Testlive 18.7.0.17 Changes

[Cratertina]

Moar Creation weapons. those should have like 100% nanoskill, + 25% weaponskill. That would solve everything. And bring creation weapons from 2004 to 2014. Give them some remotely decent damage stats. say 100-450(200) for TL5 and something 300-500(800) for TL7. Not really in favour of MP's having AS weapons, so decent bow with bow special attacks is good enough, just give it very high attack rating, kinda like engineer pistol's 100% pistol + 25% tradeskill.

That would be one fine idea.

[Dancingrage]

I'm looking at the postings here on the links I've seen, there's something missing to give me any thought about dual-wielding. Weapons usually have a marker on them stating what hands they can go in, and usually MP creation shields go in the left hand only. If it is possible to actually dual-wield shields this opens up some interesting options for the MP for playstyle, but it's not quite going to be enough with how weak the new Esa shield looks like. If there was more +nanodamage in our pocket from other stuff like perks, then this would have an option.

That said, without proof that these shields are dual-wieldable, any speculation from me is useless. (now thinking about it....nah, later)

[Dogtrauma]

I'm looking at the postings here on the links I've seen, there's something missing to give me any thought about dual-wielding. Weapons usually have a marker on them stating what hands they can go in, and usually MP creation shields go in the left hand only. If it is possible to actually dual-wield shields this opens up some interesting options for the MP for playstyle, but it's not quite going to be enough with how weak the new Esa shield looks like. If there was more +nanodamage in our pocket from other stuff like perks, then this would have an option.

That said, without proof that these shields are dual-wieldable, any speculation from me is useless. (now thinking about it....nah, later)

If you go here and click on the "Verbose" button on the top right side you can read that Shield of Zset is indeed wieldable in both right and left hand, Shield of Esa however seems to still be left hand only.
Hope that helps you unleash the M-F-moonwalk

[lainbr]

Moar Creation weapons. those should have like 100% nanoskill, + 25% weaponskill. That would solve everything. And bring creation weapons from 2004 to 2014. Give them some remotely decent damage stats. say 100-450(200) for TL5 and something 300-500(800) for TL7. Not really in favour of MP's having AS weapons, so decent bow with bow special attacks is good enough, just give it very high attack rating, kinda like engineer pistol's 100% pistol + 25% tradeskill.

That would be one fine idea.

Actually, it doesnt. Perks like CoLI and Ranger requires 51%+ weaponskill to fire. And thats why devs came with the 100% weaponskill 25% nanoskill creation on nanodocs.

[Psikie]

If it is possible to actually dual-wield shields this opens up some interesting options for the MP for playstyle,

Esa Left Hand + Zset Right Hand FTW= AAD, DtP, Nuke dmg mod, and Nanofocus for pet buffs. OUTSTANDING!!!

I would have liked to been able to dual Esa for extreme nuke dmg add but cant have it all I suppose.

Actually, it doesnt. Perks like CoLI and Ranger requires 51%+ weaponskill to fire. And thats why devs came with the 100% weaponskill 25% nanoskill creation on nanodocs.

Also adding any more weapon skill % to creation weapons will only lower AR. Which kinda defeats the point of trying to get the perk actions if they can't hit anyway.

[Metafly7]

Im to lazy to go through all the perks out there but is Ranger actually the only perkline that is locked out for a proffesion midway through? Maybe someone knows out of the back of his/her head

[Dogtrauma]

Ranger, Power up and Blunt mastery ( mp gets 4 1/5 perk here i think ) are the ones that grant partial access, weirdly enough MP has all of those but other profs also dip into PU and Ranger.

[Metafly7]

Ah thanks, so there are indeed more perklines that have that issue still. Power up is not amongst the lines that Mp can put perkpoints into. But it does relief me to hear that its not a sole Mp problem.

[lainbr]

Also adding any more weapon skill % to creation weapons will only lower AR. Which kinda defeats the point of trying to get the perk actions if they can't hit anyway.

And thats is why I always say it is a very dificult problem to handle. We want both 100%nanoskil AR and be able to use (sucessfully) whose weapon perks. Aka, perks changes, which will prolly come only after nanos rebalance (Michi, could you change it ?)

I personaly think both creation and normal weap MP should have full support. But we all know devs only gives nanoskills to us :/

[Dancingrage]

Have a thought....maybe Power Up (Isn't that a energy weapon line?) be extended to include nanoskill based weapons? One line to cover it all, and in the end pwn them, etc. Not the most used line out there, after all.

