Official Trader Wishlist of 2009

[Saetos]

Axela's Wishlist from 2008

Information provided in this thread is taken from the gathering post on the Trader board, comments made by other players on other boards, comments made here, and some of my own personal wishes. Any further additions you'd like for this thread, please post here, and not in the gathering thread. Thanks!

Please note that this is in no particular order. Every point here is important to the Trader class.

1) Crowd Control
-- A calm similar in effectiveness and performance to the 209 calm, Cosmic Relaxation, given to TL5 Traders. Level lock should be no higher than 170; perhaps 150 for S10, or 160.

-- A low-recharge, low-resist root locked
to TL5 or TL6, or series of roots. Short duration, easily breakable, but should allow the Trader to hold his target in place so that he can land a couple drains before being forced into major combat.

-- A complete rework on Charms. Make them work as Bureaucrat ones do (of course keeping us to one pet). Perhaps allow us to drain the pet in emergency situations, or in boss battles.

2) Nemesis Nanos
Grand Theft Humidity:
1) Eliminate the opponent nano replenishing that occurs when the nano terminates.
Issue still supplies. GTH change is unsatisfactory.

3) Drains
-- Reduce the recharge time of RK Deprive/Divest nanos. Divest Nanite Improved and Divest Nanite Enhanced do this, and it seems to do pretty well.

-- Allow Lesser Industrial Sabotage/Lesser Corporate Protection to be usable in PVM.

-- Stop the anti-Trader methodology at raid areas and instances; cut down or remove drain resistance on mob and raid bosses.

4) Trader Pets
-- Kill them. It's insulting enough we have to go through a rather hacknayed quest to get the nano, but when the nano provides little benefit for 30 seconds... every 30 minutes? And with pets? No way.

5) Damage buffs
-- Unstoppable Killer is pretty nice; the others in the line should buff all damage types as well.

-- Investigate stacking order of Unstoppable Killer and Soldier/Keeper damage auras; they should be able to be used alongside Soldier and Keeper damage auras.

6) Heals
-- Reduce the nanocost and attack time of Health Freeloaders/Health Plunders.

-- Speaking of Health Plunders, we'd like:
1) An SL health plunder that is much stronger than Improved Health Plunder.
2) A very strong health drain with a lockout of about 10-12 seconds, somewhere on the order of 5000-7000 damage with drained HP scaled by number of Accumulator perks. We hope to be able to use this as a replacement for AimedShot when the change comes down the pipeline.
3) Optionally, a change from a single hit drain to a DOT on the target and an HOT on the trader.

-- Have Health Hagglers heal the target before damaging the Trader. There are many times where an unlucky hit or a bad keypress killed a Trader that casted the Haggler on himself because his health was low enough for Haggler to bring his HP to zero.

7) AC Drains/Debuffs
-- Either change the SL AC Debuff lines so that no matter how high the monster's AC is, it will debuff the full amount (25k for Polonium, 18k for Bismuth, f.ex.) or find a way to make sure that Polonium DOES work better than Bismuth.
Optionally, change the SL AC debuffs to short duration percentage debuffs, whereby Polonium would debuff 100% of all ACs, and scaling down from there.

-- Take out the RK AC transfer nanos (both single and team). Keep the drain effect of
the Pawnbroker's Armor and Siphon AC lines, but change the positive buff to a team buff, taking 1 NCU. As an optional additional effect, add a very small reflect (2-6%) on the buff portion of the top of the lines.

8) Weapon Choices
-- Add good 1-handed Shotguns to partner with the Shattergun. Home Defender is quite nice at low levels especially against Hecklers, and many people find success in using alien Pistols (KMP5/KEP5/KP1) around these levels, but some good one-handed Shotguns that can be dualed with Shattergun or with itself, has fast FlingShots, maybe even slowish Bursts, and decent to good minimum damage, would be immeasureably valuable to the Trader class, especially at lower levels.

-- Add a one-handed Shotgun with AimedShot that capitalizes on our high crit chances, and is better minimum damage than the Craphander.

-- Increase droprate on Mudurlugus, or remove NODROP tag. If needed, raise the Shotgun requirement by about 40%; 350-500(500) damage on a weapon that has been equipped at level 75 is quite high, although in a way it probably is not a major problem, as the gun is slow and carries no specials.

-- Add Shotguns with health drain procs or nano drain procs at low levels, to drag lowbie Traders away from the Neleb's Nightmare Battlerod that has become a staple to them. We are a Shotgun class, after all; if a generic 2hb weapon is leagues better than a weapon locked to us, there's a problem.

-- Raise MaxBeneficialSkill on all Fine Smith Shatterguns by 50%-60%.

-- Fix the Scoped Salabim Shotgun Supremo (S4) to enable its proc with exactly 399 AimedShot skill. Currently it
does its first proc if your AS is 398 or lower, and its second tier proc if your AimedShot is 400 or higher.

-- Raise the minimum damage on the Low Recoil Diamondine Kick Pistol (or create a Trader version that does so). [EDIT 6/14/10] As the LRDKP can now be acquired from The Collector, the wishlist to change the base item for the weapon is no longer needed.

-- [NEW 6/14/10] Change the look of the Inamorata Shotgun and, by extension, the Shotgun of Noticeable/Impressive Presence. The Shotgun of Security (clan version) looks fantastic, but the SoNP/SoIP looks like a pipe.

9) Perks
-- The proposed changes to our perks is very positive. However, there is one problem: Easy Shot. This special has been our bread and butter for fighting high evade opponents. Currently it has a 5% check, and even at this point it gets countered by opponents with extraordinary amounts of AddAllDef. But that's not the problem. The problem is that it has always meant to be an easy-to-land perk special... hence the name Easy Shot. The proposed changes has this special check 100% Duck, which is BAD. The defense check of this perk should be no more than 70%. Headshot at 75% is pretty cool.

-- Shorten Purple Heart casting time to 1 second. Proposed cripple effect of this perk and Sacrifice is perfect.

-- Change Accumulated Overflow to be a HP/NP leech.

10) Miscellaneous Nanos and Other Ideas
-- Increase duration on CompLit buffs to 5 minutes to allow Traders ample time to sell off all of their equipment to vendor terminals. It has been proven MANY times that making this buff last 1 minute does not affect how high players can equip belts and NCUs. Also, reduce the swap delay on all belts to 10 seconds at the most. Many new players, non-Traders included, hate the fact that it takes 140 seconds just to swap belts, and I believe the 70 second delay was put in to curb belt twinking by Traders? Well, it ... didn't do anything at all actually.

-- Eliminate the cap on attack time with the first-stage NR debuffs, potentially raise their values a small bit to make sure they do affect the target. Leave the second-stage NR debuffs (the one with the 6400 debuff in the line) alone, and keep it to PVM.

-- Eliminate the credit cost for casting the RK nanopool drains.

-- Bring back the old shotgun shell-discharge graphic effect!

-- Introduce a line of Shotgun and FlingShot buffs that have a higher stacking order than all drains, to give us an AR boost in combat areas where opponent nanoresist or evades is too strong or drain immunity is present.
Also, have a more powerful version of these Shotgun buffs, providing a very largeAAO boost (on the order of 600-800 points) that would overwrite drains. Have a reasonable lockout on this one.

