How badly did thief mules affect the game?

I bought afk zak helm pre-patch from a guy running it solo with 3 NLs, 1 Shad, 1 Bishop, and 1 bucc.

he barely had to move any of his NLs

Granted I have absolutely no clue about anything more technical beyond holding down a single key and moving slightly left/right after 100 skill procs, he told me that heknew others that were building up to run something similar but for HT/other bosses

it did feel like an insanely OP thing to me at the time.

but in hindsight? Where there’s a will, there’s a way so i’m sure something else is going to be discovered

 

There's a lot of speculation about multiattack from those who have little to no experience making the assumption that it's effortless. As someone who has logged 1500+ Zakum solo clears along with drop, cancel and run time data, I can comfortably say there's a lot of nuance in running this type of multiattack content that most single client or even duo/trio attack players will never understand. It's not as simple as you'd think trying to efficiently coordinate across 6 characters, and it might seem effortless from a spectator's perspective, but that comes from quite literally years of practice in fine-tuning movements and learning the ins and outs of the fight.

That being said, I also mostly agree with the avoid nerfs and the direction of rebalancing. It allows for progress through leveling and stat gain to be meaningful again whereas previously, a majority of the thief dodge rate power spike could be obtained through a passive skill by level 140. In its current state, a level 200 thief should have at least 650 avoid from their base LUK, gear, and potions which afford them a passive 65% dodge rate for most attacks, improved even further if using active shifter consistently. Avoid (and avoid earned from leveling/gearing your character) becomes a stat to consider rather than take for granted.

 

just because a playstyle is naunced, difficult, or even playable doesn’t make it justifiable.

The LUK/Avoid nerf wasn’t only for balancing thieves it was also for balancing neckbeards. I only hope ML staff continue nerfing forum neckbeards so I can return in peace.

 

Great argument. Very valid points. You’re so smart.

 

Luk drk had virtually no difference in terms of effectiveness in terms of sed muling (HT) other than requiring less interaction. There's only a handful that even exist for this purpose and realistically it grants very little benefit over conventional shad mules, especially now considering shads got passive stance.

Luk drk in Pink Bean only really serves to help casuals and challenged runners who haven't washed. The actual high tier PB runs come with requirements to be 30k HP passively because requiring HB remains a liability.

Nerfing luk drk is directly nerfing the exact people that need the most assistance in a world where drks essentially don't exist.

 

When the metrics of effectiveness for an ht sed mule are required interaction and cost, I wouldn't say 'virtually no difference'. But both certainly have been more than sufficient in their job of negating a core mechanic of the HT fight.

Of course, I actually believe the base HT sed should just be removed outright due to its ability to be so easily ignored by a comatose mule. Its become so normalized to the point where many groups simply will not run/recruit without a sed mule. "Active" sed players are fooling themselves into thinking they're useful by replicating the actions of a client running in the locked downstairs basement, taking the squad's damage down with them. Why does this mechanic exist again?

 

To keep the cleavers down

 

Here’s a DICKDANN meme gif to give you an idea of what an optimized multi-client setup can look like.
He was multi-maging (not multi-attacking), but the concept still applies.

 

#iterativesed

 

Yeah my set up was one keyboard and mouse. It was fun to figure out the puzzle and discover new ways to optimize. Mine involved directional keys on my mouse to enable efficient repositioning of specific clients, but the action required even in the example above isn’t as simple as the typical single clienters. People Footpedal mule attack and those are literally (and figuratively) a step removed from paperweight botting. If people can replicate single client gaming using a Footpedal, what does that say about single client gaming?

 

I agree with you completely on the first part, but you lost me with your 2nd paragraph. Multiclient is a skill. It's not a skill I want to ever engage in, and I do think that it often has a negative effect on the game (e.g. by making the game less social and flooding the market with mesos and cheap goods), but it's not like it's a free money cheat code that is going to nuke the community. It takes a lot of time, practice, and work to pull it off even once, let alone to do it consistently.

