This is merely an idea I have brought up with some people, but would like to get some input with more players.
As many of you know, the thief class is a bit underpowered in more than one way, so I have come up with an idea that will bring some more fun back into it. First of all, trolloc thieves will be replaced by greymen. In doing so, greymen will have about 90% sneak and hide already trained. To compensate for this, human thieves will get 93% shield parry by default. This will free up much needed practices for thieves. In addition to this, greymen will be able to attain the original greyman powers as they rank up in a clan. This is not really precise, but perhaps at rank 2 they will gain 100% sneak, at rank 4 they can gain the "mark" ability, and at rank 6 they can gain effusion(sneak out of room). And like the traditional greyman, they will only be able to use short blades. Please post any thoughts or suggestions here.
An Idea
I think this will make thieves to powerful, everyone else relies on bash and cant deal 400+ hp damage so giving thieves any extra ability puts them over the top, I would not have a problem with such if our charge worked like wots does, or if we had channies who can deal extreme damage.
I don't have a problem with thieves having a melee skill but their stab landing % and damage amount should be reduced to compensate.
also I've always thought of greymen as a remort class such as fades and dreadlords.
I don't have a problem with thieves having a melee skill but their stab landing % and damage amount should be reduced to compensate.
also I've always thought of greymen as a remort class such as fades and dreadlords.
Until channies get implemented and charge gets fixed I would say this would make thieves rediculous. People say how thieves are underpowered because they cannot land stab. I feel that this is only because of the state of the playerbase (or lack thereof). If a person is fighting 1 vs 1, a thief shouldnt expect to land a stab. I know Lithium and my charger were fighting today and altough we tried, neither of us made any use of our main skills (stab and charge). You cannot say it is a point of weakness of the thief class that thieves are pking competent pkers on this mud. Maybe once we get more people are introduced and there are more group fights then thieves will be able to successfully suprise someone.
By saying that the act of spamming by the opponent weakens a thief's main skill is completely irrelevant. I spam, and cannot use a main tactic (bash). This however, stops you from using yours, which is stab. Every skill is conterable and saying that the thief class is weak because people arent caught off surprise as easily here (as another mud), is not an excuse to up thieves. If I fight a thief, I spam. If I fight a basher, I use dodge or flee to avoid bashes. If I fight a charger, I spam. The act of the opponent stopping my skill does not make my skill necessarily weak, it just means it was the inappropriate skill in a certain fight.
I do not understand why people think thieves should win in a 1 vs 1 fight. Thieves arent supposed to fight, they are supposed to sneak up and stab an unsuspecting victim and then finish and run. If a thief catches a person completely unaware, then the person will likely die or be somewhere near that. I think thieves should get near 100% landing or blick the majority of stabs, but in no way should thieves ever be able to stand toe to toe with another race and fight (unless they are finishing a kill).
Not meaning to totally shut down your ideas, but just statting my opinion. Effusion is a very very nice skill. It makes any character a pain to kill. I remember when Nicotine had it. It made him into one of the hardest characters to chase down quickly. While pracs, I feel, are also not that big of a deal with thieves. I have a lvl 30 thief which I have all the skills I need for stab at 95%, and also have some track, search, survival, notice (91%), and ride. If thieves get free 100% sneak, why not give bashers 100% bash automatically because they were born and bred to kill things?
I do like your idea of changing the thief class into a greyman class however. It would be fitting considering all trollocs in the books were all large bulky monsters in full armor and large weapons. The greyman were the assassins of the dark.
Again, I do not oppose the idea of helping out the thief class (as supported by the other thread concerning a new thief skill), but I do feel that we all need to look at how thieves are looked at currently. Everyone feels that they are underpowered because they get eaten in 1 vs 1 pk. They rightly should and I think that once more people begin to play and there are more opportunities besides right in the middle of 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 pk then stab will become more useful. I think the problem is that most thieves are currently playing against competent pkers who realize the danger of getting stabbed and simply will not get stabbed easily. I also feel that most thieves are not taking the risk and going south/north and trying to stab the unsuspecting smobber. Finally, I feel that thieves may be seen as weak because there may be those players who are not at their best when playing the thief class (I know me in this case
). I do not want it to seem as if I am saying that you are wrong, Alder. I think you have added some great additions recently that may have woken the mud back up. I am merely statting how I know I, and many others I have spoken with, feel on this issue.
