Rogue, Ganks and Time to Kill

I posed this question to Jahlon during his live stream today and we had a bit of an interesting discussion about it. However I would like to get the wider community's opinion of this too. In the past Steven has stated that the Time to Kill for PVP to be in-between 30-60 seconds. I feel like 30 seconds is too long for a gank to be effective. There should be enough time for people to react but part of ganking is catching somebody off guard. Having 20-25 seconds at the minimum to prevent a gank seems really biased against rogues. Jahlon (correct me if I am wrong, I am going off memory) brought up the fact that we do not know how rogues will interact in AoC PVP yet, that they will not receive true invisibility and that part of this point comes from a bias informed by how ganking functions in other games.

But what do you guys think about this? Should rogues be able to gank as they do in other games or should they operate in another capacity? Perhaps they could act as a distraction, apply short term debuffs that potentially hurt or cc key backline rolls or perhaps they can flank the enemy as the main force attacks and create a pincer like attack.

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Lfmr

What exactly is meant by true invisibility? Will we still have like 90% invisibility or just enough that it's hard to see unless you're specifically looking for them? will it just hide our name plates?

I am personally of the belief that if a class NEEDS to meet certain conditions to be good, then the class is bad. If a Rogue is ONLY good in PvP if they get the opener, it makes them too vulnerable. I feel like ambushing should give the Rogue a clear advantage, maybe even applying a debuff to the enemy which makes them take more damage, but it should only be an opener to the fight, you should not be able to fully burst someone strictly from your opener, nor should it ever take more then 50% of your opponents HP.

Noaani

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Should rogues be able to gank as they do in other games

No.

mcstackerson

yea, i'd take the 30-60 as an average. I think one of the specialties of a rogue should be burst damage and if a rogue builds around that, then they should be able to kill someone faster then the average, especially if that target doesn't have a lot of mitigation for the rogue's damage type.

I don't want to see rogues 1 or 2 shotting people but I could see them bursting players doing in ~15 seconds if the situation is right.

At the same time, a rogue that is built like this to be vulnerable to classes that have ways of mitigating their damage and surviving their initial burst. I imagine it being very mana inefficient so if they can't kill there target fast enough, they will go oom and most likely, dead soon after.

Cold 0ne FTB

mcstackerson wrote: »

yea, i'd take the 30-60 as an average. I think one of the specialties of a rogue should be burst damage and if a rogue builds around that, then they should be able to kill someone faster then the average, especially if that target doesn't have a lot of mitigation for the rogue's damage type.

I don't want to see rogues 1 or 2 shotting people but I could see them bursting players doing in ~15 seconds if the situation is right.

At the same time, a rogue that is built like this to be vulnerable to classes that have ways of mitigating their damage and surviving their initial burst. I imagine it being very mana inefficient so if they can't kill there target fast enough, they will go oom and most likely, dead soon after.

Personally I agree with that numbers. Either this or some kind of debuff or cc. Maybe have what they fixate or create change depend on what secondary archtype they take. The other thing that would be important to look at it is what happenes when you have rogues in mass either focusing one target.

Lfmr wrote: »

What exactly is meant by true invisibility? Will we still have like 90% invisibility or just enough that it's hard to see unless you're specifically looking for them? will it just hide our name plates?

I am personally of the belief that if a class NEEDS to meet certain conditions to be good, then the class is bad. If a Rogue is ONLY good in PvP if they get the opener, it makes them too vulnerable. I feel like ambushing should give the Rogue a clear advantage, maybe even applying a debuff to the enemy which makes them take more damage, but it should only be an opener to the fight, you should not be able to fully burst someone strictly from your opener, nor should it ever take more then 50% of your opponents HP.

To answer your question, it's kinda like the invisibility that predators from the Predator movies use. It creates a distortion effect that is visible. if somebody is far away or not paying attention they might miss the rogue but if they look hard enough they should be able to see it.

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Should rogues be able to gank as they do in other games

No.

Care to elaborate on your answer?

Noaani

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

unknown

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Cold 0ne FTB

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

They can be seen in ashes. There is a distortion effect that makes them quite visible when they move. However I agree that a two ability one shot is too much. I think being able to chunk a sizable portion of somebody's health is necessary. Otherwise there is no real reason to play the class, as stealth alone doesn't offer a raid much outside of potentially being able to scout.