Having another option for defense at cost of offense...is interesting. That's what, 1800 AAD total? Still have nukes on hand, and nobody's gonna land a thing on you perkwise. The option to balance it out with a nanodamage/cost boost is nice, but the total nano given...sucks. Badly. Double it and we'll talk. Dual wield that shield and you've got a winner for the nukers who want to put the damage down. +50% would be nothing to sneeze at, and gives the MP (assuming our nukes are half decent soon) an "I can sorta do NT's job but it takes away from other things" that would be nice in my opinion.

Combined with the Sacrificial Shielding fix alongside the little addition that shunts 20% of damage taken...we're looking at some good stuff here so far. It would be nice if the nuke values were adjusted on this patch as well so we would be able to point and say "Look, the devs don't hate us and haven't abandoned us yet!". Defensively, this sounds great, but the problem is MP offense, historically, has been generally WORSE than our defense.

On NS...another buff I'd be bothered for, but I suppose having access to it early game has it's points, especially with MPs having strong INT/PSY buffing throughout the game, this can make the early game for an MP more interesting, but not so much that it makes or breaks low level play. This does make for an interesting precedent that the primary nuking classes all share a nano now. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if a few 'profession trade secrets' get passed around or stolen, etc. I'm curious to see what gets grouped from this point.

I wouldn't mind a 'reflect shield' line to complement or replace one of the other lines (like what is going to happen with the yellow shield? I'm pretty sure it still stinks, IIRC)....but then we'd get screamed at for turtling under a ton of reflects..with no AAD or other neat bonuses, it might be more balanced out then. I'd still like to see an 'on equip, put effect on user based on shield type' which would be nice, but not likely to happen, who knows, though.

Creation weapons...man. What a mess that is the last time I looked at it. The problem the last time I looked (and I'm not kidding when I say looking at that part of the nanodoc back then gave me booping headaches!) was that the weapon users wanted to be able to fire off perks that had a hope in hades of landing, using the perks for their weapons, and having an AR worth talking about. The inherent problem is that MP weapon AR is just going to stink hands down unless you consider throwing 33% or more TS into the weapon, and that depending on the weapon because different creation weapon types max at wildly different points for the MP and then the skill buffing support is even more drastic. 2hb, for instance, isn't well supported at all past TL4 in terms of items and such that buff it, so 1800 2hb for the Xan weapon is stupidly hard for an MP versus 1800 1hb/pistol/bow. On my main I have exactly enough 2hb to use the Pet Buffing staves, and adding even 500-600 more AR from the 25% TS won't make 2hb a contender worth mentioning in the grander scheme.

Thinking about it now, it could be possible to rework them to different buffing amounts for each line to better balance them out so one could go running around with a creation bow and have a hope of landing perks and hitting targets at the same rate that someone using 2hb would be. Actually, that gives me a pretty neat brainwave: Each line has something it does really well, or is at least intended to. 1hb gives you a lot of situational capability, switching between dual wielding for good DD, shields to protect and give you various buffs, and if this document is indicative of the future of MP creations, a really impressive level of flexibility while balancing it out by having to consider what tradeoffs you're willing to make. Zero DD but utterly unperkable and really hard to hit? Mix of high evades with some NR and a boost to your nuking capacity? There's a lot of options here.

What this leaves is 2hb and Bow which are sort of out in flexibility, but could be specialized for other things. Bow style could have a nuke line attached to it to mimic AS (only a chance to resist instead of the automagical kill button it is now), but also give you access to Bow Special Attack, which has options for some neat attacks later on, so you give up defense for a potentially potent pvp offense.

2hb, though, I'm not sure what to do with conceptually: Nanodamage is covered by 1hb, damage by 1hb/bow better for pvm and pvp respectively, and its AR isn't awesome at all thanks to how little support 2hb gets for us. I'm sure doing something strange like, say, giving it stats such that it will always hit no matter what would be cool, but how to do that without breaking the game for MPs would be a tough one. The always hit, that's easy, change the 2hb/ts to both say 200% and you'll have a stellar AR, highest of the set, as in you should be able to hit anything and one with that sort of AR, but then what? The weapon damage would have to be really low so you don't run around instagibbing everything with one or two hits, and honestly if you want DD there are other options. Perhaps funky status effects at a higher rate? Bumping up proc firing rates so they're more often than 5%? Poison DoT proc to actually do the damage for you? Auto hits with a few of the MP's nastier debuffs as a proc could actually be a really cool option, even better if they stacked with MP nanolines to give a nice boost for debuffing.

So you could have the crappiest 2hb damage out there but every hit is putting on a really nasty counter damage debuff, so instead of using range or personal defense to survive, this style could just cripple the opponent with the weapon debuff proc and the MP's own debuffs which would stack. That would make for a pretty solid debuffing option that would stick out, be useful in teams or raids, and give 2hb a method of defense that is unorthodox, within the MP toolset, and would be a good reason for crappy damage on a weapon with a nigh-insane attack rating.