By saying that the act of spamming by the opponent weakens a thief's main skill is completely irrelevant. I spam, and cannot use a main tactic (bash). This however, stops you from using yours, which is stab. Every skill is conterable and saying that the thief class is weak because people arent caught off surprise as easily here (as another mud), is not an excuse to up thieves. If I fight a thief, I spam. If I fight a basher, I use dodge or flee to avoid bashes. If I fight a charger, I spam. The act of the opponent stopping my skill does not make my skill necessarily weak, it just means it was the inappropriate skill in a certain fight.
I do not understand why people think thieves should win in a 1 vs 1 fight. Thieves arent supposed to fight, they are supposed to sneak up and stab an unsuspecting victim and then finish and run. If a thief catches a person completely unaware, then the person will likely die or be somewhere near that. I think thieves should get near 100% landing or blick the majority of stabs, but in no way should thieves ever be able to stand toe to toe with another race and fight (unless they are finishing a kill).
Not meaning to totally shut down your ideas, but just statting my opinion. Effusion is a very very nice skill. It makes any character a pain to kill. I remember when Nicotine had it. It made him into one of the hardest characters to chase down quickly. While pracs, I feel, are also not that big of a deal with thieves. I have a lvl 30 thief which I have all the skills I need for stab at 95%, and also have some track, search, survival, notice (91%), and ride. If thieves get free 100% sneak, why not give bashers 100% bash automatically because they were born and bred to kill things?
I do like your idea of changing the thief class into a greyman class however. It would be fitting considering all trollocs in the books were all large bulky monsters in full armor and large weapons. The greyman were the assassins of the dark.
Again, I do not oppose the idea of helping out the thief class (as supported by the other thread concerning a new thief skill), but I do feel that we all need to look at how thieves are looked at currently. Everyone feels that they are underpowered because they get eaten in 1 vs 1 pk. They rightly should and I think that once more people begin to play and there are more opportunities besides right in the middle of 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 pk then stab will become more useful. I think the problem is that most thieves are currently playing against competent pkers who realize the danger of getting stabbed and simply will not get stabbed easily. I also feel that most thieves are not taking the risk and going south/north and trying to stab the unsuspecting smobber. Finally, I feel that thieves may be seen as weak because there may be those players who are not at their best when playing the thief class (I know me in this case
). I do not want it to seem as if I am saying that you are wrong, Alder. I think you have added some great additions recently that may have woken the mud back up. I am merely statting how I know I, and many others I have spoken with, feel on this issue.The idea of saving pracs is good, because this would allow thieves to learn more signature thief skills like pick or steal, or increase practices in skills like notice, track, shield parry, etc that are useful, but we can't afford without cutting our effectiveness.
Effuse I'm still on the fence about. Yes, it would be available at a high rank, and it would be a lot of fun to use, but unless you place it at Rank 8 multiple characters would already have it. I really don't want to picture a fight with 3 greymen spamfleeing and effusing out of combat so people get timestabbed. It should have to be coupled with an item with a high cost to issue (20-30 qps), and/or make it take extra moves when turned on.
Another possibility would be to make it so greymen only get qps for scalps of a target they mark, or maybe 1 qp for an unmarked target's scalp, making it harder to rank up and get these bonuses.
I like the idea on the whole, but I don't think it should be implemented until after channelers are back. At that point it would make a pretty nice perk for DS, while still not being nearly as powerful as a channeler potentially is.
Effuse I'm still on the fence about. Yes, it would be available at a high rank, and it would be a lot of fun to use, but unless you place it at Rank 8 multiple characters would already have it. I really don't want to picture a fight with 3 greymen spamfleeing and effusing out of combat so people get timestabbed. It should have to be coupled with an item with a high cost to issue (20-30 qps), and/or make it take extra moves when turned on.
Another possibility would be to make it so greymen only get qps for scalps of a target they mark, or maybe 1 qp for an unmarked target's scalp, making it harder to rank up and get these bonuses.
I like the idea on the whole, but I don't think it should be implemented until after channelers are back. At that point it would make a pretty nice perk for DS, while still not being nearly as powerful as a channeler potentially is.
