Discuss the AGENTS !!!!

[________________Sohn]

It seems like FC is ignoring us. I think we "whine" enough, as the non-agent would say. I've definately had a majority of ARKs from the live servers & GMs from the test server agree with me that the Agent profession just flat out sucks. I don't understand why FC will not do anything about it. Yes, there are other profession that lack their abilities... for example MPs used to suck REALLY bad, but now they are the Gods of AO. I've seen many lvl 100+ characters reroll as MPs... THAT's how good they have become. Eventually they will have to be nerfed.

My point ::

FC, you guys have the bad tendency to know only 2 extremes : Uber or sux0r. Why not try to actually figure out what the main problems/complaints are of each profession (with this in mind, each soul playing the specific character will have to do some work also ) and "touch up" the problems?
Your extreme changes eventually lead to the same cycle : upgrade... nerf... upgrade....nerf. I strongly believe that FC's developers can make a balance to the professions, it just takes time. It seems there's a patch every week or so... it doesn't have to be like that, I don't think everyone whined about how slow patches were.... did they? I feel that the AO community (the players) would be much more satisfied with, for example, a patch every month, which solves the problems and lets the players know that the FC developers actually spent time and worked really hard to make this patch.

So... this post was NOT only to "whine" about the agent profession, but to also give some ideas, light a few light bulbs, you know, help everyone out.

So, what does everyone think?... I don't mind flame, I'll just flip you the bird in RL , then go on

[________Dealingdeath]

Its fine to post ideas about enhancements to professions but lets not even ever suggest anymore NERFs to ANY profession please.

NERF the WHINERS

L106 Agent
Dealingdeath

[_________KrazyKanuck]

Originally posted by Sohn
FC, you guys have the bad tendency to know only 2 extremes : Uber or sux0r.

See the problem is that if your prof isn't Uber your going to complain that is sux0r. and even those that are uber are gonna whine. Everyone wants to be the best and they will never perfect the balance.

[______________Zierow]

Sometimes you have to make sure you don't get too caught up in the black and white of things. It seems to me you refuse to see the gray area at all. It's either really good, or really bad. I've seen a couple agents in the game at a relatively high level and they hold thier own pretty darn good. So i'm not sure I fully understand the argument.

[_____________Cloudeh]

*shimmy shimmy* Do the enforcer dance *shimmy*

And if any of you get this, if you heard any of the Schwarzenegger Parodys..

"STOP WHINING!"

"WHO ARE YOU?"

I must get a link to it hehe
No really......
Guys, Honestly whats your problem...

But mr cloud they nerfed roots or AS.
My reply...yeah? Really. Interesting, Well for the people who have never made a Agent before wont notice or give a *beep*

Course you would but, honestly, they do it to even things out.
I am actually not that god at PVP, the last time i tried was like lvl 50 lol, my bro tries to pvp and wins, dunno maybe he has good luck.

But, dude, .......honeslty, whats the fuss, is not going to alter your life drastically.

Just just, everyone QUITE< aRG!!! O_o Brain turning into juice......!

[Oriqx]

I think maany ppl missed the point behind this thread. Ppl just see an agt post something and automatically reply with quit whining w/o reading the post or thats what it seems like sometimes. What he is trying to say is lets see some positive patches not just for agt's(which would be nice ) but for all classes. As is right now. a patch comes out that iether makes someone or something extrememly strong to get them to quit complaining. Or a patch comes out to make someone or something extremely weak to get others from complaining. IE..... concealment. I was told by someone in response to a petition I made just to get a reply. That conceal has basically been turned off for now. To me that doesn't seem to make sense at all. They shouldn't just basically turn off something as a quick fix to it.

It seems as though Sohn was just trying to make a suggestion to put more thought into patches like what used to be done. For a while there things were making a very positive change for the better.

My 2 creds worth.......

[__________starknaked]

The biggest complaint I have as an agent is that False Professions are virtually unusable while grouping now, because all group heals take about 10+ seconds to cast on you.

This causes enormous problems, because they execute on everyone else instantly, and everyone else sees you as being healed already from the group heal, but really you aren't.

So then before that heal is even finished casting, the doctor casts another group heal, and both of them can't go through at once and so one is cancelled.

This generally results in the death of the agent under false profession, if you are getting attacked by tough mobs.

