Jordenk wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:00 pm
I’m confused how stealth has been equated to gsanc?
1) one does not plan their entire skill, gear and feat distr around this spell like one does hide/ms.
2) you can simply be spotted/heard
3) doing almost anything breaks stealth
4) gsanc protects you far more than being in stealth
Sure there are other advantages to stealth, as in its repeated usability, but this is just a gross misrepresentation of these two abilities.
The consensus I’m seeing from the pro nerf camp is:
1) Ppl can’t beat SDs without dumb luck, poor skill on the SD part, or a powerful alpha strike PC or diviner with TS
2) stealth is still useful without HIPS (agree)
3) the cd should be longer than 30 sec
Am I the only one who has tools to beat a HIPSing PC without TS or 100+spot/listen? This community is incredibly creative and savvy, yet all the brilliant folks in here who can speak so decisively regarding mechanics can’t serve a SD their lunch with any number of a dozen tactics?
Any number of activities can force a SD out of stealth. Need for breach against dmg shields, ultra vision, see invis, death ward/freedom/mind blank application. It’s not like every stealth exit is dmg, sometimes you have to because a dragon is chasing you or you’re blinded and need to remove blindness. To use the counters against any number of moves to counter how you might be losing an edge on the fight, you have to break stealth. With this change you’ve now used your only HIPs for that fight, just cuz an aoe WoF.
A few things I’ve mentioned that no one has bothered to address.
1) Beating stealth isn’t about spot & listen or True Seeing vs hide/ms. That’s just one avenue, it’s about winning the fight. There are LOTS of ways to do that. Someone posted they KD and bursted 300 dmg in one round. That’s not rare. How many builds have 8apr, ranged capabilities (archers do very well easily killing PC running for 12 sec), KD, stun, aoe dmg, ward, massive crits pushing 200. Let alone access to TS, 3 dmg Shields, wands, grenades, etc. I’m sorry I just don’t accept this savvy community was “stumped” by SD HIPS at 12 sec cd, and couldn’t do quite well at 18 seconds.
2) 12 seconds is not 12 seconds. It is not realistic to enter stealth right at CD. So add part of a round in practical application at least some of the time. For those of you who want the ability gone or at a min, this doesn’t resonate. But for those wanting just a nerf, it is.
3) To build a stealth build that “reliably” beats detection, lots of sacrifices are made. Some have tried to argue this, but it’s just a reality. 43/44 ab is not great. Rogue/SD saves are trash (except reflex) and it’s hard to gear uni into a reliable range given gear requirements. And anything less than AC in the 60s is basically a wash in the current meta. My rogue/SD can hit 60c but with expertise and a shield out instead of dual wielding, there goes my dmg and ab. Can one build stealth builds that are less reliant on hiding and breaking LoS to survive? Yes. Will it require a complete rethinking of how these PCs are generally built? In a lot of ways yes, with serious sacrifices. We also haven’t talked about that all the DMG output is predicated on sneak attacks!! To the poster who mentioned that hide/ms isn't a substitute for AC, stating you can hit 50 without IE, 50 is not good AC. Put on IE and sit at 60 with epic dodge, now you're talking, but that's two feats and -10 ab so you're now in the low/mid 30s. Good luck hitting anything. You will get torn to shreds by countless builds and even a lot of PVE engagements.
With these changes I think folks are better off having WM lvls and full BaB progression than HIPS. I think this change warrants a relevel for affected PCs. You may disagree, it’s just my opinion. Corner hiding is viable. I’m not oblivious or unable to use this trick. It’s just not always applicable and incredibly limited in application. I and many others would probably much rather have 5 class lvls elsewhere now. We can’t look at these things in a vacuum. It’s easy to speak in terms of hypothetical math, but in actual combat a lot of these things play out quite differently.
HIPS was powerful. Was it too powerful? Perhaps a little. A change is a probably good thing. The smart way to do these things is iteratively. I think 18 sec would have produced a remarkably dif dynamic, 18 sec is ages in a fight. 1 HIPS per fight can still be useful, I just don’t think it’s worth the investment to get it compared to alternatives now. Previous builds are going to suffer heavily in the current meta without relevels IMO.
On your first point:
If you aren't taking spot or listen, or weighing the fact that not having them makes you
meat vs HIPS users, you deserve your fate. It's a tradeoff I've made before, but never unknowingly. I plan around stealthers on characters that are not stealthers. I plan around stealthers on characters that ARE stealthers.
