Halbarad
05-08-03, 16:46
A lot of people have commented on how rough it is to level a tradeskill spy. For us to be able to fight worth a damn, we HAVE to take 100+ weapon lore or large amounts of willpower for droning, which seriously cuts into our ability to tradeskill-which is the main reason most people make a spy in the first place. Leveling by USING your tradeskill is impossible (as any constructor knows, the higher you get the less exp you get for building, not to mention the distance between levels increasing dramatically).
The best solution I can come up with is to remove weapon lore as a requirement on weapons. I would give 100% aiming to anyone who can use a weapon (decent aiming speed, more than enough to do PvM), and any investment in weapon lore above and beyond that continues to improve aiming up to the cap. It does tend to stick it to droners a bit more (if anyone has a suggestion to improve that, feel free to name it), but it solves a number of problems with spies at the moment: it frees up 150+ skill points that are usually tied up in weapon lore that can then be invested in an appropriate tradeskill, and it still requires a combat specialization for any spy who wants to engage in serious PvP-100% aiming isn't going to cut it in PvP. That loss doesn't provide any major combat advantage for the spy, since there are no other combat-oriented skills in Int (unless you count PSU, and there's not a lot of reason to take PSU as a spy anyway). It MIGHT give PEs a slight leg up, but pistol aiming has never required mass amounts of WPL anyway. For a rifle PE, you've got the same problem as a PvP spy-the basic 100% aiming you get from the ability to use a weapon isn't going to cut it for PvP, so you'd have to invest in WPL anyway to gain aiming speed above the basic level.
I'm not looking to make spies uber; I'm just looking for a reasonable way to level a tradeskill spy without having the huge added gimp that the WPL requirement gives us now. Since fighting is the only reasonable way to level, that would be the end to fix-as I doubt KK is ever going to raise tradeskill exp to a point where leveling beyond int/dex 30 or so would be viable.
The best solution I can come up with is to remove weapon lore as a requirement on weapons. I would give 100% aiming to anyone who can use a weapon (decent aiming speed, more than enough to do PvM), and any investment in weapon lore above and beyond that continues to improve aiming up to the cap. It does tend to stick it to droners a bit more (if anyone has a suggestion to improve that, feel free to name it), but it solves a number of problems with spies at the moment: it frees up 150+ skill points that are usually tied up in weapon lore that can then be invested in an appropriate tradeskill, and it still requires a combat specialization for any spy who wants to engage in serious PvP-100% aiming isn't going to cut it in PvP. That loss doesn't provide any major combat advantage for the spy, since there are no other combat-oriented skills in Int (unless you count PSU, and there's not a lot of reason to take PSU as a spy anyway). It MIGHT give PEs a slight leg up, but pistol aiming has never required mass amounts of WPL anyway. For a rifle PE, you've got the same problem as a PvP spy-the basic 100% aiming you get from the ability to use a weapon isn't going to cut it for PvP, so you'd have to invest in WPL anyway to gain aiming speed above the basic level.
I'm not looking to make spies uber; I'm just looking for a reasonable way to level a tradeskill spy without having the huge added gimp that the WPL requirement gives us now. Since fighting is the only reasonable way to level, that would be the end to fix-as I doubt KK is ever going to raise tradeskill exp to a point where leveling beyond int/dex 30 or so would be viable.