Scout Archive

Ok so here I am working on on Creature Taming, starting to tame vicious creatures so I am totally dependent on Mask Scent.

I am in a group of Mottled Wrixs on Talus, all very aggresive creatures and I am trying to charm them out of thier baby. What happens but Mask Scent fails, so I pop it back up no problem. WRONG! It tells me I can't use it? **edit**? Of course I get waxed, and thank God that another error with this game (death error) allows me to suffer no consquences for dieing, but I know it won't always be this way.

So my question is how the hell am I supposed to tame vicious creatures, when Mask Scent the skill isn't very consistent already. I manage to succesfully Mask Scent about 60% of the time, not consistent enough to sneak past Rancor I am sure. So like WTH am I supposed to do?

Granted people were getting to much exp off creatures, but wasn't that hte problem? Why not reduce the exp gains rather than make the ability USELESS! I am going to be stuck taming non-aggressive creatures till I get Master Ranger, and hopefully (can't even say with any confidence) will be able to get around aggressive creatures again.

This definitely needs to be changed. Reduce the exp gains, but let us still be reliant on the skill. I don't even use it now, because its not consitent enough to use, and thats as a Master Scout.

I'm more in agreement withan xp nerf in this case, not the ability. On the other hand, maybe SoE wants us to Scout, but at a slower rate of exploration. Some friends from beta have told me that going prone seems to help the success rate of mask scent. Has anyone experimented with this? I tried a little bit before work, and will be trying it again later this weekend when I get more time to play. This is a bit more realistic than running through a lair of vicious creatures at full speed too. Would be nice if we had better communication on why they are doing the things they do. A little more verbose of a patch message perhaps? Let us the players know how you intend us to use these abilities. Please let's not make everything a friggin mystery like it was in EQ. When people get training in abilities in the real world, they tend to know why they're getting trained and how to apply that knowledge.

I would be perfectly happy to have them take the xp away from it. I liked that you could get the xp from it, but that isn't why I used it.

Scentmask is to help me, as a scout, sneak past or up to aggressive mobs. Ok, fine.. don't give me xp for it. Just give me back the ability to use the darn thing the way it used to work.

It's pretty much useless the way it stands.

These nerfs on supposedly "uber-cheats"have got to stop. Here's my story:

First off, I was going to be a merchant who sold armor. Well, I discovered that Merchants
made around 5xp per hour of Merchant EXP. That meant I could make Master Merchant in,
oh, four or five months.

After scrapping the Master Merchant idea, I decided to go with a Teras Kasi Artist. Well,
the first day was great until Beserk was nerfed down hard. I was literally killing myself
using Beserk because it now takes so much health away. Without Beserk, Unarmed is barely
below tedium especially considering you can't group because the vast majority of players
have some type of Ranged weapon. In one party I made around 150 XP while the ones with
rifles and pistols made 700 XP a kill. Keep in mind that I took ALL the damage and got
killed the most... like every 5 minutes.

When I was getting my wounds tended in the medical center with my average 500 wounds, I
thought about what kind of character I wanted to play. Since I was unarmed, I couldn't
play in groups because I made no progress and I couldn't solo cause Id get killed by
Kreetles at Expert Unarmed. Sitting there getting healed for 3 hours I decided to make
a Swordsman/Scout/Creature Handler.

The path to Swordsman is a lonely path, but I didn't care because I could dish out damage
unlike my Transhodan Unarmed. With Scout I could travel the world without getting totally
pWnEd and with my Creature Handler I could supplement my meager fighter skill with a pet
or two.

As it is now, I am making up an fourth character because I cannot transverse anything
without getting my ass totally kicked. And to all those that say "Wait for Mask Scent to
regenerate!" let me pose a hypothetical question: If Ranged weapons were cheap (and they
are... Ive made it to pistoleer in around 6 hours of grouping... kiting the hard stuff and
not taking a scratch) and they gave too much experience per kill, do you think the wise
thing to do is to make it so you must wait a whole minute before you can fire again? Or
do you think the most sensible thing to do is to LOWER the experience amount given per kill?

If any developer is reading this and cares even remotely, please think about that. If you
made a timer on Pistols, pistol weapons and classes would be 100% worthless. Does this not
carry over for the scout? Please let me know if I am incorrect for thinking this.

With this nerf many classes are severely hindered: the Scout, the Ranger, the Creature
Handler, the Bounty Hunter and the Squad Leader.

