It'd be pretty neat to nerf stunning fist

[Korr]

This just isn't true. You make it sound like I can just build anything I want and just add some ac or fort and be good.

We can go back and forth all day with I can I could I couldnt I wont.

If everyone were vulnerable to everything nothing would be fun. The same the other way around if everyone is immune to everything it would be no fun. When immune to mind-affecting stopped stunning fist from working no one ever thought about using it because it was far to common to be immune (Im talking about the game not just ns4 on this one).

Keep in mind for most (if not all) characters to reach a DC of 60 they had to take 10 epic feats to achieve that!!! Thats ALL normal epic feats + 3 bonus feats which have to be monk, fighter, or CoT to be able to get. Thats 10 feats for 1 very specific chance of doing something.

Casters who take Auto-Quick ||| get to use that on all their spells, Epic Spell Focus is 1 feat, epic spell penetration is 1 feat, epic spells are more widely useful (for the most part) than stuns... you cant be immune to hellball, or greater ruin, or the extra AC from epic mage armor. And of everything I have listed there they still have 2 more feats to use before they match the same number of feats for JUST "ISF X". The stunner will still want epic prowess, epic weapon focus to say the least.

tl:dr -> it takes a lot to be a great stunner, dont wanna waste 10 epic feats on 50 DC stun!

[mining]

To be fair there's a big difference between DC 60 stun and autoquickening spells - one stop other people from doing anything whatsoever, the other offers the caster more options.

[Korr]

To be fair there's a big difference between DC 60 stun and autoquickening spells - one stop other people from doing anything whatsoever, the other offers the caster more options.

Theres also a big difference between 3 epic feats and 10 epic feats right? That was the point I was trying to make, is that getting a 60 DC stun is a HUGE investment in the epic levels.

[Rufio]

It is a big investment, but it clearly isn't so prohibitive that people can't do it, because it is done quite often. It takes more feats than that to get a DC 48 implode, which is much easier to get immunity from. You can make a highly effective stunner that will still stun almost anything with ease using fewer than 10 imp stun feats as well.

I agree that it wouldn't be fun if everyone was immune to it, but we aren't talking about nerfing stunning fist into uselessness, only nerfing it from being auto-win against 90% of builds.

The point is that it isn't very fun if you are stuck building in that 10% of builds just because you are afraid of getting stunned before you can even make a fight of things. What has been happening lately is that people are feeling very pressured to build in that 10%, which is causing inflated fort scores and a general lack of variety of pvp builds across the board.

[mining]

It is a big investment, but it clearly isn't so prohibitive that people can't do it, because it is done quite often. It takes more feats than that to get a DC 48 implode, which is much easier to get immunity from. You can make a highly effective stunner that will still stun almost anything with ease using fewer than 10 imp stun feats as well.

I agree that it wouldn't be fun if everyone was immune to it, but we aren't talking about nerfing stunning fist into uselessness, only nerfing it from being auto-win against 90% of builds.

The point is that it isn't very fun if you are stuck building in that 10% of builds just because you are afraid of getting stunned before you can even make a fight of things. What has been happening lately is that people are feeling very pressured to build in that 10%, which is causing inflated fort scores and a general lack of variety of pvp builds across the board.

Thank you, this summarizes my view really well. It's a chainable, incredibly high DC (Effectively 23 (!!!) points higher than implode due to spellcraft) that can be used multiple times per round, and it forces you to beat it. With implode, if you beat it, you're really not investing a ton. With Stun, you see people refusing to build whole arrays because they're stunnable. If each feat were +1DC, or you were more limited in taking them, you'd still see stunners - and I think that makes all the difference, while implode as is hardly gets used in pvp, because in being immune to it, at most, you're sacrificing maybe 1 AB, or 1 AC, or some small number in hide/ms. For stun, you're either investing a class (BG, Pal, PM) and sacrificing a ton of feats (all the saves feats) or being one of a small handful of class mixes with a ton of feats.

[Shadowalker]

The point is that it isn't very fun if you are stuck building in that 10% of builds just because you are afraid of getting stunned before you can even make a fight of things. What has been happening lately is that people are feeling very pressured to build in that 10%, which is causing inflated fort scores and a general lack of variety of pvp builds across the board.

to quote Weeeeaasel "QFT"

[Delisha Zrazorian]

auto-win against 90% of builds.

that's funny!

[Rufio]

Delisha. I'm not sure what your troubles are, but either you are feeling the effects of people building specifically to avoid stunning fist builds or you are having some other problems. I know when I solo-raided raided TC with SyNthesis one day, you logged your CoT stunner in defense but didn't make a single stun attempt against me. I've seen others with that exact same build rip apart raiding or defending parties.

[Daral0085]

I don't think there's any need to "prove" that stun is powerful, but I can confirm that I build every single toon to either 1) utilize stun, 2) somehow resist or avoid stun, or 3) do both. I mostly don't play NS4 these days, but by the end nearly everything that I was building were stunner/SDs because there just isn't anything else that compares in terms of survivability and devastating firepower/control. I built my first stun/sd what, 1-2 years ago, and since then I could count on one hand the number of toons that can legitimately kill me on that toon in 1v1. The only builds that survive me are basically PMs (and a tiny number of druid elementals, but not many people build those).

