want everyone's ideas/opinions.


This thread is for a slightly more balanced class of dexxers, and hopefully more variety in the field with dexxer and/or more hybrid mages.


Being a long time player (1999 start, PvP since 2000), I have seen a lot of changes throughout the history of the game. Whether it was Insta hit, Valorite war hammers 1 shotting people, or the more recent AoS changes... I have seen it all. I played a mage about 80% of the time (mainly bc I was on 28k dial up and was too slow to play a dexxer), but I dabbled in both in PvP and PVM aspects. So, I would like to call myself "qualified" in terms of the history of mechanics.


Before any suggestions, we are all in favor of "history perfected" when adding fun and interesting things such as pet bonding, increased control slot maximums, boss creatures, platinum, and instance events such as aMIBs and Xmas scrolls.... I feel like we should "perfect" the dexxer to a more reasonably level playing field. Who knows, maybe people will play more tank mages and dexxers instead of just stun mages & tamers.


One of my theories is when the code was altered to "Eliminate" Insta hit mechanic, it screwed up the moving hit chance. For more information on the moving hit chance, read the next paragraph. But, as of reading the changes to the server, I see your swing "restarts" based on your dex. Simple testing of mine showed this "speed" to be true. This means, if 2 people put on spears or halberds at the same time, the one with more dex would swing sooner. In the Insta-hit era, you would swing as soon as equipped, and then dex would influence swing from there. Perhaps the hit chance is screwed up there. This would explain the theory of wrestling/stun punches hitting more often because of no "weapon" equips or changes.


Another one....
While I have no physical "truth" behind this, one theory is it seems as though when you stand still, your chance to hit is indeed 50%. Just look at PVM or even attacking tests on Test Center.


Where lies the problem, is in the field when "moving". Dexxers miss a ton. Seemingly between 60-70%. The only further evidence I can provide with this, is the amount a non-moving stun punch seems to hit. You just stand still, allow the foe to charge, and the stun is generally successful (seemingly much higher than 50%).


I have -NO- idea how this could be tested outside of having a macro of a character constantly walking back and forth swinging a weapon at a non moving wrestling target.


Now, another theory is that dexxers on this server share the "archery" bug. Everyone knows archery is trash (from a DPS aspect). I am not here to defend archery, because it needs its own thread and revamp completely separate of dexxers.


Anyways, what I mean is by the "archery bug" is the more you move, the less you hit and the "sweet spot" mechanic. Again, while these are all "theories" and can not be proven, anyone who has played any of the classes can vouch for these things. Especially the lack of hit chance in the field.


If anyone can deny these claims, please tell me on what basis.

How often do you...

Play a dexxer?
Play with a friend who is a dexxer?
Fight against dexxers?
Play a hybrid/tank mage?
Play with a friend hybrid/tank mage?
Fight against a hybrid/tank mage?

Share your experiences.



For those who don't play dexxers, or don't play at all (GMs and Seers), I challenge you to watch some duels, CTFs, or even follow around PvP in the field. Watch how often a dexxer misses. Keep your own tabs. You would see 50% is clearly not "50%".



The Low Down:

So, after complaining about dexxers, what have we noticed? The hit chance is far too low. The streaks of missing are way too long. How can this be fixed?


My suggestion: Add a flat hit chance increase. Probably upwards of 10%. This number can be altered/played with until the masses/gms decide it is "balanced". My favorite being making tactics count as hit chance. 1% per 10 tactics. Meaning with GM Tactics and a perfect weapon, you have a 12% hit chance increase higher than normal.


Pros:
- The dexxer would be useful!! Really though, a dexxer actually hitting more than now will bring a rebirth of dexxers to the server. At the moment, they have the highest risk (if they die with gold costs of weapons + armor + supplies) and the lowest rewards with their low ability to kill.

- More versatility in the field as far as templates

- Weapon costs would increase. Making anyone who farms happier

- Smith/Tailors would be more useful. More mages would die (More leather armor needed) and Smith would be cranking out more runics/plate armor to defend against dexxer damage.

