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Affliction Combat - a potential change

GarrynGarryn Member, Administrator Posts: 527 admin
Okay, so I'm reasonably sure that I will regret starting this thread, but this is something that needs to be sorted out, one way or the other.

So. Let's imagine for a moment that we were to add some means of better tracking of target afflictions - probably by adding room messages to all cure methods, although the exact method is not important right now. Obviously the increased precision potential would require some affliction delivery changes, but that aside - should we do this? Is this the kind of change that you would be interested in, and/or feel that would benefit the game?

Accessibility is the main motivation behind this - the concept of afflictions and affliction dealing/curing is one of the features that makes our combat system interesting and complex, but it is also one that tends to increase the barrier of entry quite significantly, which is something that I think should be addressed.

This is not a new issue, of course, it gets raised whenever we make any significant changes to how afflictions work, or release any profession that uses afflictions to any non-trivial degree. I've been receiving very mixed opinions on this over the years, so I'm quite curious how this thread will turn out.

Thoughts?

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Comments

  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    I'm just going to side step blahblahing about 100% tracking and hit up the passive benefits of this.

    Coding a tracking offense is a chore that really dissuades people from using affliction classes. This is largely do to the fact that many skill messages are generic and don't really help you determine what affliction you gave without a system to track that. Here, I'm thinking of newbies. I think it's a good step to make all 1st person messages have the affliction name given in them.

    curse ahkan anything
    You point an imperious finger at Ahkan.

    dsl ahkan asthma aconite
    You hit ahkan with a sword
    You hit ahkan with a sword

    A lot of the newer skillsets, like Outrider, Mage, and Summoner have specific messages for specific afflictions, which really makes developing a system easier.

    I'm not really a big fan of 100% accurate tracking. I did pretty well when my system was 70-80% accurate. We've had a laundry list of mediocre combatants do exceedingly well with 50-70% tracking accuracy. Many of our classes are just too powerful to be 100% accurate. A lot of the new skills are designed to crush Garrynbot under certain circumstances and 100% tracking would just exacerbate that. Skills like inhibit that disrupt and confused base on pre-existing afflictions would get a -huge- upgrade because I would only use it when it disrupted and confused (See: Mage dilemma).  I've got a lot of respect for your ability to code, but there's no way you'd be able to tone down or even remotely come near a balance point with perfect tracking. 

    Honestly. If you want. I think this would be something you could try for. Make it true-asses but for afflictions. Tack on a mana cost to it that's nearly outrageous so you can't spam it. Then add a cool down. If you use this skill under the cooldown, congratulations it's comboable and costs eq.

    dsl ahkan
    afflictcheck ahkan
    -30 mana (start 10s cooldown)

    Ahkan is stupid and impatient (<-- see what I did there?)

    dsl ahkan
    afflict check ahkan
    Ahkan is stupid and impatient and on fire.
    -45 mana (Ohshi, cooldown)
    equilibrium used: 2.5s

    Though really, I still don't like this, but it's approaching something a little more manageable with a drawback.

    Edit: Someone is probably going to cry about low mana at mana kills. The argument could be "make it cost health." There should be some sort of cost that cripples you over time, because this is a HUGE boon.
  • AzefelAzefel Member Posts: 730 ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    Mana kills are dumb.

    Change toxin-using classes other than pred and assassin to not use toxins (in class skills, weaponry is whatever).
  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Agreed, but I couldn't think of another cost to associate with it. :(
  • GurnGurn Member Posts: 789 ✭✭✭✭
    Garryn said:
    Okay, so I'm reasonably sure that I will regret starting this thread, but this is something that needs to be sorted out, one way or the other.

    So. Let's imagine for a moment that we were to add some means of better tracking of target afflictions - probably by adding room messages to all cure methods, although the exact method is not important right now. Obviously the increased precision potential would require some affliction delivery changes, but that aside - should we do this? Is this the kind of change that you would be interested in, and/or feel that would benefit the game?

    Accessibility is the main motivation behind this - the concept of afflictions and affliction dealing/curing is one of the features that makes our combat system interesting and complex, but it is also one that tends to increase the barrier of entry quite significantly, which is something that I think should be addressed.

    This is not a new issue, of course, it gets raised whenever we make any significant changes to how afflictions work, or release any profession that uses afflictions to any non-trivial degree. I've been receiving very mixed opinions on this over the years, so I'm quite curious how this thread will turn out.