-- Allow us a small portion of the Umbral Wrangler beneficial effect, that could be overwritten by all regular Skill Wranglers; perhaps a quarter of the benefits.

-- (New: 2/1/10) Cut the execution time of Personal Grid Beacon to 30 seconds.

-- (New: 7/21/10) Create a stacking order for the debuff portion of the skill wranglers, so that using different Wrangles don't tear apart your skills.

-- (New; 9/18/10) Add some cool upgrades to the Trader's Utility Belt, perhaps by a series of SL quests, by which the quest rewards would upgrade it to 5 or 6 slot.



Alrightythen, Traderdudes. If you've got anything else to add, anything here you want modified, or you just need a place to bitch about Traders, here's your place. Let your views be known.

[lusthorne]

I have some disagreements/concerns/reservations concerning this list:

1. Charms should just have the stun effect removed from them. I don't believe that there really needs to be a "drastic" reduction in charm time. If you must drop the charm time limit then make it something at least semi useful like 5 minutes or so.

If the team needs a "breather," a calm is a much better choice than a 30 second joke of a charm nano that's just going to result in the mob gunning for the trader once it's released. In other words, if you're going to look at getting charms worked on, at least aim to make them useful and not a joke that will still end up untouched.

2. Why level lock the comp lit buffs? I mean really, what is the point, and what trader would actually WANT this on the wishlist? Traders being proficient with comp lit is one of the defining characteristics of the profession (and yet our comp lit isn't even a green skill, go figure), and introducing unnecessary locks like this is just an annoying hinderance.

I'm all for the extension of the duration, but let's be honest: the main reason we would want a 5 minute duration on comp lit buffs is for tweaking a belt on without the panic for time in swapping out ncu chips. Beyond that there's no great need for the buffs to last longer than they already do aside from a possible slight annoyance at having to recast periodically when hitting a shop.

I can tell you that this idea is certainly not on MY wish list, and it shouldn't be for any other trader either.

3. With the modifications proposed, GTH needs to have an initial nano pool decimating effect along with setting nanodelta to 0 and the nanodrain tick, or it's going to become pretty much useless.

Seriously, *just* setting nanodelta to 0 and keeping the tick isn't going to be anywhere near effective enough against the professions it's useful for, even with the reduction in heal efficiency and nano damage. You'll basically have the effect of tickling an NT with their huge nanopool as they absorb a large portion of your damage into nbg and still whip out some vicious nukes that just don't hit *quite* as hard, not to mention that even with a 25-30% reduction in healing efficiency a doc is certainly going to have no trouble surviving.

The nano is GRAND theft humidity, not "omg I'm going to lightly peck away at your nano pool and make you nuke/heal a little less efficiently."

*Any* kind of drain a trader has is going to need to hurt in some fashion, and of course people are going to complain about anything that hurts their precious epeen. Nerfing everything someone complains about into the effectiveness of a feather pillow is not the answer.

4. If you're going to consider any kind of nerf to borrow reflect, than at the worst it should pull the same amount of reflects as the AMS/TMS it's stealing. As for the cast time, I'm all for seeing capped cast times get reduced or removed on our nanos, though I'd start looking at our other nanos first, such as our NR/AC debuffs (particularly the ones usable in pvp).

[Saetos]

I have some disagreements/concerns/reservations concerning this list:

1. Charms should just have the stun effect removed from them. I don't believe that there really needs to be a "drastic" reduction in charm time. If you must drop the charm time limit then make it something at least semi useful like 5 minutes or so.

If the team needs a "breather," a calm is a much better choice than a 30 second joke of a charm nano that's just going to result in the mob gunning for the trader once it's released. In other words, if you're going to look at getting charms worked on, at least aim to make them useful and not a joke that will still end up untouched.

Here's the fundamental problem with charms: charming is the core concept of the Bureaucrat. So how does it translate over to Traders? Even 5 minutes is horribly long; we really are not supposed to be using charms. This was the best way I could think of to fix the charms, but if you can give me a good reason why we should have charms, I'll do the best I can to make sure the charms work the way you and others want them to.

2. Why level lock the comp lit buffs? I mean really, what is the point, and what trader would actually WANT this on the wishlist? Traders being proficient with comp lit is one of the defining characteristics of the profession (and yet our comp lit isn't even a green skill, go figure), and introducing unnecessary locks like this is just an annoying hinderance.

300 NCU at level 15 is why. I'm terribly sorry, and I hate to start a rant here, but you wanna know why we were completely dickwad terrible before Nanite Drains? Our endgame was at level 50. People were putting 6 slot belts on at 15, 9, now 1; people were getting an enormous amount of OSBs at level 15 and smacking other professions around; and FunCom has been scared to give us anything that would have strengthened this, which is why until now we've gotten jack crap. GTH used to be castable in TL5 BS; they level locked that. There is no reason at ALL that we should have been given access to gigantic amounts of NCU and extremely high QL hostile nanos this early on in our career, and the side effect of all of that is it gave the class no meaning past TL3. After level 50 and you've got all your drains and nanos and your shiny new Fine Smith Shattergun, what happens next? You do NOTHING. No one wants to play a Trader past level 24 anymore, because there is almost nothing to look forward to. I want to change that; but at the same time I want to stop the absolute trainwreck that is the lowbie Trader in PVP.

Trader CompLit buffs were NEVER intended for the use they're given now, and the 1 minute timer has not curbed the use of these nanos at all.

By the way, I did a little investigation on AUNO.org:

1491 Level 15-24 Atrox Traders across all dimensions. Common PVP level, common PVP breed.
1297 Level 205-220 Traders, all breeds, all dimensions.

Dunno about you, but that tells me a lot of things.

I'm all for the extension of the duration, but let's be honest: the main reason we would want a 5 minute duration on comp lit buffs is for tweaking a belt on without the panic for time in swapping out ncu chips. Beyond that there's no great need for the buffs to last longer than they already do aside from a possible slight annoyance at having to recast periodically when hitting a shop.

That's really the main reason I want the duration extended; Traders can cast their CL buff, sell bags of junk at the shop and not worry about running out once they get to their 4th bag.

I can tell you that this idea is certainly not on MY wish list, and it shouldn't be for any other trader either.

Again, let's see what other people think. If their thoughts mirror yours, I'll be all for it, but as for now, I have my reasons for putting this on the wishlist.

3. With the modifications proposed, GTH needs to have an initial nano pool decimating effect along with setting nanodelta to 0 and the nanodrain tick, or it's going to become pretty much useless.

Seriously, *just* setting nanodelta to 0 and keeping the tick isn't going to be anywhere near effective enough against the professions it's useful for, even with the reduction in heal efficiency and nano damage. You'll basically have the effect of tickling an NT with their huge nanopool as they absorb a large portion of your damage into nbg and still whip out some vicious nukes that just don't hit *quite* as hard, not to mention that even with a 25-30% reduction in healing efficiency a doc is certainly going to have no trouble surviving.

The nano is GRAND theft humidity, not "omg I'm going to lightly peck away at your nano pool and make you nuke/heal a little less efficiently."

Nor is it "Grand Theft PVP Ability". I love draining people, I love taking away their nano, but not to this extreme. Stripping Nano-Technicians of everything they need to survive in PVP in one blast is stupid. Reducing a Doctor to OE'd pistols is stupid. Just because I like to PVP doesn't mean I don't care about my opponents. Should GTH drain nano? Definitely. But I'm not about to keep the nano as it is now, where anyone with less than 10k nano has to hide in a corner until the nano goes away.

