Racial hide is too successful

[azxten]

I don't have proof yet but I wanted to mention that the success rate of racial hide seems much too high. I'll try to look into past discussions and find supporting evidence.

I'm playing a Dark Elf Enchanter and I use Hide to break charm regularly or in other situations. It seems to work about 4/5 times which seems to be way too successful. In my memory of classic racial hide seemed to regularly take 10-20 attempts to get it to work. It was almost useless except as a way to "perma" invis for AFK, etc.

I think this may actually be a more wide spread problem with skills and low skill rates in general. It seems like a lot of skills with only 20-30 points work as well as the same skill with 100+ points. Not all of them but many like channeling, hide, and sneak.

Similar to my other recent bug report on Enchanter mez this also directly ties into making DE Enchanters more powerful than they should be.

[Croco]

I don't have proof

Should've found some of that before making the post.

[Gustoo]

Can't non DE enchanters just use a clicky invis item to unpet themselves?

Mine fails quite a bit maybe you're just lucky.

[aspomwell]

Don't really use it on my dark elves but I do on my halfling druid with the same skill cap (50).

Seems to work about 1/3 of the time. Your 4 out of 5 seems extremely high to me. No way nearly reliable enough to use for charmbreaking, you want a goblin ring.

[Disease]

I don't have proof yet but I wanted to mention that the success rate of racial hide seems much too high. I'll try to look into past discussions and find supporting evidence.

I'm playing a Dark Elf Enchanter and I use Hide to break charm regularly or in other situations. It seems to work about 4/5 times which seems to be way too successful. In my memory of classic racial hide seemed to regularly take 10-20 attempts to get it to work. It was almost useless except as a way to "perma" invis for AFK, etc.

I think this may actually be a more wide spread problem with skills and low skill rates in general. It seems like a lot of skills with only 20-30 points work as well as the same skill with 100+ points. Not all of them but many like channeling, hide, and sneak.

Similar to my other recent bug report on Enchanter mez this also directly ties into making DE Enchanters more powerful than they should be.

In my memory it worked this way. I have evidence, do you?

[Sabin76]

I definitely don't get the 4/5 you are. 50% at best. It's not hard to experiment to find the probability, though. The CD is only what, 10 seconds?

[azxten]

Putting together some basic data. I did 20 hide attempts and 13/20 were successful so a rough indication of 50% success but of course very little data. Interestingly I just did another 20 attempts and got the same 13/20 success rate. So it seems you're slightly more likely to succeed using racial hide than not.

I also find this interesting because channeling, which was shown to be too powerful, had a similar 70% success rate after tons of testing with only 1 skill point at level 1. At 13/20 for hide that is 65%. Is it possible all skills if they have a single point start at ~70% success rate? Feign death would be a good test as it was notoriously unreliable at low skill.

I found some quotes from old EQ sites where people mentioned the 50 skill cap on either sneak or hide made it worthless but obviously not proof or exact statements on success rate.

[Wed Feb 10 12:32:42 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:45 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:46 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:47 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:51 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:55 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:56 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:32:57 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:06 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:07 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:08 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:09 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:11 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:17 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:17 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:19 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:27 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:28 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:28 2021] fire goblin shaman begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:29 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:38 2021] flame goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:38 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:39 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:40 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:41 2021] Fire goblin begins to radiate.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:47 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:50 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:50 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:33:52 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:02 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:05 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:05 2021] fire goblin shaman begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:05 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:06 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:12 2021] flame goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:15 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:16 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:16 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:26 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:26 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:27 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:29 2021] young goblin shaman begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:32 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:36 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:37 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:38 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:47 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:47 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:34:48 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:03 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:03 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:04 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:09 2021] fire goblin shaman begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:13 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:14 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:15 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:24 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:24 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:24 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:25 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:38 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:39 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:40 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:40 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:43 2021] flame goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:45 2021] fire goblin wizard begins to cast a spell.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:50 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:50 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:35:51 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:00 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:01 2021] flame goblin scowls at you, ready to attack -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:01 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:11 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:11 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:12 2021] You stop hiding.
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:21 2021] You begin to hide...
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:22 2021] flame goblin regards you indifferently -- You would probably win this fight..it's not certain though.
[Wed Feb 10 12:36:24 2021] You stop hiding.

[Disease]

Putting together some basic data. I did 20 hide attempts and 13/20 were successful so a rough indication of 50% success but of course very little data. Interestingly I just did another 20 attempts and got the same 13/20 success rate. So it seems you're slightly more likely to succeed using racial hide than not.

I also find this interesting because channeling, which was shown to be too powerful, had a similar 70% success rate after tons of testing with only 1 skill point at level 1. At 13/20 for hide that is 65%. Is it possible all skills if they have a single point start at ~70% success rate? Feign death would be a good test as it was notoriously unreliable at low skill.

I found some quotes from old EQ sites where people mentioned the 50 skill cap on either sneak or hide made it worthless but obviously not proof or exact statements on success rate.

