7L Merc Question

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Sirian
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7L Merc Question

Post by Sirian » Sun Oct 13, 2002 4:29 am

Jaffa talked the EST guys into trying some 7L multi. Been fun so far, so I tried a little solo play, too. Near the end of A2 Normal, my first major annoyance issue has come up.

My Act Two merc turned out to have Cleansing as his aura. That did not activate until he reached clvl 12, by which time I'd had him around for a while. That proved useful and I was content to keep him that way. At clvl 18, however, he started using telekill attack: I presume that's the Assassin Dragon Flight skill in action. :x THIS IS NOT GOOD!

Why isn't this good? If I wanted a merc to get me killed while my melee char is fighting LEB's, I would have hired a rogue. OK, so he hasn't gotten me killed yet. It's only a matter of time, though. He came rather close while fighting Kaa.

My question: Does an Act Two merc exist without teleportation?? If so, where do I find one and how do I be sure I got what I'm after? Is there a reference anywhere on the various mercs and changes? I was all in for "find out as I go" until I hit this unacceptable brick wall. Now... Now I want to know more in advance, before I commit to continue.

You guys seem to have done a fine job with this thing. I know how much work went into it.


- Sirian

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Post by FoxBat » Mon Oct 14, 2002 4:37 pm

I hadn't thought about it before, but it should be possible to give players more choices about what skills they would like their merc to use by offering more hireing choices.

It's just a tad odd though. You realize that you're asking for a merc that does not engage in combat! This kind of thing appears only important for HC. I might add a "pacifist" merc with better auras for this, but let's just say theres a reason I lowered the death experience penalties :o

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Post by Sirian » Tue Oct 15, 2002 1:55 am

I hadn't thought about it before, but it should be possible to give players more choices about what skills they would like their merc to use by offering more hireing choices.

That didn't exactly answer my question. Should I take that to be a "No, there are no A2 Mercs without telekill"?

It's just a tad odd though. You realize that you're asking for a merc that does not engage in combat!

That's nowhere near what I'm asking for. I'm asking for a merc whose engagements can be controlled well enough to ALLOW my melee build char to dart in there, get a lick (a nice fat kick will do) and dart out, as opposed to a merc who will teleport in to attack while I'm in range and cause me to be sprayed with electricity or other elemental nastiness.

Any experienced melee player will know, if you hire a rogue or a mage, they are going to keep blindly, stupidly shooting at LEBs. A merc is GREAT to have around for any and all ranged chars, but the fact that all of this game's serious threats are up close puts all melee chars further into harm's way. The value of a ranged merc is more than wiped out by their inability to take orders to STOP FIRING. Now if you could program that into there -- the ability to leave your merc in town when you don't want them along -- I'd consider that a breakthrough!

Certainly the telekill skill gets these otherwise now-shy AI's into the fight. You fixed their problem with being too easily slain by making them hit and run fighters, and more run than hit. That they will now stand around and ignore enemies you are fighting appears to be a bad side effect, in that they are now too shy on average, and you fixed THAT problem by giving them the telekill skill, to give them instant attack ability that doesn't conflict with their new "stay alive" orders.

All well and good, vs the average bear. Vs LEB's, they are now essentially ranged mercs. And any merc that gets me killed even once, or who ADDS to my risks at the times when I fighting the riskiest oppoenents, is not worth the trouble, no matter what positives he brings to the table.

Now perhaps, given the changes made to the merc AI, I may be in effect asking for a noncombat merc, the equivalent of a druid spirit, but that is not my intent. I may end up getting rid of all the mercs and playing alone.


This kind of thing appears only important for HC.

Huh?

What? Dying only matters if it's permanent? That's never been how I play, as I think you know. I happen to play hardcore and normal THE SAME, just that the consequences of making a mistake in hardcore are more severe: the game's over. In softcore, the game can go on. That does not translate into death being meaningless. It might for the bnet masses, but you didn't exactly put all this work into a mod for them, did you? :) You did it for folks who will appreciate it.

