Best Of

Septus I hate you so much right now. thonum has never came through for me ever.  Every farfugnuggen time, I bet the long odds on him and nothing.  

If you're not playing an affliction class, having an affliction tracker is not really a high priority. Group affliction calls are mostly for the benefit (or peril) of people who are actively tracking, and are just considered a courtesy if you can manage it. Some of us like to be tricky with our offenses, or want to reduce our error margins to try and push our offenses ahead. Sharing information is really the key part of this, and calling afflictions to a clan is a way of trying to optimize that delivery as much as possible.

As an example, it's important for Wytch because it helps you make judgment calls that are otherwise going to be prone to failure in combat. You want to track whether or not someone is jinxed, so you know whether or not you can 'safely' use swiftcurse/blight. You want to track the various lock afflictions, so that you know how well you're slowing down their curing. You want to track as many curses as you can, so that you aren't repeating afflictions and can build your curse stacks higher. You want to track the leech afflictions, because these modify your steal offense. Without a good sense of tracking, you will miss opportunities to seal your offensive route, which can result in firing off afflictions and getting absolutely nowhere.

EDIT: Also, to explain that quote a bit, I was referring to the user's tracking, not group tracking. A lot of cure calls are based off of simple messages, like "Jules eats a maidenhair leaf." I use that message to comb through my maidenhair afflictions and predict a cure. If "Septus eats a maidenhair leaf." can also cure Jules' paralysis, and would do so in a way that wouldn't inform me otherwise (I.E. no message like "A powerful reciprocation effect purges an affliction from Jules."), suddenly things are a lot trickier for me.

It's mostly (only) Demonic that does this kind of thing and even then it's not everyone. I encourage it fully and try to help/get people reporting together but it's not as though we say, 'report your afflictions or don't fight with us!' I mean, everyone who is skilled enough to be making the most of the infromation they're getting affliction reporting will do well even without it but you know, every little bit helps especially in a circle where afflictions are so prevalent. And bear in mind, this kind of reporting is not the same as tracking. This is just having people say 'afflicted x y' on a clan when they give an afflictions, which doesn't require tracking at all.

And @wysrias, the only thing I can say with some of these relics is that it's similar to class skills... not every single one is going to do 1000 damage, every other one isn't a instantkill. While defiance is definitely an issue (and could probably use a change to like... just be a 10% malus), others are just fine to me.

This statement speaks volumes.

There's so many other problems that have been brought up repeatedly, though. The relic powers themselves wax and wane between overpowered and completely useless, and this has barely changed. I can't think of a single positive post about the powers being offered because they really just seem like random ideas slapped together into a pile where we're supposed to experiment with them. I'll name a few examples:

Nullification: This power is ridiculous and has been complained about in each iteration of this system. Please stop trying to force artifact negation into a core conflict component of the game - a component that can (and does) extend to other conflict systems. See: shrines in contested areas, shrines on top of monoliths, shrines at boss rooms.

Obtuse: What possible use is there for blunt damage relapse? What profession tries to damage someone down with blunt weapons? Is this blunt damage as a whole, considering that the number of professions even using blunt damage is incredibly limited and mostly tied to one faction?

Mayhem: This has to exist just for hilarity's sake, because sharing all afflictions can't be something you'd possibly balance around.

Lethargic: Permanent balance debuff for everyone non-sect in an area is roughly equivalent to just making bashing 20% slower for balance-using professions in an area.

Hellfire: See Lethargic, except now it's just being lit on fire. That's okay I guess, but it's just going to make people go "huh, that's kind of annoying, let's defile these shrines".

Acute: Everyone gets 1 affliction back every 10 seconds? I can't imagine a context where this would be useful. A single affliction relapsing for all players is at best negligible and at worst will work against the user.

Absorption: Speeding up herb balance permanently for everyone in the room could potentially be advantageous, if you could lock a fight into that room specifically.

Defiance: A perfect way for front-loaded physical damage classes to one shot people, and for momentum offenses to fall apart because now they can't survive one round let alone two.

Reciprocation: This is a great way to completely kill all affliction offenses, full stop. Best paired with Defiance so that we can just autobash each other to death.

I could go on and on about some of the other ones, like Trequartista (which I will never spell properly without looking up), Rejuvenation (or Rejuvination? It's listed as both in the help file), etc. The powers are just bad. I've listed several possible ideas in other threads/posts, and I'd be happy to fish them out myself if you'd like, but no amount of painting over the system is going to fix the underlying issue where there's just too many relics that are no more than a waste of space.

That aside, I really don't like that you can outright purchase the exact relics you want. Some sects spent several months farming up pools of relics, probably in anticipation of something like this - at best, it should be a random re-roll, not a grind-until-you-buy system. If you're going to balance powers around rarity, properly make them rare.

@Dec

Even if arguments on past mechanics to PvP utility (somewhat disagree), room limitations (agree), and CD mechanic (disagree on CD mechanic itself, maybe length) necessitated change, tweaking all three at once swings the pendulum too far in the other direction.

And the kicker is that, even if we could justify the existence of these extreme relics, they were gated at least by their level of rarity. Now that we have effectively turned relics into a currency, the original plan to stratify relic availability has been obviated.

I rarely overreact to changes, but this cumulative decision is a real head-scratcher.

1. re: the change to immunity shrines. Will idols still keep their immunity, provided the 15-room same-sect shrine conditional, even if there is an adjacent opposing shrine?
2. For the purposes of reducing immunity effect, is "opposing" simply defined as a shrine from another sect? So for example, if you have a Arcanus shrine next to a Primal shrine, would someone defiling from AM or Demonic be able to take advantage of the immunity reduction effect?
3. Always active "penalty" effects are terrible ideas, even if they cut both ways, but will something like reducing my balance 20% or giving me zero resistances impact bashing within the influence as well?

ps - Letting anyone buy Bulwark relics will spell an end to the conflict aspect of the entire system. For only 20 relics per Bulwark, I am sure by now Conquest has ensured their entire network will be impervious to any future damage.

Giving some of these powers ALWAYS ACTIVE + multi-room influence is going to be a recipe for disaster. Plus the Gamestop approach to tradeins.