The Big UMD Change Thread

[Aodh Lazuli]

but I'm just an idiot noob that isn't worthy of an opinion so all of the balance discussion has been about nerfing wizards the past week.

1. Nobody said any of those things. Again, you are inventing statements that were never actually made.

- Nobody called you an idiot noob.
- Nobody made any effort at saying you are not worthy of having an opinion.
- Nobody said wizards need nerfing. Instead the comments here have primarily been focused on un-nerfing UMD and the value of balancing the game

2. Making it so randomly dropping loot items are required by the meta is unhealthy.

3. Cortex's post is probably better read as a comment on the fact "shit's crazy right now, yo", than much else. It reflects the rather unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary nature of development choices currently.

As to my own position on items such as the one Cortex commented upon...

The introduction of very very powerful items which sit outside reasonable bounds, does not fix the damage which was done to the balance between casters and melee through the alteration of UMD and Lore. Instead, it obscures the structural balance issues with a layer of circumstantial randomness. This is not a healthy or positive move. While it might sometimes swing an encounter entirely in the opposite direction, it does not balance the encounter... As one side still relies on RNG loot drops for their (over?)effectiveness, and the other does not.

[xanrael]

PC1 isn't going to give up being a slaver or reroll if they're killed here but expects PC1 to completely change their character's plans if they lose.

I think this is a pretty poor example, but I'll engage it. Why can't we expect people to change their character's plans on a server like Arelith? Fun is derived in shared story-telling, and this is a perfect example of an opportunity to do that. Now, PC2 has all the agency in the world in this encounter. So they lost combat and are subdued, but PC1 can't speak to the clamper on PC2's behalf — PC2 gets to choose if he takes the collar or not.

Now, there's two kinds of roleplayers here. The first is what you're suggesting — that they both aren't interested in a collaborative story-telling experience and are just 1-dimensional tropes of "slaver" and would-be "slavee". Boring on both counts. The other type of roleplayer uses these experiences to include others, and the real kicker is that only ONE of these players needs to be this way. If PC1 is only interested in PvP and does what he does, and fails to provide at least a modicum of interesting roleplay, that's on him. But PC2 can take this encounter and start showing a fear of encountering this slaver again, or show wounds from the encounter and seek to collect others to find and execute this slaver, or ..really the list goes on.

If any player after an encounter shrugs it off and continues like nothing happens — you can do better.

I try to practice what I preach. When I'm the aggressor a loss for me is going to result in RPing that defeat for a month+ or it being the end of my PC. I do similar as a "victim" as well. I find RPing loss as interesting as victory, sometimes more so. As I've posted before on here I also played on servers before that had a much harsher death mechanic and prefer that.

The game isn't solely an experience between two PCs and there are a ton of other interactions every week that PC2 may have been a part of. PC1 is effectively competing with those interactions for how much effect it has on PC2, if any. Too often I've seen PC1 making sure they have every mechanical advantage for an upcoming encounter without a second spent on considering how to make it an interesting one and then they're surprised that the encounter held about the same RP weight as someone dying to a zoneline ambush from mobs.

And as I illustrated on the other side of things, it sucks when PC1 does put in effort and PC2 isn't willing to RP out any reaction or else flat out leaves before anything can start. That's completely on PC2 there. I think sometimes that result can be used as an excuse for PC1 to cut corners on the RP portion in the next aggressive bit of RP with someone unrelated and it can be a downward spiral from there.

Also I'll add that you stated that there were 2 types of RPers, while I don't think the situation is black and white. I believe that an engaging encounter increases the likelihood of seeing dynamic RP.

[Cagus]

...and a horrifying mixture of stealth, high damage output, good defenses and extremely nasty grenades for rogues. Going through the numbers and specific uses of all of these in this post would produce something so long nobody would read it - But the very much shortened version would suggest that a competent player who knew how to properly utilise the tools available, would be in possession of one of the most potent and dangerous builds in the game, if playing a rogue or bard. A poor or mediocre player would suffer as a rogue, but would at least be useful as a bard.
...
Since the update, rogues have maintained some degree of their usefulness simply because they have access to disjunction shards as a rogue grenade. This renders them still effective versus spellcasters and still able to remove buffs from mundane melee without relince on random loot drops. The ability to breach spells is vitally important in pvp combat.

... I could engage in a lengthy unpicking of the prior strength of bard and rogue, but I will simply state that I do not make random statements, and the things I do say come packaged with a certain logical underpinning and active research.

I see you have contacted me, so let's have it here.

This is exactly why I mentioned I played the class. I have knowledge of its mechanics.
Stealth - the only advantage of the rogue is +5 hide Smokescreen and +10 MS dust of silence against any other class.
High damage output - I agree on this one, even if that only situational
good defenses - the only advatage of rogue is 1 AC from light armoured you can net (given 14 dex mod and padded, with leather one you lose 2 of it and leather is another 2), you can use grenades for miss chance, but that's for losing one round in the fight. As for other defences, saves (besides reflex) you can't get as high as with other builds
extremely nasty grenades - I don't see them as extremely nasty, as they mean losing a round of fight and especially the disjunction shard, which you glorified is almost useless, because
1. it is aoe with friendly fire
2. it has to beat reflex save, and that's including spellcraft!, which means casters have advantage of at least 7 and for wizards even more (+3). As 24 rogue with 14 dex mod this means you have DC of 36 and for casters is not problem to reach 34 save against it.
For these reasons, using greater breach, and sometimes even lesser breach is better than the grenade (one from scroll, second from wand).

And really, I don't see +10MS and +5 hide buff with sneaks as something making this class strongest meleé.

So as for mentioned active research, your post seems to lacking. As for the rest of your post, I don't really see the point (I read it as random statements), because you disagree, but then you recap the problems which my post was answering with solution.

[TimeAdept]

You talked about 24/6 rogue without mentioning Blinding Speed, Epic Dodge, Crippling Strike +6 weapons, Holy Water, Flashbangs and Paralysis Caltrops, Choking Powder, Fire and Acid Bombs, the stealth movement speed, and Keen Senses.

This tells us all we need to know about your experience with the class vs. what Joe's posted.