I also want to add that AOC combat is balanced around group combat. The problem with the rogue archetype is I have seen instances where it doesn't make it into group play because the class is too selfish. It doesn't provide enough of buff to the group to warrant investment

Undead Canuck

Well, since ganking is frowned upon and you can get corruption, why would you do it?

So you want to be able to kill as many people as quickly as you can with no penalties? If that is what you want, the average time to kill should be put up to 3 minutes. Then it can be a good fight.
If you want to have Rogues be a good addition to a group, then keep it as it is.

Cold 0ne FTB

Undead Canuck wrote: »

Well, since ganking is frowned upon and you can get corruption, why would you do it?

So you want to be able to kill as many people as quickly as you can with no penalties? If that is what you want, the average time to kill should be put up to 3 minutes. Then it can be a good fight.
If you want to have Rogues be a good addition to a group, then keep it as it is.

For this discussion I was hoping on focusing on the no corruption system pvp. So gvg, node combat, etc.

mcstackerson

Not all ganking would use the flagging system. You could gank within sieges, wars, and caravans. On top of that, a bounty hunter and counter gankers could also create a build for ganking like this.

There is also the chance that with the flagging system, you would want to gank people for valuable resources and taking the corruption risk is worth getting some extra drops.

Xrael

30 to 60s is perfect in my opinion.

I don't think anyone likes being one shot.

(P.S. Alpha/Beta testing might change this, so we will have to wait and see)

Cold 0ne FTB

CaptainChuck wrote: »

30 to 60s is perfect in my opinion.

I don't think anyone likes being one shot.

(P.S. Alpha/Beta testing might change this, so we will have to wait and see)

What do you define as one shotting? Because if somebody's rotation takes longer than 10 seconds to kill somebody than that isn't a one shot in my eyes.

Noaani

cleansingtotem wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

I don't pvp that much but dear lord this is some care bear shit right here.

Not carebear.

If I am going to kill another player, I'll be sure they see me coming.

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

They can be seen in ashes. There is a distortion effect that makes them quite visible when they move. However I agree that a two ability one shot is too much. I think being able to chunk a sizable portion of somebody's health is necessary. Otherwise there is no real reason to play the class, as stealth alone doesn't offer a raid much outside of potentially being able to scout.

I also want to add that AOC combat is balanced around group combat. The problem with the rogue archetype is I have seen instances where it doesn't make it into group play because the class is too selfish. It doesn't provide enough of buff to the group to warrant investment

This is all true, but I would expect scouting in Ashes will play a much bigger part on the game than it has in any other MMO.

If the best scouts in a game that values scouring are also your best single target PvP killers, and are also able to stun lock many classes as per many other games, I fail to see the worth of anything else in PvP.

Rogues as a class will be desired in PvP purely for stealth - in that sphere, anything else will be a bonus. As far as PvE is concerned, they should be able to DPS enough to make them worth the spot in the group, but are also a viable class to give fairly powerful debuffs to (especially if those debuffs take the form of poison).

Lazyactor

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

I was gonna ask who hurt you man but I think it is quite obvious rogues did.

"There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP."

- agreed. Obviously no class should be about making you not play the game. Boring and practically overpowered. Even if the skills are on an hour long cool down you just get to pick a poor victim every hour for a free kill.

"Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no."

- Yeah... you said that in the first sentence but okay. Agreed.

"I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer."

What is this mindset. Obvious bias against not just the class but the types of people who play them. So if you were in charge you are saying that rogues would have no real dps, long cooldowns and no cc because they can watch people when invisible. Seriously if you are not biased then you are just trolling. What a lubricious position.

"Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits."

- not with the way you designed the class. Hit four buttons and then go watch a webshort cause now your useless. You blew all your damage and maybe you got the kill. Regardless now your only job is to wait quietly in the corner as skills reset. You are refusing to put in thought into what you are saying just because you personally dont like the way rogues fight. Not just how over tuned they might be in other games but because you dont like them. Utterly foolish position to take.