[________________Sohn]

Thanks HCJ ( Hardcorejackal ) for your defense. I'm not just "whining"... it's really a serious issue, and for that guy that seems all mellow, " this isn't changing your life drastically..." crap, WTF are YOU talking about? I'm trying to point out some problems within the game, not only trying to help the agent class out, but FC also with all the professions. People post here about problems, or what you would call "whining" so that the game becomes a better environment to play in. Yes, I do agree that some people post for their selfish reasons, but you can tell those people apart from the people who really give a damn about this game.

[_____________Cloudeh]

are the ENf complainin? noooooo
Story end.

[zomg]

Originally posted by Cloudeh
are the ENf complainin? noooooo
Story end.

Then you must feel your class is balanced, more power to ya. No need to make snide remarks.

[Ragekage13]

No seriously, the agent profession sounds really cool on the surface, because of the good rifle skills, and the false profession line of nanos.

> But underneath the ability to do buffs and such, the agent profession is ultimately a weak profession in comparison to most. And i dont want to hear you argue this point because i know from experience, im not just talkin out of my rear end. I have a lvl 84 agent, lvl 35 mp, lvl 35 nt, lvl 41 soldier, lvl 15 crat, lvl 18 engineer, lvl 15 enforcer.

> My agent is tweaked out. I have implants on him that the only way i got them on him is by stacking treatment at the treatment lab. And after trying out every rifle i could possibly think of coupled with endless combinations of false professions and every different combination of armor possible. What it all comes down to is, agents cant deal out a lot of damage and they because of their horrible body dev they cant take a lot of damage. So what do they rely on. Well i do admit we can pull off the occasional aimshot from hell, but really, can you really depend on that? And yes i have tried lovemakers, stigmas, tsach, flichette, even glueguns, highly over-equipped i might add. I have even tried all these combinations with the mp nanos, (pets). YOu can say im whining all you want, and you may be right. But if you say im whining.. then im whining for a reason.
So leave the guy alone who posted this thread, he has played an agent and spent a lot of time inorder to tweak him out and has made the suprising descovery that all his time put into tweaking out his agent was pretty muchly worthless....

sorry if i disturbed anyone... my two cents.....

[_____________Federot]

The high level game for Agents is pretty much "hosed" right now.

1st Rifles: Only 3-4 viable weapons at the high end. (O.E.T. Ranee [caps at 188/req shotgun], Dis Sniper [slow/med damage], Blackened Blaster Rifle/Gluegun [fast, med damage/no aimed], Stigma [fast, lower damage than BB-R, but has aimed].

2nd Rifles: The above weapons don't hold a candle to Shotguns, Novas, Hammers, Riders, Support Beams, Nukes, Pets...etc.

1st FP: Most "good" nanos at the higher levels have such outrageous nano costs that they are uncastable now. I.E. I can cast Vulnerability Seeker [MA, +13% crit] however I will not have enough nano for many, many levels. The problem is they have high nano costs which are easily "reasonable" for the true profession, but adding in 2.5x cost makes it so Agents can not cast much in FP anymore.

2nd FP: Mimic and Assume lines are "worse" than False. Meaning the advantages of the higher level nano do not outweigh the disadvantages.

Tank Armor: Agents can never wear tank armor now, no matter what.

1st Conceal: Totally broken, which in turn makes Aimed Shot totally broken. The random "oh suddenly that mob you've walked by 3 times can see you, and every other mob in the entire dungeon can see you, just plain stinks."

2nd Conceal: Having to cycle sneaking over and over and over to get off an Aimed shot is monotonuous and totally uncalled for, especially against level 1 or 2 mobs.

3rd Conceal: Unable to take ANY action while concealed now. Picking a lock, opening anything, picking up anything, healing, walking around...all break sneak immediately.

1st PvP: see 1st and 2nd Rifles comment above.

2nd PvP: We are one of the handful of classes which can not "naturally" heal. Only way to heal is to summon a healing MP pet and be stuck in FP MP for 30 minutes, foregoing roots, or casting at all in PvP.

3rd PvP: "Most" Agents are Opifex = low hitpoints to start with, coupled with no healing = dead Agent in nearly all conflicts.

4th PvP: Only 1 special (on our list of viable weapons). Flingshot does normal weapon damage, and Aimed Shot in PvP generally does less than normal damage (40% target hp max). I sometimes question whether its 40% target hp max then halved for PvP combat. (Target has 3000 hp, aimed should hit for 1200, but actually hits for 600).

5th PvP: No range advantage for sniper rifles. Pistols, shotguns, and most other weapons have better range. This in turn makes roots useless, against all but pure melee characters...who just resist or break the root immediately anyway.