Ok, enough wall of text, I'm going to go read more patch notes and see what's what.

[Metafly7]

Power Up is not currently under the Metaphycisist perks however, would be entirely new then.

[Dancingrage]

Power Up is not currently under the Metaphycisist perks however, would be entirely new then.

True, but ME was at one point in our toolset (Jupiter Shield, some other ME weapons), so it's not terribly far of a stretch if it's possible to tweak it so PU would check TS for MP users and RE/ME for other professions as appropriate. If that's not possible then other options would need to be looked at, like as in my massive wall of text I edited in while you were replying. *grin*

[lainbr]

Dancingrage. Your ideas are awesome

[Metafly7]

True, but ME was at one point in our toolset (Jupiter Shield, some other ME weapons), so it's not terribly far of a stretch if it's possible to tweak it so PU would check TS for MP users and RE/ME for other professions as appropriate. If that's not possible then other options would need to be looked at, like as in my massive wall of text I edited in while you were replying. *grin*

Haha gonna read them now

[Metafly7]

Doing another reply since im scared editing my previous post is still broken (will be fixed in the future though as i heard)

Im unsure wether I totally understood the full extent of what you meant Dance. It seems complicated by the use of Bow Special and other specific abilities we have now.
Wouldnt it be better to overhaul the whole thing then (if we are changing acces to a perkline already) and create a whole new perkline alltogether and move more in the direction of NTs in the way of relying solely off nanoskills?

New perkline adding nanoskills to the lvl of a balance between our nanoskills and the NR other people have (since AAD was gonna no longer affect NR after rebalance?)
This perkline adds perks that check opponents NR and makes us overhaul our weaponry alltogether. We are now really going full into creation weaponry giving us different options for different occations a bit in the way that adventurers are changing the way more depending on what they will face (pit lizard or wolf or sabre).

Now you'll have the shield and the bow in the same fashion as they were in place with some significant changes. All creation weapons check nanoskills and no longer other skills, however the nanoskill they check differs (as we are strong in all anyways). This disallows the use of Aimed Shot aswell as Flingshot and Bow Special. Wed however create things to fill those gaps. As an example the bow as this is my poison and changes my setup like 90 degrees:

Metaing's Creation of Accuracy (just putting some names together to give it some ambience):

To Equip:
User Matter Creation 2251
User Time Space 2251

On Equip:
User Modify Nanodamage 10%
User Modify Matter Creation 108
User Modify Psy Mod 108
User SetFlag Cyberdeck 13 (13 looks like an emote version of a bow lol)

Now Cyberdeck 13 allows you a number of things. It allows you to precast "Metaing's Mind Arrows" (substitute for Albtraum Ice Arrows) and you need the Cyberdeck 13 flag to use them

Metaing's Mind Arrows:

To Use:
User Current Nano >= 301
User Psy Mod >= 2151
User Wielded Weapons & Cyberdeck 13

On Use:
Attacker Hit Health Poison -3000 .. -5000
User Hit Current Nano -300 .. -300
Attacker Temporary [All nanoskills] for 15s -50
User Lock Psy Mod 120s

Additionally this Bow with its Cyberdeck 13 unlocks the use of one certain nuke with a lockout depending on the amount of nanoskills u have in Matter Creation:

This nuke could be the Alpha nuke in documents, disallowing shield from using this
Polar Flare

To Use:
User Matter Creation >=2000

On Use:
Target Hit Health Poison -8000 .. -8000

This in terms creates the problem that you can no longer use AS together with a nuke (ultra fast alpha) but does mean that everything ties more neatly together. It fits more with FCs view in the nanodocument whilst throwing away the problem that other skills bring into the mix. And it redefines the problem on the different setups. These setups can now be mixed acording to the problem you are facing but they lock each other out from using certain abilities depending on the certain Cyberdeck you are using.

Back to the specific perkline. This perkline would now function in the way that it requires you to have one of the Cyberdecks on, so:
User Wielded Weapons & Cyberdeck 13 & Cyberdeck 14 & Cyberdeck 15 etc etc.

Complete overhaul for the weapon problem that Mps are facing but a total return to what Mps strengths are.

Is this a bit to what you were going to aswell Dance? Because I sort of tasted it from your responce but didnt really read it in that sense.

[Metafly7]

Actually I'm now also thinking that arguably wed also have no clip on the weapons because we are using our nano to fire them off and using an ammo type would make it rather a Bow tied to the Bow skill line than a creation Bow

Again i used the bow as an example because I like it, similar fashion things could be done with the other creation weapons. A secondairy Cyberdeck flag may be needed to attach (the Cyberdeck 7) to allow for alternative Creation weapon only items to be used. That could remove the whole problem with the perkline needing to add different cyberdecks aswell, they could also just only check for Cyberdeck 7 then.

