Arelith

Will this ability ever be looked at? Before the nerf to UMD and polymorph wands for umber hulk counters were in play to handle this kind of build but since the magical means to find stealthers has been nerfed will this ability finally be looked at? The dip of 5 levels is far too little for how powerful of ability it is. If anything a higher base use of 1 minute which is reduced for every X amount of shadow dancer levels if people truly want a powerful hips or straight up nerf it or raise the level required to obtain it.

Shadow mages give up quite a bit for this kind of power so it would make sense for this to not affect a shadow mage to such a large degree.

I don't think the dip is too little because it can be well worth it to take lots ow shadow dancer levels, so it would just decrease build variety pushing it further down the line.

As a whole, I feel if shadow dancers could get less speed reduction like rogues but have high cool downs on their Hips, then we would be in a better spot.

HiPS was always strong but now people really learned how to abuse the automatic success from the hide. With a few tools and positioning a SD can constantly break the fight making it nearly impossible to fight one if you're not a mage. It's like a mini greater sanctuary with a very low cooldown.

People have already suggested increasing the cooldown. I'd be happy with just HiPS not automatically succeeding even if you have a higher spot/listen. It's so silly.

Besides I feel that there are just so many SDs everywhere and it's not even considered a taboo.

Diegovog wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 5:53 pm HiPS was always strong but now people really learned how to abuse the automatic success from the hide. With a few tools and positioning a SD can constantly break the fight making it nearly impossible to fight one if you're not a mage. It's like a mini greater sanctuary with a very low cooldown.

People have already suggested increasing the cooldown. I'd be happy with just HiPS not automatically succeeding even if you have a higher spot/listen. It's so silly.

Besides I feel that there are just so many SDs everywhere and it's not even considered a taboo.

Why would shadow dancing taboo compared to being a thief? But yes not auto succes would be nice.

Well, it is a taboo ability. The supernatural abilities to manipulate the surrounding shadows are quite significant in the eyes of many uplander individuals as evil. It actually makes sense. In DND lore it states shadow dancers are looked about with fear and worry.

They can believe what they want but things that are (false) beliefs IC shouldn't influence mechanics. Like, what?

Nah. Has nothing to do with anything in the lore or IC beliefs. This is entirely mechanical. Too easy for dex builds to pick up and its getting ridiculous at many people you encounter with this ability and the old counters are now gone. It even works on people that could beat your stealth checks with auto success.

kiljaedon wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:50 pm Nah. Has nothing to do with anything in the lore or IC beliefs. This is entirely mechanical. Too easy for dex builds to pick up and its getting ridiculous at many people you encounter with this ability and the old counters are now gone. It even works on people that could beat your stealth checks with auto success.

Im all for small gradual changes and just fixing the auto success upon initiation bug would be a nice start.

Hips is annoying to play against and also I think SD would be less easy-mode class if Hips had a slightly longer cooldown, by say, 1 more round. That said, I dont think it's that much of a broken ability and a practiced player can do fine without it anyway. When I toy around with rogue builds I will almost always pick the extra rogue lvls over hips personally because they tend to give better options. That's my two cents.

malcolm_mountainslayer wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:23 pm

kiljaedon wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:50 pm Nah. Has nothing to do with anything in the lore or IC beliefs. This is entirely mechanical. Too easy for dex builds to pick up and its getting ridiculous at many people you encounter with this ability and the old counters are now gone. It even works on people that could beat your stealth checks with auto success.

Im all for small gradual changes and just fixing the auto success upon initiation bug would be a nice start.

Hard-coded/engine limitation, or that's how it was explained to me when I was first made aware of how the mechanic worked- means the fix must come from Beamdog, which requires them to find a new implementation for the mechanic.

I'm having flashbacks to a thread maybe a few weeks ago saying the same thing but was griped on. Who started dominating?

Shadowmage shouldn't have HiPS.

Well shadowmages are sort of built around it for now. Can we focus on the effect of hips for the context of this topic please?

I kind of miss the days when HiPS was disabled entirely on the server.

Disabling it is too extreme. The CD just needs to be looked at.

Ork wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:01 am I'm having flashbacks to a thread maybe a few weeks ago saying the same thing but was griped on. Who started dominating?

Shadowmage shouldn't have HiPS.

I pointed out the fact that HIPS is autosuccess months ago but was more or less responded to with "get spot," and "no it's not, it doesn't work like that. " (This person was wrong, it absolutely does.)

I guess people finally realized your detection ranks don't matter for the HiPS trigger. If only someone had told them back then when they made true seeing (THE ONLY COUNTER TO THIS MECHANIC IN THE ENTIRE GAME) only last six seconds and before they took true seeing away from umberhulks...

Owait.

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 4:21 am

Ork wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:01 am I'm having flashbacks to a thread maybe a few weeks ago saying the same thing but was griped on. Who started dominating?

Shadowmage shouldn't have HiPS.

I pointed out the fact that HIPS is autosuccess months ago but was more or less responded to with "get spot," and "no it's not, it doesn't work like that. " (This person was wrong, it absolutely does.)

I guess people finally realized your detection ranks don't matter for the HiPS trigger. If only someone had told them back then when they made true seeing (THE ONLY COUNTER TO THIS MECHANIC IN THE ENTIRE GAME) only last six seconds and before they took true seeing away from umberhulks...

Owait.