1st PvM: Agents can not use FP while in groups, due to the bugs with healing (or even buffs).
This is compounded since they interrupt firing.

2nd PvM: If hunting with a group at a "camp", we are unable to use Aimed Shot about 80% of the time, due to "target is aware" (even with outrageous conceal).

1st PvM and PvP: Reloading bugs. Agents are especially affected by reloading bugs, as most of our "viable" weapons have very low ammo, meaning we now spend most of our time in a reloading loop. Example: I fire off 5 shots then weapon auto-reloads. Instead of reloading correctly, the weapon will fire 5 "fake shots" (animation of firing, use of ammo, no damage to target), then go into a reloading time again. This can happen repeatedly, until we take some action (like casting a nano) to break the cycle.

2nd PvM and PvP: Aimed shot does not initiate auto-reload, firing your last round as an Aimed shot will empty the clip and you have to manually reload or cast a nano to start firing again.

Cloudeh, if you can list out this many problems with the Enforcer profession, you'd be complaining as well.

- Fed

[_____________Cloudeh]

Before you say, Im only joking here,I love the Enforcer, but if i did moan this would be it..


1: When im in the group I hate mobs Agroing me, its not fair.
Yes I have alot of HP and can take it but all i wanted to do is use swords good. SARCASM! sorry

2: Having to be a good tank generally in SOME cases requires us to wear Tank armour, which sucks away mostly, all of my nano points when doing a nano program.

3: Umm.....range? no. But then again a few of you want mile ranged guns so.
I want to beable to throw me weapon, Like so.. "Whaaaaa"
and then walk over to it, if not rooted and do again so.

4: again, we have to walk up to you to hit you, be you in a difficult postion we be dead, many a time this happen, yee!


5: Thas bout it matey!


Please please take this as a joke, om not serious, hopefully some of you will see the light

[_____________Federot]

Nice of you to be civil now Cloudeh, as I hope I opened some eyes with my post.


"81 Enforcer, Duel Rider Executioners " ---and you wonder why mobs love ya more than most (just kidding). If I had half the damage output of that combo...I'd be unstoppable. Sometimes makes me wonder why I chose to use Rifles with my Agent. I should have looked long and hard at the "end-game" rifles.

-Fed

[_______________Gawyn]

Agents have the potential to be an excellent class but for the various nerfs they have been dealt. Concealment, for example, is an attack against perception and since most ppl are not willing to spend any IP on this skill then they should not complain about agents being undetectable in PvP. (Which seems to be one of the main reasons for this being practically deactivated.) The other reason stems from the ability to sneak through missions. This is fine for enfs and soldiers and the like but is not really what the agent is about. You could get around this by implementing missions where the agent's stealth abilities are tested rather than their toughness.

I can't really comment on the strength of rifles with level since my agent is only 49th level but there is a definite problem against some MOBs who appear to have incredibly high proj/imp ac, which is the only damage-type most rifles do (with the obvious exception of some blasters). How about a poison dart rifle or something

Nanos: First to a general problem affecting all damage buffs. (This particularly affects agents because they get some powerful damage buffs). If the description says +x% damage it should be +x% damage not +x damage. These nanos are meaningless at higher levels because +9 damage (as you get with anatomy lesson) is neither here nor there against MOBs with over 1000 hps. If I hit with a rifle for 300 (unmodified damage) this should be a adjusted to 327 damage, not 309 damage. If +9 is the way these nano's are supposed to work then it makes them pretty worthless at higher levels, since the best only gives about +21 damage, which you get at about level 90 or something. To a level 90 character that is like a fly biting you

False profession/assume profession: This has already been mentioned but I really can't see the point of assume proficiency series. It lasts longer (not a good thing since that means I will lose all of my agent buffs 15 mins before the assumed proficiency expires).

It has a higher cost on your nano skills (essentially losing 16-20 effective levels rather than 5-7 levels that false prof costs).

The 'better' nano initiative penalty of 1500 rather than 2000 is a joke (It's still gonna be negative - hence it still takes forever to run nano progs so what's the point).

The decrease in the nf range penalty is worthless since I will never cast nanos in combat (that would be like giving up 4 or 5 attacks and I would probably be dead before the execution anyway).

The reduction in nano cost has some use but since the only reason to become another profession is to steal some of the buffs from that profession then it becomes fairly meaningless (you can run a program, use a nanokit to restore your nano and run another quite easily and with no extra time needed since it takes so long to run a program that your t&s skill has come back by the end of the execution ). This just outlines some of the problems with assume over false profession pointed out by Federot.