4. If you're going to consider any kind of nerf to borrow reflect, than at the worst it should pull the same amount of reflects as the AMS/TMS it's stealing. As for the cast time, I'm all for seeing capped cast times get reduced or removed on our nanos, though I'd start looking at our other nanos first, such as our NR/AC debuffs (particularly the ones usable in pvp).

Good point. AC debuffs is a very tricky horse to ride, and I think Chacapo's going to be doing the Buglist and will hopefully mention the AC debuff tangleup. I actually do not have much experience using the NR debuffs -- there's been very few instances I've really desired an NR debuff -- so give me ideas on what you want done with NR debuffs and I'll put it on here for the world to see.

[Phixalicious]

As a newbie Trader, my thoughts:

I didn't even know Traders had pets.:P

But instead of all the hassle of tweaking charms and tweaking the current pets, why not just remove the charm line completely and then just give some decent pets with the same duration ( 2 hours, I believe it is now ) as other pets ingame ( Engi/Crat/MP )?

Perhaps just a bit weaker than the weakest pets in those professions? So we'd have effective pets for PvM ( maybe for PVP, I don't know that side of things ) which would not be OP and would only be an assistance to, not a replacement of, the intended main toolset of drains/roots.

And I agree with extending the duration of CL buffs.

[Nanotehnpoir]

I'd just like to make a quick comment on GTH -

I think that on the initial cast of GTH (along with 0 Nano-delta versus negative nano-delta) that GTH WIPES the target of all nano.

I'd like to see all the positive effects of GTH though stay on the Trader.. but I think without an initial wipe of nano on the target.. it might be laughable by many

[Saetos]

I think that on the initial cast of GTH (along with 0 Nano-delta versus negative nano-delta) that GTH WIPES the target of all nano.

Not bad, but then if you keep the nanopool drain that effectively means ... well, they have no nanopool.

If that lands on an NT, there's no saving grace for them, no divine intervention. They're dead. And that's NOT what I want.

[Nanotehnpoir]

Not bad, but then if you keep the nanopool drain that effectively means ... well, they have no nanopool.

If that lands on an NT, there's no saving grace for them, no divine intervention. They're dead. And that's NOT what I want.

The MAIN reason why GTH is so nasty is because of the negative Nano-delta... no one can outstim, outperk, whatever it..

Without -Nano-delta, that leaves NT's with -4000 Nano every FIVE seconds.. Let me repeat, every FIVE seconds... what person here can't hit a stim and cast something between the time period of five seconds?

Also, unlike many other professions - NT's have access to a lot of perks.

Nano Heal - +4000 Nano
Tap Notum Source - +400 Nano (400 every 2s, 7 times)
Access Notum Source - +2500 Nano
Regain Nano - +200 Nano (200 every 2s, 5 times)

Also they'll still have:
Izgimmer's Wealth
+20,000 Max Nano
(900-1200 Nano every second for 10 seconds)

Now, I'm not saying it's going to be easy for the NT... but... it's not supposed to be is it?

There's enough +nano there to throw out nukes to kill a trader

[Saetos]

Hmm...

Alright, that doesn't sound too bad then, I suppose. So, do you want it to wipe the nanopool of just Nano-Technicians and hit everyone else with a solid nanopool hit, or should it wipe everyone's nanopool?

[Nanotehnpoir]

Hmm...

Alright, that doesn't sound too bad then, I suppose. So, do you want it to wipe the nanopool of just Nano-Technicians and hit everyone else with a solid nanopool hit, or should it wipe everyone's nanopool?

I think it should hit everyone's nanopool.

Otherwise A doctor who still has 50% of their nanopool is still basically as nasty as one with 100%..

One who's at 0% and fighting to stay above 10%.. a different story..

But again, with no -nano delta.. this will not cause a complete shutdown because stims, perks, and outside stuff/etc. will at least be usable then.

GTH is still supposed to be strong I believe... but -nano delta literally just makes the target's nano non-existent.. not hard to use.. like I believe my proposition will do.

[Sawbones2]

Thanks for collating this Saetos.

Big bump from me on the CC ideas (root/calm especially).

I'd be perfectly happy to lose the charms and pets. To me that is Crat territory more than calms.

Bump for extending CL buff duration. Too much of a hassle to recast every 30sec while trying to sell. Am less convinced we need level lock. I'm not a radical twinker and to me the benefit is in getting more credz because of the higher CL. Prefer not to lose that.

Bump for weapons ideas. All good - really like the idea of a new one-handed shotty with burst/fling, then we wouldn't have to put IP in RE. Another option is to improve the drop rate on the Type 5 bio mat. It's easy to get the KEP, very hard to upgrade/type it.

Would love to see a crit drain added to earlier drains so that crit-dependent shottys become more interesting to use at TL5. Maybe new nano(s) that can be gotten at the same time as the heal from the Bronto Burger quest crowd?

[Saetos]

Changes made to crowd control (including Charms, leaving the door open on that one for collective input from you guys), weapons, and nemesis nanos.

[lusthorne]

Here's the fundamental problem with charms: charming is the core concept of the Bureaucrat. So how does it translate over to Traders? Even 5 minutes is horribly long; we really are not supposed to be using charms. This was the best way I could think of to fix the charms, but if you can give me a good reason why we should have charms, I'll do the best I can to make sure the charms work the way you and others want them to.

Here's how it relates to traders:
1. Traders have had charms ingame since 12.5 (pre-SL), I'd say it's an intended part of the toolset.

2. Traders can only charm a single mob while crats, if they so choose, can charm 2 mobs (although most don't bother until the duration approaches several minutes, because something like 30 seconds is a JOKE), AND can charm higher level mobs (psychic <449 on top trader charm vs <550 on The Voice of God), AND get a dedicated pet to cast in addition, giving a potential for controlling 3 pets total. Making the charms actually useful is hardly going to dethrone crat as the charm king (and yes, I do have a 220 crat if that lends any credence to my opinion here).

300 NCU at level 15 is why. I'm terribly sorry, and I hate to start a rant here, but you wanna know why we were completely dickwad terrible before Nanite Drains? Our endgame was at level 50. People were putting 6 slot belts on at 15, 9, now 1; people were getting an enormous amount of OSBs at level 15 and smacking other professions around; and FunCom has been scared to give us anything that would have strengthened this, which is why until now we've gotten jack crap. GTH used to be castable in TL5 BS; they level locked that. There is no reason at ALL that we should have been given access to gigantic amounts of NCU and extremely high QL hostile nanos this early on in our career, and the side effect of all of that is it gave the class no meaning past TL3. After level 50 and you've got all your drains and nanos and your shiny new Fine Smith Shattergun, what happens next? You do NOTHING. No one wants to play a Trader past level 24 anymore, because there is almost nothing to look forward to. I want to change that; but at the same time I want to stop the absolute trainwreck that is the lowbie Trader in PVP.

Trader CompLit buffs were NEVER intended for the use they're given now, and the 1 minute timer has not curbed the use of these nanos at all.

By the way, I did a little investigation on AUNO.org:

1491 Level 15-24 Atrox Traders across all dimensions. Common PVP level, common PVP breed.
1297 Level 205-220 Traders, all breeds, all dimensions.