    Thoughts?

    Honestly, I think the current version of basilisk discern is pretty good. A random % chance of seeing if someone cured an affliction. A lot of times, it will be not useful at all, but there's a small percent chance of it being useful in tracking an affliction. 
  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Some usability changes in the form of how classes function - i.e very telling messages - would be ideal. Nothing like a 'truediagnose' can ever really go 'well' for us as a general populace striving for game balance. We don't need many more third party cured messages, because the strength of the classes that are already very strong with decent tracking will skyrocket. To give affliction classes better tracking, you'd need to take away some of their less fair toys (see: Instill, attunement being the way it is, etc) in exchange. I think an affliction class being able to track well should come at the expense of a narrower scope of afflictions or a lower level of strength, while stronger affliction professions need to trade away their incredible tracking - which should, on paper, bring all of them in to pseudo-parity. In a way, I think we just need to be more careful about loading on affliction classes in each circle - Demonic is comprised entirely of affliction classes, aside from Defiler. Magick is comprised of mostly affliction classes - Bard, Renegade, Hunter, Mage.. leaving Druid and Runeguard as holdouts for 'just straight DPS'. Meanwhile, Anti-Magick is packed to the gills with a ton of grindy DPS classes, with their 'affliction classes' either being Outrider or really just 'limb damage classes that like to use toxins' (Predator, Rangazon, etc). In a way, I believe that coding an offense is the compromise you handed to people upon providing them a powerful, customizable healing system server-side. The question is, how hard or easy do you truly want to make coding an offense?
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    Awesome, I was waiting for someone to say something like this.

    I believe that coding an offense is the compromise you handed to people upon providing them a powerful, customizable healing system server-side. 

    This is totally a legitimate statement.

    Classes that need accurate toxin tracking to succeed in all builds:
    Malignist, Wytchen, Assassin/Renegade, Summoner, Hunter, Mage

    Classes that have modes where you need aff tracking:
    Flickdancer, Sabre-Knight, Toxin Outrider

    Classes you can show up and mash attack and do well: (in teams) (1v1 isn't even that hard either)
    Predator, Monk, Warden/Amazon, spam outrider, priest, defiler, damage knight

    Classes that are just dumb
    Druid, Bard

    Now look at the color code.
    Green - Demonic
    Orange - AM
    Purple -Magick
    Black neutral

    Why should Magick and Demonic have more coding/skill buy in that AM?
  • IluvIluv Member Posts: 703 ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    No more 3rd party curing messages or analyse/assess analogs are needed. More first person/3rd party for aff given are needed. For example deadeyes and curse. 'You/(Ahkan) curses Sarrius with Impatience.' 'You/(Auvryist) gives Dicene the evileye, inflicting him with addiction'.

    Edit: Also, all passive curing methods need to show WHEN they cure something. Example, 'Your(Auvryist's) ouroboros has syphoned an affliction.'
  • AzefelAzefel Member Posts: 730 ✭✭✭✭
    Mage has a faceroll mode, too (as I'm sure you know). G man was pretty insistent on it being present to cater to "casual" players :(
  • DiasDias Member Posts: 107
    Just to interject, Predator is a hyrbid class of limb/mashdps/and toxins. Azefel and Septus have been discussing a lot of the cirisosis kills on those who are high health and top tier (Eldreth, Ahkan, Khizan, Lionas) since damage output will generally never get them. 

    On the toxin front, I agree with Septus. (Insert Ahkan ridicule)
  • CassiusCassius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 607 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    Though I am frustrated with the curret state of my af tracking, I too am against this for several reasons, most notably: 1. It removes an interesting element of imperian combat. 2. Good players should be rewarded for being good rather than bad players rewarded because they are bad. 3. Low level/entry level players should play classes that suit their skill level. There should be one or two DPS classes for each circle (maybe demonic needs to lose an affliction class and gain a DPS focused class) to support this. 4. High level/conplex classes for high level players are needed not mediocre classes for everyone. 5. If we do this everyone might as well be given the same system(let's assume azefel's since its the flavor of half the players) and everyone can lay their head down on the F1 key til the end of the fight. I agree there could be some tweaks with passive curing (maybe make them show the equivalent herb it cured). Maybe a few tweaks on affliction messages but not full transparency on given afflictions. (Edit - not sure why it's eating my line breaks)
  • KalonKalon Member Posts: 124 ✭✭✭
    Cassius said:
    3. Low level/entry level players should play classes that suit their skill level.
    Counter-point: People often don't find out that they're in a class that's not suited to their skill level until they are $300 deep in their class skills. 