Roots: a useless combat aid. Their only use is to stop a target following you when you are making a run for it (which happens a lot of the time as an agent). The fact that you can shoot your enemy once before it is blasted off negates any advantage it might bring.

Give roots a damage potential dependant on the level of the root and maybe no more than a quarter or half of a player's hp. This may be how roots being blasted off is calculated already, but if it is then the amount of damage they can take is seriously undervalued. Regardless, the damage potential of roots should be clearly stated in the program description.

Just a few of the gripes and a couple of suggestions of how to answer them in what I think is a fair balanced way.

[___________Comador64]

With the Concealment Aimed Shot combo F*****, and the FP nano cost F***** and the low damage Rifles we get, we are F*****.

[_____________Cloudeh]

Uhm...
Okay my average Dmg is about... Discluding the odd 150-200 dmg.
300-700 crits, and the odd 900-1k brawl.

Ive seen agents my level do much much worse dmg, like 1200.

[alphane]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by VelvetGut
[B]No seriously, the agent profession sounds really cool on the surface, because of the good rifle skills, and the false profession line of nanos.

> But underneath the ability to do buffs and such, the agent profession is ultimately a weak profession in comparison to most. And i dont want to hear you argue this point because i know from experience, im not just talkin out of my rear end. I have a lvl 84 agent, lvl 35 mp, lvl 35 nt, lvl 41 soldier, lvl 15 crat, lvl 18 engineer, lvl 15 enforcer.

> My agent is tweaked out. I have implants on him that the only way i got them on him is by stacking treatment at the treatment lab. And after trying out every rifle i could possibly think of coupled with endless combinations of false professions and every different combination of armor possible. What it all comes down to is, agents cant deal out a lot of damage and they because of their horrible body dev they cant take a lot of damage. So what do they rely on. Well i do admit we can pull off the occasional aimshot from hell, but really, can you really depend on that? And yes i have tried lovemakers, stigmas, tsach, flichette, even glueguns, highly over-equipped i might add. I have even tried all these combinations with the mp nanos, (pets). YOu can say im whining all you want, and you may be right. But if you say im whining.. then im whining for a reason.
So leave the guy alone who posted this thread, he has played an agent and spent a lot of time inorder to tweak him out and has made the suprising descovery that all his time put into tweaking out his agent was pretty muchly worthless....

My only char is an agent lvl 56 and i'm pretty satisfied with it. u say we are weak in health but perhaps didnt u try all possible combination with FP . here is how i do before beginning missions or team. i change to enforcer and buff myself with essence of cyclop (+400) which run for 80mns . i have some QL 70 implant and can reach a total of 1800 health. the only constraint is to wait 30mns the end of enforcer FP. then i buff as agent (snipers bliss, feline etc..) and change to MP with their great health pet (valentylia) that health me during fights at a mid rate of 200 every 4s . this way i can handle 50% dif mission since lvl 50. And keep in mind its a very bad char i failed to improve (bad IP use and weak armour). not to mention all buff we can use as FP. trader give wranglers we can buff for good donations and so on with many other combinations. but over all its the possibility for me to explore all other prof without having to change my char..

to all agents , enjoy

PS: one of our guild agent ,lvl 60, hit over 1800 with a flechette rifle.
I personaly use a gluegun , fast and good average dmgs (dont like PVP).

[_____________Federot]

Cloudeh - we might hit harder once in awhile, however we do not hit nearly as fast, and we have to reload every 5 shots (on the usable rifles). Executioners = twice as many hits per minute, even before you consider reloads, plus the fast refreshing Brawl (which you can use many times in the same fight).

Dijou - "Most" Professions are decent around 50-70, your examples are not good indicators of our weaknesses. And spending 40 minutes getting "buffed up" to do a mission is not very enjoyable either.

- Fed

[________________Sohn]

Well I've read all your posts, positive and negative. The one person that pisses me off the most is CLoudeh. Why?.. because he sounds like a 13 year old kid who doesn't really understand what this post/board is about. This post was to point out flaws and help the profession as well as the game. It's pretty serious "matey." I'm all for humor, but there is a time and place for it.

Federot, I see you online sometimes @ EFP with the Lag God and Clanners hunting there, overpopulating our hunting grounds
We both are experienced Agents who spent a lot of time developing our characters. But also I do feel that we want to see the game more balanced, and not more nerfed (hopefully some people understand that statement). I hope funcom really looks into the Agent profession... It's definately time they should.