- Alchemist/Poisoners would be more useful with poisons & potions being needed more often with more PvP



Cons:

- Would need a good bit of testing/coding to get right. While you can change it and let the population confirm/deny the usefulness, it would need monitored

- Would need to make sure hit chance increase would only work with weapons. My suggestion is tie it with every weapon in game, or add a hit chance increase with tactics. Perhaps a 1% increase per 10 tactics. That way magical weapons also give a boost and will become worth more and more highly sought after.

- Mages complaining. While being the top 90% with a random good dexxer here and there, the mages will complain I am sure. This is a constant back and forth. I feel mages should be on the defensive more often than now instead of depending on the RNG streak of missing 4+ to kill a dexxer

- Would PvM dexxers become too strong? In my opinion, they already hit a lot, so it shouldn't change much. But a possible flaw.

- With an increase of hit chance, top end damage of PvP may need altered. I am sure verite or agapite runic crafted large battle axe hitting More often wouldn't be fun for most mages

- Also with dexxers hitting more often, armor and armor mechanics may come into question. Just predicting ahead here as a possible con




In closing, I am sure this is a TL: DR for most, but those who took the time, thanks. Feel free to voice your opinions. Please be aware that simple posts attempting to slander or derail will probably be met with equal posts back.


This is meant to be a formal message to the community and staff about helping out 50% of the available classes in game. This, in turn will be helping the server in the long run with increasing population and simply not "UOR: Mages&Tamers online".

Feel free to debate and suggest things. This is for the community!! Thanks.


- Loxness



PS: I may edit screw ups and such as I go. So I apologize in advanced.

I'm not an expert when it comes to this stuff but dexers are my favourite types of characters and I rarely have a reason to use them anymore. I think small changes will go a long way but don't think they need very much. I agree that there are too many misses, or maybe the damage range should be narrower. A GM swords/LJ or anything else for that matter should never hit for a "1". Not sure how what you've suggested would impact overall mechanics but as long as it's nothing drastic it sounds good to me.

ive played dexers in pvp from 99 osi to to osi 2017 to free servers the miss rate vs stun mages is very high it isnt just warrior noticing the misses its the fact that you can maybe string 3 hits together if your very lucky but sadly at least 1 of those hits is a low roll damage but then you will string up to 8 to 10 misses in a row. this isnt even rarely it happens all the time. i just want balanced and i hope this message from loxness helps bring light to the pvp blight of warriors on this server.

1.) "Insta Hit" is already active on UOR. If you have a weapon armed, and the equip delay has elapsed it will pause in the ready state, and will "instantly hit". Having no "insta hit" means there is a timer that is always running, and only swings when it elapses and a target is in range, but will not hold it's state, instead it re-starts. What you're referring to is simply the equip delay being equal to the swing timer of the previous weapon. So for example, if you swing a hally every 10 seconds, and punch with wrestle every 3 seconds, you can arm a hally and swing with the timer of wrestling, but the next swing uses the hally's 10 second timer. Giving an advantage to those who "cycle" the weapons to maintain the wrestling timer. This will make mages much more powerful than they already are.

2.) I'm pretty sure that stun chance is correct, and hit chances are correct. Three factors are at play here.

• a.) People's opinions and "tests" on this are meaningless. It doesn't matter that you "feel" it's not 50%, and your test of 100 swings is worthless. Chris can easily simulate a million swings, and I'm sure it will show a distribution with a mean of ~50% as you would expect that is much more statistically significant. But that doesn't mean the frequency with which you hit X times in a row is as you should expect from true random.
• b.) The .net provided random class that runuo uses is not as consistent as we would hope. The tables generated for psuedo random numbers are not good, and other shards have found better third party solutions.
• c.) The production UO server uses a RNG for multiple calls to simulate a "dice roll", which simply does not happen here. I'm sure shard admin would hesitate to add such a feature as it adds to overhead, but again, it has been added on another shard that had this same problem, and that problem was solved.

I think at the very least, attacks from players should have a simulated XdY dice roll using even the random class, it would "feel" better than what we currently have here.



Just another consideration. There simply weren't as many mages in actual OSI UOR that had appropriately high enough skill due to cost/time, and the ease with which dexer skills were trained probably made for a VERY pro-dexer environment after publish 16. It's 2017 and every mage is fully GM, I think that connection speeds and this fact have more to do with mages being overpowered than anything else.

