At the risk (guarantee) of being accused of whining, I want to say that we really need to do something about damage in this game.
Iriaen is level 91, trans evasion and has a surcoat. Last time I played, this investment (which costs like $250 on top of the fact that you'd naturally trans your other skills before any of that, plus the many hours of time for leveling) was enough in the past for Iriaen to tank 2 people, possibly indefinitely if I stayed on the defensive instead of attacking. Now I get damaged down by most fighters in anywhere from 20-40 seconds while on the defensive and I've heard rumor that someone (cough) can 1-shot people with 400+ health. It's nearly at original bowmanship levels of "I'm dead, was I fighting?" Finally, I find myself idly wondering if the slightly diminished population in Imperian, despite improvements in most other areas, could be related to this.
My suggestion is that we make changing the to-hit stat a priority for the next classleads, even if it is conceptually difficult. Something as simple as having it effect the damage mitigation of evasion, where more to-hit reduces evasion's effect, might help a lot assuming that evasion's impact were increased.
To be fair, we're coming in at the tail end of a, hopefully, half completed damage re-work. This last classlead we reduced the overall tank of Imperian. The problem is, and was raised in the beta, that we're reducing of the tank in the world, but we weren't actually reducing the damage formulas that were based off of those tank values. It's a really weird scenario and I hope we'll go back in and ratchet things down and eliminate outliers like WD, Templar.
There are some outliers. There will always be outliers. You can't nerf 100% of the game because Azefel (The exploit king) one shotted someone. That's one person in 300? You know what you should do. You should type score. I bet you're locked into the fast stat-pack. You're rolling into combat with low con, low dexterity, and a level 1 sip malus. A stiff wind could kill you if you're not built properly. Imperian's gameplay has shifted. You can get by with passable builds that are built on compromise. Well, I can't tank in level 2, but I can tank in level 1. I can make this work. Gone is the day where you're locked into the primo affliction/damage statpack known as fast. The game is more diverse with a lot of build strategies that are quite viable. Want to be a super aff/damage god in fast? Pay up.
Next problem: Bowmanship never did 400 damage. I should know, I pioneered its exploit. References should be correct and relevant.
To-hit. No. No. Stop. God. We got rid of to-hit because nothing was worse than basing a damage/affliction class on a mechanic where you had a 20-40% chance to miss because the smithing system is pants on head retarded. Where did your momentum go? RNG ate it. (Same with dodge). You just argued that smithing sucks. Now you want to base all weaponry classes on a skill you claim is terrible. Just no.
tl/dr: Yes, there is too much damage in Imperian. That being said, your solutions are worse than awful.
I see no reason why the to-hit stat couldn't just be removed at this rate. Why repurpose something in to an element we don't need to introduce? Introducing things needlessly is how we get a lot of balance problems in the first place - unnecessary additions to working systems is how Lusternia became a mess.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) 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>
Yeah take out the to-hit stat so my super smithed sabre has one less stat to worry about.
This is the problem, by neglecting one stat since it now does nothing, you can make super-smithed weapons like never before. No one seems concerned about to-hit anymore.
Actually removing to-hit entirely, if no one wants to put in the effort to balance it, might be for the best because then you can nerf the total points accessible to a weapon and it would be really easy to balance that.
Edit: I would add that I've never found auto-smithing 500 sabres to be an interesting part of the game, so if this change made it easier to get top tier weapons, I don't see many downsides to that. Credits are the ideal gold sink anyway.
You say that like to-hit was ever a relevant stat. Artifact weapons had enough of it, sabres have such a high base to-hit that even shitty sabre to-hit would hit anything, and nothing else was ever worth using. Also, credits are not a gold sink because no gold is removed from the system.
That aside...
Original Bowmanship was "I drank health and hit full health. Before recovering health balance I took two doubleshots from the same person and died from full health", and it wasn't just some relatively untanky scrub dying like that, it was Runeguard Khizan and the like. The current state is nothing like that. Azefel's oneshots are an outlier; he hits Khizan for ~220 damage after basically burning an attack to set it up,
I'd also just like to point out this: Being able to tank a damage class indefinitely is not a good thing, and being able to tank maybe two indefinitely is awful. That kind of thinking is a lot of what led to the arms race and what's led to the "Every class must be an affliction class" mindset that so many people have fallen into. "I can't kill X with damage, I need more damage" --> "I can die to damage, damage is the province of the non-1337 and only used by low class so-called PvPers, thusly I must be made tankier" --> "I can't kill X with damage, I need more damage."
"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."
This keeps coming up as a persistent problem that needs to be addressed. It's important to mention that if the powers that be actually listened to people who play the game, that it would not be a problem. To be fair, this is partially my fault since I clamored for upgrades to holy ground for about a year and change. Tbh, I didn't think we'd upgrade the crap out of it with ducks, lasers, and sharks with light sabres to the point it was greater than the other two combined. But hey, classleads.
Hazewards v. holy ground.
Consecrate has no cost associated with it. You can bluhbluhbluh and claim that devotion=cost, but at the end of the day you're full of ****. Devotion recharges and beads impact consecrate. So, why is no cost important? Like everything associated with Templar and Cleric, there is a distinct lack of preparation and planning in the use of consecrate. This means that you have on-demand lockdown whenever, wherever you need it, regardless of the situation at hand.
Solution: Consecrate gains a commodity based cost, I'm leaning towards veritum, but would settle on silver (2). (tbh, I also think diamond dust is a good one...because it's rare.)
