[.11] Mettle and new fighters.

[Tantarus]

So I was just building a level 1 fighter for a new lowbie campaign in oregon. I realized I could buy a mettle at 30ish build. But I cant actually use a mettle till I have 80 build to have 21 body. This seems really rough for starting players and fighters even worse for templars/scouts. Perhaps that damage it does to you needs to be reconsidered? It just seems super pushing to new players and awkward that you can buy the skill many levels before you actually have the body to use it.

You can actually buy 3 mettles before you can use 1.....

 

[Polare]

Note that with purchases of Hardy, you can have the Body Points to use Mettle as a starting character.

 

[Tantarus]

Are there any other skills that you can buy but dont function without buying another skill?

Riposte, I guess? But requiring 10 build worth of Hardy to use mettle when you can first buy them seems off to me.

 

[Tantarus]

The skill seems very punishing at low levels and even more so for hybrid classes. Something I had not previously considered as I only looked at it from the pov of a level 40.

 

[Draven]

Note that with purchases of Hardy, you can have the Body Points to use Mettle as a starting character.

Incorrect.

A starting character who purchases Hardy to meet the requirement will not have the Martial XP to buy Mettle.

Unless Hardy has been proposed and confirmed to be Martial XP....

 

[Alkalin3]

Incorrect.

A starting character who purchases Hardy to meet the requirement will not have the Martial XP to buy Mettle.

Unless Hardy has been proposed and confirmed to be Martial XP....

Bryan is showing his hand early haha.

 

[Feldor]

The skill seems very punishing at low levels and even more so for hybrid classes. Something I had not previously considered as I only looked at it from the pov of a level 40.

I wonder if it couldn't be better mechanic'd with instead of taking 20 damage, you instead take a weakness. Thematically, this feels good. (You weakened yourself pushing through the effect.) You could optionally make it not work if you were already affected by weakness; or just have it reset the weakness duration.

Downsides against this is it still is more harsh on starting players, and there is a lot more healing available than remove weakness. (And as a templar, I know I will just self-heal through mettle uses.) That and it makes mettle useless against weakness...

It might also be worth mentioning that at the moment, since wear-extra-armor & blacksmith are martial skills, there's a reasonable chance that if characters buy wear extra armor sufficient to cap armor for their current physreps, you may end up with a number of people who qualify for mettle but don't have 20 body points. I'm not sure if it is by design that mettle is not usable for them.

 

[JeffL]

I think this really deserves some thought. Mettle is a pretty punishing defense. It costs you XP to buy AND body to use.

Unlike Weapon Shield (for example), which costs XP to buy and can be put up again immediately without cost.

And then the issue of level and body points... a spellsword will have to be incredibly high level before they could use two Mettles in succession.

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

 

[Muir]

Yeah, I think this is a large part of why I discount Mettle as a replacement for the Cloaks and Banes fighter haul around now to let them keep playing the game. It's only really usable more than once or at best twice for very high level fighters, if then.

As a class ability, it is flatly inferior to Dodge.

 

[Tantarus]

Yeah, I think this is a large part of why I discount Mettle as a replacement for the Cloaks and Banes fighter haul around now to let them keep playing the game. It's only really usable more than once or at best twice for very high level fighters, if then.

As a class ability, it is flatly inferior to Dodge.

It is more akin to Evade, but yes still much worse. Evade being a parry is kinda insane.

I have play tested fighter twice so far, and mettle has been really good. I bought 10 last time I played and it was about right. That said I am very high level so I have 91 body. Which kinda blinded me to some of the issues. Until I started building and mapping out build spending for a level character....

 

[Muir]

Yep. I thought it was pretty okay until I started mapping out my alt, and tried him as a fighter. He's still pretty decent sized at 115 build, but you have to have 180 xp on a fighter at present to use Mettle twice and not fall down, assuming that you don't invest into a bunch of Hardy.

Even if you're using Hardy, that makes the 'actual' cost per use of Mettle 23XP per, and one bought per 4 character levels at best due to the restriction on Hardy.

 

[Draven]

Yep. I thought it was pretty okay until I started mapping out my alt, and tried him as a fighter. He's still pretty decent sized at 115 build, but you have to have 180 xp on a fighter at present to use Mettle twice and not fall down, assuming that you don't invest into a bunch of Hardy.

Even if you're using Hardy, that makes the 'actual' cost per use of Mettle 23XP per, and one bought per 4 character levels at best due to the restriction on Hardy.

Are you planning on zero reliance on other people/production items?

I’m not trying to be mean or anything, but based on your recent posts about Fighter defenses, it sounds like you’re unhappy about changes that were specifically designed to

1) limit power bloat
2) strongly encourage teamwork

#1 is the result of decades of unchecked power growth causing massive scaling issues. #2 has always been a core aspect of Alliance.

Mettle is great, and Parry is great, but they are simply tools in the box meant to have their place in key moments. Dodge is the best defense for the class expected to be in the most danger. Parry is an emergency weapon counter for you or your friend; Mettle is best used as a gap closer in conjunction with dumb defenses (Shield spells). Between dumb defenses and Mettle, even your Fighter should be able to absorb two effects before closing.

If you can’t close that gap, you either need more support, your scaling is off, your level is too low, your tactics are poor, or maybe you’re taking on something that is intended to have advantages over you.