The other factor is armor. This barbed armor stuff here means mages have much more armor than they have the right to have. To compensate for this, dexers need to use runic weapons (or high level magic) to have even a fighting chance vs anyone with mage/med/wrestle, and thus, have a higher entry cost barrier to pvp and risk more on death.

I think that's pretty spot on and well written, Loxness. The amount of whiffs dexxers do here is unreal and needs some tweaking. And like Vandalin said, there's no reason anyone should be making 1 damage hits with good weapons.

Because you wrote so much, I only have one word for you:

Ossytank

Ossytank?

We should'nt have to supplant OP skills to gloss over the known issues of warriors.

But ossytanks require no taming unless you choose to use frenzieds.

While I agree, I dont think this shard will ever see large enough changes to make a pure dexxer build viable on its own. I am not against anything suggested here, almost all my characters are dexxers after all. I'v just never been one to seek changes, I seek solutions with whats available.

(not trying to be negative or hinder this thread in any way, thats just my view)

.

Be sure to comment! Even if its a simple "I like the idea" or "No I hate it." Voice your opinion and raise your post count!

@Chris doesn't think there is any problem and that no one plays dexxers enough to warrant a change. Let's show him otherwise!

Uhhh, did he tell you this directly? because thats different then what I have heard. Telamon is doing all this volunteer work in what ever time he can spare. Last I spoke with him he is aware of dozens of actual problem but simply doesn't have time to address them all. He has had to relocate the server once every year for the past three years and deals with LOADS of other technical stuff many of us never hear about.

Pretty sure he is aware tamers are OP at PvM and mages OP at PvP. Balancing other classes to match them is less important to him then insuring the continued survival of the server.

Check the "known issues" official thread.

Do you guys think the server owner should make radical changes to pvp without any sort of evidence other than a few vocal players' feelings about the topic?

The last time I was testing melee weapons on test center with a log book, which to be fair was a while ago, the hit chance over the period of hours was ~50%. How come whenever I do testing of melee weapons and stun chances, I get radically different results than what those few vocal dexxers feel?

The life of the dexxer is the life of the dice-roll. The damage is not consistent burst damage. Why should it be? Mages cannot endlessly dump spells, they have severe restrictions on spell-casting because spells require mana. In order to cast spells, they have to stop and let you have a chance of hitting them.

I don't think many people who want dexxers to be better really understand what they see as the role of the dexxer. They just want them to be better because it's what they like playing and suggest anything and everything to give them any buff. As we all can see in this thread, they don't really have any evidence beyond their personal perceptions about their experiences. Dexxers are already far, far better at doing damage over time than mages.

Why is it in situations where players cannot run forever, for instance inside a box like CTF, the dexxers dominate? When I first started on this server, dexxers even dominated the dueling scene with their axers. That changed when a few very good players who preferred to play mages started beating them. Was hit chance different? No. Was damage different? Yes, dexxers do more damage now than they did then.

Having played dexxers in pvm and pvp, I just don't see it.

Not to pick on the OP, but this makes it really hard to take things seriously.

I actually think this was implemented here a couple of years ago. I agree with literally every other point in your post though.

Or because they were actually formidable in era? People ran from two-hit kill LJs in era. Not so here because it doesn't happen unless the target is naked AND you get a miracle of two good hits in a row.

The bonus damage is nerfed here among other things. Armor values are ALL peak here whereas on OSI every person didn't have peak AR for 1500gp.

Hell, even the Int hit from Concussion blow is nerfed here to keep mages on top.

Peak weaponry for dexxers is still in the realm of 1m per weapon so it's entirely imbalanced. Had valorite hammers been as common as top tier dyes, this would be a non-issue right now.

Basically top tier armor has been available for next to nothing since year one. Top tier weaponry became available for massive amounts of gold, 2+ years in and they are STILL so rare that dexxers are calling for changes because they shouldn't be so lackluster at this point, when every other template can peak in a week.


In short, things were nerfed hard in favor of mages here well before the shard even launched. Good luck getting it balanced, ever.

I haven't seen such a change, and sure doesn't seem that way with how casting res, melee hits, and stealing stacks works.

Test isn't live.

.