Point 2:
They will likely not see or hear a properly built, prepared SD. They will likely not see or hear an improperly built, or otherwise unprepared SD (though 'they' will be more common in that event). Very few people have enough detection to see or hear a stealther, and the ones who do are trying very hard, and you'll very quickly learn who they are and avoid them if you're smart.
You can be heard, potentially, because that's much more difficult to get the skill levels into 100+ territory. Any SD at all should be sitting at 105+ stealth
actually all the time, and that's before environmental factors. I can do this on a ranger with gear and the right buffs. The same ranger has real trouble reaching higher than 96 MS, which is still stratospheric. SDs have the Hide skill on lock better than any other class in the game. Understand the scale on which Hide and Move Silently operate on.
Point 3:
Heal kits do not, and stealth for an SD is a reliable way to completely break contact. Or you could stealth, dip behind cover and drink a heal potion. Or you can just stealth and drink the heal potion anyway now you have a breather. Toggle iexp on after drinking and smile as you take no damage.
Point 4:
Gsanc protects you marginally better than a stealth built HIPS character. It protects against a few things that stealth will not and allows rebuffing. Its primary use is that it gives you, potentially, time to reassess the situation and leave or stay if needed. If you actually needed Gsanc, you likely need to leave. People leading combat with it are throwing away their get-out-of-trouble-free card if the fight sours for them.
Gsanc also has reliable counterplay that HIPS does not. That it is rarer now to encounter that counterplay does not equate to point 2. You can truesight scroll and use a mordenkainens item or spellcast, if you're playing a mage. Gsanc is now removed utterly from combat for the next 4 and a half minutes or so. They can't poof on you anymore. They can only run, or fight.
Stealth is a contact breaker, like Gsanc. It's less flexible than Gsanc in its potential to let you ward on the spot, but offers, for HIPS users, the option of repeat usage. It also has much more aggressive offensive applications in allowing you to force an enemy to be flat-footed against you regardless of whether they detect you in stealth or not, meaning that even if you cannot use it to run, you can use it to
win.
It is a gross misrepresentation to equate Gsanc and HIPS in its 12 second cd state, yes. Gross in favor of Gsanc. Gsanc
edit: ...is way worse than HIPS in almost any iteration where HIPS is usable more often than Gsanc. Forgot to type that.
The consensus:
1) Ppl can’t beat SDs without dumb luck, poor skill on the SD part, or a powerful alpha strike PC or diviner with TS
Yes, because the SD can almost always safely run from almost anyone. Or could
force flat footed status at will every two rounds or so and hit you with a full flurry of sneak attacks.
2) stealth is still useful without HIPS (agree)
Okay.
3) the cd should be longer than 30 sec
That's five combat rounds. I'd like it to be longer because it means every 6 combat rounds the SD can force a round of flatfooted or leave. Or leave and then force TWO rounds of flat-footed when they come back and attack out of stealth, then hips immediately on top of you and then attack again out of stealth. If a PVP is ending in 30 seconds real time, someone involved has made an error.
And that can happen. That does not validate the mechanical power of being able to force flat footedness every three rounds and all of the other combat versatility being able to stealth at will opens up for a shadowdancer or other HIPS user. Corner stealthing is very powerful and is still open to them, there's hardly anything to complain about with it being raised to 30 seconds.
Moving on, yes, you apparently are the only one able to counterplay HIPS users without ever counterplaying HIPS users. Damage shields are not a counterplay to someone hostiling and becoming invisible. They are a counterplay to the person trying to swing at you, in that it will cost them. The evoker combo, if one is also a diviner, could be considered a counterplay, for instance. Because one would lead with Truesight and follow with unavoidable stuns potentially preventing a dip back into HIPS.
You causing any number of effects that give them the opportunity to leave HIPS and counter that effect is not a counter to HIPS. It is an option you present them, and they have always also the option to walk away.
I'll now bother address your points that no one else has bothered to address, apparently:
1: First, that's two avenues, unless you're generalizing that the 'avenue' is beating their stealth, which both of those potentially do. Many builds that have features like this, all of them have counters. Some of them do not generally exist. 8 APR and 200 damage crits is no longer possible, as naginata monks were rightly nerfed. Very precious few builds except a greataxe CoT WM can push that kind of damage in a single strike, and a greataxe CoT WM is also going to resemble tissuepaper to a dual wielding SD in kind. KD will not work on a decently built SD. Stuns have counterplay. Wards, whatever you mean by that, have counterplay.
