Can we address the huge issue that nobody seems to be talking about? The fact that if you are a dexxer and are trying to pvp your little sitting there waiting forever to hit and when you finally hit to do damage by the time you next hit its easily healed by even the slowest bandage.


Also if you by chance are lucky enough to get a mortal on your enemy .. it just fades away before you even hit again...


the only way to hit is to have this + parry damage added to your weapon which isnt even able to get in game without donating or being lucky to be online to attend kanes old event. not to mention this can only be added to range weapons so your extremely limited in what you can use.


pvping is just pointless at this point unless your ganking so you can have an enemy stone cricled/mortaled/and hit by multiple people! its pretty rediculous imo

i guess we should  all just use pets then oh well.

Pets or Magery - and high eval lowers your parry so that you are easier to hit by a dexxer.

And yea, thats basically how PVP is at the moment.

Eval mages rule the roost so to speak. It has been this way since I've come to the shard a little over a year ago. Insta cast harm with minimal recast hitting for 30dmg. Insta cast heal with minimal recast literally out healing anything, and the eval mages stack parry so you can't hit them.

It is not a priority, from what I've seen, for PvP to be remotely balanced. I've cried about this, others have cried about this. You just have to accept it.

Nope even with high real people can still easily heal through it especially mages

What do you think the spell damage cap for evaluating should be?

Here is the formula from elsewhere.

The following formula was used to make the above calculations:
Eval. Int. Bonus: ((EvalInt * 3) / 100) + 1
Intelligence Bonus: (INT / 10) (Drop decimals from result)
GM Inscription Bonus: 10% Damage Bonus
Spell Damage Increase: Int. Bonus + Inscr. Bonus + Spell Damage Increase Items*
Total Damage: (Base Damage * Eval. Int. Bonus) * ((Spell Damage Increase / 100) + 1) (Drop decimals from result)

I'm not sure right off hand if it has been tweaked, and I believe the spell damage increase for PvP is capped at something like 15%.

Maybe capping the damage increase from eval for PvP to something like 200 would be effective?

What other ideas do you have to balance it out? Maybe have Kane try out the cap for a bit and note feedback?

It has more to do with there being practically 0 mana cost, near instant casting, and near instant recasting.


To put it into contrast with swords:


-You can swing a weapon once every 1.25 second to do however much damage.
-You can cast harm once ever 0.58 seconds or so with no down time for recast. This means in 1.16 seconds you are getting off two harms that will land without question (even with evade from bushido it generally will land).


So in 1.16 seconds you are getting out about 60dmg as a high eval mage.
In 1.25 seconds, as a swordsman, you are getting out 0 damage as the opponent probably has maxed parry, and dodged your arse.

I can't find it but need Kane to comment - but I believe that after a certain threshold now, high parry lowers effective eval and vice versa. So like 280 eval and 240 parry might diminish each other.

So how would you balance it? Have high parry reduce eval effectiveness and vice versa? I know a lot of people perfer the cookie cutter max dex, swords, tact, parry with the same outfits. I wouldn't mind if there was variations, like mage/necro having a solid yet different tactic for both PVE/PVM.

Maybe just make PVP dex verse dex and spells do no damage to make people happy? Then it comes down to RNG mostly I guess.

Talked with Kane - Parry and Eval at higher levels oppose eachother. He said, and Im paraphrasing - that after a certain amount of eval is obtained, way above 120, having a shield is basically the same as wearing a hat - it does nothing for parry.

So your problem with high eval mages melting face and having crazy parry has been solved.

No telling, there may be traits in the future that your chance to hit with bows is magnified by players int, making suited traited archers deadly to mages.

With traits in the pipeline and new visions of paths of improvement I believe that the cookie cutter builds might not last. Some areas may be better suited to pets with traits that require a high lore suit, while another area might be suited more towards mages and another to tanks and another to bards and another to groups.

Let's see how it goes and make suggestions accordingly

Unless cooldowns, mana costs, being able to toss multiple explosion pots, bard spells being effective in PvP, etc, etc, etc, I don't see things changing from stacking either swords or eval for PvP.

-Necro: cast times, and damage on every spell other than wither makes them obsolete. With wither you have to be red to be able to hit a blue/gray with it, and it eats mana so fast you have to be in wraith form to be able to spam for the duration of fights.
   ***** Now there used to be a use for the cleric spell to drain stam + strangle + vengeful spirits, but the stam drain spell was nerfed recently to no longer stack on a player making that entire combination useless in almost all situations*****


-Cleric spells: Nothing really here to do damage

-Barding: Nothing really here to do much of anything other than a firehorn that has a really long cooldown/chance to blow up on you

-Druid spells: Cast times, and damage are horrid. Certain spells (wildfire I think) have a purpose for people running protection when vs mages as it interrupts them.

-Spellweaving: Not useful in PvP iirc.

-Alchemy: Can only toss one pot every 4 seconds. People just run out of the way, and the damage is lower than a harm spell. Now, if you were able to machine gun 3-4 pots at a time with high (like 300+ alchemy +150% enhance pots) then things could get interesting. As it stands, 1 pot every 4 seconds makes it useless.

-Ninjitsu: Reliant upon being able to hit your opponent in melee, which we already know if a large issue currently.

If any of that becomes viable to some extent it just opens the doors to complaints. It seems most everyone wants one single spec to rule the roost and no strengths or weaknesses to balance out or counter effect eachother

Warboss, that pretty much defeats the entirety of what Ultima Online used to be about.

Warboss, that pretty much defeats the entirety of what Ultima Online used to be about.

single 1v1 pvp is stupid at the moment, i have to go in search of basically an entire guild to make it challenging to fight. i dont mind, but i wish dexxers had parry nerfed a bit

I never really complain but god dang i wish the - mage weapon weapon on a bow was -5 instead of -29 id even take anything lower than that. Very rare to see any mages other than myself nowdays, granted we do have it rough.