Shadowdancer tuning?

[breg]

"The shadowdancer guild is far from viable option for high exp player" I agree even though I'm not a highbie. There was some serious talk about this in the old "Shadowdancer ideas." topic, check pages 2-4. Even you, artic, wanted to see some improvement in the guild, even though you don't want to change anything anymore (i wonder why, because there hasn't been any major changes).
As yoz said, the melee need to be improved. Slashing weapons would make a difference, but I think special hits would fit the theme better (they don't have masteries like "knowledge of inner organs" for nothing, right?). This way the daggers and such would still suck, but dancers could still make some use of them. So that they would have somekind of purpose in the game.
Another thing that could bring some balance (without making dancers offensive tanks) is to change the shadowbarrier (this could also be a separate skill/spell/whatever) a bit, so that we could dodge hits better because of the darkness. This was already mentioned in the old "shadowdancer ideas." topic.. I hope people participate in this discussion, since dancers have been around for a long time and in my opinion they deserve more attention than the newer/future guilds!

[yoz]

how about giving shadowdancers some "vital pressure points" or so skill, and they could inflict loads of stuns with it. With a wilder or stunning militia/templar it could prove to be a decent addon for party for its high stunning abilities.



basically, a master shadowdancer could poke a monster to vital points with their daggers, causing some monsters to be stunned/unable to attack for long period of time. Bit like wilders at the moment. This would replace the "not doing damage" problem so that they would just weaken monster and beat them slowly to death.


Or instead of stuns, they could get hits that lower hpmax/str/dex and so for some small period of time.

In my idea, shadowdancers should not be a guild of meaty brutes with chomping cleavers who go and whack everything to tiny pieces, instead sneaky guys with dangerous ability to disable foes with their insanely fast series of dagger hits.

[breg]

Sounds good. The critical hits I mentioned could include, like you said, stunning, but also different kind of effects. Sometimes a little more damage, depending on the bodypart of course (I'm talking about a LITTLE more damage compared to normal hits, which would happen quite often, not one hit/one kill criticals) and perhaps wounding with normal hits. Wounding would help dancers to solo bigger mobs, but it wouldn't be too useful in a party (exp party) because of the fast pace of killing. Dancers are, after all, mainly a solo guild.

[hors]

In my idea, shadowdancers should not be a guild of meaty brutes with chomping cleavers who go and whack everything to tiny pieces, instead sneaky guys with dangerous ability to disable foes with their insanely fast series of dagger hits.

hmm.. but we have already meaty army... and shapeshifters are quite meaty.. why would meaty dancers need shadows then?

[yoz]

In my idea, shadowdancers should not be a guild of meaty brutes with chomping cleavers who go and whack everything to tiny pieces, instead sneaky guys with dangerous ability to disable foes with their insanely fast series of dagger hits.

hmm.. but we have already meaty army... and shapeshifters are quite meaty.. why would meaty dancers need shadows then?

right, read it again.

[hors]

In my idea, shadowdancers should not be a guild of meaty brutes with chomping cleavers who go and whack everything to tiny pieces, instead sneaky guys with dangerous ability to disable foes with their insanely fast series of dagger hits.

hmm.. but we have already meaty army... and shapeshifters are quite meaty.. why would meaty dancers need shadows then?

right, read it again.

lol :p i need to take a break from a monitor

[artic]

Even you, artic, wanted to see some improvement in the guild, even though you don't want to change anything anymore (i wonder why...)

Well , why dont artic want to change the guild

I was part of a guild once upon a time that was deemed unbalanced and was recoded. I lost all my masteries and the most fun guild i ever played. Now i got shadowdancer masteries at around 30-60% and my devotion is around the level of players around the level 60's (just because i have invested huge amounts of time in this guild), and finally i have invested loads of mithril into my guild weapon upgrade (yes some might argue that money is super easy to make in this game, but its not easy for me). Now if re-coding the guild means that i loose all of those things, than id rather suffer the sucky melee damage than have a re-code.

