"Should Spell-Damage-Delays be reverted ? (Pre-Patch)

[Jaster]

This is a post I found on a Developement page of owo.com from January of 2000 explaining a change to precasting, but it references a situation from the prior system [ which is our current system].

The first change I would like to address would be that made to precasting. For months we have been hearing about a spell-hally combo able to do 80 points of damage faster than you can say "Kal Ort Por." While this may be a great PvP tactic, it was also being used for evil™ . I know this may come as a surprise to some of you, but many players were using this outside of the boundaries of consensual PvP, and smacking anyone that crossed their paths. If this were not bad enough, it should come as no surprise that a precast recall while looting a corpse allowed player vultures to "loot" and "fly" without worry of reprisal. Thus, we determined that precasting needed to be changed under certain conditions.

http://web.archive.org/web/200003020216 ... ments.html

The bold and underlined text talks about a spell - hally combo that would do about 80 points of damage that wouldn't allow a 4th circle spell to get off. When I think of the T2A era, EXP EB Hally comes to mind. There are references for explode being a 2 second delay, and the demo shows fireball as a 1 second delay, but this reference is telling me that a spell hally combo wouldn't allow a 4th circle spell to get off while doing that amount of damage. Currently exp/eb hally can be healed through with much ease. That makes it seem to me that there is obviously something in the timers that is not correct.

Remember that during this time people were also not running on the pings that we have now. T2A, the era of dial up, beginning of DSL/cable and satellite connections. If people were able to not allow a 4th circle spell off in those days, I don't see how they can now, unless something isn't right.

What does everyone else think?

[Jaster]

Players could organize combos to sometimes do almost 100 damage a piece (The most famous being Explosion [which had a short delay before damage hit], Ebolt [energy bolt], and the Hally [Halberd, the most popular weapon for a mage], combination, which if executed perfectly would cause the 2 spells and the weapon damage to hit at the same time. That other player, if skilled enough, would have timed his Greater Heal spell correctly and healed much of the damage. The casting player, now exhausted half of his 'Mana' and will use his Meditation skill to regenerate it at a good pace, or attempt to follow up his attack. It sounds complicated, and truthfully, it is and it isn't. It's hard to really explain in a way to make someone who never played, understand, but it's a pretty straightforward concept.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaon ... ?id=202762

UO-Assist really helps out. There is a bunch of stuff you can do with it. You can build macros to lets say. Take off all of your armor an use meditation. I had one that I used in my PvP days. It would take my sword out of my hand, cast explosion, then e-bolt, re-equip my halbred, and start using healing on myself. That was one of the deadly combos that would usually kill in one strike.

http://www.opentechsupport.net/forum/sh ... 926&page=4

If I'd a time machine, I'd go back and hang out with Lenny Bruce, Nick Drake, and I'd play me some pre-Trammel, house-looting, explode-flamestrike-hally UO.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2005/09/ult ... ammel.html

These are a few quotes that I found on forums and websites referring to the era that involved exp-eb-hally as a combo. It is obvious that so many people refer to this during the era and these aren't players from UOSA. So many memories including players from this very shard that I don't see how it can't be true. I remember it, these players remember it, how many more must remember it before it can be true that it was a reality? ...

[Guerrilla]

I think this whole situation is fantastic, so u mean to tell me that the situation i been complaining about IS(indeed) inaccurate.... WOW go figure props loops

[Faust]

If 95% of the people had 65 or less than resist like they did back then explosion/ebolt would be used a lot more on here. When you have a 50/50 chance to resist both of the spells it obvious why most people prefer not to use it. I don't see how a converation about the topic is going to really prove one thing or the other unless it has some sort of time frame involved with it such as a dev member describing the explosion delay as 3 seconds for example.

How about we test some statistics here...

Example 1:
100 Magery, 100 Eval, and 100 Resist
Energy Bolt - 54% chance to resist, 5-42 damage, 100% base spell damage.

Example 2:
100 Magery, 100 Eval, and 65 Resist
Energy Bolt - 19% chance to resist, 7-45 damage, 107% base spell damage.

We go from a 50/50 chance to a little under 20% chance... The explanation for the two being used less frequently is obvious in itself. Both of the spells being used here is very viable only if they don't resist it...

[Jaster]

Most people prefer not to use it because there is to much time between exp damage and e-bolt damage hitting that it is worthless. Has nothing to do with the amount of resist someone has. The point is, it was used because it had the ability to do that damage and it would do that damage without allowing someone to heal unless they got lucky.

Difference with UOSA is that you have to be unlucky to not heal through it. Can practically cast the spell between the damage of exp and e-bolt.

[Faust]

If you cast explosion and ebolt at the same time your hally will hit practically the same time as the ebolt delay hits. All of this can easily be done before they heal. It was always possible to get a heal off in between this if you did it right. The whole point of doing this combo was to try and do an 80+ like they said with two harms after that for disruption followed up with a hally to finish it off. That was the way it worked. If you're talking about doing an explosion/ebolt after a hally this was the very least way the spells was used back then in a combo together.

[Guerrilla]

You lost me there Faustus

[DrFaustus]

I'm not him.

[Burn]

I think OSI UO in the T2A era was based on 56k. Now comps are way faster and the system should be fix to fit the feel!! Not the Numbers!!!
I played Chessy and was part of one of the biggest PvP guilds on the shard during this era and the feel of PvP does not even come close.
I really cant tell the GMs to change it but if the PvP was faster, I feel the field PvP would pick up, causing the shard to grow. Also i agree that PvP turnies should be done away with to force people to fight in the field. The fact that 1v1 on this shard is pointless is true you can see it at the turnies people just heal through just about anything and just wait till healing is disabled then dump as fast as they can. I do not remember this being acc in T2A.

[Guerrilla]

An Corp.

[MatronDeWinter]

An Corp.

Why didn't you post a new thread with the pros and cons of the system, as a lot has probably changed since this dead thread was discussed (and explained by staff). Now you just invite more question, resulting in nothing being accomplished.

[GuardianKnight]

As someone that just barely pvps on an alt, I'm curious to hear how things have changed since this 2009 post.

Did they get better or worse?

Ever since I got here, I haven't wanted to cast a spell and that's not because I like being a tamer more than a mage. I just assume I'm going to lose regardless of who I go up against because I'm just not feeling it with the system.

I really wanted to just be a dexer like I started with in T2A. I was fairly ok back then and I had no access to vanqs. I couldn't kill another dexer here even if i had vanqs and invul armor.

[Ronk]

As someone that just barely pvps on an alt, I'm curious to hear how things have changed since this 2009 post.

Did they get better or worse?

Ever since I got here, I haven't wanted to cast a spell and that's not because I like being a tamer more than a mage. I just assume I'm going to lose regardless of who I go up against because I'm just not feeling it with the system.

I really wanted to just be a dexer like I started with in T2A. I was fairly ok back then and I had no access to vanqs. I couldn't kill another dexer here even if i had vanqs and invul armor.

In my opinion, people got caught up int he patch notes too much and lost sight of the T2A feel. To many systems are out of wack from what they were in T2A, like dexxers as you mentioned.

[Faust]

The spell damage is known to be exactly one second long before t2a and it's known to be exactly that still to this very day.

There is no mention of it ever changing from any source through out the decade this game has existed.

Spell damage delays being lesser than this is a well known RunUO distro package feature due to it being half a second by default.

Case is closed and will remain that way.

[Guerrilla]

Is there any way we can lock faust's reply button on this thread?