If your answer is "put up with it, it will only get you killed vs LEB's, and it's softcore, so what does it matter anyway"... Well, it matters to me.


I might add a "pacifist" merc with better auras for this, but let's just say theres a reason I lowered the death experience penalties.

The one thing I never did in D2 was to 3dot a pure melee char without ranged or pet support. Why? Because the threats to melee chars were disproportionate, the armor system broken, and the game speed combined with the targetting system too blurry. May still be that way, since small precise movements and specific targetting are impossible, and shift-click style defensive stances are ineffective, giving ALL -- I say again, ALL -- of the initiative and advantage to the attacker. That part of the game falls on the game engine, and I don't suppose any mod can fix it.

Even so, I'm enjoying my kung fu Sassy (complete with GI Joe-style Kung Fu Grip and twenty hotkeys for using it) enough to keep going. After all, mixing-n-matching the charge-ups and finishers puts thinking and strategy back into what is otherwise generally a mind-numbing clickfest, but this merc thing was a setback. If the game is as hard as you say, from the normal monsters, that's a good thing. D2 and ESPECIALLY Lord of Disappointment x-pack were notorious for nothing mattering except the bosses. You may have changed that, but the bosses still remain the biggest threats. They still have special abilities. They still have more hit points.

If I can't take a pure melee char through because the upclose threats are too severe, that's a problem. I know hot to make any ranged char work, no matter how fragile or how feeble. Yeah, maybe lack of speed on footwear would complicate that, but only to a point. Tempting Fate still works, and that's all I would really need. Melee chars are where the hot action OUGHT TO be, but the ridiculous imbalances of the original game rendered them unfun, leaving only the ranged builds of various flavors. MSLEB's have always been broken. That's a strange and illogical side effect of the combination. You may (or may not) have read my rantings on that topic in the past. Take out all the LEB's and this merc skill wouldn't be an issue. But... it is. And it's such a big issue for me in my quest for fun and logical melee gameplay that it will be a deal breaker, since in my full clear style I will encounter many LEBs and not be content to avoid them. I'll have to ditch the merc, I guess. That kind of messes with my game plan a bit, but... perhaps that will be for the best.


- Sirian

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Post by Brother Laz » Tue Oct 15, 2002 8:18 am

I read those posts and I thought, 'this looks like Sirian!', and lo and behold,...

You'll be pleased to hear that I have D2 1.03 installed, with a level 23 (and counting) firebolt sorc. :)
SIRIAN!" wrote:You may have changed that, but the bosses still remain the biggest threats. They still have special abilities. They still have more hit points.
This can easily be changed in the dlls, by lowering their skill levels and HP bonuses. I believe Apoc posted about it some time ago.

But actually it's the minions that pose the most problems. I can handle an extra fast holy freeze fanaticism minotaur. I don't do mercs, so I can handle a MSCELEB with leap attack or smite or dragon tail. But I cannot handle said boss and his mob of x8 HP 'c'mon, just beat on us for 20 seconds till one of us dies while everyone else is hammering on you' minions.

Just remove the x8 HP for minions and decrease the stupid damage bonus of extra strong and it'd be a lot better. In D1, there was also a boss monster that did x3 damage of a regular monster. His name was Diablo.
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y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

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Post by FoxBat » Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:23 pm

Yes, it is possible to make such mercs that hang back, and they can co-exist with mercs that do something.

I never thought about this before because it's not an important issue to my perspective. In hell my chars die once every 30 minutes, and there are many more dangerous things out there than LEBs. Heck mobs tend to kill me without any boss helping them. From my perspective, the extra LEB risk is nothing next to the help I get.

