UO Second Age

Panthor the Hated wrote:BUT THE DEMO IS ALWAYS RIGHT...
When are we going to get off this "its in the demo" kick? I'd trust memory over the demo, and I don't trust memory. If anything is going to be changed please use real evidence.

I must concur with my feline compadre.

I always had 100str 100int 25dex on my mage with the knowledge that 100 str = more damage from my melee.

35 dex was for newbs.

Mens Rea wrote:I always had 100str 100int 25dex on my mage with the knowledge that 100 str = more damage from my melee.

35 dex was for newbs.

I almost feel like switching to 35 dex though.

In order for me to not "lose out" on DPS I have to run an extra step or 2 away so my timer refreshes and I can hit, if I don't then the 35 dex mage will hit me and I will "punch" him and lose my hit.

100 int/25 dex is nice on the field, but it gives me a huge disadvantage in a confined tournament area vs a any 35 dex mage who knows what he's doing.

Everytime I fight 35 dex mages and especially so-called "top pvpers" they act like every hally hit is going to be their last. Lol, they get so intense with the hally spamming that it's laughable to watch.

35 dex is used here because its superior for duels, 25 dex was best on OSI because we didn't have daily tournys.

A 35 dex based tank mage template was not used on OSI for an obvious reason.. Stat management did not exist until UOR number one. Secondly, skill management did not exist until November 23rd, 1999. This means there was only a three month window of opportunity to conduct a flawless 35 dex tank mage until pre-casting was removed in January 2000. By this time it would have been utterly pointless to run a 35 dex template tank mage if anyone actually successfully over came the learning curve for them in the first place.

The only way the 35 dex based tank mage templates will no longer exist is if we were to actually fix the stat locks finally and opt out of skill management portion of the controversial November 23rd patch.

Panthor.. stop ranting endlessly with the demo comments until you can actually formulate an intelligent conclusion on the subject matter and why it's actually used as a source.

25 dex isnt bad. i expect most people with 35 arent even utilizing it.

That's assuming that the hally cycle thing here is even remotely correct, which I suspect it is not.

A hally swinging every 19 ticks (4.75s) with 25 stam with an equip delay would make the weapon completely useless. We know that they were not useless during the t2a era for obvious reasons. Secondly, without a hally being able to 'cycle' the explosion, ebolt, hally combo is not possible. We also know that this combo was possible and used heavily during the t2a era for obvious reasons.

Try doing the math matron...

Explosion Damage Delay: 12 ticks (3.0s)
Ebolt Casting Delay: 7 ticks (1.75s)
Hally Delay(25 stam): 19 tickks (4.75s)

Please explain to me how you can cast an explosion, target the spell, cast an ebolt holding the spell, equip a hally(which resets your swing counter to 0 aka readjusts the weapon delay back to the beginning), wait 4.75s even though the explosion damage delay would have already elapsed 1.75s before a swing could even take place.. and land the ebolt relatively at the same time as the other two sequences of damage even though it has a one second damage delay upon being casted... Again, we also know it was possible to land all three damage sequences very close together during the t2a era.

Put your thinking cap on for this one son.

It seems like that rests on the equip delay. The time could be 15 seconds to ready a swing and you would still be able to pull off that same combo. Where is the actual information used to back up this claim, because from a realistic standpoint, it's speculation.

Faust wrote:Here is the compiled list of everything that I was able to find from the initial patch in '97 up to this point in time...

- Equip/Lift Delay -

1997, December 16th - Patch
Equipping a weapon in combat will restart your weapon swing.

Reference: http://wiki.uosecondage.com/?title=1997_Patch_Notes

1998, July - UO Demo
Equipping or lifting a weapon adjusts the swing counter to zero.

Reference: Batlin

1999, January 27th - Google Groups
Won't matter for us pure warriors; we still won't have a chance to hit
anything under the sun. Since they're adding an equip delay, it will take
even longer to hit something.