Dunno about you, but that tells me a lot of things.

Of course you'll see a lot of lowbie trader twinks for pvp, because unlike their tl7 counterparts, lowbie traders have *always* been excellent pvp twinks. This is why you still saw plenty of traders running around at TL5 and under PRE-LE. This power is more attributable to the ability to ladder up to ridiculous drains in pvp than the ability to twink on a bunch of ncu.

*Every* lowbie twink gets outside buffs, and tweaks ncu the best they can. Nerfing the ability for a trader to twink on a 6deck with a lot of effort so early is certainly not going to change that.

I mean really, do you honestly think that if you nerf trader comp lit buffs that this will magically fix that? The idea of pvp level locking drains will do a lot more to fix this than screwing traders out of their comp lit buffs by unnecessary level locks.

GTH was nerfed at TL5 because it was ridiculously overpowered at that level range (and still is in its current state at TL7, hence the heavy discussions of revising it) and certainly not because comp lit buffs were overpowered/ridiculous.

I did a little research of my own for ya on AUNO as well:
1559 150-170 Traders across all dimensions (*gasp* look at all the tl5's!)
1978 76-95 Traders across all dimensions (oh the horror!)
And for the coup de grace:
25034 25-220 Traders across all dimensions (look at all those traders that no one wants to play past level 24, amazing.)

And to preemptively snipe the predictable question of how many of those numbers are froobs and/or don't even play AO anymore, remember the same question can be aimed at your referenced numbers.

What do you do past level 50 with that shiny new shattergun and drains on? You level to the range you want to be active in and improve your toon. It's not like there's nothing to look forward to, which you seem to want to believe. There are bigger weapons, other pvp tiers, other goals to achieve. Many people stop playing a trader early on because it's not exactly the easiest of classes to play, and you don't simply q /afk (incidentally trader being a fairly busy profession to play is one of the things I happen to enjoy about it). They certainly don't stop because omg they have their endgame equipment by level 50 and therefore there's nothing to do or accomplish.

All the people that complain about traders at TL5 and Tl7 would seem to lend some evidence that there is definitely something more for traders beyond 24.

That's really the main reason I want the duration extended; Traders can cast their CL buff, sell bags of junk at the shop and not worry about running out once they get to their 4th bag.

Perfectly valid reason to extend the duration, if only for the annoyance factor, although not all traders sell bags of stuff to the trader shop.

Nor is it "Grand Theft PVP Ability". I love draining people, I love taking away their nano, but not to this extreme. Stripping Nano-Technicians of everything they need to survive in PVP in one blast is stupid. Reducing a Doctor to OE'd pistols is stupid. Just because I like to PVP doesn't mean I don't care about my opponents. Should GTH drain nano? Definitely. But I'm not about to keep the nano as it is now, where anyone with less than 10k nano has to hide in a corner until the nano goes away.

And as your own fellow trader professional has pointed out (and incidentally brought up the same opinion as myself in regards to the instant nanodrain), the reason someone has to "hide in a corner" is because of the negative nanodelta killing ANY possibility of nano use until it's over.

With an instant nanodrain at cast, zero nanodelta, and the small tick, the possibility of nanoregen perks (NT has several, as have already been mentioned in posts previous to this) and stims it would be entirely possible to still manage *something* within the duration of GTH (which incidentally should also be dropped to 30s as opposed to a minute).

If it doesn't empty the targets nano pool at least on the initial hit with the revised ideas for the nano, it's simply useless. An NT will still nuke, a doc/adv/agent will still heal just fine, etc.

Good point. AC debuffs is a very tricky horse to ride, and I think Chacapo's going to be doing the Buglist and will hopefully mention the AC debuff tangleup. I actually do not have much experience using the NR debuffs -- there's been very few instances I've really desired an NR debuff -- so give me ideas on what you want done with NR debuffs and I'll put it on here for the world to see.

What I'd like to see with the ac debuffs is to do away with the idea of tiered debuffs and actually make them the "badass" ac debuffs they're supposed to be. Make Polonium actually debuff a flat out -25k ac's like it's potential is supposed to be, Bismuth a flat -18k, etc. Make them pvm only, or give them a seperate (and lower) debuff when used in PVP. As it is right now, there are only a handful of mobs that Polonium is useful on, two of which that come to mind are portal bosses in Pande. This is just flat out stupid.

On the NR debuff, my only real complaint about them as they stand right now is the cast time. I'd like to see the cast cap reduced or removed, particularly on the first part of the 2-stage debuff, which is usable in pvp (-250nr on the top one isn't earth shattering compared to CB, but it's still useful at times). Obviously the second, larger debuff should remain pvm only.

[Hacre]

Also they'll still have:
Izgimmer's Wealth
+20,000 Max Nano
(900-1200 Nano every second for 10 seconds)

First of all I agree, there's only two things that needs to change about GTH, the negative nano delta and the duration. 30s is fine, nano delta at 0 is fine. What's retarded is surviving an encounter with a Trader (getting away) and sitting around in a corner somewhere either waiting it out, or on the BS blowing BS virus scanners, then spending five minutes getting pool back.

Don't point out IW as something NTs have to "heal nano" though because the lock is retarded and using it in combat is a massive no no. Look at the debuffs on Notum Ravager.

As for nano heals, NTs don't have -all- of those, they usually have 2 of them at the most, since outside of GTH, to spend perks to get all those at full strength is a massive waste.

On to lowbie Traders. The various myths circling around Trader twinks needs to stop.

First off: The higher a drain the Trader ladders into, the fewer times that Trader is going to be casting drains due to prohibitive nano cost.

Second off: -ANY- TL2 twink can get enough NCU to run to a tower site with RRFE, Behe, GSF and Hack n Quack. Hell Atrox Enforcers I see get Behe, Omni Med, a higher enf weapon buff from another Enfo as well as things like GSF/RRFE etc. The main advantage Traders get from the comp lit buff as far as that goes, is being able to twink a 6 deck to make use of a decent level compiler for insta cast drains.

Yes I've seen TL2 Traders casting nanites. Those Traders also don't tend to live very long when there's more than one opponent. Why? Because those Traders aren't casting nanites with composite mastery, so they're getting PM/TS mochams. Which means a: they're effective for a much shorter time on the battle field and b: have you seen the nano cost on nanites? Even with PNH no lowbie Trader is going to be spamming nanites around. It also means fewer OBs for survival, due to how much NCU eaten up by said Mochams.

As for the comp lit buff, my level 41 Trader has 5x QL200 NCUs in and a ql 260 Viral Compiler. If you think I pulled that off just with 3 CL implants and casting Trading Mogul, you can think again. One of the fun things about Traders is how much you -can- twink them if you put the work in, but it's by no means easy mode.

Which brings me on to level locking drains. Why? Do you want to see TL2 Traders disappear overnight? The drains a PM/TS twinked Trader with comp mastery can cast initially, suck. You can also forget landing Plunder on anyone that actually bothered spending IP in nano resist and actually twinking it. Remember NR1 opens up at level 30 as well. So with the suggestion to screw lowbie Trader twinks out of laddering up drains, you'll inflict upon them the very thing that TL7 Traders bitched about for years: Drains suck and don't cripple opponents when they should.

