Agility Rework

[Vintorez]

Agility is generally considered bad compared to other attribute trees, which makes me sad because I like Agility and the kind of playstyle it gives.

This is how I would rework Agility to make it more goodlier.

1. Make Blades the high-dps melee weapon to reward the low CC and attack range. Turn Bleed damage into a rolling percentage of the initial strike, with the percentage increasing with perks. For example with no perks bleeds could deal 20% of the initial attack's damage over say 4 seconds. At rank 5 Deep Cuts this could be a full 100% additional damage over 4 seconds. Additional strikes would refresh the duration to 4 seconds and increase the intensity of the bleed so no damage is lost from previous bleed applications. This also allows the bleed damage to scale in line with weapon damage, better balancing it between early and late game.

Making DoTs part of a class/build needs to warrant having less alpha damage, and this isn't an MMO where players can be fine waiting for a 20 second bleed to slowly tick away to get their damage out. 4 seconds would be a decent balance, long enough to back off and use a medical item while keeping the slow effect but quick enough for the damage to be impactful.

2. Replace Flaming Arrows/Bolts with Serrated ammo that inflicts bleed damage, increased by Archery Perks. Perhaps with less damage carryover but a stronger slow and longer duration.

3. PoI based Stealth Thresholds. When in a PoI, have a line indicated on the stealth meter. If you keep under this line, you won't trigger the "surprise" sleepers. Higher level PoIs have tighter stealth thresholds to stay under. Exceptions for the final loot room is understandable but it should be possible to stealth through the rest of a PoI without having the break through walls to avoid invisible triggers. If you wanna get real fancy make non-player light source blocks easily break into unlit variants so Agility users can shoot out the lights in a room to keep their stealth meter down, would be a fun thing for the world in general really.

Side note: Shooting a Compound Bow often causes more noise than firing lower tier handguns, and a single shot from a silenced SMG is louder than both the Desert Vulture and .44 Magnum (and Sniper Rifle lol) might want to tweak those numbers as an SMG should be strict upgrade over the 9mm Pistol for stealth provided the player fires single shots. Also maybe make the Trigger Group: Semi Mod make Suppressors more effective, might make somewhat useful. Also shouldn't be able to be applied to guns that are already semi auto, likewise for the other Trigger Group mods.

4. Make Mod Crafting it's own crafting line and put its benefitting perk in Agility. The only thing Agility crafts/provides for the team is armor and Strength can do the same thing. The stealth gameplay even means AGI users prefer to loot alone. Mods are always in high demand and most of them have pretty distinct "tiers" that they can be sorted into. Make mod crafting a skill, give it magazines, give it to Agility. I know crafting is no longer hardlocked to attributes but it's still good to have the obvious "This is the thing that my class provides best" perk options.

5. Not really AGI specific but make Night Vision goggles a high tier craftable helmet mod, with Weapon Flashlight being low tier and Helmet Light mid tier. Also adjust the Night Vision visual to that of white phosphor which is still realistic and much easier on the eyes as seen below.



6. Lock Picking is a low value skill in general as it's easy enough to just make or find more picks, it also requires nimble fingers and is better suited for the sneaky types. Bake it into From The Shadows or Hidden Strike. Have it so attempting and successfully lockpicking is silent while breaking lockpicks causes some noise.

7. If AGI still feels lacking in open combat after the other buffs then an Uncanny Dodge style ability could be baked into Parkour or Run and Gun, giving the player a chance to take reduced/no damage from an attack.

It'd take a good bit of work but to implement but I feel Agility would be more enjoyable in almost every aspect with these changes.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[RhinoW]

I think you're looking for a different game in some of these changes. 

I've been playing AGI, for the last 3 alphas and I'd argue it's one of the stronger, if not the strongest tree out of all of them. I haven't speced or used knives in this alpha, but the agility tree has some of the best perk value of any tree. I still remember when I tried fortitude agility last alpha, and I quickly realized how terrible the fist weapons were.

1. Bleed stacking is fine if it's still the same as a20, doesn't really need a buff IMO.

2. Gunslinger is busted with an auto 9mm pistol on max rank,

3. Bow master is decent, and bows and crossbows are simply godlike on their own (I haven't put points into hidden strike, and my crossbow does the work easily).

4. Run and gun is easily the best combat perk in the game, because it removes the thing that gets you killed half the time early on. Reloading.

