Sup Guys,

I’ve got a bit of a scenario to run by you guys to see if this has been happening to you. I haven’t been playing my shade much due to increasing frustration with the class and BG3 has been a ton of fun with my champ (my server is a Hib flagged /level 30 server). Anyway I got on my shade and decide to head to Emain and AMG just for giggles and I haven’t been there since all this new patch stuff. I get to AMG and 4-5 groups of Hibs are defending the gate from 6-7 groups of albs, pretty standard stuff. I get in the chat try and find groups with no luck so I decided to go it alone and work the outside of the Hib mob for stealthers and scout for the groups, normal stuff for me in these situations. I stealth go to the top of the mile gate and wahmo a Scout nails me. Huh, okay True Sighted me so I go back down wait a bit for his true sight to fade and go back up and again nail by another Scout. I’m getting a bit irritated by decide to weather the storm and go back up this time to be hit by two scouts and I would have died if not for a quick thinking druid.

Now I’m pissed and ask in /cg if anyone else is having stealth troubles, and yes all the Shades are reporting the same thing that they can’t scout because they are getting shot. The Scouts it appears were almost exclusively shooting Shades. So being the daring (foolish) little keen dood that I am decide to jump the wall and see if I can get behind the Albs and maybe mess some wizard up while he sitting or something. Everything goes according to plan and I manage to sneak thru and do a little happy dance. I watch from the back for my opportunity and see a wizard sitting a little too far from his buddies and decide the time is now to extract Keen justice on the invading bean-poll Avalonian. I come out from behind my cover get about three steps from the poor bastard I’m about to stick and.....can you guess......yes your on the right track.........WHAMO shot by a scout. So now I’m caught with my pants down and a swarm of albs looking at me funny.

At first the new True Sight change didn’t bother me now I think it’s completely stupid. If it’s one Archer then no big deal if you run across several group in pretty much negates your ability to stealth and do anything. Basically we just went from hunting Archers to be hunted by them but unlike archers we really have nothing to provide if we can’t stealth all our attacks are close range so what the hell are we supposed to do now? If I run with a big zerg I’ve just be reduced to the world’s lightest tank.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or comments on your experiences?

Geflin GraySoul

Well, sorry to say that I will be likely cancelling my account again LOL.

Just too much to take anymore and I don't feel like starting another character again.

That is the only solution I would have for you

Sad part is I really enjoy the game, just that now I am reduced to running with an army and there are FAR better classes to be when doing that. No one wants me in their groups because I don't bring anything

You could roll an archer class if you are on the /level 30 server

Same types of experiences you mentioned.

My comment would be to make an archer. As Gyth said, I too have cancelled my SB account. Alkeistarte Red[b]Shadowblade Reference Guide Website [b]

The reason I haven't been playing my shade much is because I made an Range who's now 24th (started her before the /level thing). My experience so far is that Ranger are 10 times better than shades at soloing and more group able (but not by much) post patch forget about it the difference is night and day in effectivness.

/shrug I'll continue to play the game just not an assassin till they fix the problems.

Sad thing is, the only thing an archer brings to a group that a Nightshade doesn't is Truesight.

A few days ago I was happily scouting from my guild mates in hadrians (well, I was out there alone and w/o a single buff 'cause no one had a place for me in any groups, and even if someone left there was always someone better to group than me) I was finally going to join a group at Beno, when, while I was quite close to that villa with legionaries I see a few groups of albs.

I start to warn my realm mates about them when a scout charges me and hits me with his sword, with all those albs around I had no chance but to run....
No need to say that the scout simply pulled out his bow and nailed me for 1/3 1/2 of my life with each shot.
I could have run away if it wasn't for that nice feature TS has to prevent you from hiding.

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One or two day laters, scouting a wall and reporting on the movement of some groups of albs.....
A scout is attacked by a shade, kills him with the help of a fellow inf, and then pops TS.
This time I was a max range (on the other side of the valley in front of the wall) and he misses his first shot, so I manage to run away and sprint until TS runs out.
he saw me from max range.

---------------------------------

I'm tired of this True Sight crap, archers are already almost impossible to kill, scouts slam, hunters have a blue pet to help them, and if things really go wrong some of them can still use IP.
And now I cannot even do the only thing that's left for me to do, which is scouting.
To scout I have to be very close to some critical points....an archer only has to get there (camoed, so even if I choose to waste 8 points on SH I cannot see them) burn TS and nail me with arrows that could almost oneshot me.