To point out another common twink at these levels, Enforcers still hurt like hell, even with Divest Skills running on them, until you get the second drain on. If a Trader happens to be soloing a tower field and a decent defence shows up (ie, more than one defender), even with PNH a Trader can't chain spam drains willy nilly, roots, as well as heals, before that ~2k nanopool is gone. Not to mention any smart twink can grace rush the Trader and lay down some real hurt before the Trader can even get that first drain off, at which point do they Plunder and risk dying, or then start kiting and spamming Haggler? Trader twink PvP isn't the lol /afk affair people seem to think it is. Yes Traders are powerful, but so what? They depend on debuffing others to get that power while every other profession that's powerful at those levels (and Traders are -not- the only one) have that power from the get go.

Also, if you want to level lock Nanites, where do you propose locking them? My 94 Trader only needs a single drain to cast Nanites and at over 40 levels higher than my 41 Trader, the nano cost is still ridiculously prohibitive, ie, spamming it is going to cost you. Not only that, once you're into the high end of TL3 and into TL4, you've got NR perked Agents/Keepers to deal with (care to guess how fast your nanopool disappears trying to get a Nanite Divest off on those boys, while they're eating chunks out of you?) and decent Enforcers are a bitch to get a Plunder on, even when double drained and are over 1200 in nanoskills.

People bitch about low level Traders because of stupid weapons that get put in the game (new Neleb rod anyone?) and because if the Trader is good, a non Trader just faceplanting their keyboard in an attempt at an alpha is likely to fail, giving the Trader a chance to soften them up.

If anything needs to change in regards to low level PvP, it's viability of more professions, not nerfbatting the ones that are already viable and fun to play there. If Trader was the only option that wins at everything all the time, then no one would bother twinking anything else, apart from people who like to do things differently from everyone else.

Back on to Nanites for a second, you do realise I hope, that moving past TL2 and into TL3/4, the weapons a Trader can equip with double Nanites up are pathetically out damaged by weapons that professions like Enforcers and Keepers can twink on and keep out of OE (with the Trader needing to be double drained to stay out of OE), Agents, Fixers etc? Even if I flip to a dual wield and put on a Fine Smith for tower DD that I can't equip without both drains and is OE without drains, that gun does less than half the damage of a Keeper packing an Excalibur and less than half the damage an Enforcer can do, per swing.

Saetos, why do you keep bringing up Atrox for Traders? There's -way- more active non Atrox Trader twinks at TL2-4 at least in my experience, Nanomage makes an excellent TL2 Trader and Opifex are very popular especially at TL3-4, due to an easier time equipping Scouts and the fact that almost all of the custom ql200 implants are Agility based, while IP is tight pre TL4.

As for pulling Auno numbers, as Lust already pointed out, it's pure folly. You've no idea how many of those toons are still played, still on an active account, or even PvP.

[Saetos]

Which brings me on to level locking drains. Why? Do you want to see TL2 Traders disappear overnight? The drains a PM/TS twinked Trader with comp mastery can cast initially, suck. You can also forget landing Plunder on anyone that actually bothered spending IP in nano resist and actually twinking it. Remember NR1 opens up at level 30 as well. So with the suggestion to screw lowbie Trader twinks out of laddering up drains, you'll inflict upon them the very thing that TL7 Traders bitched about for years: Drains suck and don't cripple opponents when they should.

To point out another common twink at these levels, Enforcers still hurt like hell, even with Divest Skills running on them, until you get the second drain on. If a Trader happens to be soloing a tower field and a decent defence shows up (ie, more than one defender), even with PNH a Trader can't chain spam drains willy nilly, roots, as well as heals, before that ~2k nanopool is gone. Not to mention any smart twink can grace rush the Trader and lay down some real hurt before the Trader can even get that first drain off, at which point do they Plunder and risk dying, or then start kiting and spamming Haggler? Trader twink PvP isn't the lol /afk affair people seem to think it is. Yes Traders are powerful, but so what? They depend on debuffing others to get that power while every other profession that's powerful at those levels (and Traders are -not- the only one) have that power from the get go.

As a general wish, I would love DEARLY if every profession, from Adventurer down to Trader, could be at their best at every title level. But as the game is now, it's extraordinarily hard to fix it.

First off, you've got weapons, as you've mentioned down your post. You know what irks me so much on my level 49 MA? I have no chance versus any JAME Trader that sees me. One drain and I'm toast. Burst always caps. Fling/Kizzer takes a good chunk out of my HP. After that, one or two regulars and I'm history.

Standalone, yes, drains aren't too powerful. Standalone, yes, OSBs are nothing special. But you combine the two, then add powerful weapons, and you pretty much create an imbalanced situation; if that Trader drains you, you're dead. You do mention Enforcers, and of course they can kick some ass if they get the upper hand; but that's one profession. Agents, perhaps. What about the other 11 professions? Is it fair that no matter how you build a level 24 Adventurer, even with mochams and GSF and crap, their weapons (their only source of damage mind you) will jump straight down to 25% or 0%? And what about Keepers? Shades? Soldiers? Doctors? The fact that a total of 2 professions at level 24 (as an example level) can even stand a snowball's chance in hell against a 24 Trader is stupid.

By the way, you want to argue with me about NanoResist? My 49 Martial Artist used to be a 30 NR1 twink. Could get 880 NanoResist with UWOS. Guess what that did? Jack crap. It did nothing in tower battles; Traders were still landing Divests on me and I had a couple manage to land Plunders. With that running, I had no hope of OD'ing HNQ.

To be honest I don't even know now if it's worth it trying to crusade for some sort of balance in PVP, as a Trader Professional. I want the profession to succeed, I want the profession to become a great choice for new players trying to make their first 220, I want people playing Traders to feel like they're a force to reckon with in PVP and PVM. But I'm not going to sit by, laugh at people that ask why they can't PVP at level 24 and giggle out a response saying "well it's because of Traders, and with me you'll never PVP a day in your life." I see that there's a problem at low level PVP - but it's not just because of OSBs and non-level-locked weapons, both admittedly huge factors. Any attention I can bring to FunCom to end this stupidity, I will try my best to do.

If I had the opportunity, believe me when I say I would ask WAY more highly for OSBs to be cancelled once 25% flag hits than to modify Trader drains; but what can I do, as merely a Trader Professional? I'm not an Enforcer professional; I can't march up to FunCom and say "Level lock Mortiig Beaters, Chief Cook Cleavers, and Rage nanos, nao!!!1!!1"

Because the attention seems to be pretty high here, I have modified the Drains sections. Know, however, that my intentions were as sound as I could make them. I want to make PVP fun for everyone, not just Traders and Enforcers.

Also, if you want to level lock Nanites, where do you propose locking them? My 94 Trader only needs a single drain to cast Nanites and at over 40 levels higher than my 41 Trader, the nano cost is still ridiculously prohibitive, ie, spamming it is going to cost you. Not only that, once you're into the high end of TL3 and into TL4, you've got NR perked Agents/Keepers to deal with (care to guess how fast your nanopool disappears trying to get a Nanite Divest off on those boys, while they're eating chunks out of you?) and decent Enforcers are a bitch to get a Plunder on, even when double drained and are over 1200 in nanoskills.