- Rogues should have tools to make stealth useful. Despite what you might think of stealth it does nothing by itself if you dont have tools to make use of it. If you disagree maybe steven can give you a special class that can stealth and basic attack and thats pretty much it. apparently you dont need much else.

-How would I like to see them is very much in style with the archetype established over decades of RPG's. Stealthy ambush classes that rely on traps and sneak attacks to debilitate and defeat foes. Rogues never needed the OMG damage to be effective. Stealth is strong in of itself. Designing tools they can use from stealth is key. Traps that apply special debuffs and effects to enemies. Damage that can burst a target but not from the get go.

Ideally the rogue should be trying to set up a situation where they are extremely favored to win. Debuffs that reduce your damage and increase damage you take or reduce healing. Skills that reduce movement speed and force you to face him. Effects that build into untankable damage over time requiring the rogue to be in combat for sustained periods to seal the deal. Traps to punish carelessness. Trap and skills that cant be directly targeted should be the most powerful skills a rogue has. In solo situations the rogue should be focused on observing his target and setting up a locale that when entered will be the hardest to survive the ambush from. Otherwise a vanilla backstab initiation should just put the rogue on par with other classes in terms of TTK.

The rogue should be forced to manage debuffs and skill effects as should the target. Clearing off vital effects that lead to your death and forcing the rogue to react accordingly. The rogue should be slightly favored when facing targets with weak defenses that focus on damage like himself and slightly unfavored when facing targets focusing on their own ability to survive. His prime targets should be ones that heal or buff others. His secondaries should be other damage dealers and the lowest priority should be tanks and enemies who manage status effects or damage really well.

Ideal scenarios are such.

-1v1 rogue was initiated on.

The rogue should have to choose whether to escape the situation where no one has a clear advantage or press in for the kill.

If they choose to run force them to use a skill like smoke bomb to go invisible. This skill should have a long cooldown and should be purely for escaping bad situations. It should be more effective with less damage taken in a given time than say trying to escape death with 10-30% health left. If used at the start of a fight it last a generous time and you are completely invisible. Where at less than half health it should be basically useless. Not lasting long enough to put serious distance between you and the foe but maybe giving you enough time to drink a potion before combat resumes.

If they choose to fight then the rogue should start loading his target with an assortment of weak on there own debuffs and DOT skills. The rogue should be killing based on momentum. By layering skills like bleeding and reducing the targets damage output or increasing his cooldowns on skill should he use them while under the effect of the skills.

In fact the rogue should be given a skill called stun. On its own it does practically nothing but extends slightly cooldowns of skills the targets uses while under the effect of stun. However the more debuffs and negative effects the target gets under the more effective stun would become. Resulting in increasing further cooldown recovery all the way to flat out stopping all recovery of skills.

As the rogue engages in combat he should be setting up a situation that results in the death of his opponent from a thousand cuts. You used some of your bread and butter skills and now are waiting an extra 30-50 percent from stun increasing those cooldowns. You are dealing reduced damage. Have reduced movespeed and healing. You are taking damage from bleeding and have so many negative status effects its become clutter on the screen. The rogues damage is starting to build and once certain conditions are met the rogue uses a finishing skill to end the fight when you dropped below 30% health and had numerous bleed stacks.

Given how I went through that how would any one deal with it? Ideally you should be forced to pay attention on what is happening in the fight. The rogue has you under stun so you know anything you use will have extended time on cooldown. So either wait for the effect to fade or clear it before committing to core abilities. Negative status effects are starting to hurt your over all output of damage so you should have to use skills that CC the rogue or a mobility skill so you can get a breather from them all.

What should dictate who wins that fight is skill. Knowing what the rogue can do and what tools you have to manage them all should be key to preventing the rogue from killing you quickly. As the rogue you should have to be aware of what skills your opponent has he can use to counter your kill path and react accordingly to reduce as much as possible any lost DPS while also maintaining key debuffs and DOT abilities like bleed to maintain dps so you can get your target below thirty percent health for a finishing move. something key got purged reapply it right away. keep movement speed debuff on target to prevent easy escape via mobility or cc.

Scenario 2 ambushing the target.

