Changes to Perk targeting and effect on Agents

[Biggysmallz]

I don't need to play an Agent to know how well they perform in PvP. You're also an idiot if you think I didn't play my NT pre LE.

Wow good go to call other person idiot basing your facts on your own assumptions .

That's because you're not a tank class, unlike soldiers and keepers. It also largely depends on who those 5+ well equipped people are for the keeper or soldier.

Should tank classes have same/better damage/alpha than assassin/finisher class?

My keeper has ~2k NR if I wear all the NR gear I possess. Unlike Agents I can't easily pop two perks into NR.

Waki has 2.1k+ NR in his auno setup, Nogoal has 2350+ NR in his aomainframe setup. Guess RK2 sucks somewhere. < So keepers can't afford nr1/2 and agents can?

Welcome to the world of Keepers and NTs, who's threads have been pissed all over by non keepers/NTs for years.

Yea going around other prof threads, whining is the best way! Something like, wow this guy did something bad to me, will do exact same thing back to him, because it will make me feel good and its such a nice thing to do. It doesn't matter that he will re-do this thing back to me again.

For a shade to do well at all in PvP they either need to be trox and spend 10 perks for MR and be a melee version of an agent spending most of their time in sneak without any kind of range advantage, or spend 8 perks in NR and only appear from sneak when acrobat is up. The latter certainly sounds like a big PVM nerf to me, bigger than anything agents have to endure.

List how many pure dmg perks trox shade posses after MR perked ai20 and how many trox agent for alpha purposes, please. (agent has 3 perks btw for alpha)

[Blackcradle]

I don't need to play an Agent to know how well they perform in PvP. You're also an idiot if you think I didn't play my NT pre LE.

First I'll start of by saying this thread isn't strictly about agent pvp performance, although I'm sure this point will be ignored within the next .01 seconds of anyone reading this. It's about some of our perks being rendered useless, yes, useless, as in they are no longer usable in 99% of situations (some in 100%). Additionally, not that I'm arguing against agents' pvp abilities here, but coming from an NT/Keeper your 'perspective' probably isn't the same as say a sold/enf/advy when pvping against an agent (because any decent agent will kill a nt most of the time and if you fail to alpha an agent you are probably also running on a keeper, and dead if backup isnt near, which is seemingly never for keepers ).

For a shade to do well at all in PvP they either need to be trox and spend 10 perks for MR and be a melee version of an agent spending most of their time in sneak without any kind of range advantage, or spend 8 perks in NR and only appear from sneak when acrobat is up. The latter certainly sounds like a big PVM nerf to me, bigger than anything agents have to endure.

Pretty sure there's plenty of PVP Engineers that would beg to differ as well about how "well" they do in PVM.

EDIT: What Yue said. Same applies for PvM shades.

I'll start by saying just no. I don't know where you grabbed this info from but I can say with certainty you are incorrect. Shades damage is highly perk reliant and even if they sacrificed 8 perks to go nr8 (which only crappy shades would do now with their new nanos, so if you're arguement is based upon gimps then I apologise), I bet a shade could and would still OD an agent in a situation they could actually get to a mob and hit it (not inf easies). Although I'll change the topic here by saying, I dont care about shades, at all. This isn't a shade topic, this isn't an engineer topic, (although if a pvp engineer can't do as 'well' in a pvm situation as an agent ,besides situations like inferno easy missions- or pande where they have no pets, they suck) this is an agent topic, about agent issues with multiple of our perks which are currently worthless and our toolset -or lackthereof- which is buried deeping in the ground after every patch. I'm can only hope you and the rest of the other profs who continually post here don't intend to derail every thread into a flame war time after time but I'm sick of seeing it happen. How much does it annoy you when any thread in the keeper/nt forum get spammed with morons saying 'omg you cant tank 5 people and wtfpwn 2 of them,' or 'nt pvp lolz u got 1 button win nerf.' Surely people can understand to back off on the flame posts for once and just let a community truly express what they (the players) view the problem/issue to be.
I'll apologize in advance if that's too much to ask for.

[Hacre]

I'll apologize in advance if that's too much to ask for.

Actually, it isn't.

I admit to posting on threads like these where various members of the Agent community do little other than run around, scream how they're nerfest and become more nerfester patch by patch. Then they proceed to become visible and wtfpwn most targets on the BS, CH and run away again.

I appreciate that is a largely generalised scenario based on when things go right but when 2 supposed "love children" (NT/keeper) struggle against a prof claiming to be "nerfest ever since SL, wah" then something has to be up somewhere.

I'll repeat again that I do feel and have gone on record many times, openly, that any and all nerfs are bad. A direct nerf to something in the hope of a "fix" or "balance" never brings about any good. Look at the effect of "fixing" absorbs for low HP exploits had on various classes that had absolutely nothing to do with said exploit.

I also share an agent's concern in regards to PvM damage lacking with various arguments of PvP performance used as a justification for no improvement. The same thing happened and is happening with NTs. A lot of the abrasiveness that appears in threads like this come from various things:

Like the NT, people only ever remember the bad stuff. Wtfpwn a fixer with crappy NR in 3s? No problem. They don't give a damn that someone with better NR can counter triples, they don't care that fumbles happen, they don't care that if that "alpha" fails I'm stuck able to do very little offensively, or fire my main defense, for what seems like an eternity.

Much like people don't care that you can't queue up a perk from sneak anymore because Agents did and still do, cause -major- issues for a lot of professions.

I don't know if its the attraction of the class, but the attitude of a lot of agents stinks, first hand. I know a lot of good, decent and friendly agents, but I've also had my fair share of swapped hate tells/epeen waving after getting "oaned" with a LO1234567890 skillful combo by one or more agents from sneak.