In the case of the shifter change, I don't really get what you're saying or why you're justifying it. Was the avoid gained from LUK and stats not meaningful before? Why does it suddenly become meaningful now? Did you have certain breakpoints in mind that are now harder to hit? If so, wouldn't a nerf to the avoid formula and a nerf to the numbers from shifter have achieved the same effect? Why is making avoid harder to get and more gear dependent (on thieves specifically) even desirable? Avoid gear, and even avoid scrolled gear, was already desirable and impactful pre patch.

I guess I'm just not understanding what you think warranted the change.

It says that it's fairly easy and straightforward, I guess. Is that a bad thing?

 

A lot of the nerfs were targeted at strategies deemed too powerful, but frankly they weren't even the strongest strategies available for money making for the time and meso investment involved. A number of people were soloing Zakum and other low level bosses with entire parties, one person had done a load of solo Horntail, and it's quite popular to attack on two Night Lords in bosses like Pink Bean.

I think it'd be more accurate to say there are strategies that staff disagree with rather than saying they were too powerful. I don't think the Zakum soloers were making money indicative of the effort provided. Starting out it's maybe 20-30mil/hr and that's after hundreds of hours of investment, and only after the exp of hundreds of runs does it get closer to 40mil/hr. The HT solos were better, but only with the caveat that it looked to be a significant amount of work, and only after loads of practice could the apple costs go down enough for it to reach ~60mil/hr of profit(though when the drops truly hit with stuff like 2 mw20, it was bonkers) but the investment required is in the tens of billions in gear and many thousands of hours played. Solo HT isn't something you really build towards, it's something you can consider after chasing other strategies long enough.

You can get similar money for less effort and investment with multimaging, it makes many of the boss solos look like a sort of niche alternative playstyle rather than something inherently broken. Of course the avoid nerfs didn't really stop it as much as it made alternatives look more viable, all while inconveniencing the average player. Stance is equally as problematic as avoid when it comes to making characters playable on a mass scale, to the point that multi-pally is going to wreck havoc on all of Neo-Tokyo, and are only protected from nerf by being staff's blessed and favorite child. It's difficult to come up with solutions that don't end up as half-measures that don't leave everyone involved unhappy, and the thing you try to fix only comes around again with a new face and a bitter taste in the mouth.

For consistency either warrior afk play should be nerfed or Shifter should be brought back online, even at a lessened rate of like 15% on NL and 20% on shad. The .4 avoid/luk is pretty fine as it is, though .3 would probably fit warriors better since they already possess so many uniquely powerful assets as luk mules. There's a decent middle ground to be had, and it's correct to say that avoid was overtuned, but I don't believe it needs to be gutted entirely.

 

What absolutely drives me nuts about this situation is the contradiction between how the rules treat multiclient (MC) and how both the community and balance team (BT) treat it. Kimmy is adamant that it's impossible to enforce a ban against multiclient. Fair enough. And most of the community engages in some sort of multiclient play. But then the BT consistently treats MC as suspicious if not prima facie in need of nerfs. So you get these overhauls and heavy-handed nerfs to strategies that maybe a handful of players were running after already spending thousands of hours and billions of mesos and it's not even clear why they're a problem to begin with. If banning MC is impossible, nerfing it out of existence is harder than impossible. Am I really supposed to be mad at someone running HT solo, anyway? Yeah, sure, it makes the game less social but like... it's explicitly allowed by the rules and more or less condoned by the player base. So why is BT treating it like a game-breaking exploit?

 

The people that are/were doing this you almost guarenteed would never even get to join even if they decided to bring more runners in. The social arguement in this case is basically moot

 

BT was pretty clear they were targeting unbalanceability of thief class if their core identity is to be afk ignore all attacks and spells, which hopefully means there will be future bosses and tweaks. Toning down multi-attack was probably just a bonus, and ppl are still allowed to run their 6 shads or 4 NLs at the same time. They're not even targeting muling that much, muling is still as easy as it was before.