Taken up a notch

The new huntress has arrived. See the character sheet or forum for full description, but here are the key changes:

PROWL - She’s better at sneaking and surprise sword attacks (including leap attacks), but more likely to be spotted if leaping.
DODGE - Her ability to dodge hits only applies to missile and breath attacks, unless evading.
EVADE - Evading provides a bit better defense, but without a counterattack bonus.
FLAMING ARROW - Gain a bonus for each flame you shoot over along a direct path to your target (even if the flame is not adjacent to the elf)
LEAP ATTACKS - Leap attacks are eligible for Heroic Strikes, can be against up to 4 targets if leaping 3 spaces, and can be turned off using a toggle under the elf portrait.
SLIME CHANGE - If she does a non-magical leap over slimes, they turn to face the direction of her leap as a free action.
FEAT ACTION - She can leap 3 spaces during feats.

And, as with the new swordsman and brawler, she now goes to level 24. Let us know what you think!

ELVEN HUNTRESS:

ABILITIES:

Leap: Leap 2 spaces (Stealth leaping is 6x more likely to be spotted than prowling.)
Dodge: 30% chance to dodge missile & breath hits
Prowl: Chance of being spotted sneaking is 5% + 5% per adjacent facing monster (pilfering remains 10% + 10%); extra +2 to surprise sword attacks

SKILLS:

Leap Attack I: Attack what you leap over, with 40% chance of causing panic (formerly called disorientation)
Leap Attack II: 50% panic
Leap Attack III: 60% panic

[You can use the button under the elf portrait to turn leap attack on or off. During stealth, the default is Off. Once spotted, the default is On (unless it’s your second feat action and you turned it Off on your first feat action.]

Evade I: If guarding, dodge applies to all hits, counter with bow or sword
Evade II: 40% dodge
Evade III: 50% dodge

Long Shot I: Bow distance penalty is -2
Long Shot II: Bow distance penalty is -1
Long Shot III: No bow distance penalty

Flaming Arrow I: +1 per flame along arrow’s path (flames of equal range only count as one, so it’s a max of 2 flames that add to the bonus)
Flaming Arrow II: +2 per flame along arrow’s path
Flaming Arrow III: +1 to above total

DURING FEATS: Huntress can leap 3.

OTHER CHANGES:

• Surprise leap attacks are allowed

• Ability to turn leap attack on/off

• Leap attacks get any applicable focus bonus and generate focus on the last miss. (When leap attacking multiple targets, the first target counts as an attack, thus causing loss of focus on anything else.)

• Extended Leap Attacks (from a feat or leap scroll) generate an attack against all monsters on tiles along the leap path even if two away. (up to 4 monsters can be attacked)

• If you leap over a slime with the elf, the slime gets a free action to turn in the direction the elf was leaping. (does not apply to scroll leaps)

• Leap Attacks are eligible for Heroic Strikes. Rolling a 10 (or 9 against dragons) will trigger a feat.

Yay!

Good so far….

Although I am not happy about being hit by oozes jumped over, at least I can jump in the tunnel without using a scroll. Thank you!

Is the experience chart meant to differ from the other heroes?

Well it seemed good on paper. First try on 32 dragons and I only made it through 14. Equipment was good, couldn’t blame it on that. Appreciated all the extra leap attacks but most were misses. Hopefully a fluke. Maybe the decreased defense was my downfall. Being able to secret leap attack is great.

seems a bit nerfed based on the gameplay since the change. Spreading out the benefits of Long Shot has had an impact. The first time an ooze changed direction and attacked me when I j6mped over it was a shock.

Yes “free action to turn in your direction” = you can’t get away from a slime by leaping over it. It will move on to your space.

The tunnels are harder because of that - beware.

(green will. yellow can.)

Was the huntress considered too strong or unbalanced before? This feels like a nerf, I think mostly due to the reduced ability to sneak while leaping, and the removal of dodge for melee attacks. I tried in the game, and it definitely feels more difficult now.

I think they wanted more hunting and less sneaking and pilfering when playing the huntress.

The Elf does seem to miss a lot, even with a +9 bow and one or more flames.

It does not appear as if the new Elf, operating solo, is competitive with the new Dwarf.

How many Elves are near the top of the Tournament leader-board at this point?

I don’t try it beetletoe, because I have this slight nerf-feeling, too. 1. It seems too hard, until the last long shot comes. 2. I messed up my elf skills during games with only humans and dwarfs and couldn’t rebuild them, yet. I mentioned in the dwarf thread, that the last 3 dwarf upgrades are not so relevant, so he is already on “kind of max” strength. Elf really relies on this one long shot point. A good stratagy is still leaping over two dragons two times (on scroll, one normal) the chance is good, that they won’t attack, because disorientation stacks and you might also get a feat. But that is hard to use in dense rooms, because you loose the shoot back and can’t really hit in close combat. Of course you CAN hit great with fire now. But what if a tournament would not provide much fire scrolls? You are done in that case.
It might be worth thinking about a new rule to avoid the nerf-feeling: If you disorient all monsters in a room in the same turn, you enter sneak mode. That could be part of the prowl skill. I absolutely don’t know if that is much too strong or absolutely useless, so it might be just right and fits to the direction of development.

There was a bug with the new huntress (thanks, Burner D). The dodge vs. breaths was not working correctly when not evading. It is fixed now. She should do considerably better in the lair now.

