Stabilis
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Today, Cyber Hunters, before that, Strength Tactical Mercenaries, before that, Support Tactical Mercenaries, before that, Focus 5, before evolved classes, Ultimate skills (usually Massacre), before that, Strength Mercenaries, before that, Multi skills, before that, Tanks, etcetera, etcetera...
Today's Cyber Hunters: Usually a variation of Strength or Dexterity. Strength Cyber Hunter: Massacre, a weak Malfunction, Static Charge, Plasma Armour, and possibly EMP or Field Medic. Dexterity Cyber Hunter: Multi-shot, a weak Malfunction, Static Charge, Plasma Armour, Field Medic, and possibly EMP or Massacre. Key robots: If not pairing the Borg with Malfunction, guaranteed it will be Assault.
These skill sets work so well for them. Why?
Massacre: high energy cost, improves with Strength, requires Support, unstoppable Primary damage that can go critical but does not apply with rage... and is element specific to the held Primary weapon. Malfunction: normal energy cost, improves with Support, no requirements, increases Deflection rate and Energy damage, and can go critical and apply with rage but is blockable. Multi-shot: normal energy cost, improves with Dexterity, no requirements, unstoppable Energy damage that can go critical and apply with rage. Static Charge: energy source, improves with both Primary damage and Strength, requires Technology, and can go critical and apply with rage but is blockable. Plasma Armour: passive, improves with character level, requires Technology, passively boosts Resistance. Field Medic: normal-high energy cost, improves with character level, requires Technology, unstoppable fixed healing with no links to critical or rage modifiers. EMP Grenade: low energy cost, improves with Technology, no requirements, unstoppable fixed energy deduction with no links to critical or rage modifiers.
Realistically, Defense Matrix, Cheap Shot, Venom Strike, Plasma Grenade, and Shadow Arts are uncommonly used. Why?
Defense Matrix: situational for moments of Dexterity loss or weakness to Physical damage (rare), improves with Support. Cheap Shot: low chance to go critical, blockable, low percentages. Venom Strike: high energy cost, situational in being relative to enemy health, slow. Plasma Grenade: low damage, low chance to stun. Shadow Arts: lucky, requires Support to improve block chance (2 skills improve with Support-> Defense Matrix, Malfunction).
Were you able to see a pattern? Everyone talks about synergy, and it is just that. First let us look at the main passive, Plasma Armour. PA at max level requires 43 Technology and gives up to 11 Resistance points. Therefor the minimum Resistance a Cyber Hunter can have with a max PA is 26 Resistance. At such a cheap cost, PA at level 10 compensates at least 44 Technology points, allowing 44 stat points to be allocated into Strength or Dexterity. Because of the Technology cost, having more than 43 Technology is redundant as Defense becomes compromised, leaving players to be untouchable in Resistance, but vulnerable to Physical attacks. Unlike Tech Mages and Tactical Mercenaries, taking damage benefits Cyber Hunters for nothing aside from rage. Therefor, taking damage is widely accepted by our class as destructive to success, and because of the lack of Technology skills that benefit offensively and defensively besides EMP Grenade, Cyber Hunters have no means to excel in or abuse Technology. Technology also damages the core. I will reveal the riddle shortly.
Now for Defense Matrix and Malfunction. But more specifically Support. Both of the said skills improve with Support. They both have normal energy costs as well. You never hear of Support Cyber Hunters for quite a few reasons. If you are cocky enough at all to believe that you can produce an efficient Support Cyber Hunter, please challenge me. I will gladly whoop your butt using level 25 weapons on my Dexterity Cyber Hunter. Support Cyber Hunters are first of all inefficient because of energy costs. Both Defense Matrix and Malfunction cost energy and one turn to perform as they are active skills. Due to the fact that most Cyber Hunters use Plasma Armour and especially at max level, Resistance is secure but this also compromises Defense. Oh, but wait, there is Defense Matrix, that should cover that flaw, right? WRONG. First of all Defense Matrix costs one turn, and lasts for 3. For the next 2 turns you are protected from Physical attacks. On the third turn you must use it again if Physical attacks are still prominent in the battle. This costs a major toll on energy. Let's not forget that you may be using Field Medic more often PLUS using Malfunction for offense. Support also damages the core.
What is the core? If you haven't already suspected, the core does not rely on Technology nor Support. I am talking about a skill. This skill is Static Charge. Static Charge is the core of most Cyber Hunters. Apart from rerouters, chargers have better control over their energy. We get to decide how much and when we obtain energy. Support Cyber Hunters are unlikely to gain decent energy from Static Charge, but neither will Technology Cyber Hunters. Both versions have a low energy income and Primary accuracy. It is therefor not recommended to play with these types for efficiency or speed.
If you can understand so far as to what the key theme of this thread is, is that the synergy between stats and skills is dangerous. There are 2 things in this field that I do not support: stat requirements on skills, and improving skills with stats. Both of these egg on 2 undesirable outcomes: Focus, and stat abuse. Wha-wha-what?! Focus AND stat abuse? Yes. You ARE obligated to administer all of your skill points, and many skills have requirements. You are free to choose skills that have no requirements, but in doing so the combat efficiency of your build may decrease. Because of the dedication you have given to such requirements, you may end up raising stats you would otherwise not choose given the choice. Due to forced requirements, players may find themselves at odds with focus. Now there is nothing wrong with focus, but if you do not ever intend to use robots as a damage source, what is the point of raising their damage? In the outcome of requirements, stats you would have otherwise used for health, energy, or one of your preferred battle stats, are drained into stats which you may find unfavourable to your build (example being forced to have 40 Strength when you need Support... Strength provides no true benefits outside of Primary weapons and the Sidearm, so Strength would therefor be a hindrance in your effort to administer Support). If given the power, I would remove requirements first and foremost from skills. The second issue is having skills improve with stats. Few MMORPG I have tested merge character stats to skills, for good reason. With the current system, stat abuse is a twofold for cause and effects. One: stats control weapons. It is natural in EpicDuel for Strength to improve the Primary weapon. Two: stats control skills. Any skill that improves with a stat further increases the danger of such a stat. It is a transitive property in which Strength can boost Primary weapon damage, but also handicapping that damage with Double Strike. Stat abuse only climbs higher in the relation of weapons to bonus weapons (skills). If given the power, I would remove the transitive property of having skills improve with stats to annihilate stat abuse. I would instead scale all skills to character level alone. For Static Charge I would have it only scale to character level and Primary weapon damage.
Thank you for your time to read about my studies of EpicDuel's mechanics of stats-to-skills. I hope I have enlightened some of you about the dangers that are growing within the roots of the whole foundation.
< Message edited by Depressed Void -- 3/7/2012 20:03:33 >
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