RE:That's just to make the game fair for non-UOA users. So a UOA user
can't disarm and arm with a single keystroke - much quicker than a
non-UOA user.

They are moving the "swing delay" to "after the hit" instead of before
it. That helps warriors that aren't using UOA to disarm, heal, rearm
super-fast.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... p+delay%22#

1999, February 24th - Google Groups
Is this delay for all weapons, or just ranged weapons? It is very annoying. A
damn ettin walked off the screen while I was waiting to fire.

RE:As far as I can tell, all weapons have a delay before the first swing,
depending on the weapon's swing time.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 29cfbb2369

1999, April 19th - Google Groups
Archers: Another 'cool' char class, though really quite poor. Unless you have 100


dex, supremely acc +23 archery bows and and 100 skill you will hit so infrequently
that anyone can do anything between the shots. Combined with the equip delay it
is too slow. However, a fast moving archer can give an advantage (as everything).
I agree with some other comments; poor to begin with, nerfed to nothing.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... p+delay%22#

1999, May 13th - Google Groups
Pandemonium mentioned that he would like to make it so that you can drink
potions and cast spells with weapons equiped (but still have the re-equip
delay before you start firing/swinging again). I'm not sure about the
balance issues raised by this, but it seems like it might make two handed
weapons (such as bows more popular with those who do not use UOA.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 8dde8841b8

1999, June 22nd - Google Groups
Ideas I like most so far:


1) Increase the fire rate, decrease the re-arm delay;
2) Increased accuracy to offset the cost of arrows and the fact that
good mages never miss, and meleers hit so fast they hardly notice;
3) Ability to interrupt an archers fire to balance the other changes.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 4e6d4f95d8

1999, August 12th - Google Groups
For instance, my mage is still holding on to his archery and because
of the arm delay cannot effectively use the "combo". Well, plus I'd
died to lag of death twice last night and decided not to even pickup a
bow.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 8e13bc5812

1999, December 16th - UOHOC
Glamdring - *Asparouh-LoD* Archery is the least popular fighting skill now and continues to go down. Are you going to at least fix the extremelly long delay before a bow starts shooting when equipped?Any changes planned to make crossbows and heavy crossbows useful again?My bowyer is starving!
Firedog - Much of our attention is focused at this time on the six-month plan. Making adjustments to specific skills will most probably
Firedog - not take place until after we implement that plan.
Firedog - After this happens, there will certainly be more time to look at individual skills, and archery is certainly one
Firedog - that I would like to take a look at.

Reference: http://uohoc.stratics.com/logs/1999-12-16-pub.shtml

2000, January 15th - Google Groups
Not true on either account as far as I know. The nerf on archery
included removing the ability to drink potions with a bow equipped and
then adding a horendously long equip delay for all types of bows.

RE:The equip delay is a real killer though, especially
since there doesn't seem to be one for the other weapons.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... p+delay%22#

2000, January 16th - Google Groups
weapon delay. Why does archery have such a huge
delay, but a halberd doesn't? The equip delay
for archery needs to be shortened, and lengthened
for some other weapons. I'd make the delay weapon
based and not "skill class" based.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 48463443bb

2000, February 3rd - UOHOC
Glamdring - *Exe_* "BTW, great changes lately, the game seems livelier than ever. Archery Question: Is there a reason you decided to increase the firing rate as opposed to decreasing the equip delay? IMO it's the equip delay which makes the bow practically useless in pvp and the reason most people choose not to use it."
Sage - Excellent point. Rune and I were discussing this earlier. This is definitely something we need to address. Should we go ahead with these changes, it will be. Excellent question. Thanks.

Reference: http://uohoc.stratics.com/logs/2000-02-03-pub.shtml

2000, March 8th - Google Groups
Maybe just me, I can take the firing rate, but that damn equip delay really
kills my archers.

