Howdy, Stranger!
Classlead Hashout Late 2013
Selthis
Member Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭
What do you feel needs addressed in the next round of classleads. What do you think are fair ways to address it?
Please don't act like buttheads in this thread, I'd like to actually have a decent amount of good come out of it so we can look at things that have been long standing problems and that keep falling through the cracks.
1. Druid has it all and is out of control.
a.) Druids have a lot of control. Writhes, rubble, engage (I think?)
b) High damage out the wazoo.
c) They're not pigeonholed into any statpack because of the nature of their skills (strong druids are a beefy damage caster class vs intelligent or fast noctu which are a squishy damage class)
d) There is other stuff that needs to be classleaded.
2. I'm sure there are others, I just know Druid has been a hot topic lately.
0
Comments
Druids in general, but especially their damage
Wardancer hinder rates, possibly their afflicting speed.
Bardic resonance, their ability to lock somebody out of a fight in unconventional ways, nuarinyu's affliction table.
Peace change from last season
Future topics once we can see their relevance:
Summoners and Mages needing more tweaks that 7 active beta testers just could not catch.
My issue is this. We release a lot of classleads into the game with 0 testing. Or if there is testing, you guys are like the padawans of pk or something. Start a classlead. Put in the classleads. Let us hit each other with nerf bats. There are some people in the beta, if they like something, it's probably overpowered. We'd save ourselves a lot of drama if we'd just test things for a day or two before releasing it into the wild and watching the shenanigans for 365 days.
Feedback and suggestions please. Don't let things go the way of cleansing in our last classlead round.
As far as things I want for Hunter. I want Metrazol not to stop claw/sting/smash/etc 100% of the time. It's lame and I don't know of any other classes that suffer the same way(although it's possible there are others dealing with it too).
Could basilisk learn to attach to me so I can fly and track without having to land\bsum\queue eqbal order x return;oneb queue eqbal mount x? We've already changed it so you keep ents through Grove Return, and Outriders keep their ent when they track, why can't I? =/ (QoL concern, if you're worried about me leading shardfall teams with track without needing to pay for a tracking pet, keep in mind that most of Magick can't fly. Still worried? Have Shapeshifting Track lose followers like Grove Return does).
Thespia - Flight
Flight
Syntax: SING FLIGHT <target>/ME
Requires: Playing a flute
The Song of Flight grants one the ability to fly for a short time.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
I'd personally rather see relax (or some variation on it) in survival over fitness. That might not be the case though if your different toxin blocking tree classlead went in.
Nairat/shadowplant (assuming no changes to the mechanic) also shouldn't block curing paralysis ever. This is great fun for the person using it and an exercise in tedium for the other person.
Passive balance disrupt is something I'd personally like to see changed as well (not really many of these left, and one will be dying with the summoner changes).
I stand by my defense of Barkskin for Trailblazers, because I don't think it truly disrupted game balance in any heinous ways. Rangers and Amazons are not immortal by any means.
I think a 'classlead beta' would be a damn good idea, but is likely a pipe dream.
The biggest problem I have with the game right now is probably just how heavily the various CC methods stack with each other.
My preferred solution for this is pretty simple. Just make various forms of CC remove other forms of CC. If you get impaled or pinned, the pain wakes you up from unconsciousness, jolts your mind from being transfixed, cuts the entangling things. If you try to entangle an impaled person, the stuff shreds on the blade, etc, etc.
This change reduces the amount of CC that players can be subjected to in a manner that also punishes poor play, because blindly mashing your CC button will result in wasted balances on somebody's part.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
..Joust..You gather your breath and hurl a piercing battlecry towards Aleutia.Aleutia smiles, unaffected by the battlecry.
Un-deaf first duhhh
Sarrius said: Twist ... is still half an old disembowel.. maybe 1/3rd of one?
It's 20% of max hp IIRC, but yeah, completely unnecessary for WDs to have twist if all it does is damage. If you're fast statpack, you get extra damage on top of your super buffed dsb. If you're not fast statpack, twisting is useless and only serves to out bad people. Should probably give twist some other effect instead/on top of damage.
EDIT: @Iluv - Eviserate is on a 10 second timer. How much slower do you truly want it to be? Also, consider the tradeoff a Wardancer makes by picking Eviscerate as one of their two dances? I would more likely be interested in the deletion of the Doubledance skill, which immediately increases the opportunity cost of every single dance by virtue of being unable to use any of the other dances. Right now, Doubledance effectively lets me have my cake and eat it too by picking Sentinel or Spurn as my 2nd dance while having free Eviscerate up. In the unlikely event I want to use the +2 DEX dance, I have that option too.
Increase Trioxin damage to around 70 at transcendent or allow Trioxin to deal damage in two phases, remaining at a total of 50, but doubling the chance of a critical hit.
- Quarter shouldn't be binary insta-kill or unconditional unblockable damage. If anything, make the unblockable damage depend on number of mangled limbs. This will still reward people who bother to limb break, while reducing its impact in team combat unless they coordinate for limb damage, which is fine.
Runelore
- Laguz in dumb for circles that have already engage, rubble, flood, etc. Demonic has no natural way to avoid surges. (No that raiding is that important now anyway) Make laguz reduce surges for 5 minutes. This of course, make ethereal wisps' supposed purpose irrelevant, but it is already irrelevant because...
