Masked Afflictions Classleads

Ahkan

Howdy, here is one of my projects that I hope some of you will tag into for this classlead round. Ultimately it's a masked affliction genocide.

Personally, I think that masked afflictions make this game relatively un-fun. In the 1v1 game, you're forced to spam diagnose. The state of the game being as it is, this costs you valuable momentum. As this is not a 'hinder' it really shouldn't have the benefit of sustained affliction pressure -and- a momentum hinder. As far as the team game goes, masked afflictions are unnecessary and wildly imbalanced. There's so much going on, most combatants, even the good ones, can't track what's going on with 100% visible afflictions. WWe released Garryn bot so everyone can heal as well as everyone else, masked afflictions directly contrvert that.

The best example I can think of is wytchen. They have a skilled called "blight" which makes the curse I give masked.

You point an imperious finger at yourself.

You are afflicted with an unknown affliction.

The knowledge that you've been cursed floods your mind.

I also have an ability in Shamanism called Hecate, which allows me to flare a second masked affliction with my curse.

You point an imperious finger at yourself.

You are afflicted with an unknown affliction.

The knowledge that you've been cursed floods your mind.

The Mark of Hecate on your body flares briefly.

You are confused as to the effects of the toxin.

You are afflicted with an unknown affliction

If you fight any wytchen doing this to you (or anyone for that matter) it's just annoying. You really run the gamble of "I ignore Ahkan being lame and power through and hope I don't get anything bad" or "spam diagnose every 4-6 seconds." Neither of these options are really applicable. Now, imagine a 5v5 where 2 people are doing this.

So, now that I've presented my reasoning why I think it should go, here are my solutions.

For many 'masked' afflictions, the easiest solution is to make them not masked. I'll use formaldehyde as the example here. Forma has the capability to affliction with 1 toxin from the entire list. That's nothing to slouch at. The only thing wrong with it is the masked nature. This will be the ideal choice for most of the fixes. I listed some examples here and followed up with the 

Formaldehyde:

 still applies a random toxin, you just see the message. (Sting, cobras, bashing)

Nuarinyu: 

No more masked afflictions. To compensate, maybe broaden the affliction list.

Sketch masked: 

Affliction message shown.

Deathaura: 

Broaden afflictions, make it afflict smarter (no repetition) 100% visible

Mind mask: 

Monk doesn't need this. Never did. 

Spider intoxicate: 

Remove the 'masked' effect. Make it into something else, haemophilia maybe?

Becloud:

Remove the masked effect. Possibly redesign nature of skill.

Obscure:

Rename, redesign. Honestly, I don't think they need this and they're fine without it. (maybe increase trioxin damage)

Hecate: I have a classlead for this. Without the masked effective this skill is dead.

Blight: same as hecate.

Honestly, I may have missed some, but you get the general idea. 

Khizan

Completely agree.

There's nothing interesting about diagnosing every third eq.

Lionas

Sting: Why is this a thing? It's too slow to use, and just gives forma. What? More interesting racials, please.

Ahkan

You used to be able to use sting in some combos. Past that it's racial rp flavor.

Aulani

I need it to sting Khizan when he's being annoying.

Also Supremacy Instability gives a masked affliction when you touch tree.

Gurn

Which includes fear. Whyyyyyy.

Iluv

What if Naurinyu worked like moon? You can choose which affs to give or choose not to and the random afflicting is not intelligent.

Septus

Only other one not mentioned that springs to mind is spiritwrack.

Kryss

Terratheria has toxicsplash.

Ellen

Naturebinding has Sting and Bewilder.