... you do realise I hope, that moving past TL2 and into TL3/4, the weapons a Trader can equip with double Nanites up are pathetically out damaged by weapons that professions like Enforcers and Keepers can twink on and keep out of OE (with the Trader needing to be double drained to stay out of OE), Agents, Fixers etc? Even if I flip to a dual wield and put on a Fine Smith for tower DD that I can't equip without both drains and is OE without drains, that gun does less than half the damage of a Keeper packing an Excalibur and less than half the damage an Enforcer can do, per swing.

Locking Nanite Enhanced to 75 is about as low as I can consider. This'll disallow players to cast them at TL3 BS.

People bitch about low level Traders because of stupid weapons that get put in the game (new Neleb rod anyone?) and because if the Trader is good, a non Trader just faceplanting their keyboard in an attempt at an alpha is likely to fail, giving the Trader a chance to soften them up.

*caugh*
*caugh*
*sneeze*
You're definitely right.

Saetos, why do you keep bringing up Atrox for Traders? There's -way- more active non Atrox Trader twinks at TL2-4 at least in my experience, Nanomage makes an excellent TL2 Trader and Opifex are very popular especially at TL3-4, due to an easier time equipping Scouts and the fact that almost all of the custom ql200 implants are Agility based, while IP is tight pre TL4.

On RK2 at least, I see a lot more Atrox at TL2 than I do other breeds.

As for pulling Auno numbers, as Lust already pointed out, it's pure folly. You've no idea how many of those toons are still played, still on an active account, or even PvP.

In hindsight it probably wasn't the best idea. But what I was trying to point out was a comparison between people rolling TL2 Traders of a specific breed and people making TL7 Traders.

Here's how it relates to traders:
1. Traders have had charms ingame since 12.5 (pre-SL), I'd say it's an intended part of the toolset.

2. Traders can only charm a single mob while crats, if they so choose, can charm 2 mobs (although most don't bother until the duration approaches several minutes, because something like 30 seconds is a JOKE), AND can charm higher level mobs (psychic <449 on top trader charm vs <550 on The Voice of God), AND get a dedicated pet to cast in addition, giving a potential for controlling 3 pets total. Making the charms actually useful is hardly going to dethrone crat as the charm king (and yes, I do have a 220 crat if that lends any credence to my opinion here).

Their charms contribute to DD. We're not a DD class. What would a charm do for us? I can see it being kinda cool, but... is it necessary?

What do you do past level 50 with that shiny new shattergun and drains on? You level to the range you want to be active in and improve your toon. It's not like there's nothing to look forward to, which you seem to want to believe. There are bigger weapons, other pvp tiers, other goals to achieve. Many people stop playing a trader early on because it's not exactly the easiest of classes to play, and you don't simply q /afk (incidentally trader being a fairly busy profession to play is one of the things I happen to enjoy about it). They certainly don't stop because omg they have their endgame equipment by level 50 and therefore there's nothing to do or accomplish.

The thing about Traders is you're able to cast the top drains very early on in your career. After that, it's levels upon levels upon levels of pretty much doing nothing but leveling and replacing your implants and weapons. Couple that with our rather back-seat role in the team, and ... we're not the most exciting profession atm.

By heart I'm a combat trader. I will tradeskill implants if I need to, but at the heart of it I love the profession's PVM abilities at high levels. You have to admit, though, that it's an acquired taste. Doctors can heal more than us; Shades can debuff more AAO/AAD than we can; almost all other Ranged professions outdamage us. So why level a Trader?

All the people that complain about traders at TL5 and Tl7 would seem to lend some evidence that there is definitely something more for traders beyond 24.

There is; but at the end of it all, the Trader in question has to ask themselves if it's really worth leveling one. And in most cases, it's a sad "no".

What I'd like to see with the ac debuffs is to do away with the idea of tiered debuffs and actually make them the "badass" ac debuffs they're supposed to be. Make Polonium actually debuff a flat out -25k ac's like it's potential is supposed to be, Bismuth a flat -18k, etc. Make them pvm only, or give them a seperate (and lower) debuff when used in PVP. As it is right now, there are only a handful of mobs that Polonium is useful on, two of which that come to mind are portal bosses in Pande. This is just flat out stupid.

This would be terrific. At the very least, I hope we can get something working with Polonium, but even a total debuff would be great.

On the NR debuff, my only real complaint about them as they stand right now is the cast time. I'd like to see the cast cap reduced or removed, particularly on the first part of the 2-stage debuff, which is usable in pvp (-250nr on the top one isn't earth shattering compared to CB, but it's still useful at times). Obviously the second, larger debuff should remain pvm only.

Alrighty then, I'll add it. Thanks.

Oh yes, extra customary smiley faces to offset the rawr mood I've been in with this post.

[Hacre]

Before I tackle your post Saetos, I want to quickly address something I missed last night, with what I said about GTH, as it looks like all I want changed about it is no negative nano delta and a duration nerf, with everything the -same-. Not so. As Lust pointed out, if the negative nano delta goes away then it has to hit the entire pool, so change the amount zapped on the initial hit to like, -100k nano or something.

The other thing I wanted to say was Merry Christmas to all

[Hacre]

As a general wish, I would love DEARLY if every profession, from Adventurer down to Trader, could be at their best at every title level. But as the game is now, it's extraordinarily hard to fix it.

It is. Let's see what FC can manage at 220. While I enjoy the lower TL PvP, I do consider it a form of meta gaming that FC should be looking at once they've resolved things at TL7, then start moving backwards, given the lower you go, the more messed up things are due to variations in toolset.

First off, you've got weapons, as you've mentioned down your post. You know what irks me so much on my level 49 MA? I have no chance versus any JAME Trader that sees me. One drain and I'm toast. Burst always caps. Fling/Kizzer takes a good chunk out of my HP. After that, one or two regulars and I'm history.

Standalone, yes, drains aren't too powerful. Standalone, yes, OSBs are nothing special. But you combine the two, then add powerful weapons, and you pretty much create an imbalanced situation; if that Trader drains you, you're dead. You do mention Enforcers, and of course they can kick some ass if they get the upper hand; but that's one profession. Agents, perhaps. What about the other 11 professions? Is it fair that no matter how you build a level 24 Adventurer, even with mochams and GSF and crap, their weapons (their only source of damage mind you) will jump straight down to 25% or 0%? And what about Keepers? Shades? Soldiers? Doctors? The fact that a total of 2 professions at level 24 (as an example level) can even stand a snowball's chance in hell against a 24 Trader is stupid.

Perhaps this is more of an argument for looking at the OE mechanics in 25% gas rather than nerfing what Traders can do? Currently it's all or nothing. A Trader using the first drains they can tweak into without laddering, is useless, A Trader unable to drain someone, is useless, once drains land that the Trader needs to land to get the upper hand, the Trader wins.

By the way, you want to argue with me about NanoResist? My 49 Martial Artist used to be a 30 NR1 twink. Could get 880 NanoResist with UWOS. Guess what that did? Jack crap. It did nothing in tower battles; Traders were still landing Divests on me and I had a couple manage to land Plunders. With that running, I had no hope of OD'ing HNQ.

Then at some point down the line MAs need some attention. Please understand I'm talking about the effects on the professions I actually encounter and I guess what you're posting there, is why I'm yet to run into an actual MA TL2 twink? Just a Divest on an Enforcer or an Agent doesn't insta win the fight for me, it buys me time.