If the rogue chooses to ambush a target with a vanilla pop out of stealth style ability like backstab then all he should gain is a slight advantage in momentum. Starting the fight with movement speed debuffs and maybe a stack or two of bleeding and some damage. Being ambushed should put you at a disadvantage but not so much you dont have any hope of surviving or winning. Otherwise the fight should play out like above.

Scenario 3 ambushing the target with preparation.

In this scenario the rogue should be given some tools like traps and mines. These skills should take a few seconds each to setup and require your target to walk into them on their own because you predicted where they would move to next roughly 10 or so seconds ahead of time. Like watching a gather go from ore node to ore node. You would be able to easily predict where they went next by simply going to an ore node up ahead.

If the fight starts by the target walking into the traps it should give massive momentum to the rogue. Not a single trap needs to do damage to be effective in this way. At its simplest just applying a bunch of the rogues key debuffs and DOTS before the fight even began would be enough. You hit the traps. Now you are suffering from multiple stacks of bleeding, stunned, slowed, random 1-3 skills automatically go on cooldown. things like that. The rogues most powerful tools should come this way. The traps should reduce a rogues normal time to kill by about half or more. Still requiring the rogue to react to what his target does to survive but also giving him a major advantage in the fight. A target should be solely focused on escaping in that scenario rather than fighting.

Group fights.

The rogue in group fights should be setting traps as the fight goes on and assisting with securing kills. Executing low health enemies and jumping on to targets to help with appling debuffs and Dots. He should be on the prowl for people out of position mainly healers and other dps. Rogues should have the ability to detect other rogue traps and have the greatest ability to detect stealth-ed enemies when stealth-ed themselves.

IMO this makes rogues an interesting and fun class to play while keeping us away from instant kill hell without neutering the rogues style of dirty fighting and damage. Almost all classes should be built in such a way as to require strategy to fight. Not just rogues. From skill combos to stacking debuffs and effects.

I could go all day but I think you got the point. It is very much possible to keep a class in check without neutering the play style for everyone who plays a class whos archetype you dont like.

Noaani

Lazyactor wrote: »

I was gonna ask who hurt you man but I think it is quite obvious rogues did.

See, I addressed most of the points you bring up in my post before yours.

It was only posted about 90 minutes before you posted though, so it is probable you were typing the above post out as I posted my post.

My first two points you agree with. Cool.

The next point - the fact that stealth is powerful - you disagree with.

However, you seem to be disagreeing with it from a single player perspective.

In Ashes, 1 stealth player that is able to scout out the enemy is able to make 500 players stronger.

If you are doing that, an argument could very easily be made for stealth characters having exactly zero damage dealing ability - as if used correctly, they are already the most powerful class in the game due to a single ability they have.

While you are right in that stealth does nothing by itself, the most powerful ability to pair it with is VoIP.

Edit to add; anyone that doesn't see this has never played a stealth character to it's fullest potential.

Lazyactor

noaani wrote: »

Lazyactor wrote: »

I was gonna ask who hurt you man but I think it is quite obvious rogues did.

See, I addressed most of the points you bring up in my post before yours.

It was only posted about 90 minutes before you posted though, so it is probable you were typing the above post out as I posted my post.

My first two points you agree with. Cool.

The next point - the fact that stealth is powerful - you disagree with.

However, you seem to be disagreeing with it from a single player perspective.

In Ashes, 1 stealth player that is able to scout out the enemy is able to make 500 players stronger.

If you are doing that, an argument could very easily be made for stealth characters having exactly zero damage dealing ability - as if used correctly, they are already the most powerful class in the game due to a single ability they have.

While you are right in that stealth does nothing by itself, the most powerful ability to pair it with is VoIP.

Edit to add; anyone that doesn't see this has never played a stealth character to it's fullest potential.

oh shiz you did meander in the same area. Yeah I didnt see that. I wan invested in my brain storming.

To your point however by that same logic if we just accept it as is....1. it requires a large area to battle in with significant obstacles or distance from each other. You know cause no need for a scout when we can....see you. 2. Once the battle commences the value of anything before is used or useless. 3. Information alone can be gathered at a distance by mounting or spies. 4. Any information gathered has to be effectively communicated and interpreted and then acted on. Any one of these stages can be effected by other people in voip or simple verbal misunderstandings. 5. Being able to relay information isnt actually game play and therefore should not have an impact on gameplay.