I really only figured this would be put in if channelers were put in. Just think it would give people a reason to play darkside rather than channelers 
Taking effuse off the perk list couldn't hurt anything though. I do agree that sneak fleeing would be quite frustrating. And as a side note, I have talked to Galnor about creating charge faceoffs =) So perhaps that won't be an issue soon enough. I don't know if all of you read the part about ALL thief classes getting practices in certain fields to start off with. I think we all can agree thieves are very tight on practices no? Please post some more comments based on the fields that greymen would come with to start, as well as human thieves getting some free shield parry. Also scratch EFFUSE from greyman perk list, since it would probably take a decent amount of coding to make fleeing non-effuse. So now I would say rank 3 for 100% sneak, and rank 5 for mark target. Areas of practice that Greymen would most suitably have by default are any combination of sneak, hide, and/or notice. I think the original proposal of around 93 shield parry for human thieves is reasonable, thoughts?
Taking effuse off the perk list couldn't hurt anything though. I do agree that sneak fleeing would be quite frustrating. And as a side note, I have talked to Galnor about creating charge faceoffs =) So perhaps that won't be an issue soon enough. I don't know if all of you read the part about ALL thief classes getting practices in certain fields to start off with. I think we all can agree thieves are very tight on practices no? Please post some more comments based on the fields that greymen would come with to start, as well as human thieves getting some free shield parry. Also scratch EFFUSE from greyman perk list, since it would probably take a decent amount of coding to make fleeing non-effuse. So now I would say rank 3 for 100% sneak, and rank 5 for mark target. Areas of practice that Greymen would most suitably have by default are any combination of sneak, hide, and/or notice. I think the original proposal of around 93 shield parry for human thieves is reasonable, thoughts?Here's my take on the greyman idea:
First off, we could only imp them if we're imping channelers too. *wink*
Secondly, I'd picture creating a character like this instead:
First, choose who you serve:
The Creator, Lord of the Light
Shai'tan, Lord of the Dark
Whoever the hell Aiel serve
The Empress of the Seanchan Empire
--> shaitain
Now, pick your class:
Berserker (warrior)
Trolloc (ranger)
Greyman (thief)
We could keep the thief class basically the same, just call them greymen and give them the skills of marking targets (rank 5?) and eventually effusion (rank 8?) , and possibly a finishing move could be implemented immediately.
Heading towards the Light side of the start menu, we'd keep the classes at Warrior, Ranger, Thief, and Channeler... this way there would be variety at least
Koradin
First off, we could only imp them if we're imping channelers too. *wink*
Secondly, I'd picture creating a character like this instead:
First, choose who you serve:
The Creator, Lord of the Light
Shai'tan, Lord of the Dark
Whoever the hell Aiel serve
The Empress of the Seanchan Empire
--> shaitain
Now, pick your class:
Berserker (warrior)
Trolloc (ranger)
Greyman (thief)
We could keep the thief class basically the same, just call them greymen and give them the skills of marking targets (rank 5?) and eventually effusion (rank 8?) , and possibly a finishing move could be implemented immediately.
Heading towards the Light side of the start menu, we'd keep the classes at Warrior, Ranger, Thief, and Channeler... this way there would be variety at least
Koradin
I agree with giving thieves a few more practices so they can experiment with pick and steal. I do disagree with thieves getting any sort of automatic proficiency. Thieves have hard practices just as much as my dodge ranger. I cant max out bash/dodge/weapon, but Im pretty sure there are thieves with maxxed dodge/stab/weapon. I just dislike the idea of free proficiency in a certain area, whether its shield parry, sneak, etc. Give thieves 10 extra practices - plenty for pick or steal.
I think the greyman idea is a great idea though. I am confused on the mark ability. What is it?
I think a good idea would be to let thieves get non direct-combat related bonuses. An example would be a increase in certain practices as the thief becomes more adept at the art of assassination. Ie: A rank 5 thief gets 7.5% (rank * 1.5) better sneak, hide, and short blades. This will free up practices while showing how killing comes easier as the assassins become more experienced.
I think the greyman idea is a great idea though. I am confused on the mark ability. What is it?
I think a good idea would be to let thieves get non direct-combat related bonuses. An example would be a increase in certain practices as the thief becomes more adept at the art of assassination. Ie: A rank 5 thief gets 7.5% (rank * 1.5) better sneak, hide, and short blades. This will free up practices while showing how killing comes easier as the assassins become more experienced.