A few musings on crowd control skills/equipment

[Dagni]

Actually, it's more of a typo. :P Instead of +32/128 = +1/4 weapon damage, Blade Shield does +3/128 weapon damage!

Anyone who knows how to mod should be able to fix it super easy for SP. Just change BladeShield's 'SrcDam' in skills.txt from 3 to 32.

Also, while looking through for that, I noticed that Blade Sentinel has 'passivestat1' = 'tohit', 'passivecalc1' = lvl*5. So Blade Sentinel certainly must have a to-hit roll, whether the other Blade skills do or not. The others don't have any such bonus to-hit listed in the .txt file.

- Dagni

[Occhidiangela]

She does have that habit of wandering off and thinking that she is in charge! So yes, a recast now and again puts you back in charge of her for a time, before she decides that she has a better idea. :)

She's all woman! Smart, deadly, beautiful, and has a mind of her own. What's not to like?

[lemekim]

After doing some testing with Blade Fury, I found out the following:

Blade fury is affected by both AR and Blocking. I setup a test with a level 99 assassin and level 90 paladin, who had maxed defiance, and modified his defense. I estimated that assassin shoots about 120 blade fury hits per 30 seconds. With 895 defense, I hit about 60 or so shots over 30 seconds (1/2 chance to hit). With 5024 defense, I hit about 15 shots over the same time (1/8 chance to hit). Also, I tested this with about 50 defense, but the amount of hits was too fast for me to keep up properly; I estimated that just about every blade hit.

With blocking, I again saw the difference in the number of hits with 75% blocking and no blocking. With 75% block, max holy shield and with defiance on, paladin had about 10,000 defense, and was practically oblivious to all attempts by the assassin to hit him.

I am still not sure as to the exact formula for the AR/DR to hit chance for the Blade fury, but I hope that this is a start.

[Occhidiangela]

"We own the night!" Name your Assassin "Charlie." OR Delta_Dawn! :P

Thanks for the update, looks like the skill will benefit from use of Cloak, which reduces DR.

For Realms Play, I predict that, due to a common lack of tolerance for the screen going dark every so often, Blade Fury/Cloak will not be a welcome combination in public games.

Blessed Aim Merc anyone? :)

[TaMeOlta]

If you get a chance to try out Runeword "Delirium" - try that one for crowd control , test it in bloody hills A5 Hell - it will definitely increase your odds of survival , as long as you survive the initial hits that trigger its effects ;) - its also fun watching hordes of archers and spear tossers all of a sudden turn on each other :D !

[Brista]

The power of Defence boosting skills is quite remarkable

Playing in no twink Normal Act 4 with level 11 Shout and about level 6 Defiance or so from a merc myself and another player were pretty comfortable about being swarmed in the River Of Flame

Despite being swamped with monsters (maggots, urdars, balrogs and stranglers) we were taking negligible damage and suffering minimal block-lock or stun-lock because of the very high defence

Even Hephasto was rather easy

[Crystalion]

The power of Defence boosting skills is quite remarkable

Playing in no twink Normal Act 4 with level 11 Shout and about level 6 Defiance or so from a merc

Yeah, my personal theory is that the change to Holy Shield boosting total defense % for a Paly instead of just the shield (btw, it is still the case that if you take off or weapon switch to no shield you lose the bonus) is because of the powerful synergy they added from defiance to holy shield. In other words, they deliberately added a no-aura almost-passive defense booster to the Paly. I'm afraid I didn't think to test if actually turning on Defiance adds or multiplies with that bonus.

Still, if you were willing to play a defensively oriented Paly, it seems much more viable now. Still, good defense vs. non-magical attacks is not the same as good crowd control. I imagine you could use that runeword for the item with charges of CoS and one of the CCing merc tricks. But I think ranged magic attackers would still tear you up. Hmm, come to think of it, whether a Paly goes high defense or not, ranged magic attackers are a royal pain, so what's not to like about high defense if that suits your playstyle?

[Occhidiangela]

Get a round 4 socketed Paladin shield, 4 PD's, and the bulk of your resistance worries start to fade in a hurry. :) 100-110 Res all is not that uncommon.

For the defense oriented Paladin, that ^ piece of gear makes a significant difference in how much to emphasize stats, resists, life, FHR, and other affixes.

Shadow Master:

I think your term for SM, "Crowd Chaos" is most apt. She seems far more prone, now, to light off on her own and raise a little hell. Even though you can re cast her, (There is a spell timer on Shadow Master now, not sure why) she will probably wake a few new monsters up.

NM Cows with a roughly 58 level Assassin, traps, and level 9 Shadow master. Without Mind Blast and PMH, I'd still be down there. :P She did indeed run off and get me more cows, whether or not I had just finished, or not, the group I was trimming for meat packing.

Aint she sweet?

[Pren]

Make sure you report the bladeshield bug, Dagni.


Occhi: Don't forget you can unsummon her when you need a break.

[Occhidiangela]

Shadow Warrior is less of a nuisance, and dies quickly enough. :)