For HC or other "almost-never-die" kind of approaches, this is a problem. I'm only hesitant about accomodating this viewpoint because I think these kind of players will not like Hell difficulty at all, or at least the kind of one that I am aiming at. It's even worse with multiplayer lag. If you can survive lag, that means you can survive without your character reacting at all for a time, and I attempted to counter that as much as possible simply because I like frequent and fast reaction. This comes at the cost of some lag deaths. To me that's acceptable, I know it's unacceptable in HC and perhaps your SC playstyle.

I don't really know how much a problem this is in HC as I know those kind of players will take it safe and avoid more deaths. I lack any real data about how HC pans out, all I have to go on is the comment I've heard that "tanking in multiplayer HC SL is impossible", and I can see why they are correct. Truly defensive characters need to rely on more active skills like war cry, howl, conversion, mind blast, etc, reaction-intensive skills, which will not help all that much when lag strikes.

An extra merc type isn't hard to implement, but I suspect those desiring this will find more fundamental problems later on.

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Post by aurikan » Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:55 pm

I concur that HC multiplayer is *hard*. Very hard. So hard, in fact, that I had to play in the middle of the night, when nobody else was on, in order to beat act 5 nightmare -- I *needed* the better ping for reaction time (and the fact that nobody else was around crashing the games helped too). Even so, it took me more than 1h30 from the Worldstone waypoint.

However, I think several people have proved that it *is* possible to play the game successfully HC - at least with a ranged character - even no-twink. Hell is taxing but fun, or so says Conqueror Poe, level 62 and counting :)

Now, the next challenge is to come up with viable melee chars :OI:

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Post by Sirian » Fri Oct 18, 2002 7:38 am

I'm only hesitant about accomodating this viewpoint because I think these kind of players will not like Hell difficulty at all, or at least the kind of one that I am aiming at.

Just curious, have you read all of my old spot reports?

Variants exist because the normal game gets old. Variants exist to get more out of the game. I've run some fairly extreme variants, including hardcore. I push my chars to the brink and dance along it.

If the game itself had better balance and more challenge, that wouldn't be the end of variants, but it would mean less NEED for variants. That is what I hope you have achieved here, and so far it looks very promising. "So far" now being almost to the end of normal difficulty, with some very cool changes in acts 4 and 5. If playing "normal characters" is entertaining rather than boring, there'd be a lot to play without touching variant land.

Obviously, I'm in no position to criticize until I've experienced it all the way through. I don't care to nitpick anyway. I chose to sit back and let others deal with D2 modding while I moved on to new games. I didn't expect to come back, but I also never said never. Those who know just how deeply disenchanted I became with the expansion will realize what a compliment to your effort it is that I'm still playing it. The merc issue was just a surprise: I ditched the merc and am doing fine on my own.

I agree that there are other major threats besides LEB's. There are ways of dealing with them, too. The way I had to deal with the merc question was choose not to use a merc. That will surely have its drawbacks, but I can find ways to resolve those. There was no way to resolve the merc being able to attack when I did not want him to. If only D2 itself had enough intelligence for you to be able to give some simple commands to your merc, such as "Follow", "Avoid", "Engage", "Stay With Me", etc. It does not, so... I've made my choice.

In the good news department, my char got her rear end handed to her stepping out into the first area of act four. I didn't know what to expect and got into a furball, and did not get out. You have no idea how entertaining that was! :o Seriously. :D A little reconnoiter goes a long way. Presented with problems, I will seek solutions, and generally find them.


I like frequent and fast reaction. This comes at the cost of some lag deaths.

No lag deaths for me in single player. The action is hot, though, and there's some serious pressure on my Tempting skills taking place, in single and in TCP multi with the guys.

I can tell the difference between a latency death (true lag), a packet loss death (my I/O isn't reaching the server), and a mistake on my part. The first I can cope with. The second is always frustrating, and why I don't do hardcore multi. There is mutual exclusion between the concepts of "truly difficult" and "shielded from lag". D1 would be impossibly unfun if it had D2 style lag. That's just the way it is.

