Martial Arts?

I believe this is worth more than a simple post on the SQT.

Why were the Martial Arts skills of the Assassin removed? To replace with new things? A D2 limitation that made it far weaker than every other class set? The Assassin was unique in Vanilla with it alone having the ability to kick. What is the reason of not continuing the use of these skills?

By going with that logic, Laz could have kept many skills from cLoD for their uniqueness. He decided to add new skills to every chars instead; don't you think it would be lame if every char had new skills except assassin?

I think he means by the overall mechanics of them such as the charge up attacks and finishing moves. The only thing we have related to that is batstrike, the finishing move being a normal attack.

Segolia wrote:means by the overall mechanics of them such as the charge up attacks and finishing moves.

This. I'm not saying to have Dragon Talon, Tail, Flight, ect in the game, but kicking skill(s) or related things. It was unique to the Assassin.

It's the same reason why paladin shield skills don't exist either. It has nothing to do with innovation. It has to do with the fact that these skills are highly hardcoded. This is the reason why Laz decided to leave them aside, using skills (or anything) that is heavily hardcoded involves a risk, which is that you can never be too certain about the outcome, unexpected things can happen. In some cases, some skills mechanics being hardcoded simply means that you have limited ways to modify it, and thus, are unable to make a viable outcome out of them.

I want to point out that ever since I took over the mod I've been trying to use all resources at my disposal on all possible aspects in the game, even if it involved using hardcoded features that might break something, just due to the fact that it heavily pays off if you manage to make something out of it, as new mechanics mean more variety and less "nova that casts more novas". Pestilence is one example (hurricane func), as well as Demonrend (hydra func). All I'm trying to say is that at this point, if there's a certain skill mechanic missing, the reason for it is that I have come to the conclusion it's impossible.

Particularly for assassin, the kick skills are extremely hardcoded. None of the clod kick skills have any kind of room for customization. The missiles are hardcoded, the skill parameters are hardcoded, I'm fairly certain they also need to be at a specific index in skills.txt, which is always a problem. But you might ask: "Macro, can't you just make a random skill that uses the kick animation, just like Tiefling Form uses a backflip when casting?" - the answer is yes, I can. But what's the point? If I made a random skill and gave it a kick animation, then:
- On-attack procs wouldn't work (assumption, since bites from werewolf don't proc them either)
- The damage used would come from a weapon, not boots (since you need a hardcoded skillfunc for that)
- Morphs would fuck it up
- The skill wouldn't be flagged as "finishing"

And this last point is the most relevant to me at least. I have tried for several hours to get shadow refuge/crucify to be considered 'finishing skills' and came to the conclusion it is impossible without hardcoding. So the only finishing skills can be normal attack or the clod kicks (as I mentioned before, un-customizable). As a matter of fact, assassin was going to get charge-up skills in XVc, but after I found out about this limitation, I had to ditch them. Sad story.

MarcoNecroX wrote:
And this last point is the most relevant to me at least. I have tried for several hours to get shadow refuge/crucify to be considered 'finishing skills' and came to the conclusion it is impossible without hardcoding. So the only finishing skills can be normal attack or the clod kicks (as I mentioned before, un-customizable). As a matter of fact, assassin was going to get charge-up skills in XVc, but after I found out about this limitation, I had to ditch them. Sad story.

It's awesome that you tried this btw.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

MarcoNecroX wrote:snip

This is the answer I was looking for. I figured things like this would be hardcoded. Thanks for the reply. Perhaps, since Sigma contains code edits, it could be viable to "unhardcode" sort-to-speak some of said things? I have no idea, just curious.

It's definetly being fixed in sigma. Batsin and charge-up builds could be "less punishing" and become more used with such change. It has always been a shame that this charge mechanic was squeezed into just this one skill, Batstrike, which most people are kind of afraid to commit to because the odd normal-attack finish.

which most people are kind of afraid to commit to because the odd normal-attack finish.

For me its not that, its mostly because I have  trouble finding enough MO/gem/rune room to sqeeze in minion stats, without needed to make some sacrifices, such as -enemy res for ways, or dex for block. The bats themselves though are obviously one of the best and deserved that early game nerf I noticed you put in. The AoE WDM effect though is really amazing in some ubers when you find some good items to proc alongside with it. It's not so much normal attack, its more of the fact its tricky and intimidating to build around.

Thanks for the awesome reply marco. I always wondered about this as well. I loved the martial arts tree from cLoD