    I would go on about this and about how the few people posting here probably do not represent the marjority of the playerbase (as, if I'm not mistaken, almost everyone who has posted here so far already has significant time invested in an aff tracking system written under the current rules), but long day... time for tv.
  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Eh, I dunno about that. I suspect true newbies don't drop $300 on credits to trans out without any idea of what they're getting themselves into. That's what guild/citymates are for.
  • AhkanAhkan Member Posts: 2,375 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    Numbered lists should look like lists.
    1.
    2.
    3.
    4.
    5.

    Novice upgrades cleared up that problem, @Kalon

    You guys are some petty little derps. What's with all of this latent butthurt surrounding Azefel's system? I know for a fact that some of the more vocal cry babies are sucking on the teet of someone else's defense/offense.  I'm not going to lie (or pull punches), most of you retards died to the same pkers who use Azefel's system before they got Azefelbot. The only difference is they killed you with less spam on their end. 

    I don't even know why Azefel let me use it. The guy hates me because I break it in ways he couldn't imagine and ways I shouldn't. The best thing that his system did for me is he has a function that uses one database for afflictions and toxins since demonic is a clustercrap off names=other names =third names and I can use that function to call affs for my own offense. Most of the people that are beebopping around the game with Azefel's system don't even pk. The best parts of his system don't even involve pk. If some of you weren't such a bag of dongs you may not have gotten blacklisted from using it. The best part about the system? I can take someone who doesn't know anything about pking (Katalina, Aleutia,) (Azefel can toss them his system and teach them how to use it. No joke, I've learned a stupid amount of Cmud coding just by looking at his system, let alone him explaining it. Not only do they get spoon fed a "this is how you pk" but that actually get taught the reasoning behind it and the motivations behind the tactics. Some of them even code parts of the system that are so badass, they get included in the system itself. That's where it's awesome. That's where Imperian (and the cry babies) should focus the effort. 

    More problems with affliction tracking

    1) You're not going to see a lot of low end performance. Why? The coding work and time involved doesn't really change. You still have to know how to apply this. The "skill" is building a queue or queues that can outwit the opposing curing, which is 99% stock g-bot. New people won't understand how to do this.
    2) The impact is going to be seen in the mid-to-high end. Azefel is going to become god mode and people who are already good are going to become better.
    3) Maybe long term you'll see people break into the 'higher tier' of combat, but it's unlikely. With power creep and perfect affliction tracking and 4-5 years of coding experience/trouble shooting your system. They're going to obliterate you.
    4) These affliction classes will still get ruined by anything that drops an absurd amount of damage. Why? Because they're balanced around tanking like wet paper. You won't change the metagame with this.

    Bads <<< Afflictions <<< DPS <<< good afflictions <<<artifact dps

    Every class can be broken down into an ez-mode. The fact that there are skillfull classes and not skillfull classes are really myths. Even druid has a PhD-PK mode. You don't see it because it's the GED druid kills more people faster. You can buy into a lot of classes and make a few aliases and get into the nitty gritty of pk and put up good numbers. If you want to be 'good' you can start doing skillful things like:
    -not spamming cleave in team fights
    -not flaring a 3s rune with a 2.2s dsl.
    -not flaring a 3s rune after the second cleave message.
    -calling out 'Cassius is spamming cleave, someone should put him to sleep' in rt
    -calling 'good' target priority
    -realizing that someone is one-trick-ponying you and playing to avoid it.

    These are all 'skillfull' plays that you can't pick up with 100% tracking. Sadly, the only way you learn this is hanging around people who do it or dying to it repeatedly.

  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013

    IMO, the reason that affliction combat and tracking has become problematic of late is because you've basically turned every class you've revamped, aside from Druids and Clerics, into a class that relies on affliction tracking for kills, or which at least benefits greatly from it.

    More and more, the classes are leaning to afflictions to kill people because that's the kind of kill method that's easy for people to implement via classleads, and it's the kind of thing that's favored by players like Azefel, and the game supports it easily. 

    Once, we had damageknights that were 1v1 viable with broadswords. We had Hunters and Druids and Summoners and we had Wardancers who mained a sword-and-board combo. As people got tankier and more capable, you phased out everything that's not limb damage or affliction kills. Druids and Clerics are really the only two outliers to that I can think of.