In most games where large groups fight in my experience has always been CC and AOE. The most our scouts could do for us was help to jostle the group into a favored engagement. This is something anyone could do on any class. Stealth just makes it less risky.

Noaani

Lazyactor wrote: »

In most games where large groups fight in my experience has always been CC and AOE.

AoE is not great in games with player collision.

May need to come up with a new tactic for large scale PvP.

Cold 0ne FTB

noaani wrote: »

cleansingtotem wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

I don't pvp that much but dear lord this is some care bear shit right here.

Not carebear.

If I am going to kill another player, I'll be sure they see me coming.

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

Care to elaborate on your answer?

No.

But I will anyway.

There should never be a situation where players are unable to fight back in PvP.

Since your question was if I think rogues in Ashes should be able to gank like rogues in other games can, and in many other games rogues can kill many players (mages, in particular) in two hits, my opinion on that is a solid no.

I am also of the opinion that if a class has stealth or invisibility, it should have exactly zero CC abilities available to it. Not even a 10th of a second stun. Burst damage abilities on such classes should also be limited to 5 minute cooldowns or longer.

Being able to not be seen is the single strongest thing in PvP, such classes need no other benefits.

They can be seen in ashes. There is a distortion effect that makes them quite visible when they move. However I agree that a two ability one shot is too much. I think being able to chunk a sizable portion of somebody's health is necessary. Otherwise there is no real reason to play the class, as stealth alone doesn't offer a raid much outside of potentially being able to scout.

I also want to add that AOC combat is balanced around group combat. The problem with the rogue archetype is I have seen instances where it doesn't make it into group play because the class is too selfish. It doesn't provide enough of buff to the group to warrant investment

This is all true, but I would expect scouting in Ashes will play a much bigger part on the game than it has in any other MMO.

If the best scouts in a game that values scouring are also your best single target PvP killers, and are also able to stun lock many classes as per many other games, I fail to see the worth of anything else in PvP.

Rogues as a class will be desired in PvP purely for stealth - in that sphere, anything else will be a bonus. As far as PvE is concerned, they should be able to DPS enough to make them worth the spot in the group, but are also a viable class to give fairly powerful debuffs to (especially if those debuffs take the form of poison).

The balance comes back to group play though, a rogue might win most one v ones against squishy targets there is nothing to say that a tank or fighter couldn't counter a rogue. This would make it so people wouldn't predominantly play them.

However I would like to draw you to ESO for example, in the world of ESO PvP the rogue equivalent can kill somebody in less than 3 seconds but when it comes to any form of group almost nobody that knows what they are doing will run them. This is because they are too selfish and don't provide much to the group. Things like stacking hots and buffs makes ganking somebody within a competitive group nigh impossible.

Rogues can heal and they can take on a boomer role but they are significantly out classed by other classes that can do the same thing. But this isn't relevant as in AOC rogues won't be able to act as healers.

So I don't have a problem with a rogue killing somebody quickly in 1 on 1 combat because this playstyle from my experience does not lend itself well to group play.

To address your point about scouting, it really depends on the game. Personally I prefer having an active role in combat and I want to be an important part of that aspect of the fight.

Noaani

Cold 0ne FTB wrote: »

To address your point about scouting, it really depends on the game. Personally I prefer having an active role in combat and I want to be an important part of that aspect of the fight.

While it does depend on the game, there is no denying that Ashes is a game that will allow for better use of scouting and good intel than any other MMO out there.

As such, if gathering that intel is something that should be considered in class balance, then it is obviously something that rogues will excel at - I mean, the rogue/ranger class is even called a scout.

Songcaller

In my old Raid Groups, I always had a Rogue alongside my Tank Group. Rogues were excellent sustained single-target damage in those older games. The Rogue didn't use stealth in Raids but it did provide a steady stream of burst damage on Raid Bosses - Even when other groups were on adds and the tank group alone was on the boss.

In terms of PvP Rogues often protect the flanks and the rear. I would hope for meaningful PvP than just rapid attrition. Two Rogues should be able to detect each other due to the limitations of the invisibility in Ashes.

It will be interesting to see the tactics unfold. Can't wait.

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