Ghurshog Registered User
Posts: 57
(3/26/04 2:27 pm) Reply
The Letter I just wrote
When I read the RA ability given to Minstrels I almost gagged. Hence the letter I just completed to the RvR Expansion folks through the hearld.
Ameliorating Melodies and Minstrels
I don't know if the people who are designing the RAs for the expansion even play Stealth classes or not but in effect this is giving the typical Ablion stealth gank group an I win button. The minstrel simply has to stay out of sight, which isn't diffcult since the Minstrel can stealth, while the other stealthers grouped with it simply camp the area of choice. Now if the minstrel is a BOT the controlling player places it out of line of sight in the area they are camping but keeping it in range of the minstrels ability. So if anything comes along that the gank group wants to kill. The minstrel's controlling player simply pushes the button and the gank group goes to work without worry as they are gettting healed every tic for the listed amount, which at level 3 of the ability is more healing than many enemy melee classes can do in 3 seconds. So in essence the Albion gank group wins unless they are severely outnumbered or they didn't see a caster or two show up to the fight late and nukes them. In essence making "Choke Point" camping even easier for the Albion realm's steath classes than it already is.
In essence giving a class that stealths ANY ability that can heal anyone they are grouped with, especially other stealther seriously unbalances the RvR picture. More so for the stealth community where Albion Infiltrators already have a significant advantage in that the Minstral can stealth and actively participate in stealth gank groups. Adding this tool to the Minstrel class seriously endangers the already fragile if not non-exsistant balance that exists between each realms stealth classes.
I believe this ability is so unbalancing that I am suggesting that it is not worth giving to the Skald/Bard/Minstrel inorder to prevent the minstrel from having it. I know that the thinking was that if the Bard and Skald have access to the ability then so should the Minstrel, I even agree with this point of view as it is a sound design decision, as it is also fair to all three classes. However only one of the classes has an ability that puts it squarely into the subculture of the Stealth community and there by affects a part of the DAoC community to such a significant degree as to clearly unbalance that community across all three realms.
Remember my example was the minstrel as a bot, if an actually player is at the keyboard of the minstrel then the effect of the class become all the more effective.
Also for those who say that the minstrel can't be place out of harms way and effectively do the example I have typed above. The gank group would work something like this.
1 Scout + 1 Minstrel (Bot)= off the beaten path enough to hide the Minstrel. Scout shoot at it's intended target. If the target is an assassin or not matters little because the ranged attack effectively pulls the target to the characters "Ground of Choice" to fight. Now lets make this example even worse.
1 Scout + 1 Minstrel + 1 Infiltrator = Very dead target(s).
This even MORE so if it were to be done inside the frontier dungeons. The Minstrel can be effectively place out of sight of the targets or even, in so cases, behind where the targets will Zone In to the dungeon. So the Albion stealth team simply kills any thing that zones in to the dungeon and has a healing class that can be visible or non visible by choice to support them. How fair is truth is this to the rest of the Stealth community.
All along the voices of Mythic have been saying the game balance isn't about a direct class to class comparison but how once realms classes function togather against the other realms classes when togather. If effect giving Ameliorating Melodies to the Minstral is giving a realm a truely effective support class without recipicating that effectiveness to the other two realms.
And for those how say that the other realms could bring along a skald or a bard respectively. I say that this is no where near balanced as the having a support class grouped that can not stealth is simply a liability to the stealth group as a whole. The point and purpose of a stealth group is to be able to more from point "A" to point "B" and initate an ambush from stealth inorder to effectively kill the enemy. Having a non-stealther in the group makes this function nearly impossible. Where as for the Minstrel there is no difficutly to the execution of the above plan of action.
If the Minstrel were not able to stealth OR this ability was not give to the 3 classes listed is the only coarse of Realm Balance I can reasonably see.
And that is what I had to say on that subject.
Ghurshog Registered User
Posts: 58
(3/26/04 2:33 pm) Reply
...
Apparenlty I am in desperate need of a Spell checker or better yet a grammar checker. Please forgive the typos.
And I would encourage any and all to send feed back via the Hearld on the RA redesign. The people who are designing these RAs have obviously missed some of the more subtle nuiances of the game that we as stealthers live with day in and day out.
Registered User
Posts: 1664
(4/4/04 3:59 pm) Reply
Re: ...
Quote:However only one of the classes has an ability that puts it squarely into the subculture of the Stealth community and there by affects a part of the DAoC community to such a significant degree as to clearly unbalance that community across all three realms.
And Mythic replies, "what stealth subculture?"
Even if you could get them to admit that the "stealth war" exists--which they won't--I doubt you could get them to balance around it.
Orcmauler Registered User
Posts: 65
(4/4/04 9:11 pm) Reply
Re: ...
Hell last time I played I was alb, and I can't comprehend how people can honestly say a stealth class w/ chain, multiple forms of crowd control, and now AM isn't overpowered.
I think this would be easily solved by either taking away climb walls for minstrels, or put it at a higher spec all together i.e. 32-36 for minstrels. The reasoning being "pure assasins" spend all their times learning the stealthy arts, whilst minstrels who split their time between the stealthy arts and music lessons are behind the curve (lol).
ripre79 Registered User
Posts: 29
(4/5/04 6:31 am) Reply
Re: ...
Mythic's fix for this will be to remove the "stealth wars" from the game, one way or another
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