    Now, as more and more classes are forced into affliction play and the higher coding demands it brings, the accessibility becomes more problematic. People used to avoid Renegade and Assassin, except for the Fazlees and Septuses, but now it's awfully hard to avoid afflictions and so, while we have more people fighting than ever before, most of those people don't actually know anything about how to really play their class, because the affliction mechanics are beyond either their ability or their care line.

    A better change would be stopping this "skillful" thing where you make every class an affliction class and coming up with new kill methods. 

    "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."

  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭

    A second post for actual comments about current affliction combat:

    Every skill I have that delivers an affliction should either straight up tell me what affliction it gave, or have a unique recognizable message. 

    Right now, stabbing looks like this

    You rub some aconite on a mercurial quarterstaff.
    You stab Kryss viciously with a mercurial quarterstaff.

    It should look something like "You stab Kryss viciously with a mercurial quarterstaff covered with aconite."

    And rebounding looks like this:

    You rub some aconite on a mercurial quarterstaff.
    You stab Kryss viciously with a mercurial quarterstaff.
    The attack rebounds back onto you!
    Damage Taken: 81 cutting, physical (raw damage: 133)
    Strange, everything doesn't quite seem so simple anymore.
    You are afflicted with stupidity.

    When it should look more like:

    You rub some aconite on a mercurial quarterstaff.
    You attack Kryss, but it rebounds back onto you!
    You viciously stab yourself with a mercurial quarterstaff like the clumsy idiot that you are.
    Damage Taken: 81 cutting, physical (raw damage: 133)
    Strange, everything doesn't quite seem so simple anymore.
    You are afflicted with stupidity.

    "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."

  • DiceneDicene Member Posts: 913 ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    Cassius said:
     2. Good players should be rewarded for being good rather than bad players rewarded because they are bad. 3. Low level/entry level players should play classes that suit their skill level.
    Telling 80%+ of players that they have to play Druid or DK because they don't have years(or months for fast learners) of experience coding, an in-depth understanding of zScript or Lua, and weeks of learning the ins and outs of Imperian's affliction combat, etc etc, is not what the admins want to do, because that's non-inclusive, not fun for people that pick classes like Malignist or Wytch without being previously aware that you need a system to do anything, and really sucks for people that don't have the time to devote long hours to coding.

    Here are four options that I think would be enough(individually, not together) to pull several classes into the general players range. These don't make high-end aff tracking 100%, don't make high-end aff tracking less complicated, and give newer players to aff classes an easier time building a foundation(making affliction classes less of an OP for high-end, useless for low-end kind of class).

    Disclaimer: I don't claim that any of these ideas are perfect, or that they'd be balanced well, or that they could be balanced well, they're just meant as ideas so we stop just arguing about 100% tracking(don't think Garryn is even actually considering this). There are all kinds of shades of grade between our current tracking and potential tracking, and from the tone of his post, I'm guessing he's willing to put serious work into rebalancing with changes, rather than just tacking on something cheesy like 10% Discernment from Supremacy or 100% Discernment from other IRE.

    - Mental 3P affs. 3P affs are where you start building your first aff class. Tracking Hemotoxin and Butisol and a 3P-less kelp is simple enough. Adding ciguatoxin in, then adding useful toxins from other plants(and eventually second cures on the same herbs) is a great way to build your system piece by piece. It gives you an obvious start to your system, immediate benefits to your combat, and a certain feeling of stability that you mostly know what's going on. Giving mental classes a few 3P places to start(on mostly innocuous afflictions) would give them a decent way for new aff class users to learn the ropes of afflicting without needing to buy someone's system or spend a million hours with no intermediate benefits.

    - Make Tree, Focus, and Purge not as noob-system ruining. Fully 3P "Ahkan touches a tree and his impatience fades away." (probably OP without some major aff-class rebalancing) or just giving some information(but not too much) with 3P messages like "Sarrius focuses his mind, ridding himself of a mandrake affliction."

    - Only partially prioritize herb curing. Not having a completely standard order of herb curing, but maybe making Recklessness always cure before Impatience on Mandrake curing. Just small examples of priority, without having a set order for every single cure like other IRE games.

