Engage Opponent

So, I recently GMd Engage Opponent. Others who have leveled that skill say its good for stealth. I just decided to do a GM for the fun of it, with no real purpose in mind.

A couple thoughts on how this skill works,

- You always only move to the target's original location, so for instance, if you use Engage on a mob that's running towards you, you'll go past him. This doesn't seem right. It would make more sense to always go to the target. I don't know what "Effectiveness" means in the skill information, but maybe effectiveness could play a role in this. But because I have GM and 158% Effectiveness, its seems to me I should always be able to stop at the target wherever his final location is.

- A novel use is that if you find a target outside mobs that are surrounding you, you can use Engage Opponent to escape. This given, it would actually make sense if you could use it effectively without a target. Without a target, the game could just push you forward a set number of meters in the direction you're pointing.

- It seems to me the best possible future use of this skill would be for combos, like some Polearm combo which would create a running spear thrust, or a combo with Body Slam, and things like that. Something slightly different might be a "Pursuit" combo, maybe with Flurry, that would lead you to follow the target around for a given period of time, engaging him whenever he moved.

 

I use it to rush behind certain enemies to get a quick Sneak Attack and/or to get to the enemy archers while I'm surrounded by melee.

I commend you for GMing this skill though; I'm surprised you managed to retain some of your sanity.

I always thought it was a little weird to have in the Subterfuge tree.

 

Please file a bug on this point. I think I noticed that before, but hadn't thought it out as clearly.

 

It wasn't difficult... most of my hotbar is a randomly drawn deck, and I put five glyphs in the deck, so in the middle of combat, an Engage Opponent glyph would always come up and I would press it so it would be discarded and bring up a more useful glyph. No harm, and at least it aligned me with my opponent better ;>

 

How high of a level does the skill need to be in order to have 5 glyphs? I thought the max amount was 4.

 

Not sure what level anymore, but I have some as low as 84 with 5.

 

The lag issue your illustrating it's also happening with body slam.

 

I'm guessing also with Charge in the Shield skill tree... I'm not sure its bad in every case.. so if you're charging with your shield or doing a body slam and someone moves to the side, you miss. On the other hand, if they don't move to the side but just move forward, I don't see why you'd end up moving past them if you actually hit, rather than just stopping where you hit.

I was also thinking Engage Opponent could be a bit more flexible and also move you sideways if your opponent moves sideways. I'm not sure what "Effectiveness" currently means, but that might play a role. Though I guess this would also be dependent on what type of combos are expected with Engage Opponent in the future. If its something like a running spear thrust, that sounds something that would work more like the Charge skill.

I'm also imagining that running past the target might be what happens if this type of attack was ever applied to Wild boars, which would make sense in that case at least. But in that case, you'd expect the Wild Boar to hit multiple targets in the line of attack. And this would make more sense for a player attack if a player could hit multiple targets in his line of attack when charging.

 

At least with body slam the stun still fires even when the target moves away. Engage is super situational since it doesn't do anything other than run to a spot, and like you say, it quite often misses the opponent.

 

The reason I gave up on Engage opponent was that any little bump on the ground between me and my target would stop my rush cold in the previous patches. I then decided that shield bash/charge was the way to go.

 

vanilla wow charge. nuff said

 

Yeah it's hard to see most of the skill's value when pressing it will often times be a dud.

 

Yeah, currently however mobs are spinning where after they are stunned. Making the skill useless.

 

Yeah, I've been complaining about that (among other Subterfuge related things) for a long time... devs don't seem to want to address the issue much less fix it.