Ranged Combat and Stealth

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Tessa
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Ranged Combat and Stealth

Post by Tessa »

Howdy,
So I am hoping to explain this as best I can, but if clarification is needed, please let me know. And um, please don't mount me on a wall.

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I play a primarily ranged/stealth character. While my stealth is almost at 400, I still find it particularly strange that ranged attacks are being spotted from the easiest targets to the Liberi. If mobs in hiding are harder to spot without higher perception, I feel this should go both ways. In order to at least make stealth feel like it was worth training, I'd love if our risk was re-examined. I am pausing at maxing stealth to my ranger's cap, but if I did decide to cap it, I would feel very cheated if my ranged attacks were still being spotted 2 out of the 3 times.
I hope this makes sense. Thank you for reading.
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Lexx416
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Re: Ranged Combat and Stealth

Post by Lexx416 »

I've been doing ranged stealth on an alt, and while ranged skillgain is a little slow feeling by comparison to Melee, I feel like I'm able to consistently get off between 2 and 4 shots before I'm discovered most of the time unless I just get really unlucky, and that feels pretty fair. Enemies don't have any means of retaliating if you're hidden from them, and so I think it's intentional that you build up risk as quickly as you do - to prevent people from being able to infinitely snipe from what amounts to an untouchable position.

Something to keep in mind is that for combat actions like attacking, your stealth only counts up to 10 skill per level, similar to how Melee and Ranged training works. So you can train your stealth higher than Ranged or Melee, but if you're level 20 and you've got 400 in your stealth skill, only 200 of that stealth counts for the purposes of combat calculations. You can still sneak in and out and you're counted as having your full 400 stealth, but only a portion will count towards your combat stealth checks.
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Rias
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Re: Ranged Combat and Stealth

Post by Rias »

Lexx made some very good points. The Risk system is there to essentially prevent stealth from being Invincible Mode. Think of the Risk system as a sort of roundabout way to have cooldowns on stealth utilization. When it comes to combat, stealth is meant to be a situational bonus, not a constant state of bonus.

For stealthy combat types (both melee and ranged), my suggestions are:

- Enjoy the ambush/sniping for starting off an encounter in your favor, but accept that you'll be pulled out of hiding before too long, and learn to manage in open combat.
- If you prefer to try and only do combat from stealth, you will need to accept that there will be significant downtime between encounters as you wait for Risk to tick down.

For ranged users specifically, I recommend finding a buddy who is willing to GUARD you while in open combat. It's not always an option, but it's great fun when it's available, and then you don't have to worry about your Risk rating!
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Lexx416
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Re: Ranged Combat and Stealth

Post by Lexx416 »

Rias wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 3:01 pm - Enjoy the ambush/sniping for starting off an encounter in your favor, but accept that you'll be pulled out of hiding before too long, and learn to manage in open combat.
This is actually one of the reasons why I aim for the legs, on my ranger :) So I can make it a bit harder for bad guys to try to get me, and make it a bit easier to hit them.
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Frisbee
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Re: Ranged Combat and Stealth

Post by Frisbee »

These are great suggestions! If I might add one more...

It's not a bad thing, especially if you play a coward character and you're in a group, to temporarily run away, to assess the situation, then rejoin the encounter and strike again a few more times. My main will ALWAYS die in open combat, especially when there are a lot of hostiles, partly because it's not easy to keep track of everyone, and also because she's not hard to hit anyway. Knowing when to take risks and when to slip away for a while has proved greatly effective ever since I've started doing it.
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