    - Give aff-heavy classes some mode that gives them 100% tracking at a major cost. Not mana, mana is a bad thing to tax heavily on lowbies, because mana kills are dumb, and the mana cost of some aff classes is already too high for any long combat without sip rings. Maybe like an alternative to Wight form, you get Newb form that gives you reliable aff tracking, but slows your afflicting speed or reduces int or something. Hunters could get an aura(meaning they can't use NatureAura, slowing their afflicting by at least like, 0.3 seconds per combo). Wytch could use a rune on themself that lowers int or limits bone dusting speed(or whatever it is that Wytches do) for reliable aff tracking. Summoner could trade 2 or 3 leashed demons in exchange for reliable aff tracking. Mages could focus their crystal(and prevent it from being used for anything else) in exchange for 3P messages. This option doesn't effect high-end aff combat, but makes lowbie aff-class players not useless. Also, one of the easier options to balance and control.
    image
  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    How can we make it so that not tracking afflictions so well, won't be punished so drastically?

    E: the current paradigm of afflictions are: boolean effect, instantaneous cure. Can this be altered without breaking the game? Can we make affliction effects scalable with time, other afflictions.
    Khizan said:

    A better change would be stopping this "skillful" thing where you make every class an affliction class and coming up with new kill methods. 

    Can we create a third paradigm besides a scalable variable (damage), versus a stack of variables (afflictions). E: And a stack of variables dependent on scalable variables (limbs)
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
  • AzefelAzefel Member Posts: 730 ✭✭✭✭
    delete gbot :D
  • DiceneDicene Member Posts: 913 ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    I think some other IRE's make uses of afflictions that have multiple layers. Rather than sensitivity being 33% or 0%, you can afflict with it 11%, twice for 22%, or three times for 33%. I think it's MKO that I saw that in. I don't know how well you could mesh in that kind of aff with our current system(see current attunements and their myriad problems) but it's something to think about at least.

    Edit: Also, not saying that they have sensitivity in MKO like that, but I'm using it as an example of how not boolean work.
    image
  • SeptusSeptus Member, Beta Testers Posts: 781 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The certain affs cured before others is still pretty excessive, IMO. For instance if there is one maidenhair aff cured before the others that instantly gives a huge bonus to tracking what is arguably one of the hardest herbs to 100% predict. This is bad because every single maidenhair aff is amazing and part of the payoff to rolling all four into your offense is that you're going to have to accept some inaccuracy.

    Another example of this would be asthma/clumsy. Process of elimination would pretty much enable perfect tracking on the important herbs if certain ones were always cured first, and if you didn't do it for important herbs it'd not help overall.

  • SarriusSarrius Member, Beta Testers Posts: 1,682 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2013
    I'm in favor of the next remake cycle being one where we nix two affliction classes and make them in to something else. Not going to lie, a good way to reduce the need for tracking is to take away or lessen the dependency on it.

    How about Bard and Diabolist?

    Edit: ideally I'd like to bring MOST classes in the middle of the list by Ahkan, and reduce the amount in the top section. This would mean moving some classes in to a more simple line of play.
    <div>Message #2062&nbsp; Sent By: (imperian)&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
  • KryssKryss Member Posts: 426 ✭✭✭✭
    If you make it easier to track afflictions you make it easier for those that know how to use affliction classes to grind people into the dust. I don't know about you lot, but a world where an Assassin can know with perfect clarity what you're curing under hypnosis is a scary one. Not to mention knights with maidenhair afflictions never having to second guess what you just cured. And the list goes on. It's the random chance on a lot of things that makes it fair. Take that away and affliction classes will go from good to unstoppable as soon as they have momentum and that won't be fun for anyone.
  • AzefelAzefel Member Posts: 730 ✭✭✭✭
    image
  • KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Really, my biggest problem with affliction combat is probably the afflictions we use in it. So many of them are completely and utterly debilitating in combat that the affliction class offense is a control offense. 

    Paralysis, Metrazol, Confusion, Lethargy, Slow Bal, Slow Eq, Stupidity, Clumsiness, Weariness, Peace. All the afflictions that prevent you from healing them.  A million and one writhes on top of it all. The affliction classes bury you underneath a pile of crap and you suffocate in it because you can't swim out of it long enough to hit them back. Even if it doesn't kill you, it's impossible to push an offense through it, which is why the only other effective combat strategies are limb damage setups that are okay with hitting them once every 10 seconds and insane burst that can put the boot in before they get rolling.

