Game Mechanics: Racial hide is too successful

[azxten]

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/....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/...o-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/20010429...EW.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/20010501...replyto=000005

But yea not much data on this tbh.