To be honest I don't even know now if it's worth it trying to crusade for some sort of balance in PVP, as a Trader Professional. I want the profession to succeed, I want the profession to become a great choice for new players trying to make their first 220, I want people playing Traders to feel like they're a force to reckon with in PVP and PVM. But I'm not going to sit by, laugh at people that ask why they can't PVP at level 24 and giggle out a response saying "well it's because of Traders, and with me you'll never PVP a day in your life." I see that there's a problem at low level PVP - but it's not just because of OSBs and non-level-locked weapons, both admittedly huge factors. Any attention I can bring to FunCom to end this stupidity, I will try my best to do.

Using your closer position to FC as a Professional to fight for fairness or balance is never a bad thing. However, nerfs, especially heavy ones, are rarely a good thing. I'm not sure your fellow Traders would be too pleased if in the crusade of balance you ignore your first loyalty, ie Traders, and we end up getting smashed with a nerfbat. I consider your first priority to be us and what is best for us. There's Professionals for each profession, it is their job to do the same for theirs while we hope that it all comes together in the end.

If I had the opportunity, believe me when I say I would ask WAY more highly for OSBs to be cancelled once 25% flag hits than to modify Trader drains; but what can I do, as merely a Trader Professional? I'm not an Enforcer professional; I can't march up to FunCom and say "Level lock Mortiig Beaters, Chief Cook Cleavers, and Rage nanos, nao!!!1!!1"

Killing twinking isn't the answer, as it's one of the better features of AO and to be honest, why I still pay a premium for two accounts to play. Instead, again, of removing capabilities from Enforcers, Agents, Traders etc, give similar power/ability to the other 11 professions.

Perhaps instead of all OSBs being canned, work with all the professionals with regards to a select list that get canned once you're hit by 25% gas in a tower field. Like PM/TS mochies for Traders, Hack n Quack for all, or just for professions that have healing perhaps, Omni Med for all, etc.

Because the attention seems to be pretty high here, I have modified the Drains sections. Know, however, that my intentions were as sound as I could make them. I want to make PVP fun for everyone, not just Traders and Enforcers.

Locking Nanite Enhanced to 75 is about as low as I can consider. This'll disallow players to cast them at TL3 BS.

Locking them to use at level 75 is in my opinion more than reasonable. Or a special flag to not lock them out of use for twinking.

*caugh*
*caugh*
*sneeze*
You're definitely right.

Ithaca? Seriously? Regular hits suck, only the top Nanite drains give %crit and the aim shot recycle on it at lower levels sucks kinda hard.

As for the JAME, hey, I'm biased here but that's a fun twink project. No Trader runs with that at 100% unless they sacrifice drains or other OBs to make it that way. I can't speak for the lower TL3 Traders that wear one but at TL2 I speak from experience. Higher TL3s yes are better off with Ithacas. It's no more OP than weapons other professions get twink on.

On RK2 at least, I see a lot more Atrox at TL2 than I do other breeds.

Well I guess that depends on the profession. I specifically queried Atrox Traders.

Their charms contribute to DD. We're not a DD class. What would a charm do for us? I can see it being kinda cool, but... is it necessary?

Wasn't the fact that Traders have the makings of a DD class covered somewhere else? They're most certainly an Artillery/Support hybrid of sorts, with lots of access to +crit at end game. So either the Trader charms should be made useful as opposed to a running joke, or replaced with something useful. There's a good case for either I think.

Oh one last thing I just noticed in the wishlist.

-- Level lock the AAD and AAO drains (Industrial Sabotage and Corporate Protection, both versions of each) to 150 on Lesser and 200 on regular.

Ahem, why? At ~TL4 they have plenty of use particularly against targets that Plunder is either hard or impossible to land on. The Notum Repulsor perk line needs some heavy attention before you start nerfing what Traders can and can't cast at high TL3 to TL4.

[Tergx]

talking of modifying any existing nano is a pipe dream most of the time, but of course it will always continue, although such things should not take up space or be represented in things that the profession actually wants.

The charm line......lol that was basically useless when it was new, and probably sucked up a crapload of ark time with the ubiquitous /petition "omg my trader can't move.." it was left in the past for a reason, no necro needed there. Want to charm stuff level a crat.

The other nano line that was left in the past was the ROOT line. This is unacceptable, since traders are a profession that fights from a distance with no hard defenses, we need to keep mobs/players immobile while we "soften" them. This "was" a fundamental part of our toolset years ago, but somehow was abandoned by FC.

Only other thing I can add is what I have posted time and again, as I have about roots, that for the high level trader peeps, making the drains effect special skills is the only way to make them effective like they used to be, used to be as in the context of the game until the launch of shadowlands. People will boast and whine about our current drains depending on the question and whos asking.

A doc can say either that the drains don't have much effect on them or that they are overpowered (although that is rare). Other professions can all say the same thing.

AS far as weapons, a new one handed shotgun with AS would be nice to replace the crusty fine smith shattergun.

[Tergx]

The Notum Repulsor perk line needs some heavy attention .

couldn't agree more, but realistically that will most probably never happen. The Shadowlands nerfxpansion destroyed pvp IMO, and nothing else has come close to fixing it to anywhere near the fun that it was after the release of Notum Wars. Like what do we do now ? OOOOH run around the same predictable maze for a predictable length of time ONLY IF there's room for us in the maze. WEEEEEEEEE

[lusthorne]

Their charms contribute to DD. We're not a DD class. What would a charm do for us? I can see it being kinda cool, but... is it necessary?

We are capable of decent DD if we are so inclined. As for our class, we are part artillery (traditionally dd) class, and part support class, though strictly speaking we are officially a control class. If you want proof you have simply to look at your assigned +10 novictum ring. With that in mind, what does *every* control class have in common? If you guessed the capacity to have pets (whether charmed or otherwise), you'd be correct.

So what would working/useful charms do for us? They would add some potential DD when leveling, give us access to (and a reason to use) a portion of our toolset that we have largely ignored because it's current design is, quite frankly, crap. To be honest, I see fixing our charms more as restoring a part of our toolset we've been unable to use for a long time, rather than some new unheard of functionality. I dunno about you, but I don't much like looking at our list of tools and saying "you know, those right there would be pretty good if they didn't suck." I'm not aiming to make traders top of the DD table, I just want all our tools to actually work/be worth using.

The thing about Traders is you're able to cast the top drains very early on in your career. After that, it's levels upon levels upon levels of pretty much doing nothing but leveling and replacing your implants and weapons. Couple that with our rather back-seat role in the team, and ... we're not the most exciting profession atm.

Are you kidding me? Yes we can cast the top publically accessible drains (just being slightly nitpicky here as the *top* drains are obtained via the db questline) quite early. Part of the excitement in levelling a trader is getting on that new ridiculously badass new gun that's OE without drains goin and stealing aggro when you get a nice string of hits (I used to love doin that ;D). Not to mention there are other nanos to update as well, just like any other levelling profession. A trader is not, after all, simply divest, plunder, wrangles, and QU.

The biggest reason traders might have a "back seat" role in a team today is because of past tradition and stereotyping. Traders got the stereotype in SL of having crap damage, and only being good for umbral and calms once they're 209+. I'm sure you can remember our reputation of being the bitter gimp traders because we were junk in pvp past tl5 (though some notable traders like Syyceria on rk1 did prove in the time period that traders could be viable in tl7 pvp).