Druid
- Wisps: I wasn't aware how easy is to keep air at 100%. Spam some songs and presto, 100% air. It shaves some .5s from Stab, which doesn't looks like that much, but in the long run is important. But, you could say, if you are using songs to raise air, then you have to be static. There is where ethereal wisps enter. Since evoking a wisp doesn't takes balance, you can use ethereal to raise and keep air at 100% as long as you need it WHILE moving. Remove ethereal, druids don't need to be all-purpose tools for magick and certainly don't need an easy way to do keep air up.
- Imbue/feather: There isn't -any- drawback to stacking full air/earth. Faster attacks, with higher damage. Wisps/empower work so flawlessly to raise air/earth that the only reason it isn't important right now is because the OPness of Choke. In my opinion, make that you can have only so much air/earth at the same time in the staff. If you aren't using air to deliver some special effect, then you lose the speed benefit when raising earth toward unleashing earthquake.
Shamanism
A wytch is always good to have for demonic. Two or more witches are meh. Why? Because sowulu has a ICD so it can be spammed, and the design of marks assure that only one wytch can unleash the full power of the profession on a person. This is something that is almost exclusive to wytch. Assassins can garrote/choke, Hunters can at least deliver damage with claws. The secondary wytch is left with... Shamanism. Terrific. Choke or what? Paralysis? That is probably being spammed anyway? Slow is going to change from crowd control to a different mechanic. Also, marks is an annoying mechanic. I have to first brand the target, and THEN I get to breach. Two balances wasted, and basically what I have done is the equivalent of raze. And that is for EVERY target.
Marks need to be changed so they let wytchs work together. I have two ideas here.
- Brand mechanic is the same. Let wytchs benefit from any mark that is branded on the target, like it is their own. Simplest solution, but since all curses attack are invisible to anyone but caster and target, the coordination required is still too high to make any real benefit, and the time required to start being useful is still the same.
- Change brand so the wytch brands HIM/HERself with the mark. Add a kanai-like target (balanceless) ability so the wytch attunes the mark to the target. This solves most of the problems above: easier team combat contribution, setup time is lowered to just breach. The problem to coordinate curse affs is still present, but this change would also allow a wytch to go Belial for damage while another is using Cadmus on the target for afflictions.
Marks (reloaded)
There is little incentive to use anything but arctar/buul for lesser marks. Tying with the changes above so more wytchs can attack the same target with more effectiveness, a possible change would be to make Danaeus, instead of delivering small damage, reveal to the wytch what afflictions the target is receiving. This works for both team combat, so a wytch can know what curse did the target receive from another wytch, and in single combat, in combination with Hecate.
Devotion
Banishment rite has no real need to exist. Demonic ents, apart of being one of the most fragiles in Imperian (compared to like everything else like roots, outrider's) don't need a special rite that delivers damage to them passively, specially with the existence already of Banishment for weapons. And when fighting magick, banishment rite is just cannon fodder for Flare
Voice
-Have mellaon give a third party message for stripping insomnia.
-Unmask nuarinyu.
-Uncombo myried and remove resonance gain from it.
-Remove three attuned note instant kantae.
-Increase resonance needed for note attunement.
Thespia
-Have Cruel Lament add more damage for affliction bonuses only if nuarinyu becomes unmasked and instant kantae is removed. (I only propose this since healing from nuarinyu's afflictions will be incredibly easy.)
Artistry
-Reduce sketchlink engage to a single successful block throwing the target off balance for a very short time, requiring a need to re-engage. (I'd even settle for a simple BLOCK instead of having engage.)
(Runeguard)
Chivalry
-Defend will allow afflictions to still go through. Maybe set PvP do mitigate 50% and PvE for 100% for hunting purposes.
Runelore
-Nairat/Loshre will only block one attempted cure.
Smithing
-Better etches for weapons please!
My opinions for what I agree with and want changed personally.
Never!
As an addeddum, it should work only with pure mental affs, so no asthma/anorexia. I wouldn't mind some more new afflictions on Shamanism once Nairat/Loshre are changed, very likely, from blocking cures at all.
Knights won't be having a revamp any time soon, too complicated. WDs probably could benefit better.
The problem with Wardancers having transfix is that Wardancers gain way too much offensive momentum from hinders; they're a straight up offensive option. Transfix and the stupid-fast speed of flick combine to give Wardancers an utterly ridiculous amount of offensive control, enough so that most classes just cannot push an offense home through the affliction spam.
Hell. One major problem with the game as a whole right now is the amount of control affliction classes have while pushing their primary offense. Metrazol, ciguatoxin, peace, clumsiness, weakness, confusions, various lethargy effects, etc, etc, etc. The only other viable class types now, really, are timebombs that can cope with that much hinder or Druid's ridiculous runaway burst train, because anything else is too hindered by the amount of control.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Too many defenses are still stuck in the mode that Warding first started in : too slow. Deflect takes five seconds, building a fire takes eight seconds, and flintlight takes five seconds. These are all things that are best used mid-combat, and the long delay ensures they are used rarely if at all.
If anything, I'd appreciate a way of using them while off balance, but each skill has its own problems that are easily solved. Except for Deflect. It functions like rebounding, but does not rebound and only blocks one hit. Either make it much faster or improve it in some way. As it is, it's worse than pointless. It's pointless and wastes a lot of time.
Building an encampment and then sprinkling ink is painfully slow. Eight seconds plus the balance to sprinkle ink can leave you crippled in a mobile fight. Just cut this time down, please.
Flintlight's an easy one. Give us the ability to reheat when in a campground or encampment. Simple.
There are many other suggestions I'd like to make, but these are the simplest.