 

[Feldor]

So I think the concern here is not trying to be self sufficient, but that you can't use an ability you purchased -- at all at low level, or at mid level without getting healing in between. The game doesn't really have anything else use-gated in this way.


If damage really is the right way to throttle this ability, I did have the thought of what if instead of doing 20 damage, it did your_level+5 damage? This way it'd be usable when you could first buy it, and it'd scale appropriately as you leveled up.

 

[Muir]

It is, so far as I can tell, the sole ability in the rules that relies upon an out of class resource (healing) to be functional. Fighters have no in-class method of regaining body, and Hearty is not (at present) classed as a Martial skill.

 

[Draven]

The game also doesn’t have any other ability whose value inherently changes with level.

It does, however, have a number of abilities that have a flat numeric effect. Slays/Assassinates/Evocations.

If we introduce the concept of “scaling with level” to any ability, it would be an argument for all abilities. That would require even more reworking of the system, particularly at the design core.

A single Slay, for example, might take out an enemy appropriately statted for a 4th level character. It would certainly be less effective at higher levels, however, unless you had purchased multiple, plus Improved Slays.

Mettle is a bit of a reverse, in that it’s pretty expensive in terms of Body for a low-level character to use. However, that cost isn’t impossible to overcome or even compensate for. Armor is much easier to rep, healing is easier to get, and Resolute is a thing.

Mettle will require consideration and thought to use. I don’t think that’s wrong for the game. It creates situations where you will feel incredibly satisfied when it was correctly used, and I think that’s worth it.

 

[Tantarus]

Mettle is a bit of a reverse, in that it’s pretty expensive in terms of Body for a low-level character to use. However, that cost isn’t impossible to overcome or even compensate for. Armor is much easier to rep, healing is easier to get, and Resolute is a thing.

It is not just expensive at low levels, It is not useable. Unless you buy a ton of hearty skills.

I am unclear on the meaning of your comment about armor and resolute, neither help when trying to use mettle?

 

[Muir]

Are you planning on zero reliance on other people/production items?

I’m not trying to be mean or anything, but based on your recent posts about Fighter defenses, it sounds like you’re unhappy about changes that were specifically designed to

1) limit power bloat
2) strongly encourage teamwork

#1 is the result of decades of unchecked power growth causing massive scaling issues. #2 has always been a core aspect of Alliance.

Mettle is great, and Parry is great, but they are simply tools in the box meant to have their place in key moments. Dodge is the best defense for the class expected to be in the most danger. Parry is an emergency weapon counter for you or your friend; Mettle is best used as a gap closer in conjunction with dumb defenses (Shield spells). Between dumb defenses and Mettle, even your Fighter should be able to absorb two effects before closing.

If you can’t close that gap, you either need more support, your scaling is off, your level is too low, your tactics are poor, or maybe you’re taking on something that is intended to have advantages over you.

I feel like you're rather arguing past me and focused far more on a distaste for the current status quo than what I'm saying. What I want, in a nutshell, is for fighters to be in a position to do their schtick (aka, melee combat) without feeling like glass cannons because a single low level spell turns their fun into a nap.

Cutting defense bloat is good. Cutting defenses entirely while making the take-out effects even more effective feels like an incredibly harsh restructuring of how the game will play for fighters, and Mettle stands out as being vastly harder to buy in-class than other classes' in-class defensives (looking at you here, Dodge). Remember that Disarm now disables spirit linked weapons for 5 seconds, wither is almost entirely anti-melee now while a caster simply stays off the front line as they are thematically speaking not fighting hand to hand anyway, and shatter works on Arcane and Rendered armor.

 

[Draven]

It is not just expensive at low levels, It is not useable. Unless you buy a ton of hearty skills.

I am unclear on the meaning of your comment about armor and resolute, neither help when trying to use mettle?

Armor and resolute help compensate for the drop in body, assuming that you at least have the base 21 Body for it to matter, is what I meant.

Additionally, I suspect a lot of folks are looking at Mettle as an ability that should be gradually purchased as you advance in level. Why? Why can’t it be something that you don’t purchase until later in development? Nobody seems to have an issue with how it functions in late game play (20+, maybe even 15+).

Why does Mettle need to be equally ideal at early levels?

Put another way, I’d be cool with making Mettle cost 10 Body, if the XP requirement for it was jacked up to 50/60 XP. Fighters don’t need that much invincibility in the late game, and frankly shouldn’t have it.

 

[Tantarus]

Why does Mettle need to be equally ideal at early levels?

I think that because all other skills are? Ideal, and functional are different things... I think asking that mettle works at a level you can buy it is not an unreasonable ask.

Also the prereq is only 20 build spent in martial. If it was meant to be an end game skill it should be like formal, where the req is having over 100 build spend in martial skills.

I do agree it seems fine at high levels, but I am biased because I can do 4 of them without healing. I can see now people much lower level then me might have a different opinion.

 

[Tantarus]

Put another way, I’d be cool with making Mettle cost 10 Body, if the XP requirement for it was jacked up to 50/60 XP. Fighters don’t need that much invincibility in the late game, and frankly shouldn’t have it.

How is this different then rogues and evades? Evade and mettle are mirrors when it comes to prereqs and being a strong defense. But a rogue can use there without any limiter. And at level 2-3 without issues.