*back to the drawing board*

hmm... are creatures supposed to be able to attack you with maskscent up? i had something aggro me with it up, and the icon didn't drop off my bar, even while i was fighting the creature..

i usually hate when people gripe about things in a game, but this was not needed... /sigh

Svysco

-scout

-Bloodfin

Gregg, critters can still attack you with maskscent up. Just because they can't smell you doesn't mean they can't aggro on you... guess they see you instead.

i am going to have to agree with nerfing the exp, not completely destroying it, but making it dramaticaly lower. the reason i say this is because the xp befor the nerf was insane, completely unbalanced. but since some of us would like to go out and get xp for what we like doing (in this case exploring), the experience should not be completely taken out. we should not be forced to go out and hunt/grind just so we can get the experience to make exloration easier. im sure if the players who play scout wanted to do that, they would just go brawler or marksman since thats all those classes do anyway.

Also, it will suck for us when we actualy do become creature handlers because if the sent is spoted, we would have to wait another minute before we could try and tame again. that is to say if we dont die in the process...

Bottom line is, that they should get rid of the timer they put on, and just nerf the experience ALOT. so that way we would only be getting about 1-3k exp an hour (give or take), but we would still be able to go out and SCOUT the different lands and creatures in thier natural habitats.

Why don't they simply remove the xp gain from red con creatures ?

The skill is broken at the moment. Can't explore, can't gain xp (and i was waiting for this skill to replace harvesting.... but not exploit it).

Please rename the "Scout" profession to "Hunter" profession as it can't explore or recon anything now.

PS: i was going the scout/ranger/CH way. Now i wonder if i will do this as i won't be able to sneak anymore.

PPS: it was already challenging to travel with all those humanoïdes rogues on the roads, now even the beasts will prevent me from exploring.

I'm an architect/scout combo. I got all the way up to 3 before I even tried mask for the first time. Once I figured out how useful it was, I started using it all the time. The point is, I never used it to gain experience in scouting. I used it because I'm a weak architect who has no way of dealing with the Mottled Wrix taking naps beside my harvesters. Everybody who says wait for it to regenerate, that does not work for me when I'm walking into a giant blob of red because my harvesters are in the middle of it. One failure usually equals me screaming on burst run getting bit in the behind. This really hurts me...

Wow.. spent some minutes writing a long post, and poof.. the boards crashed AGAIN!!!! aaaaargh!

Well.. try to remember the things i wrote :

Why not make it so that when you go prone, you will be hidden from creatures. As long as you dont attack or move at all, scouts get a native "hide" when they are prone? So if maskscent drops you drop to prone hoping the mobs did not detect you, and can wait for the timer to refresh. Would that make scouts all too powerful? At least would make for a chance to explore to some degree. EQ rangers get a "hide" feature that have about a 50/50 chance at working against mobs that dont see through invis. I have saved my butt several times as a ranger going with cammo, and cammo drops, immediately hitting hide and it works.. (Of course i have diedeven moretimes when hide was not successful). Would give it some chance at working.

It is typical Sony to nerf something like this. I have played EQ for a couple of years, and the EQ devs dont play eq at all, and the never listen to players unless there is something they feel are overpowering.. "Wow.. 6 wizards just killed Uber_Dragon_01! - Patch Msg : Manaburn now have a delay between each player cast" They nerf, nerf, nerf.. all the way till the class you started playing are worthless, but you are so "entangled" in the gaming web and made a lot of good friends, so you wont stop playing anyway..

Nah.. The Devs need to listen to the people playing the class.. not everyone gonna swiff through scouting xp in 1 day because it is possible tho, but to making 1 of the most important SCOUTING abilities worthless.. that is a totally WRONG way to deal with what they think is a problem.

"Servers are coming down at 5AM PST. Please log out now."

I sooo hope they are fixing the nerf. Lower the XP, or just take it away, but please give us our /maskscent back!

P.S. - I never post on the boards. I just read them. This is merely a sign of my desperation.

Oh yea, and Garrett. I do have something to complain about other than /maskscent.

/bodyshot2

/bodyshot2

/bodyshot2

Ring a bell?

P.S. - I still think the Devs are not looking the the right places to balance the game.

This really sucks.

Why did they not just link maskscent usage to the mind pool?

That way we could rest before scouting somewhere, and have a chance to reuse mask scent maybe 10-20 times, then have to rest again.

Would have the same effect in reducing misuse, while still allowing scouts to explore, which is after all their main use???