Expose Weakness not firing after 1/17 update

[chad878262]

Medium BAB yes. To give specific example, I have an elven gish which when buffed has 44 AB but which often gets dispelled back down to 36 AB. Greater TWF gives him 8 attacks a round an he averages about 12 dmg per hit. How much HP does a base frost giant have, 500-1000? How much DR does it have? Same thing with Fire Giants, even Gnolls to some extent. It gets tedious and down right off putting attempting to get one down, let alone a mob. One benefit to such an endeavor, is that EW when applied to it's full extent will knock down the AC enough to begin criticalling with increasing opportunity. If you play a dex character without sneak dice, you would understand.

I actually have more than one such character. However, if I am going to make a lowish CL gish I make sure that I am quite capable even without buffs... Gish should either be high CL (28+) or have other benefits to help make the lower CL less of an issue (i.e. HiPS or building around equipping as a fighter and using spells for short term power rather than long term buffing). In any case, balance has to consider the other side of the coin, where a Rogue dip weapon master is getting 2-6 crits per round for hundreds of points of damage. CR is based on a party of that level so if you are soloing end game content and it is frustrating/difficult I would say that means it's well balanced.

Now you make it also sound as if the EW is automatically applied on every attack. It is my understanding that you still need to beat the creatures AC to have it apply. Some bosses have quite high AC and there is still the chance with 36 AB, that you can miss your attack on simple mobs. Then your hard cap moves closer to -3 for medium and low AB builds. Is EW now auto hit?

If you do not land your first attack then EW is still effectively on your weapon. Thus as long as you land at least one attack per round then yes, you are landing EW every round. So, if you are fighting a boss that has 50 AC and you have 36 AB, you need to roll a 14 on attack 1, 19 on attack 2, or 20 on any subsequent attacks. And once you land it in one round, then the following round you need an 11, 16, 20... Land at least one hit in round 2 and now you are at 8, 13, 18, 20... This is not how we would wish it to be, but it is still considered to be better than auto-hit bug. However, again as you can hopefully see it is yet another reason we felt that allowing stacking to -15 AC is too much. When you consider that landing 1 out of X number of hits in a round will apply the AC malus, in general it is going to apply every round for most PC's.

Can you define exceedingly rare spotter script? I have found a good number of bosses can spot up to 60+ Hide and Move Silent characters and some pertinent areas such as Durlags and maybe 2-3 others still have the spotter's script in place.

Valeforts Spotter script is 1% of mobs, but you comment on bosses which has not been changed in years. 60's stealth has never been considered enough at level 30 and it still isn't. If you get to mid 70's you are safe the vast majority of the time, otherwise you are looking at ~50/50 in high CR area's. Durlags is actually better than it used to be before Tfunke's changes... That place used to be impossible to use stealth in, even if you approached 80's in both hide and move silently!

Sneaks have always been forced to focus all their gear slots toward hitting higher stealth scores. With the epic shops you have the opportunity to potentially put a few gear slots toward other things (my sneaks generally use the +3 STR/CON belt and try to get a +4 deflection and natural armor item, but all other slots are then dedicated to epic stealth gear). However, this is very expensive, so for a new character that is not twinking gear you are still going to have to play the "old way" of loading up every gear slot with stuff that has +2 - 3 hide/move silently... Then use a ring slot for a +6 hide ring, etc... Do this and get your hide up to mid 70's (move silently can probably be high 60's to low 70's and still be fine), then you will find that you are only spotted by the rare boss or spotter scripted mob and even then it will be about 50/50 so HiPS'ing should still work to land attacks.

[Maverick 40]

Chad, I have been building for some time. I have built some of the gimpiest RP builds on this server and I have created builds on this server that could live mechanically within Avernus indefinitely. When you plan out a build contingent on Feats working as intended and then they are changed, that can cause a restructuring, or weakening of a build, that is what is at question here, not mine, or any other players ability to build. Though I respect your wanting to be informational.

If you do not land your first attack then EW is still effectively on your weapon. Thus as long as you land at least one attack per round then yes, you are landing EW every round. So, if you are fighting a boss that has 50 AC and you have 36 AB, you need to roll a 14 on attack 1, 19 on attack 2, or 20 on any subsequent attacks. And once you land it in one round, then the following round you need an 11, 16, 20... Land at least one hit in round 2 and now you are at 8, 13, 18, 20... This is not how we would wish it to be, but it is still considered to be better than auto-hit bug. However, again as you can hopefully see it is yet another reason we felt that allowing stacking to -15 AC is too much. When you consider that landing 1 out of X number of hits in a round will apply the AC malus, in general it is going to apply every round for most PC's.

So, the Feat is not firing on your highest AB attack as intended it seems, which would not be so dissimilar from the original firing bug with the original feat. Is there a way to create the feat that technically can miss, which would begin the cool down?

Valeforts Spotter script is 1% of mobs, but you comment on bosses which has not been changed in years. 60's stealth has never been considered enough at level 30 and it still isn't. If you get to mid 70's you are safe the vast majority of the time, otherwise you are looking at ~50/50 in high CR area's. Durlags is actually better than it used to be before Tfunke's changes... That place used to be impossible to use stealth in, even if you approached 80's in both hide and move silently!

Sneaks have always been forced to focus all their gear slots toward hitting higher stealth scores. With the epic shops you have the opportunity to potentially put a few gear slots toward other things (my sneaks generally use the +3 STR/CON belt and try to get a +4 deflection and natural armor item, but all other slots are then dedicated to epic stealth gear). However, this is very expensive, so for a new character that is not twinking gear you are still going to have to play the "old way" of loading up every gear slot with stuff that has +2 - 3 hide/move silently... Then use a ring slot for a +6 hide ring, etc... Do this and get your hide up to mid 70's (move silently can probably be high 60's to low 70's and still be fine), then you will find that you are only spotted by the rare boss or spotter scripted mob and even then it will be about 50/50 so HiPS'ing should still work to land attacks.

Thanks for the advice. To be honest, my sneaking gish basically can be buffed to 90+ Hide and 84 MS, which leads to the 80+ Hide / Move Silent roll over 100 reset bug (something that really needs fixing). Even without spells, I am well over 70 - 65 Hide and MS even with AC gear but that is because I have been playing on this server and have accumulated both vast amounts of gold and gear over a span of seven years. But finding that sweet spot between the 100 roll reset bug and the 70+ range is problematic at times, especially for non-melee sneak builds that must struggle to deal with low AC - low AB. Expose helps to bring those builds some greater viability in such melee situations.

While the gold sink store I think is a step in the right direction regarding bridging the gap between the haves and the have nots on this server, it is still problematic for new and returning players to access that store. In the meantime, nerfing feats that help to create more parity for weaker non powerbuilds I think is a bit counter intuitive to universal design.

Why can it even be deactivated? I haven't seen any situation where I wouldn't want to have it on. Should just always be on IMO.

I am also getting the random deactivations.

This, +1

So simple, but really hits to the heart.
Well done Winterborne.

[SpoonDagger]

As someone who has never used or even seen the old EW and who just recently acquired it on my character, EW seems awesome. My mediocre character now feels like an engine of destruction. What I dont know, can't hurt me, so 2 thumbs up to EW in its current iteration.