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... p+delay%22#

2000, August 1st - Google Groups
i) Oh, your GM Archer appears to have missed 10 times in a row.
ii) Oh, look at that I have full health and mana, and you cant drink a
potion without that stupid re-arm delay penalty. Kal Vas ... ooOOoo

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... m+delay%22#

2000, October 31st - Google Groups
The arm delay is still far too long, even after the <so-called> adjustment,
and the fail rate for a gm archer is absolutely ridicules. (IMHO).

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... d806863ea7

2001, August 3rd - UOPowergamers.com
Archery is the weakest fighting skill, and only useful in few situations. It's advantage is that you can hit monsters (or players..) without having to stand directly next to them and getting hit back. The only other skill that allows you to do this is magery.
The drawbacks are the slow firing delay and long equip delay of the xbow and heavy xbow, the VERY limited range of bolts and arrows, the fact that you can't move until your weapon hits (or misses) it's target (Moving stops the shot, and that you can outrun arrows and bolts (!!).

Reference: http://www.uopowergamers.com/a-aug01.shtml

2002, March 8th - Google Groups
I didn't like dying, but i bore a grudging respect for them. They fought well,
and rarely relied on cheap tactics.(Deadly poison, the halberd no-equip delay
bug, etc..)

Reference: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... p+delay%22#

Present Day - Ultima Online Production Shards
Still sets the swing counter to zero when equipping/unequipping a weapon.

Reference: Kaivan

This is a very old discussion that has been hashed out many times Matron. The equip delay is most certainly accurate which leads us back to my original question... How can you perform a synced damage sequence explosion, eb, hally combo when your halberd at 25 stamina has no chance to even swing until 1.75s after the explosion spell lands?

I think you missed my intention.

I'm not questioning whether or not the halberd should swing in time to perform the good old explode-eb-hally combo after being equipped. I am questioning the delay put in place between "hally cycling" or whatever you like yo call it.


The table on the left is the least possible delay to cycle a halberd, as per the formula. I don't know if it is accurate or not anyway, but that is not important. The table on the right is a stamina level, and the related delay between disarm-rearm to cycle the weapon. Before you mention it, yes I know that it could be up to an additional .50 to the total of the minimum delay because of starting the cycle mid tick, and the way razor counts, not to mention the macros line speed. For each of the stam values I decreased the delay in .10s increments until I found the time that hit with a consistant rate. Rather than the delay being proportional to the stamina level, it appears to have 4 states almost. (~2, 2.25, 2.5, 2.75). With 2 stamina, you can still cycle a weapon in 2.75 ??

I can understand 46-100 stam producing 1.9 or so, I think the min possible is 1.25 but thats unlikely. The only difference across the entire spread of 1-100 stam is .75?

Edit: Reuploaded img.

Some of the mechanics aren't right, mini heal is too effective.

I'm not even quite sure what you're trying to get at with that last post Matron...

The swing timer increments from 0 ticks until the current weapon's tick value for a swing exceeds. IE: 60000 / (( Stam + 100) * Weapon Speed) which means a hally at 25 stam is 19 ticks. The so called 'equip delay' simply resets the swing timer value to 0 anytime a weapon is dragged or equipped with your character. The values for the equip delay do not vary which is what is what is sounds like you're trying to get at here Matron. The timer as we all are aware of incremetns per tick(0.25s).

Psilo, the current mini heal formula being used on UOSA is actually less effective than the one used in the original OSI code that yields 11-16 at GM magery.

I am questioning a mage at 2 stamina, still being able to cycle the halberd at 2.75 intervals.

It isn't a far cry from a mage at 50 stamina swinging at 2.

MatronDeWinter wrote:I am questioning a mage at 2 stamina, still being able to cycle the halberd at 2.75 intervals.

It isn't a far cry from a mage at 50 stamina swinging at 2.

True, if archery is affected by dex/stamina and there is a lower cap for minimum speed, all weapons should including bare fisted wrestling