Post these quotes with links and make sure they are in time frame with our current time line.

[Gustoo]

Mend was the one that critical failed and killed you at low level.

Interesting to see what base for mend is.

[cubiczar]

I've been leveling a monk, didn't start to see mend even work until 30-40 skill. I'm now up to 67 and I'd say its like 5-6 out of 10. I also use sneak a lot to do faction work (iksar monk) and at 60 skill it is still around 50% if I'm lucky. At low skill (20-30) I would run into streaks where I would get like 12 successful sneaks in a row but then bomb out for 20 failures in a row so it wasn't like it was reliable at all and most of the time it was at least 4 fails to get a success.

Maybe there is a difference with racial skills but I'm not getting anything like OP so his guess about all skills being too good at level 20-30 points is easily proved wrong. Also running a test with 20 data points is pretty much garbage, get at least 100 to even show that something might need looked at. We all know this game can be super streaky, maybe you have something with racial skills but at least get some good data going and then back that up with in era evidence saying what you are seeing isn't the way it was on live.

I played a rogue on live and 50% at lvl 8-10 sounds about right to me but who cares about what I remember right?

[azxten]

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/skills.html?skill=43

My halfling warrior is level 60 and only uses sneak to sell to otherwise nasty vendors. it is capped as a racial trait at 50 and minimal help.

Data was 26/40 success.

I doubt this will ever be provable. It's pretty much impossible to find anything specific on success rate of racial abilities in era. All I can find are quotes like the above mentioning how it was pretty much useless.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/mangler-enchanter-cant-get-charm-killing-to-work.270761/

I chose to play a Dark Elf, partially because of the Hide-ability, seeing many recommend it as a great way of breaking charms for no mana cost, but I've only managed to break charm twice in about 3 hours worth of testing it out, the other times the mob just remained charmed

You can't skill up Hide at all. It's forever capped at 50. It's probably successful like... 1 in 4 times or so?

Racial hide being ~65% successful seems much too high for 50 skill. There are lots of anecdotal posts like this mentioning how unreliable it is. The only "use" mentioned is to AFK safely, do some quest stuff, and for Charm breaking where it's always called out as not very good. I've been using Hide to break charm for about 20 levels now and it is very usable compared to historical or TLP mentions. I wouldn't even bother to get an invis ring it's so successful. Also I regularly use Hide to avoid death from trains and such. I guess this is another example of something that will never be proven so it will be left in an unclassic state.

[cubiczar]

The main reason why they call it not very good is that it isn't reliable. When you are using charm to solo you have one mob charmed and another that is rooted taking dmg. When one of them gets low health (hopefully both) you invis to break charm and then kill the lowest one.

Even at 65% that isn't great because in one round your pet or the rooted mob might die. You want to know for sure that you are going to break charm exactly when you want so you don't loose exp because your pet bites it (or because your rooted mob dies and your pet steals 50% exp). Much better to invis and burn the mana than loose the exp. Hide was definitely a strat just maybe not the best one.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010429054020/http://eq.castersrealm.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=3756

First let me start by saying that the Overthere is hands down one of the quickest places in existance to do levels 17-24. There are a few ways of going about this, there is fear kiting (detailed in another strategy posted here) which is what I did until I got up enough bravery to test out charm for the first time. The strategy is simple, pick a nearby mob, mes it, tash it, and charm it, then find a mob of similar strength, tash it, and sick your newly found pet upon it. As the fight between the two monsters progresses keep your eye on both the health of your pet and the health of the mob that your pet is fighting. ALWAYS keep the monster that your pet is fighting rooted, this is extremely important as in the case that your charm would break you only have one extremely pissed off mob on you instead of two. If this should occur simply color flux, glance at which of the two beasts has the highest health, and charm it. Nuke as necessary to ensure that your pet does indeed win the fight, however not so much as to end the fight with your pet's health too high (or he'll be a pain to finish off). After your pet has come out victorious simply cast invis (or use your inate hide skill if you're a dark elf), color flux, and nuke. If you know that one nuke won't be enough to kill your former pet than flux, mes, root, and nuke until dead. There ya go, this strategy carried me from the end of level 21 to level 24 in about 2 days, and I imagine it could have been used far before then. Good luck to you all and happy charming!

I have no evidence of how good hide was but it was obviously a strat that was known and used (also charm was known and used successfully to solo).

[Nirgon]

The success for it was fairly rare. Good research.

[axisofebola]

LOL. It doesn't work anywhere near 4/5.

it's probably closer to 2/5.

It's for damn sure under 50%.

[Dolalin]

Ran a search against the archives. I see this from 2001:


About hide - as a DE myself I find I get around 30% success rate on it, which isn't bad. I assume that if you cast illusion dark elf you would get the hide ability in your ability box the way you get slam from ogre and troll illusions.


https://web.archive.org/web/20010501122537/forums.castersrealm.com/cgi-bin/eq/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=reply&f=9&t=004347&replyto=000005

But yea not much data on this tbh.