Things that i think are the most wrong with the shadowdancer melee damage is the low efect that skills have on the damage. As a army brute i didnt even know anything about the hit style skills like 'pierce' and 'thrust' and although as a shadowdancer i got decent skills in these hit styles i still make less damage than a brute. Fast, dexterous and skilled sounds all nice, but it seems a dumb brute is still better in combat just because of his two hand axe and medium stength. Also what is wrong is that the high amount of dex does not help dodge almost at all. A warrior with similar dodge skill but very very low dex (trained his str and con) can dodge just as well. And the darkness help nothing at all. Should logically make the shadowdancer harder to spot with all the darkness swirling about him and yet still all monsters can just see you perfectly enough to rip out your heart.

And i agree with the statement that daggers are not fast enough to compensate for the low damage they do. Not even in the hands of well trained dagger user and not even after upgradng your dagger to uber-high-end materials.

Suggestions:
Make dex affect dodge more.
Make high darkness make monsters miss more.
Make daggers (or only shadowdancer with a dancer-only skill) hit faster.
Make the skills 'stunning' and 'wounding' work more often and work on normal/critical melee hits not just stabs.
Oh and also a _funny_ (in the bad way) skill is 'Enhance criticals'. At least criticals with my deft dextirity and upgraded dagger are the sad kind of funny.

[yoz]

in my experience, it somehow feels that its the dex that affects dodge more than the actual dodge skill, as a militia with very nimble dex, i seem to dodge almost as much as with templar with 45% dodge and few adjectives lower dex.

[artic]

in my experience, it somehow feels that its the dex that affects dodge more than the actual dodge skill, as a militia with very nimble dex, i seem to dodge almost as much as with templar with 45% dodge and few adjectives lower dex.

Not in my experience. I think i dodged more as a warrior with no dex training than i do as a shadowdancer with '(boosted) dex.

[moraq]

Re-coding doesn't necessarily mean that you'll lose masteries & devotion, though it can happen. I remember that some wiz once said that devotion is one of the very few things that actually work in dancers... Anyways, a part of dancer masteries are equally good compared to the ones the old militia had. Correct me if I'm wrong

[breg]

I don't want to lose my dev/masteries and maxed dagger either. Maybe it's possible to do some balancing without recoding the whole system, but if that's the only option I think I am willing to lose everything. If the guild is actually recoded/gets new features, please don't remove devotion (I don't mean my devotion, but devosion in general), because it makes the guild so interesting, at least for me.
...And I agree, the crits are silly

[yoz]

i think if dancers would've been recoded, atleast the dev system would stay (yea, rumour says its the only thing that works in that guild ;p ). So there is a high chance of not losing your devotion, however if the guild would get a total new makeover, i doubt that people who really want to play shadowdancer guild, could let it go.

[iluth]

I've only got limited experience in dancers so my perspective is different to others who have played longer, but:

Shadowdancers already make a nice solo rate as it is, i agree with the tunes to make em more party friendly, but giving em slashing weapons would also increase their soloing rate which is already quite nice (i think anyway) backstab is already quite strong.

This is not to disagree but rather to understand, i have only played dancers from a noobs perspective so i dont properly understand the problem of playing with high totals.

[yoz]

I've only got limited experience in dancers so my perspective is different to others who have played longer, but:

Shadowdancers already make a nice solo rate as it is, i agree with the tunes to make em more party friendly, but giving em slashing weapons would also increase their soloing rate which is already quite nice (i think anyway) backstab is already quite strong.

This is not to disagree but rather to understand, i have only played dancers from a noobs perspective so i dont properly understand the problem of playing with high totals.

they prolly would've not be backstabbing much then.

[artic]

... backstab is already quite strong...

Here we go. Yup, backstab strong, but you cant use it more than once on a mob usually. Unless you wait a while wich in most cases means the mob is gonna regen or gonna get killed by someone else. And engaginn the mob in melee is just not working. Melee is soo weak that i get hurt lot faster than the monster, and i need to run away.