You yourself said you do not care about other professions and their problems. Well then don't expect us to care about your's. Take a look at what happened over the proposed Easy Shot nerf to traders, just about every professional, vocal forum person, non traders, basically bayed for Sil's blood over the matter and the nerf never made it to live. Perhaps more of this support could come from the rest of the community if you didn't just dismiss out of hand anyone who doesn't belong to the Agent club.

Responding to other's threads (not you, others do it, often) about problems in PvP with "well wah Agents are nerfer than you QQ more" also goes a long way towards generating hate. You know the whole eye for an eye thing.

Lastly in my Wall of Text crit damage, it'd also help if anyone who isn't the proud owner of an oh so nerfed Agent, wasn't told how clueless they are with any and all comments made. The effect YOU have on OTHERS is just as important as how YOUR chosen profession affects YOU.

Like I don't need to play a trader to know GTH in its current state is retarded.

[kiggity]

does it affect offense?

yes, if you consider the actual landing of UBT as an offensive ability

[Ober]

yes, if you consider the actual landing of UBT as an offensive ability

Ubt has next to no value defensively, so yes, I guess it's a nice offensive tool vs profs that use nanos to heal.

(PvP ofc, ubt is still worth something defensively in PvM, since mobs don't have perks/specials.)

[Blackcradle]

Actually, it isn't.

Thank you.

Just to start off, I dont think most people would call NT's 'lovechildren' besides fixers, some MAs, and maybe soldiers. Keepers of course, are a different story.

You yourself said you do not care about other professions and their problems. Well then don't expect us to care about your's. Take a look at what happened over the proposed Easy Shot nerf to traders, just about every professional, vocal forum person, non traders, basically bayed for Sil's blood over the matter and the nerf never made it to live. Perhaps more of this support could come from the rest of the community if you didn't just dismiss out of hand anyone who doesn't belong to the Agent club.

What I said, I said in context of this subject at hand. I play other professions too and I don't want anyone to be left out, but improving/fixing certain things within one profession shouldn't require other profession to be 'fixed' first, I think anyone would agree with that. Like I have said multiple times before whether or not other professions have troubles in certain area, more or less than agents, is irrelevant, yes completely and totally irrelevant to this topic. This topic isn't about them. I get your point that our effect on others is supposedly just as important as how your profession effects you, I just disagree with it. With that logic we'd have to consider all other professions issues at hand before addressing anything. For example, traders as you pointed out. GTH is OP blah blah, well think about how this affects say...NTs or docs, then think about how this effects other professions (not as much). Saying other professions should be taken into consideration for certain fixes might be fair, although I don't think so given that most people are generally uninformed. It's not the way things happen in this game so I don't see why it should be the case here. You also took for exampe easy shot and the general consensus from the community about why it should be left alone. I myself have a trader and enjoy pvping with him and I'm happy this wasn't changed. Although with some of the changes that have been made to agent perks, FIRST we weren't notified beforehand, it was just changed, end of story, so the issue is not comparable. Subsequently another issue is that EVERY, yes EVERY thread about any agent improvement gets derailed on a fairly consistant basis. I can't really say much about the 'agent only club' which we are all a part of, but I can say playing an agent is a far my dynamic experience then player lots of other professions due to the innate diversity on the profession. I personally wouldn't lash out and say no one else has a clue but after playing one as my main for as long as I've been playing Ao BUT I can say that lots of people still don't seem to understand various things in nature about the profession which is probably why some members of the community come off with arrogant negative attitudes. There are a lot of common misconceptions about agents which a lot of us have to deal with fairly consistantly and surely there are lots of agents which are less tolerable than others. I'm not discrediting any of your points as many of them are indeed valid, just all shouldnt be punished for some, at least in my view.

Finally just because members of a certain professions community have negative attitudes that shouldnt exclude that said profession from being addressed when a fix or multiple changes are warranted. Additionally the entirety of the agent community shouldnt be punished for the agents who As/zone etc like everyone seems to point out. NTs were the ones who exploited low-hp for so long and subsequently everyone was effected by the changes, I doubt many people would agree that was fair. If so many agents are doing that then maybe that's a sign everything isn't as fine and dandy as everyone thinks, who would rather as/run then kill someone?

[Cyberleet]

I also share an agent's concern in regards to PvM damage lacking with various arguments of PvP performance used as a justification for no improvement.

I think we do adequatly in both, but we have some serious bugs with tools going on

I don't know if its the attraction of the class

I came from games like Metal Gear Solid and stealth/strategy games where the charracter is squishy but very very deadly and stealthy-
-So thats why agents seemed to fit what I like in gaming. Still is

Of course, some people only choose for pvp-prowess (ie Epeen ) but I do think a lot of players feel the same.

I don't know if its the attraction of the class, but the attitude of a lot of agents stinks, first hand. I know a lot of good, decent and friendly agents, but I've also had my fair share of swapped hate tells/epeen waving after getting "oaned" with a LO1234567890 skillful combo by one or more agents from sneak.

Comunity issue, nothing profession related nor unique to one.

The thread is really about perks where some of them are ruined.
A lot of professions does well but serious issues do get adressed, like procs firing off on themselfs or something, while these issues doesn't get adressed. Thats all.

And thats not agents being emo, thats players experienced with said perks giving acurate feedback and voicing their concerns.
Apart from that, these perks are extremely in line with agents per definition :>


Assassinate= useless.
It never fires off before a mob is dead or because of the defense checks it gets resisted on mobs it can fire on.

Death Stike- Even worse.

There is a lot of suggestions to fix these perks in agent forum, so read on

Like I don't need to play a trader to know GTH in its current state is retarded

Thats an opinion...really. I get what you are saying tho. ^_^