This goes to Delisha and anyone else who doubts it: the stun mechanic is obviously broken. (Hips is obviously broken, but this is a separate topic.) It's possible your build has flaws, and it's possible you are playing suboptimally. But I can assure you that I have fought 1v3 and 1v4 before and killed everyone, solo. It's just plain broken. I put stun on all my builds now because it makes you strongly than nearly anything that doesn't have stun.

Right now, I have: 2x rogue/sd stunner, dragon stunner, cleric/sd stunner (in progress). I would have more but after the first rogue/sd stunner I didn't really need to build anything else.

[Korr]

I was never trying to say that it wasnt plenty powerful, just trying to make sure that the adjustments still reflect the dedication to the ability. I think most of my suggestions I made on the last page reflect that. They all involved slowing down the process of the stun in some fashion (lower DC, timered, etc) or another.

I agree that it wouldn't be fun if everyone was immune to it, but we aren't talking about nerfing stunning fist into uselessness, only nerfing it from being auto-win against 90% of builds.

90% is a little excessive on that number.

PM(straight immune)
BG(super saves)
Pally(super saves)
CoT(super saves)
Elemental Shifters (immune)
Construct Shiftes (immune)
Medusa Shifter ( has amazing con )
Lizardfolk Shifter ( again really high con )
Zombie polymorph (though admittedly who would want to use this?)
Iron Golem Polymorph ( this is almost viable to use )

IIRC (this could be way off) improved expertise (And other combat modes) dont get disabled when you are stunned. Anyone is capable of taking that route, something to keep yourself surviving a bit longer.

Again my main point is to just make it so those who invest (basically) every epic feat into this dont become suddenly useless.

[Delisha Zrazorian]

90% is a little excessive on that number.

PM(straight immune)
BG(super saves)
Pally(super saves)
CoT(super saves)
Elemental Shifters (immune)
Construct Shiftes (immune)
Medusa Shifter ( has amazing con )
Lizardfolk Shifter ( again really high con )
Zombie polymorph (though admittedly who would want to use this?)
Iron Golem Polymorph ( this is almost viable to use )

let me add to this list...

RDDs - even if I spam and stun them 16 times in a row I haven't the fire power to kill them... generally they knock me down and stomp me with their big feet...

Barbarians - dito - except they blast me with their big mace

DWD - dito - except they blast me with their big hammer

Wizards/Sorcerers - with my HIPSer, their summons spot me and they just Bigby me down and spam ice storms til I'm dead - with my CoT they just Bigby me down so their summons can carve me up and spam ice storms til I'm dead or they Bigby me up on some hill with no way down and spam ice storms til I'm dead...

*sighs*

Indeed nice to hear from someone who actually plays stunners

well... both my stunner builds are verbatim off the "best builds list", so I must conclude that this is not the problem

and while indeed I will admit I'm not the best player by far...

That fact that others are so successful makes me think that perhaps my constant Hughes Net lag is affecting me more than I thought...

[Rufio]

Most those things you listed are PRC classes korr (well paladin might as well be a prc class being in 2 factions), and the shifter shapes are just a subset of a class (and some of those forms are very nearly useless in pvp) so for most factions you might only have 1 or 2 prc classes to work with in order to be stun immune. I'd say that accounts for 10% of builds or less. Even paladin and bg and some CoTs aren't necessarily stun immune. If you aren't cha based and had to sacrifice some con to work in the steeper ability score requirements, it is easy to still max out in the high 40's fort, especially for any feat-starved builds. I have a +10 cha mod paladin that was built before the stun epidemic that only gets ~45 fort.

[Daltian]

When I wen't to build my CoT stunner (Urlic, quite a few of you have been killed by him I am sure) several years ago it was just a proof of concept. No one made one before and I went to build it with wild elf and with only one WIS+2 book used thinking to myself, lets see how it works to make a stunner with quite bad AC but insane stun DC.
Turned out to be so good that I never finished my svirfneblin one (she is made over a year ago and never finished). Saying that stun is not overpowered is silly. Having one build that wins 1 on 1 in 95% cases is not good.
And saying that palemaster is immune to stun and hence wins against it is silly since PM dies to CoT stunner if he tries to fight it. Only thing about PM vs. CoT stunner is that PM can run away with relic and stunner cant kill it in time, but if PM stays and fights he is dead.

I think that if I say that stun is overpowered and I definitely have bias toward keeping stun as it is says a lot about current state of stunning fist.

[Lokey]

Alright, info to stop chaining of stun hits (intercept gui press in nwnx_events, decide on whether to let go through).


This doesn't address the dc, so doesn't solve all our problems. Personally leaning towards the imp stun 4 or 5 is highest you can go, delevel if character has higher (give the xp back...granted I'd say most of them are probably salvageable but for the guys that post here, I guess we can just delete them to save you time).

Still have a save game to take apart to look for any other identifiers the engine tosses on, have to get to that later.

[mining]

Alright, info to stop chaining of stun hits (intercept gui press in nwnx_events, decide on whether to let go through).


This doesn't address the dc, so doesn't solve all our problems. Personally leaning towards the imp stun 4 or 5 is highest you can go, delevel if character has higher (give the xp back...granted I'd say most of them are probably salvageable but for the guys that post here, I guess we can just delete them to save you time).

Still have a save game to take apart to look for any other identifiers the engine tosses on, have to get to that later.

For further info, possibly way to get DC but could be really broken and not sure if we can get it working or not. If we can, fixed? forever?