Well, I prefer D1 to D2, as far as the dynamics of pvm. I want it hard, precise, and for death to come only when I make a mistake. That's the ideal, and the closer to it, the more entertaining the game will be. D1 has its own lag, and its own problems, but they are manageable.

I won't ever blame your mod for D2's lag, or any death caused therein.


all I have to go on is the comment I've heard that "tanking in multiplayer HC SL is impossible"

Tanking in D1 is impossible, too. Run your warrior out there into the thick of that H/H mob of Azure Drakes and "tank" and let me know how it turns out. Yet the D1 warrior was, is, and probably always will be my favorite Diablo experience. He was sturdy enough to stand up to SOME action, toe to toe, yet vulnerable enough to force you to play smartly, to know WTF you are doing. (And no, I don't use telekill. If I wanted to play a mage, I'd play a mage).

Tanking ought to be impossible. OUGHT TO BE. If you stand there like a golem and can't be brought down, there's a problem. Yet you ought to be able to take a couple of licks. D2's broken armor system made items useless for defense. Nothing mattered. The defense-boosting skills wrecked everything. Balancing for THOSE when they were maxed out left everything else in the dust, and screwed up. Whether or not you've made that right, I don't yet know, but so far I've seen reason to keep playing.

Perhaps I'll have more to say after I've played farther.


- Sirian

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Post by Brother Laz » Fri Oct 18, 2002 10:49 am

It's not just defense that is broken - it's paralyzing skills. Warcry anyone? A bard is about the most boring barb subclass imaginable - I even prefer ww'ing through hell cows with 'shako' and 'ss' than standing there right in the middle of a mob for 20 seconds with everything having pretty little stars over their head.

Shockwave is even worse; It is broken in CLoD, and I believe it is VERY broken in Seven Lances; it does 300 damage to its entire area of effect, stuns, and can be fast cast. It's better than frozen orb in SL. Everything is a piece of cake, the only difference between players 1 and players 8 is the time it takes to reduce their HP. Snoozing my way through NM Hardcore, the UBER GODLY 5 spirit wolves with high level direwolf and 1500 HP (and counting) with 550% spirit of barbs flatten everything. So far for the bear being a melee character. :-| When I 3dot him, I'm going to do something interesting for a change. A CB sorc, now that it has been nerfed, of course. :)
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y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

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Post by Sirian » Fri Oct 18, 2002 11:52 am

If it's boring, why finish? Give Foxbat the feedback on what you think is amiss, then move on to an another character. Maybe if the skills do get fixed, rebalanced again, you can pick the char back up again. If you 3dot now, you'll never want to see that char or those skills again.

I have some concerns about Blades of Ice. With three charges, it damages and chills everything within four yards. The chill even persists, and seems to hit moving monsters more than once, as well as hit monsters moving INTO the chill area while the chill persists. This is very very powerful. Of course, building up three charges with this slow-swinging move while mobbed is not always that easy, and it's less uber in multi, even just three players, where the damage is not enough to kill everything in one shot. As the game progresses, I expect single player to leave that realm, too, at which point what is momentarly very strong for now will fall back into merely functional later. The skill did not work properly at ALL in LOD, so now that it does work, it's way way way more useful at slvl 6 than Phoenix Strike is at slvl 1, but then you might expect that.

The biggest problem I have with phoenix strike, or with any skill where it matters how many charges get stored up, is that dual-claw can rack up two charges on one swing. You attack once, she swings twice, and more often than not picks up two charges at a time. This is Very Very Good (TM) when trying to get three charges quickly, and indifferent to Tiger Strike, but impossible to control with any precision when you want a specific number of charges. I gave up on Thunder, as that one does better on two charges than three, most of the time. I'd put claw-and-shield on second weapon slot for more control, but I've got throwing potions in the second slot for occasional use, and even with 40% of my stats into dex, my blocking with a shield would go DOWN, which is not good. (Maybe that will change if I get a good enough shield). If I end up in fights where I NEED fire damage, because neither cold nor physical are going to cut it. I'll need to be able to stop Phoenix at one charge. Perhaps that situation won't arise too often, we'll see.

