Dirty Tricks: Skill and More Options

[Vazbol]

So it has been a few months since we've had the first general ability release that included a number of specializations, styles and classes. We've all played around with things, broke things, broke them harder and provided feedback on a lot of pain points, such as the heavy armor experience, the difficulty of raising some skills and general wackiness of a lot of abilities not working as intended.


however, we sort of have a playing style that's been made difficult due to an issue with a combat class spec and how it works. Before the ability release, artifice was a skill learnable at some trainers, and would be what was used for some performance stuff and theft. But with the ability release and dirt kick being introduced with a artifice skill focus, the skill had been pulled out from trainers. Anyone using combat pragmatic or playing as a marauder had a slower grind from this, but it wouldn't be too painful to progress a skill at base speed. Anyone trying to grind out artifice through means of sleight of hand or theft had their work cut out for them. And it was just easier to grab dirt kick and dirt kick ones way to master thievery.

...Which seems to be the issue at hand. Considering the impact thievery has on people, it should be something that is difficult to consistantly due, and train up (Why it has a number of abilities attached to it). But being able to rapidly train it by kicking dirt into people's face causes it's own problems when attached to artifice. So the skill for dirty tricks has been reconsidered for change.

But there hasn't been an update about this for a while. Dirty tricks still use artifice for offense, and no trainer teaches artifice still. Not only that, people wanting to use dirty tricks aren't sure what to train. We can train artifice yes, but a lot of the other activities for artifice, such as pickpocketing and stealing, have been made into ability point investment options. So if one went forward training artifice right now, using up any skill gain bonuses on the skill, and the decision is made to change it to perception as one mentioned alternative, then those resources are wasted. Doubly so if said person has no desire to take up the theft abilities at all. Just having a trained up skill rank they can't use for anything they want. It would be informative if we got an update if this change is still planned for dirty tricks, to avoid wasting time and reward resources on a skill someone might end up not using.


Moving away from skill stuff. We also need some more dirty tricks in general. Dirt kick does serve its role for combat disengagement and perception dropping for stealing, but it's also the only dirty tricks marauders get. And combat wise, it currently does nothing really special. This is ignoring the lack of balance allowing for negative rerolls on defenses and the whole thing surrounding shameless opportunist (that would be covered if balance gets put back in). But it does mean dirt kick doesn't exactly do anything right now in an offensive context outside of a timed stun. The bonus you get is a perception drop. Good for landing other dirty tricks with more crippling debuffs, but we don't have any of those to use except another dirt kick, which does not look to stack the debuff. As well, that being it's downside for now, dirt kicking someone in the face doesn't do much to support the follow up strike from tactics marauder. An extra dirty trick or two might flesh things out and provide a follow up to dirt kicking someone. But for now, marauder does feel like an incomplete class spec compared to the others.

But that's just the feel for the class and artifice stuff at the moment. Stuff is still being worked on, and there had been more critical issues to adress (See previously mentioned list of heavy armor and the rest). And people have enjoyed a lot of the new things worked on, especially the two openned guilds. So I am aware there's a list to slowly work through, and appreciate what's been made so far.