Scout Archive

That's a great idea. Honestly why shouldn't maskscent have a HAM cost, almost every other XP giving skill does. This would allow you to get some benefit out of the skill with out totally exploiting it for XP gain.

As of now /maskscent is just worthless...took it off my Macro Bar

-Futureman
Bria

well, new patch notes and they havent fixed maskscent, I'm so sorry fellow scouts, we are royaly screwed. I just recently found out about XP gain through maskscent techniques. Tried it for the first time after the nerf and zero exp gain and it kept wearing off in the middle of the red dots and I would die. Nice going SOE! thanks for screwing us over.

I was wondering if anyone knew where I could go to, to get into groups that kill big hard monsters fast and get good exp. Can someone give me ideas on how to find a good group? thanks.

Errmm... this sux, i haven't even gotten the skill yet, and now getting it will make no difference, judging from the posts here.

So what the hell am i supposed to do, delete my character and start a new professor, camping the servers, so i can get the same one as my friends again... this sux... might have to go back to Anarchy Online, or continue to tryout Shadowlands.

It's not a good practice to not inform people of changes or nerfs, ect.

Well it is not as bad as all the doom sayers say.

I am a scout and had maskscent for a while and never used the run to Lok/Yvain 4 for crazy xp method.

I have explore 3 and here is what I have found.

Mask scent does a good job of keeping me hidden from yellow cons and bellow. Using this I can still get 100s of xp just by running past a camp a say kreetles,servitors, or even Whoomp Rat types.

This skill is not needed to explore. I often do not even use it and I explore all over. Sure it helps but by paying attention to your mini map and the like it is relatively easy to skirt creatures combined with a burst run if needed.

All this means is you have to just think a bit more. The way it was implemented before was stupid. With no resest timer they mine as well just made it an always on effect that could sometimes fail.

Perhaps removing all xp gain from the skill would have been a better solution but I am sure the people who are the most vocal about this are the ones who used it mainly for xp gain any way.

yes pls nerf the xp..by reducing exp gained and not have to wait a minute to put it up again......or put like a 10sec timer...u ruined the scout main purpose

From another thread:

Can we get a statement from you guys as to whether[maskscent change]is permenant or not..if permenant you will lose a lot of Creature Handlers guys.

We are fixing the high failure rate, for sure. I am also floating the idea from the boards here, about it not giving XP but having the old success rate.

I think a gyrating dance of some sort may be in order. Just don't let up until it actually gets fixed.

The problem was people getting buttloads of XP from critters they had no business being around at their level.

Better I think that they set it so maskscent simply never works against mobs that con so high against your relative skill level.And let me keep the few xp I get from low blues.

Oh well, I guess I'll just kill every dang baby animal I comes across so I get the XP need to be a CH. I just hope the stench from all that killing washes off.

First off, just because a monster CON's higher than another does not automatically give it Super Sensitive Sensory. Now it makes sense that it would be harder to sneak by a Tiger vs a Cow, probably the same would go for a Domestic cat vs a Buzzard, so lets avoid the blanket statement that we should not be able to mask around them just because they are Red. Level/CON at this time is controlled by your weapon skills and not your Mask skills.

Earlier I made the statement that I would prefer No Exp to the Timer as it is now, I still hold that, but if I was to suggest changes to the skill that would balance it out some I would start out with something like:

1. I would remove the timer as it stands now, I would change it so that IF you are detected by a animal that it would take so long (x minutes, 1 minute, whatever) for you to mask your scent against that specific animal again. If I run by a grizzly bear and 4 deer, just because the bear notices me, does not necessarily mean the deer are going to be aware of my presense.

2. I would break the current skill into two seperate deals. A. is the general maskscent as it is now, allowing full range/speed of motion but with a greater chance of being detected. If detected, you can reapply instantly but you will not wipe the monsters memory if he had detected you. To do that you would need to go "so far away from him (100m, 500m, 1000m, whatever) and stay for so long. He then would forget about you and if you reapproached he would just "roll the dice" to see if he detects you again (just like a new mob) The second part B - a maskscent that has greatly increasedchance of "Not" being detected, that reduces movement by 25%, 50%, 75%, whatever and will break if you "Attack". This mode will allow BE and CH to approach mobs, sneaking along, kinda like Stealth in EQ/DAoC.

3. In relation to the EXP gains - I am not sure what the DEV's consider "good" so they would have to play with it til they balanced it out like they wanted it, but I would potentially reduce the gains some, and I would increase the Delay time between repeat gains in EXP. example - You run by a mob, you get 150Exp, this mob will not give you Exp again for 10-15-20 minutes. If he detects you, then you do not get Exp and you still have to wait the required amount of time before you are able to gain Exp from him. So if you successfully run by a pack of 10 animals then you potentially could get Ten 150point Exp hits. This would eliminate the Exp loops and if someone want to gain by exploring, then they will be covering a BIG area.

Just some thoughts - feel free to comment on, modify, trash any of the above.

I agree with Killfar I don't care about the xp I just want mask scent / chamouflage to work so I can sneak past stuff or take out a couple of mobswhile the others are busy on the other side of their homesome distance away. My wife who is a crafter/survey person likes to beable to survey and run past mobs with outgetting killed.

The mask scent thing as it stood before the gate was pitiful, if it ever worked at all -for lower level people ... make it like it was in the last part of Beta ... and put the xp from it to nothing or next to nothing.

Getting to the xp ... one good trick to keep exploits lower is to only allow the mob One shot at giving you xp ..set a flag and have it so that you can't get xp from that mob forx period of timeor never again.

'nuff said

"Vega thinks its fine because he has already exploited it for all the scouting exp he needs. I hope you don't think anyone believes that your a Tamer and you think this is a "great" change. "

I despise that. I worked very hard to become a creature tamer and it did not involve exploiting maskscent. I'd contribute about 3% of my XP to successful maskscent checks... and believe me, that is generous.

Please don't try to discredit my posts with assumptions like this. I am very serious when I say that I think the new way maskscent works is better.

Pyradius... Yes, walking and going prone does in fact help your success with maskscent. I have tested it.

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...

Why not even 5 or 15 seconds? I haven't gotten this skill, but it sounds awesome and I was really looking forward to it. Now it just seems useless because if it fails you are in a middle of aggressives who will kill you instantly. I think a better alternative if ppl are getting the scout XP too quick is to lower the XP gained by doing it over and over. Perhaps the first time you do it you get 100%, then the second within 10 minutes you get 70% or so on, don't know how hard this would be to implement, but it sounds reasonable. Another better option would be to lower the amount of XP gained to a more reasonable level for the more difficult creatures. Don't leave it the way it is sounds like it ain't useful anymore and there are already too many non-useful abilites out there! If neither of these changes are possible change the limit to something better, don't know if that would even help though since I'm not 100% clear on how the skill works.