How come i some times still see the hipsing hipster when they hips?
As in they dont vanish for me at all on my toons with high spot and listen?

Since it is hard to code maybe it should be removed from the server and a shadow dancer and mage given a less powerful replacement that has a similar effect if you cannot fix the auto success on hiding from someone.

Hide in plain sight feat note from wiki:

The benefit of this feat lies in the "while being observed" part. Normally, anyone who sees a character entering stealth mode continues to see that character. With this feat, a successful spot roll is required to continue to see the character.

Dunno what makes you guys to think it is auto success.

I /totally guess/ it simply rolls Hide first and Move only in the following round. SDs have crazy high hide and not that amazing move so it could explain that.

Another complete guess in the opposite direction: Maybe Hips treat the spotter as if there's terrain between them, thus making the initial hide check upon entering stealth as auto success, as it would be if there's terrain between them and no Move check was failed.

NWNwiki wrote:With [the Hide in Plain Sight] feat, a successful spot roll is required to continue to see the character.

Coincidentally, SDs get a whole pile of Hide skill bonuses that improve their chances to succeed at this check. Also buffs like Camouflage etc.

Kalopsia wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:59 am

NWNwiki wrote:With [the Hide in Plain Sight] feat, a successful spot roll is required to continue to see the character.

Coincidentally, SDs get a whole pile of Hide skill bonuses that improve their chances to succeed at this check. Also buffs like Camouflage etc.

Yes, I believe this is the root of the problem. Buffing hide is really easy.

Not sure. Out of the tests I tried with a high spotter they temporarily vanished but then reappeared later. Not sure if its auto success or just luck of the roll. I am thinking that either an increase in SD levels to receive hips or a longer cooldown that is reduced with more shadow dancer levels is a good start.

kiljaedon wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:48 am Well shadowmages are sort of built around it for now. Can we focus on the effect of hips for the context of this topic please?

Dr. B wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 3:55 am Disabling it is too extreme. The CD just needs to be looked at.

There is absolutely nothing extreme about disabling this inherently imbalanced ability. Numerous reasons for this were mentioned in the thread Ork is referring to (viewtopic.php?f=37&t=27311&hilit=hide+in+plain+sight), which, as myriad other threads on these forums, got locked and seemingly entirely forgotten about, with no sensible result gained whatsoever as people with poor understanding of the game needed to, once more, be explained how certain mechanics work, which in turn caused the thread to derail (as is tradition at this point). I'll repeat the main (read: not the only) reason as to why HiPS is a busted ability:

the grim yeeter wrote:One of the most broken things about hips [...] is if you hit it mid-combat, you cause the opponent(s) to automatically disengage and turn flat-footed. If you then, after hipsing into stealth, immediately re-engage, you can get a free flurry vs. flat-footed AC. This is extremely powerful and certainly should not be a thing. And it definitely shouldn't be a thing you can do every 12 seconds.

And even though this has always been an issue, HiPS is a problem now more than it has ever been (that is ignoring the days in which it existed without any cooldown at all, before it got disabled completely).

Of course not. The more extreme and work required for the changes to be enacted the less likely it will not even be looked at any time soon if at all. The shadow mage issue I feel could be a separate issue and the mechanic itself should/could be looked at first. If you just straight out remove hips from the shadow mage side of the mechanic it will, in essence, kill shadow mages. I highly doubt the powers that be are in the mood for that punch in the gut reaction like we saw back in October.

On the mechanic itself, it is the power it gives to people that use it as a dip that is the problem in my view. So many dex classes are taking it for an extra defensive mechanic that isn't even needed when most dex builds have high AC, reflex, evasion and epic dodge baked into the build templates. And being able to use it in such an offensive manner as to cause disengagement is another issue.

Just to reiterate, to clear up how this actually works, if you spot someone hipsing you don't drop combat and aren't flatfooted. It's not an automatic flatfoot, there is a skill check.

As a stealth arelith update or a beamdog change in the last patch, listen does seem to have the same effect on HIPS now as spot. As in, you can detect immediately with listen now and you don't drop your attack action. (However, as is the norm, listening someone doesn't prevent them from flatfooting you from the first flurry of their attacks.)

That said, it's clear that HIPS is very problematic in the current meta.

If you aren't able to detect someone (Which is extremely difficult for most things, made more difficult by periphery changes) you are at a severe disadvantage. This disadvantage is entirely disproportionate to the investment in it.

There are several changes that could be implemented to make HIPS not so powerful, considering we aren't going to revert other changes. They're also extremely simple changes to implement.

1) First and foremost. Fix the cooldown.

Currently, the HIPS timer counts down while you are stealthed. That means you can stealth-attack someone, then immediately re-stealth.

The script needs to check if the target is in stealth on the cooldown tick and then reset & stop until they exit stealth to start again.

(E.G. the target needs to be out of stealth for the entire cooldown to be able to get HIPS again)

2) Extend the cooldown.

A timer of 30 seconds would still be strong. While giving some counterplay. During this time the HIPS'er can still stealth, they will just need to use their environment properly.

3) Introduce methods of decreasing the cooldown IF it seems some classes are very weak after this.

E.G.
Shadowdancer could have their CD tick twice as fast (for a 15 sec CD) if they're within range of their shadow summon.
Shadowmage could have their CD tick twice as fast if they're in darkness.

(I don't think Ranger will be weak after changes like this, but I'm sure someone could come up with something if they are)