5. Parkour is useful for the most part and straight up busted at max rank, there's no way you're dying in an open area or in a bloodmoon.

6. Hidden Strike is a direct buff to the bows.

7. From The Shadows is very useful when it works, it only doesn't get its full perk value because of how sleepers are terribly handled.

8. Crafts are not tied with perks anymore, only the chances to find the magazines, and imo should stay as such, the light armor perk is insanely good and will keep you up and running from most zombies.

9. I would argue that the attack speed buff should be higher than what it is now, but that's about it.

10. Flaming arrows do suck, but I don't know if a bleed arrow would be any better. Considering fire stops radiated regeneration I think, and looks way cooler.

 

[Vintorez]

For every strength AGI has, another line does it better.

If you think an auto 9mm is good, try an Assault Rifle or Shotgun build, it will blow your mind.

Perception weapons aren't that great for a solo player but are really good for teamplay, sniping high threat targets and deploying explosives when things get hairy. Spear isn't amazing but the reach makes it reliable enough if you can keep advantageous positioning.

What Intellect lacks in direct damage it makes up for in crowd control and utility.

People who think Fist weapons are bad aren't using beer, drunken fists with a few Bar Brawling books wrecks house. Definitely a highs and lows weapon but at least it has a place and comes paired with Machine Guns, the most versatile gun type to balance the most situational melee weapon. Blades on the other hand are barely stronger than Stun Batons without even the heavy crowd control.

Current bleeds are pathetically weak, doing 1 damage per stack, per second for 20 seconds with a maximum of only 7 stacks. Only useful in early game if you blitz down the AGI tree and get points in it fast, but falls off like a truck once you're against radiated zombies and are doing significantly less damage per swing and the bleed becomes negligible due to lack of scaling.

Bows are only "godlike" when you're plinking few zombies from stealth, in which case any quiet enough weapon will work. Mainlining bows for real @%$#, such as horde nights, is garbage until you have a plentiful supply of explosive arrows.

Hidden Strike is largely unnecessary overkill, especially for bows and knives as they already have built in sneak attack bonuses. A few ranks ranks might be helpful on high difficulties and for making really high thresholds like one-tapping irradiated soldiers with the Vulture or zombie bears with a crossbow (or you can just use an explosive bolt and one shot it regardless) or if you can't click the head of a stationary target. Similar to the stealth perk, it also does nothing once you're stuck in a fight. 

The benefits of Light Armor do not stack with the Custom Fittings, at least not to any noticeable degree aside from about an extra 0.5 stamina point per regen tick, and so is largely made obsolete by them. Absolutely not worth 4 points unless you're also the only one crafting armor for your group and need the magazines.

Fire does not stop radiation, but is powerful enough to slightly overcome it as the damage scales up the longer it burns, making it better than the most powerful bleeds. And while it's got spectacle, the framerate loss from a bunch of burning zombies is a huge PITA.

Every weapon class is fine in early and mid game/difficulty, but the gulf between each build type becomes wider and wider as you climb game stages and difficulties, and AGI falls way behind the rest.

 

[RhinoW]

1. You're choosing to ignore mobility, which is the main aspect of agility.

2. Of course a shotgun and a machinegun is going to outclass a pistol on horde night, what do you expect. But can non agility players stay outside of their base and kite zombies without getting caught for a while? No. Can they stealth their way through a building late-game like an agility player? No.

3. Perception is largely worse than anything else simply because you don't keep constant pressure, like you said, it's good for teamplay, while agility is great for solo play.

4. Ah yes, fists are good...but only if you are under the effects of a buff that you can only consistently get with a Leveled Cooking Book, Farming Perk, and Seed Book and with certain Bar Brawling perks.

5. Like I said, I got no idea about the bleed in this current alpha, so I'll take your word for it.

6. The medieval stealth weapon excels at stealth, but gets a penalty when fighting a horde, who would've thought. Mainlining a bow against a horde night without explosive arrows, gets you the result that you should've expected to begin with. There's a reason explosive arrows exist, and that's precisely for horde nights so you can use the bow.

7. You're right about hidden strike, it's mostly used with silenced weapons that don't have such a high sneak multiplier, but largely an overlooked perk until you need it.

8. Custom fittings is not made for light armor, it is made for heavy armor because light armor already does what the mod does but 100x better.

9. I don't think agility really falls late game, at least from my experience and how I play the game. And remember, specing on a tree means you excel with that weapon, it doesn't mean you're locked from using others.