SH may have been too much before camo (but it was exactly what was needed to bring archers in line at the time) but became almost useless with Camo.
Now it has been further nerfed so it's really useless.
Yet TS remains as powerful as anything, and with archers getting buff after buff, they're again a very popular class.

An archer w/o stealth can still fire his bow for very good damage, while an assassin w/o stealth is just dead.

Care to fix TS, so we can once again do something to help our realm besides crafting ?
And, what's most important, have some fun ?

And range......I have no armour so having to get in melee range with all that army blasting going on I fall like a paper doll.....

If I had the time to start again I would have chosen something a bit tougher tank wise (knowing what the assassin class is now on the battle field).

Caowyth.......buddy. Archers bring more than true sight

What about long ranged suppressive fire on keep attacks/defense

Or Better ability to solo than assassins in RvR and PvE

Or the ability to pull more effectively now.

The archer ability to kill from range (and do really good damage) was mitigated by the assassins ability to see them (by the way I though see hidden was too powerful as well) now that is gone and we have nothing to do and nowhere to hide.

Ranger would like to tell you that it only works for 1 minute out of 30 well on a micro level that is true, but if there are 10 Archers running around that’s a lot of 1 minute I see you and now you lose timers going.

Geflin

/shrug

Sounds like balance, to me.

Gef, I'm not going to get into this with you in public. We disagree on the subject, and we are both biased.

Cao

Sounds like balance huh? Stealth is our class’s saving grace....our only ace in the hole....the last thing we have to hold onto to keep us a float......while the game advances and other classes get buffed we just fall behind with no “love” only nerfage. The balance should be since Archers have greater range and do more damage faster, (you could argue this but with crit shot and rapid fire I don’t see how) from certainly more security then an assassin strikes from, that we should have a slightly higher detection range than they do.

You say this is a balance I say /delete and try a class the Mythic gives a damn about it certainly isn’t the class I play.

Sorry for the Rant but this is the last *****.

Sad thing is they have an easy way to solve our biggest problem. If they would just increase CS to something a bit more deadly they would basically be somewhat balancing the assassins with each other as well as others.

The only reason we have such differences in the assassins classes is mainly because we all end up spec'ing in other things than CS because the other options simply have more to offer. Like myself being thrust for a stun style that I would be just as happy pouring those points into CS if it did some nice damage.

Camo really needs to go... this would help a lot. Now that See Invisible has been nerfed (appropriately, I might add) Camo is completely negating that RA. I know for a fact that archers are speccing about 15 in stealth because they know they get camo. With camo... they might as well spec 0 in stealth.

Any archer that speced to 15 in stealth is an idiot. Camo may negate see hidden, but it doesn't negate detect hidden (The base ability) or the standard detection range of any other player in the game.

It was my understanding that to get cammo.. you had to spec 30 in stealth. Is this understanding incorrect? Sashe lvl 50 Infil - MLF
Darklin lvl 4x Earth Wiz - MLF
Mezisto lvl 3x Sorcerer - MLF
Icefog lvl 2x Ice Wiz - MLF
Silvoc lvl 2x Fire Wiz -MLF
Sacre lvl 2x Infil (test toon) - MLF

No, you just have to make level 30.

It only negates see hidden though, normal detection works fine.

Two problems though, a 15 in stealth my not negate detect hidden ability but it is still going to be hard to see them from a large distance (hmm...much as most archers have since they are range based).

Second, an archer now has the choice to raise stealth even higher (perhaps as high as 50+, I personally know a scout with a 54 stealth after bonuses)......this means the chance to detect that scout is like a joke. Trust me, I try following him and it is like following an assassin.

Now my guess is with his 54 stealth that the range at which you will see him with see hidden would be rather limited even when camo was down. Put up camo and the guy vanishes like an assassin does.

Well...its near impossible to solo as a nightshade in any areas where you might actually find some RvR action on my server. I can't imagine soloing as a ranger is much better.

An archer with 15 base stealth IS going to be seen from a long ways away. Not max bow range perhaps, but outside of name range for sure.