Each Cyberdeck number then stands for a different kind of if scenario in a pyramid of possibilities. This cascades leaving open the option of Dreadloch Bow but disallowing it from using all the nice perks of a creation bow right as its shown above.

[Le-Quack]

i like what you say meta, now go share the idea with dev team and force em to make it happen.

if the dev's dont listen we refuse to buff people ci and cm and ao will be destoryd

[Metafly7]

Thats the whole problem with these discussions. We can agree with each other but that doesnt help a damn thing, the only thing we can do is throw it up at the Devs through our professionals and they give the final yay or nay. Its a game and its under the developers control and so it should be i think. But its atleast fun to dream of things like this. These suggestions are to big to put them in there now though so its not gonna change a thing for now. Thats the reason some of the easier fixes have been suggested before.

[Psikie]

I have no problem with getting full perk lines for 1hb/bow. I DO NOT want the weapon skills for creations changed to 51% weapon skill to use them.

I have in the past suggested that the poison procs on creations be increased in frequency to say 20%-30% and that would more than make up for lack of special on creations like fling/fast attack IMO. (Fyi creation weapons were the first proc items in game way back 10+ years ago)

Bow is really the problem child imo for this thread. Tigress is the only reason any MP cares about bow. I feel that is the wrong way to base the discussion. I get it that it is the really the best ranged weapon in game. But I do not think the devs are going to bend to making us that much better using it. Insane DD, fling, AS, and a special proc, come on guys you know in your heart it's never gonna happen. We would be better than agents (an artillery/combat prof) ...WITH pets and debuffs!!!

Honestly what I'd like to see is 80% nano 20% weapon on all creations, especially shields again so we can still use nano perks with shields up. I ran around on test with Esa+ Zset and it was pretty nice, except I couldn't perk grey mobs even. I would have liked to seen dual Esa but 50% nano dmg full time would have made NT's even more upset than losing Det Matrix.

For a support prof I honestly think we have a LOT of bow support from items, research, perks. (add it up it's a lot) We just have a crappy low weapon template. Opening up ranger full I have no problem with and would agree with. Id like to see more bow special buffing though. I think those ice alba arrows are really key for pvp imo. Id also like a creation bow 80% TS 20% bow with either a poison dmg proc, or possibly a snare that doesn't break on hit.

***Also there was word that Keep/MP were getting a new ME perkline don't know if that is still true. But I might be tempted to break out TheArgument or try to dual wield Xan dawn/dusk.

Overall I know I will be using 1hb Asp/Zset. That seems to be the direction the devs have set out as the best combo atm.

[Dancingrage]

Fly, you seem to have the gist of it. The perkline idea was the beginning of my usual "start writing and let the ideas percolate from there" that's pretty common of me. ME generally doesn't get used seriously in the game except for probably social at best, so if there's something that might shift that balance, it doesn't hurt to remind the developers that we did use ME once upon a time. Whether they do anything about ME for MP's is pretty much in their court.

Psikie: Weapon perkline perks simply will not function if the weapon held in the hand is not at least 51% whatever basic weaponskill. Perks in Ranger won't do a thing if you're using a creation bow, Blunt Mastery perks can't be used with creation weapons, etc. That's the big argument on how Creation weapons should be handled, on one hand you have people who want to get the most out of the T&S skill that we excel at versus weaponskills that are third rate, on the other people who want to be able to use the perks that go with their weapon because they invested perk points into these lines and dagnabbit, they want to run perk actions! This is what started the big massive argument that took the MP Nano Document discussion from years ago and dropped it down a well. The devs back then were trying to make everyone happy and it wound up looking like a giraffe crossed with a tarantula, with it's legs twisted into a knot.

Countering the loss of AS/Fling is less the problem (the last nanodocument had us getting 4 nuke lines, and IIRC with how it was set up we could have done a stupid amount of damage with just one of those lines), just make one nuke line require Deck 13 (playing off of Fly's idea earlier), give it a cooldown of whatever makes game balance happy, and then code up a copy of Ice of Albtraum that will work with a Creation weapon of Deck 13 (remember that Deck 7 is the support staves and the nanos tied to them.), so you can't just grab an Asp of Titaniush and start hucking these arrows around (though for a good laugh, the 1hb Asp line bears some resemblence to an item known as an atlatl.) It's a bit harder to counteract the loss of perks since this makes up a large chunk of alpha strikes in PvP. If the perklines in question didn't give perk actions I think this would be a vastly different discussion.

Mostly I'm curious as to what folks think of my idea on 2hb, at this point.