If recent years have proven anything it's that a trader can whip out very respectable dd if they so choose. Not to mention the fact that, as I've stated before in other threads, we have received numerous tools specifically to help BOOST our dd, ie; crit in drains, divest damage, crit guns like the wyrm and xan, etc. Likewise, if you want to DD, you have to set up for it, and it isn't necessarily going to be the same setup you'd use for pvp (which is JUST like other professions as well mind you). If a player isn't willing to put in the effort, then yes, they're going to be crap no matter what they play.

By heart I'm a combat trader. I will tradeskill implants if I need to, but at the heart of it I love the profession's PVM abilities at high levels. You have to admit, though, that it's an acquired taste. Doctors can heal more than us; Shades can debuff more AAO/AAD than we can; almost all other Ranged professions outdamage us. So why level a Trader?

Doctors heal more than us: Of course they do, that's their job

Shades can debuff more AAO/AAD than we can: So where are all the people crying over shades? In pvm shades are top tier DD, and in pvp it's largely the trox shades that perk out MR that manage to be effective at all.

A tl7 trader can potentially debuff someone enough to stand in front of them and watch them miss WITH MR running (not that it happens all the time but I've done it). Plus, with the exception of fixers, a pvp setup trader can be in a position to perk just about anyone (assuming divest/plunder are going and the possible addition of industrial sabotage into the mix). Not to mention we can make a shade have a really bad day, so much for their ability to drain more aao/aad.

Here is something else to think about:
A drain from a trader counts for more than just the value of the debuff itself on the target. Lets say for example we hit someone with Industrial Sabotage. They get a -350aad debuff, you say, great it's a whopping -350. But if you factor in that we also get a 300aao buff off of that, it's really effectively like having landed a -650aad debuff on that target isn't it? It's the trade that brings in more power.

There is; but at the end of it all, the Trader in question has to ask themselves if it's really worth leveling one. And in most cases, it's a sad "no".

You gotta remember that a trader doesn't play quite like any other profession, and that makes us tougher to compare. This is a class that is more rewarding to people that are up for the challenge of learning to play a trader effectively, and that means learning how to fight like a leech.

We are the great enabler. We enable more overall damage to be dealt with ac debuffs, more nanos to land with NR debuffs, more attacks to land and more nanos to be cast via umbral.

We are also the great thief. We steal an opponents resources to benefit our own, be it nano skills, attack skills, nano pool, ac's, flat out damage, defense, health, etc.

We are potentially vicious in pvp, even at endgame now that our toolset has improved.

We can be a pretty good soloer, if admittedly a bit slower than some, but how many professions do YOU know that can solo something like scary spider?

We are also a decent crowd controller, particularly at 209+, more for our instacast calms than our more modest rooting abilities (which are in need of some updating admittedly).

We are a profession whose performance a lot of the time depends very much on the skill of the person playing. Stick a bad player on a trader with amazing gear and they're not going to do as well as a good player on the same trader.

So is a trader worth levelling? Let's see, why did you level your trader? I leveled mine because it was a very busy/challenging profession to play effectively (and incidentally I had a blast), and I'd say it's been a pretty rewarding undertaking, so I really have to disagree with your pessimism that a trader is not worth leveling.

I even rolled a second TL7 trader just so I could have one trader dedicated to pvp, and the other dedicated to tradeskills (and incidentally it can do every tradeskill in the game selfbuffed) as opposed to, say, an engineer, because not only is a trader arguably a better tradeskiller, I very much enjoy playing a trader.

Incidentally, by contrast, I can't stand playing a soldier or an enforcer, and I don't particularly enjoy adv (despite having one at tl7) as they tend to bore me. Different playstyles for different people.

Oh yes, extra customary smiley faces to offset the rawr mood I've been in with this post.

Right back at ya, and have a merry/happy whatever you happen to celebrate during this time period.

[Saetos]

Man, I love you guys.

The fact that I have you people (especially Hacre and Lusthorne) personally letting me know how much you two care about the class means a lot to me.

I have modified the drains section, again. But I've no problem with doing so.

Now to Lusthorne:

We are capable of decent DD if we are so inclined. As for our class, we are part artillery (traditionally dd) class, and part support class, though strictly speaking we are officially a control class. If you want proof you have simply to look at your assigned +10 novictum ring. With that in mind, what does *every* control class have in common? If you guessed the capacity to have pets (whether charmed or otherwise), you'd be correct.

So what would working/useful charms do for us? They would add some potential DD when leveling, give us access to (and a reason to use) a portion of our toolset that we have largely ignored because it's current design is, quite frankly, crap. To be honest, I see fixing our charms more as restoring a part of our toolset we've been unable to use for a long time, rather than some new unheard of functionality. I dunno about you, but I don't much like looking at our list of tools and saying "you know, those right there would be pretty good if they didn't suck." I'm not aiming to make traders top of the DD table, I just want all our tools to actually work/be worth using.

Personally, any fix to the charm toolset would be fantastic. I'll see what I can do.

You gotta remember that a trader doesn't play quite like any other profession, and that makes us tougher to compare. This is a class that is more rewarding to people that are up for the challenge of learning to play a trader effectively, and that means learning how to fight like a leech.

We are the great enabler. We enable more overall damage to be dealt with ac debuffs, more nanos to land with NR debuffs, more attacks to land and more nanos to be cast via umbral.

We are also the great thief. We steal an opponents resources to benefit our own, be it nano skills, attack skills, nano pool, ac's, flat out damage, defense, health, etc.

We are potentially vicious in pvp, even at endgame now that our toolset has improved.

We can be a pretty good soloer, if admittedly a bit slower than some, but how many professions do YOU know that can solo something like scary spider?

We are also a decent crowd controller, particularly at 209+, more for our instacast calms than our more modest rooting abilities (which are in need of some updating admittedly).

We are a profession whose performance a lot of the time depends very much on the skill of the person playing. Stick a bad player on a trader with amazing gear and they're not going to do as well as a good player on the same trader.

Yep

So is a trader worth levelling? Let's see, why did you level your trader? I leveled mine because it was a very busy/challenging profession to play effectively (and incidentally I had a blast), and I'd say it's been a pretty rewarding undertaking, so I really have to disagree with your pessimism that a trader is not worth leveling.

I loved playing my Trader; the main reason was that no one was leveling them at the time he was born. It was also the very first profession I ever rolled. And you bet it was damn hard going through the 140-209 stretch, since it was hard finding players who wanted a little Trader in the team filling up the team slot We are a challenging profession, and you and I (and all of us) love that; others, however, find it daunting. What I would like to do is keep that challenge going, but perhaps throw a bone to the less inclined, and give them an opportunity to make an awesome Trader. Perhaps our Charms could do that. Hmm...

Incidentally, by contrast, I can't stand playing a soldier or an enforcer, and I don't particularly enjoy adv (despite having one at tl7) as they tend to bore me. Different playstyles for different people.

I have an Enforcer and Soldier myself. The Soldier is VERY fun in S10, seriously considering leveling her. My Enforcer (214 nanomage) is on hold til I finish up my Trader and a couple other alts, but she was very fun as well. The profession that tends to bore me the most is actually Keeper. I'm sure they're terrific at 220, but before 150 ... ew.

Right back at ya, and have a merry/happy whatever you happen to celebrate during this time period.

Happy Holidays to you and all other Traders out there!