TS wasn't much of a problem when you only had to contend with 2 or 3 archers. Now the number is much higher. High enough that a decent sized zerg can keep TS up almost perpetually. Aurra Sing
50 Infiltrator (deleted)
48 Shadowblade (cancelled)

If I recall, True Sight is active for 60 seconds and is on a 30 minute time. So three archers, with PERFECT precision, could keep an area under true sight for 10% of the time.

Therefore, it would take 30 archers with perfect precision to keep an area perpetually "true sighted". I'd hardly say that's likely, let alone unbalancing. Even on Guinevere, the most crowded server in the game, you will never see 30 archers in the same zone. And assuming you COULD find 30 archers, getting them to use TS with perfect precision is probably not going to happen. Edited by: Kalwraith at: 6/12/03 3:30 pm

Geflin,

You sure it was TS on those Milegates? They may be just volleying the wall? Volley doest require LOS and if you get way up on those hills my scout can shoot at a ground target thats actually out of my visual clipping range. So they can often sit back in a very hard to find spot and volley the wall.

For my scout I only use TS when I have a group with me. We will do "TS Runs" and I essentially have everyone AF me while my scout runs up on assassins and slams/slashes them. I take 1 swing to pop stealth and move on to the next. The group kills off the one I popped. Think my personal best is 4 assassins in one run.

But dont forget about Volley. With this last patch changing it to ignore Bladeturn, its foolish, IMHO, for an archer not to have it now. The other archers that I know who have Volley are in the same boat that I am -- we absolutely love it and look to use it as often as we can. Edited by: Xumten at: 6/12/03 5:57 pm

Well, the archers would not have to keep an area TSed the entire time to suppress an area. Having 6 archers one activating TS every 5 minutes would pretty much shut down any assassin activity in the area.

Quote:If I recall, True Sight is active for 60 seconds and is on a 30 minute time. So three archers, with PERFECT precision, could keep an area under true sight for 10% of the time.

Okay I think your not thinking about this too clearly, it would not take perfect coordination, anyone who been in RvR knows perfect coordination is impossible, but once every 5 minutes is enough to render stealth useless or nearly useless. How you ask? How long does it take you to get into position for a kill? Or to get a good look at an enemy force to report back numbers, movements ect? Something like 5 to 10 minutes for me, after all stealth is really slow. So while you’re getting into position or scouting if any Archer Type hits TS you’ll be spotted plan and simple. So even a small number of Archer types with any sort of overlap at all can limit the stealth ‘window’ to next to nothing and you will never know when they have it up or not making getting in close a ridiculously perilous and nearly fruitless operation enough so making /release is a good candidate for your tool bar.

To answer your question I do not believe it was volley simply based on the damage I was taking from each shot (Crit shot damage), but I do realize the utility of Volley and was smart enough to not go to the same place every time. Oh I just remembered there were other people on the wall as well not being hit by arrows only the stealthers (payback attacks most likely).

Do only archers get TS? If they do assassins are out of a job. Whether its 1 minute out of 60 or not the player gets to choose when it is activated. It doesn't just reveal you, it breaks your stealth and stops you from restealthing. As an RA its a nice bonus indeed. Now the ONLY REASON infiltrators were ever grouped with IN THE ENTIRE GAME has been removed, and they are better at it than the infiltrator.

Inf's get a chance to "see" enemy stealthers in a larger radius than most, only a chance, dependant on lvl of stealth + lvl of character (the exact mechanics escape me), we don't break their stealth, if they want to PA they can, we just see them doing it before anyone else. Nice use of an infiltrator, "stick" him to a caster, guard the caster while he nukes the world. You perform a service and get RPs as the caster + rest of group kill people.

Now look at it from the archers PoV: Within a small radius you have an equal chance of seeing through stealth...

(its only the radius that gets smaller as your lvl in stealth goes up, not the chance of being detected, the idea being that the target doesn't even get to roll to see you till you're right on top of them, except the radius is never that small, but thats another story)

...you're stuck to a caster, you see an assassin closing on him, rather than having to run and attack said caster (i'm not even going to mention positional damage at this point) all you do is pop TS, the assassin looses the abilety to use CS and is promptly ganked by anybody/everybody.

Why should archers get an abilety that destroys the assassin's abilety to use a skill? Assassins don't get the abilety to stop archers from critting with their bows, or to stop casters from casting.