Truestrike is useful only if you can see them and they let you drink it and then hit them. Since you don't have spot or truesight in this theoretical, and they are HIPSers with 12 second HIPS anyway, you can in fact do neither. Damage shields, wands, and grenades do not help you see the HIPSer, and are not counters to HIPS or Stealth, and only Damage Shields would even contribute directly. The rest are self buffing tools that ought to be a given, or things that might be used on the stealther if they're visible to you, which they are not.
2: 12 seconds is definitely 12 seconds. But I think the point you want to make is that it's unreasonable to dip into stealth exactly 12 seconds after leaving stealth. You're right. 13 or 14 seconds would be quite likely. That fact matters very, very little. It neither refutes nor changes the meaning or effect of anything I've discussed very much. Which is also true of HIPS in its current 30s cooldown state. Aniel has said, and I agree, HIPS is still very, very powerful.
3: Yes, there will be tradeoffs. That's what makes an RPG good, competitive choices where you feel a cost at the opportunity lost by making the choices you made. A HIPS user has options and ways to cause their enemies to be vulnerable to them to compensate for poor AB.
Why is it that the HIPS user does not have access to all these counterplays to HIPS, like stuns, or truestrike? All the same things apply to the non-stealther, except more-so, because the non-stealther generally will lack a means to authoritatively break contact that the HIPS user does not lack.
If your saves are not good, learn how to make them better. Better gearing is possible and raises those saves. It is an option available to everyone. People who have good saves are people who use that option. It is also the case that with UMD and Lore, saves are easily covered by blanket immunities to certain effects. Shadow Shield on a chestpiece covers NEP and death ward, clarity potions make you mind immune. You should never be in a situation where you didn't have the option to HIPS and drink a clarity potion, or use a mind blank scroll, and while that will break stealth, you are now only at risk of death after breaching and to fortitude, which should be easily raised with +fort on gear, and +will as well, or unisaves are both very good options.
There are, in fact, ways you can and should already have been playing even with HIPS which would have done nothing but improve your capabilities, such as corner sneaking, and I do not think the fact that HIPS was so incredibly powerful as to render those incredibly powerful methods of play un-necessary is a support of your arguments.
If the inability to cope with HIPS being raised from once every 3 rounds to once every 6 rounds is enough to cause a character to be unable to function, that character's build was actually hot garbage, or they were wandering into places they shouldn't be alone in anyway. In either case, it is a teachable moment.
Damage output predicated on sneak attacks exists. This is why corner stealth exists, and why you sneak when an enemy isn't focusing on you. You have UMD and lore. Summon a pet. You have the potential of having Knockdown, which will allow sneaks, you have the option to bring a tank instead of yourself.
Improved Expertise and Epic Dodge is actually several more than two feats, but effectively gives you 65 AC, assuming 60 AC is where you actually sit. This renders you effectively safe from anything but a paladin or a battlecleric, and nearly immune to anything utilizing touch attacks. It even has an effect on the damage output of things like arcane archers and rangers. You are not going to die in 5 rounds to a single enemy if you have both of those things. You aren't likely to die in ten rounds to a single enemy in an engagement where you have both of those things.
I don't think more than once in a single fight that you can, without any counterplay, HIPS and flatfoot a target, is fair. If that were all it did, I would still say 30s is VERY strong, but it also means that after 30s you might choose to leave because the fight isn't going well for you, or take a moment to breath before re-engaging. It is an incredibly powerful ability with a ten minute cooldown. It's an incredibly powerful ability that you have the button in the game at all.
I think, having picked all of that stuff that wasn't quite correct apart, I understand you were trying to get around to making a case for the nerf to be lessened because people build around HIPS. I can't say whether it was nerfed enough or too much with authority. I'd bet it wasn't nerfed enough. As it was, anyone built purely around the use of HIPS as their hammer with which to respond to nails was coming dangerously close to exploiting. Anyone whose character is now unplayable was leaning on an extremely strong gimmick instead of building a viable, mechanically capable character.
It was an incredibly useful survival tool. Now it will not let you put yourself into places you have no mechanical business being, or make you actually play with the mechanics and find other ways to use your character that you should have already been doing anyway, while remaining an incredibly useful survival tool.