    That's generally awful, and I don't think it's really needed anymore. If you removed all the hindering effects from those afflictions, I'd still have to heal them to avoid brainmelts. I'd still have to heal them to avoid annihilates, to avoid infirmities, to avoid cirisosis and enlightens and 100% disembowels. It's not like reducing and removing those effects would mean that I suddenly got to stop curing.

    It would just mean that I'd get to hit an affliction class back reliably. It'd mean that they could be a bit tankier to compensate for the fact that getting hit is no longer optional for them. And it would mean that classes like Druid could slow their damage truck down to a reasonable speed limit, since they wouldn't be so dependent on smashing the enemy to death in the handful of balances they get before they're in disable hell. Those are all good things.


    "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."

  • AkumuAkumu Member Posts: 21 ✭✭
    The only thing I'd like to see to make tracking easier is the kind of message Khizan suggested. Though I rather it look more like generic messages so something like:

    You stab target
    Target is afflicted by stupidity (same aff name used here as generic aff messages today)
    You stab target
    Target is afflicted by paralysis

    And then no message if you'd hit aura or you're clumsy etc.

    You stab target
    You hit aura
    You're clumsy and miss the target

    This would make us able to create ONE trigger and track the affs we hit our target with, which lowers the entry to tracking affs a lot. Cures however should not be displayed because that would have us clog up the next classlead with sooo many nerfs for affliction classes.

    I'm not sure about displaying third party messages though. It'll make team fights for affliction classes a lot easier for sure, but would it become too easy and make them too powerful in shutting down a target? Most likely.
  • IluvIluv Member Posts: 703 ✭✭✭✭
    Khizan said:

    IMO, the reason that affliction combat and tracking has become problematic of late is because you've basically turned every class you've revamped, aside from Druids and Clerics, into a class that relies on affliction tracking for kills, or which at least benefits greatly from it.

    More and more, the classes are leaning to afflictions to kill people because that's the kind of kill method that's easy for people to implement via classleads, and it's the kind of thing that's favored by players like Azefel, and the game supports it easily. 

    Once, we had damageknights that were 1v1 viable with broadswords. We had Hunters and Druids and Summoners and we had Wardancers who mained a sword-and-board combo. As people got tankier and more capable, you phased out everything that's not limb damage or affliction kills. Druids and Clerics are really the only two outliers to that I can think of.

    Now, as more and more classes are forced into affliction play and the higher coding demands it brings, the accessibility becomes more problematic. People used to avoid Renegade and Assassin, except for the Fazlees and Septuses, but now it's awfully hard to avoid afflictions and so, while we have more people fighting than ever before, most of those people don't actually know anything about how to really play their class, because the affliction mechanics are beyond either their ability or their care line.

    A better change would be stopping this "skillful" thing where you make every class an affliction class and coming up with new kill methods. 

    I'm all for Demonic getting a new warhammer-based profession that doesn't rely on affs.
  • GarrynGarryn Member, Administrator Posts: 527 admin
    edited September 2013
    Khizan said:

    A better change would be stopping this "skillful" thing where you make every class an affliction class and coming up with new kill methods. 

    Such as?

    This is a bit of a tangent, but I keep hearing about these 'new combat/kill methods', yet remain unsure what they should actually be. To date, we have:
    - raw damage (druid, defiler, ranger, claymore knights, etc)
    - timebombs (limb damage - most of AM classes, bard resonance (wasn't intended that way, but it effectively is one))
    - afflictions into instakills (assassin, hunter, wytch, diabolist, to a lesser extent predator and outrider)
    - afflictions into damage overload (knights, summoner, wardancer, mage)
    - power meters (monk, priest, summoner, to a lesser extent mage, defiler and druid)
    - damage over time effects (mage, summoner, outrider, defiler)
    - bleeding (outrider)
    - incurable temporary effects (priest, runeguard, wytch, defiler)

    Positional effects are out, the game doesn't work like that. What else is there to add?

  • GarrynGarryn Member, Administrator Posts: 527 admin
    Iluv said:
    No more 3rd party curing messages or analyse/assess analogs are needed. More first person/3rd party for aff given are needed. For example deadeyes and curse. 'You/(Ahkan) curses Sarrius with Impatience.' 'You/(Auvryist) gives Dicene the evileye, inflicting him with addiction'. Edit: Also, all passive curing methods need to show WHEN they cure something. Example, 'Your(Auvryist's) ouroboros has syphoned an affliction.'
    Sure, we can certainly do these.
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