Stratics News! The Quest To Gimp Smoke Bombs

The way I see things personally, you have two types of people playing UO as a Ninja.

1. Those who find the Ninja of Legend something they are intrested in.
2. Those who find the skills associated with being a Ninja adventagious to their quest to perfect Player vs Player combat.

IMHO, those who fit in catagory 2 are ruining things for those in catagory 1. Simply put, there are a number of people out there who have learned skills in the Art of Ninjitsu not to become one of that skill, but because they can apply Ninja Skills with other skills making them stronger.

It would appear that the subject of Smoke Bombs have come under the scrutiny of the Dev Team. Apparently, there are those who feel the benifits of using a Smoke Bomb in combat gives someone too much of an advantage. As the dev teams agree, adding a "Peace Timer" to smoke bombs for an extended period of time is a bit too harsh, but they seem intrested in this under some other time length context.

• First they attached Mana to the use of a smoke bomb. It didn't make much sense, but it also didn't really affect me too much.
• Then they removed the ability of a Ninja in animal form from throwing bola. I buy this, but still, a benifit from being a ninja was removed.
• Then they lowered the damage capacity of the Death Strike and Back Stab. Oh the pain.

There are several other "balancing issues" that have changed the life of a Ninja, but this latest attempt by others to see the Smoke Bomb gimped brings me thoughts of anger.

All of these gimps have, in one form or another, revolved around how some people in the PvP community felt the Ninja was a target they could not overcome. This based almost completly on characters using Ninja based skills beyond how a "True Ninja" would use them. But the outcome of the fix effected ALL Ninja and how ALL ninja were able to perform.

The Gimp of one Skill Combination has GIMPPED us all time and time again. Lets hope the Ninja Hatred comes to a close soon.