There were so many things wrong with dual-claw in LoD that it wasn't worth playing. Tons of bugs, tons of imbalances, tons of headaches. The charge-ups are a very cool thing, though. I almost get a taste of tactics similar to D1 warrior in some respects: the details of it, the movement, the targetting, the engage-disengage factors. Not the same, but akin. The part about having to know your enemies, and to fit your attacks and tactics to the enemy, is what I find fun. My mind stays engaged, and there is satisfaction in each new situation overcome. That's pretty much the opposite of what you are describing, with a single uberskill that you snore through. Quit messin with that and get yourself a character worthy of your time.


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Post by Brother Laz » Fri Oct 18, 2002 12:20 pm

My hero" wrote:If it's boring, why finish? Give Foxbat the feedback on what you think is amiss, then move on to an another character.
I want to prove my theory that shockwave is the best elemental skill (beats everything in the elemental tree except volcano and sometimes boulder but unlike these two skills you don't need wolves for shockwave... I use them for the overpowered spirit of barbs), then bury FoxBat under balance reports until he caves in and fixes it. Noticed the listed charged strike fix for the latest patch? Found out that it did 200-300 damage per bolt and the bolts increased per level. My charged strikazon, aptly named LytraTimesTen, struck down a Hell Minion of Lister's pack in exactly four seconds. Fun char, but it was unbalanced.
Softcore Wussie" wrote:I'll need to be able to stop Phoenix at one charge.
IIRC in classic LoD phoenix does stop at one charge... everyone and their brother spam meteors on the realms, and that is pretty much all the assassin is used for. (makes me wonder: why the timer on sorc skills with a skill like this?!?) Unless FoxBat changed it, in which case I'd say change it back ASAP!!!
19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
Median XL released!
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y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

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Post by Gillias » Fri Oct 25, 2002 6:14 am

Here's a quick overview of the A2 mercs in Seven Lances.

From the Seven Lances readme.txt :
Each type of merc (combat, offensive, defense) starts with their own aura. This is the same whether you hire the merc in
normal, nightmare, or hell. However, mercs hired in nightmare will at a certain level switch to using a new second aura.
Mercs hired in normal do this level up twice switching to a new third aura. The hell and nightmare mercs have higher
levels of these said auras though.


What this means is there are 9 possible aura's you can pick a merc for in Seven Lances. I looked in the hirelings.txt and found the exact sequence of aura-switching to be (mlvl = merc level) :

A2 Combat Town Guard
Normal : Cleansing (mlvl 9) => Prayer (mlvl 31) => Thorns (mlvl 55)
Nightmare : Cleansing (mlvl 31) => Prayer (mlvl 55)
Hell : Cleansing (mlvl 55)

A2 Defensive Town Guard
Normal : Resist Lightning (mlvl 9) => Defiance (mlvl 31) => Holy Freeze (mlvl 55)
Nightmare : Resist Lightning => Defiance (mlvl 55)
Hell : Resist Lightning (mlvl 55)

A2 Offensive Town Guard
Normal : Blessed Aim (mlvl 9) => Might (mlvl 31) => Sanctuary (mlvl 55)
Nightmare : Blessed Aim (mlvl 31) => Might (mlvl 55)
Hell : Blessed Aim (mlvl 55)

So, if you want to ultimately end up with f.i. a Prayer Merc, you'll have to hire the Combat Town Guard in Nightmare difficulty. If you want to end up with a Holy Freeze Merc, you must have hired the Defensive Town Guard in Normal. So, if you're like me and finished Normal difficulty with an Offensive Town Guard for helping out with AR, and planned on getting a Holy Freeze merc in Nightmare later on, this is bad news as you're going to have to go back and level a new merc. In hardcore multi, too ... :roll:

Finally : all of the A2 mercs get Teleport as their secondary skill (at level 18 or above).

Cheers,
Gillias.

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