Hi, Rowdius.

Dodge aside, is it possible that the hit probabilities on long shots are not as high as they are claimed to be?

In general, the Elf seems to be missing shots much more often than before.

Last night, I had one particularly puzzling extreme case with the Elf (Level 20), using a +9 bow, shooting over TWO successive flames, missed more than a half-dozen successive long shots on the same Red Dragon (even though the game reported that the focus value was increasing each time).

So the new Elf is BOTH a worse Thief, and a worse Archer? Sigh.

It makes me wonder whether the game needs to add Magic Prescription Spectacles, to help overcome the Elf’s recent development of nearsightedness.

@beetletoe - I think the bow shots are working as they should.

However, we did find another bug. On leap attacks against 2 targets, the elf was attacking the monster with the lesser bonus instead of the greater bonus. That’s now fixed.

Retried 32 green dragons with the elf and finished fairly easily with 4 remaining potions. My fairly unscientific test says better. Both bow and sword hit at rates that felt reasonable and didn’t get destroyed by incoming hits.

One note I had a few times where I used a leap or haste spell (not sneaky) to attack and forgot to check the intent button resulting in a harmless leap over, doh! Hopefully just a habit that will improve with practice. Does the button remember from the last attack or should it revert to default behavior each time?

@eddiert - That doesn’t sound right. If not in stealth, the default should be for leap attack to be on, even if you haste or scroll. It does not remember from the last attack, although if you turn it off and then click haste or leap scroll, it will remain off. (The exception about remembering the state is with feats. If you turn it off on the first feat action, it will stay off for the second action – which is not ideal, but it would require a fair bit of work to change it.)

Are you observing a different behavior than that?

@rowdius I am pretty sure that it was not in stealth but unfortunately not 100% sure. It’s one of those cases of if I was paying better attention then it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. I will take more notice next time.

@rowdius So, I ran another 32 dragons, had no issues and was ready to put it to bed. Then, I started the daily hunt adjacent to a monster. I wanted to attack the monster so I went to choose leap attack and lo and behold it was already selected. Finished that room and went into the next. Again adjacent to a monster but this time the leap attack was not selected by default. I resigned and started a new daily hunt and the behavior was repeatable. For the first move leap attack is on, after making a move the leap attack is off.

Currently elf is not an option for me for high tournament unless having max lvl… I feel the same as beetletoe with the bow. Had a 9 bow and missed so much… Next time I will look closely at the values. In the past 9-bow always “felt good”. However, it can just be bad luck one time or comes from that one missing penalty on range 3. 54% or 45% is very different (like 20% less hits!).

We’re not done balancing the heroes.

If we removed the penalty for range 3 bow attacks, it might mean nerfing her in some other way. (Or if we leave it, maybe improve her in some other way.)

So, assuming that the overall power level remains the same, do you prefer the gameplay of where there is a difference between range 2 and range 3 shots? Or do you prefer them to be the same where you don’t have to consider the difference?

The bow seems to be OK. I have checked the results now. However, I think there is one important change: Dodge does NOT apply on fireballs? Maybe this is intended, but as a rule it is not very clear. It is not a missle and not a breath. I just thought I just have very bad luck, but is it just not working the way I thought? It makes a huge difference to me, because I guess the number of potions I will need for each room in advance. Often a mage is “hidden at range 4”. But nobody else can attack me. This would change the strategy a lot.

For clarity: It works of course when guarding.

@Rowdius I am uncertain about the range-3-penalty. I think it depends on the overall elf. Currently there is a difference to range 2 and I sometimes reduce the distance for this reason. But it is often only in feat mode against a very low number of monsters, because I don’t have the “freedom” to do such things otherwise. So the gained tactical component isn’t enourmous. It feels more like an “additional thing to do”, when doing so. If you want us to “fight closer” I suggest either making dodge work (with its chance) against the focus target. That way we may decide to shoot at dragons in range two. Or increase the feat probability for a range-2-shot to 10-12. Both, together with a range 3 penalty, could make me go closer, but usually not the penalty alone.

I don’t play the elf much, but it seems to me that she is at significant disadvantage in the lair over the others: only 2/3 of the hit points; maximum attack without scrolls of +9, worse at safe distance, no shield after bow, d8 sword, no bonus for bad rolls. I’m not sure that Dodge and Leap make up for that. The dwarf can charge for +2 and relatively safely charge a group of 3 for the frenzy bonus as well. He has d12 shield and bad rolls hunkering give Gird Loins. The swordsman has press and full swing, chance to take 2 hit points with Cleave and another one with Skewer. Bad rolls give Rage. Dragons can attack from 3 away (as they can move then breathe) so the elf constantly has to work to keep out of range and with more than one or two dragons that’s not feasible.

How about giving the elf a chance of sneaking away from a fight after a bad roll, or being able to re-enter a room through the same doorway without being seen? So the Surprise/Prowl ability would be usable more than once per room. There’s a lot of difference between an attack at +9 and an attack at +12 or +14. Or give the elf (not the others) a feat for killing a dragon?

Feat after dragon kill would be much too strong. Maybe a feat when killing two or more dragons with one jump? The question is how likely that really is. It is probably less than once a game. But it sounds fun to try to get this. In case you make it so, you should also do it for the human (killing one dragon with the attack and another one with skewer with the same attack).