Hazewards. While I initially was pretty excited about the concept of 'demonic sigils' since it was mechanically and roleplay awesome.Hazewards can only resist being picked up with the presence of a defiler (shadowbinding hazeward), which is a small minority within the demonic class schema. One dude per team can really lock down a room to prevent super-running-skills.
Solution: Diamond dust (2) will be used to 'affix' a hazeward in a location. Defilers can do this for free. (See that, differentiation perk + gold sink + comm sink). Using this will not consume balance or eq.
(Wytchen rant follows)
And to wytchen marks. Every fight starts with this terrible, clunky mechanic.
You reach out and hastily scrawl the Mark of Istria on yourself.
eq:2.75 (<-- i have a diadem, this is 3.2 for the peasants out there)
Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.
You have lost the anti-weapon field defence.
You take 1 purple bone dust, bringing the total to 2049.
You take 1 blue bone dust, bringing the total to 2066.
You mix some purple and blue bone dust and throw it at yourself, watching your movements slow down to a crawl.
You are afflicted with aeon.
Balance Taken: 3.35s (the argument could be made, why is this affliction on a 3.3s balance?)
You must regain balance first. <-- this is where i try to brand someone after a dustthrow, it doesn't work brand/dust or dust/brand or brand/dust)
First problem, why is it equilibrium? Second problem, you can't combo this with anything, despite the fact the class is a walking spam-combo bot. Third problem, cadmus is the best mark in the game. You know why? Because it seamlessly integrates my two pvp skillsets so that I can use them both to kill people (cadmus lets you curse + dusttghrow). Belial is the 'damage mark' that does damage equal to that of an angry newbie (see below). Hecate is an 'afflict' mark that really sucks because curses affliction list is pretty terrible by itself (<cadmus) and the best hecate mechanic got placed into templar mirroring, #classleads.
You point an imperious finger at yourself, invoking the curse of breach.
Your curseward has failed!
The Mark of Belial on your body flares briefly.
H -39 [7.6%] [40] (Woe is I. Woe) (This doesn't start scaling with int until it's ignited (ab shamanism ignite) and even then, it's underwhelming.
bal:1.55
Also, for the purposes of testing, fix this. Now, preferably. This is as important as Mathiaus dying to incinerate.
ignite mark on ahkan
You cannot burn any Marks on yourself other than the Istria one.
Removing runelore mastery was harsh to wytchen tank, especially since the opposition is rolling in the burst-dps #classleads. A necessary nerf for Runeguards, but terrible for wytchen. I'd like to propose a very in depth and complicated roleplay change to differentiate Runeguard and Wytchen runelore because the administration cannot.
Wytchen: Wunelore Runeguard: Runelore
After this, you could be able to file individual classleads for the class specific skill. Which reminds me
Malignist: Mecromancy Deathknigh: Necromancy
Then we can finally go back and put in the oft forgotten Classlead #124 (I'll cite it for you)
Aside from the thematic problem, Soulstorm is mechanically useless for the classes that share it. In the age of garrynbot, by the time I need to soulstorm, its either already cured or I've died.
Change the functionality of soulstorm as follows: Soulstorm is an activated ability that gives you 10 charges of the soulstorm defense. SOULSTORM AFFLICTION [ME|target]. If it is me than I heal 1 affliction and heal myself for 5-10% of my health. If it is a target, then they are hit with 10% of my health in cold damage and the affliction is cured. There should be a cooldown for spending charges in the ballpark of 10s. Using charges does not use eq/bal, nor does it require it. Putting up the ability initially (giving you 10 charges) should have a longer equilibrium cost than the current soulstorm, by x2 or x3.
Solution #2:
Change the functionality of soulstorm as follows: Soulstorm is an activated ability that gives you 20 charges of the soulstorm defense. For deathknight: These charges works like a mobile rite of healing. Will heal 20 afflictions and fade before needing to be reapplied For diabolist: Diabolist already has passive curing, but the profession comes with a high mana cost. For Diabolist, Soulstorm would periodically heal mana but are activated and expended in the same fashion.
Edit 2: Aleutia makes an amazing point, the commodity system sucks and we see as many diamonds as we see unicorns. I also learned that Aleutia has been hoarding all of the diamonds in Khandava. Wtf.
I see no problem with the associated solutions for these but I will say that you need a Templar or Cleric to consecrate. You only need a Defiler to manufacture your hazewards and you can carry them from place to place. This is only assuming you are bringing them up on a combat level, though. It is a small distinction (smaller because Templar is played a lot right now), but it is one.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) 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>
I think the problem Ahkan has with hazewards, on a combat level, is that without a Defiler on board anyone can easily trigger picking up any that they drop, making them inferior to even monoliths (or superior if you're any class that wants to store them in a pet for later use), which usually come with an attached flame sigil.
To be honest, I just wish that hazewards brought down consecrated rooms a bit faster. It takes like 10 hazewards to destroy one consecration. Unless there's some sort of demonic skill I'm ignorant of that destroys consecration, it's the only way for demonic to drop that effect.
The biggest problem, to me, is that taking down a consecration in AM territory requires standing there and pounding hazewards into it for a solid minute or more.
Taking down a hazeward or a monolith requires a sapping charge and six seconds and you're off balance for less than half of that six seconds.
"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."
Can you affix a flame sigil to hazeward? With wytch marks, the biggest irritant to me now is: Iluv targets Kryss, I just marked Azefel, I mark Kryss, Kryss leaves the room, Iluv targets Septus, I mark Septus, Septus twists, Iluv targets Kliko, I mark Kliko, Kryss comes back in the room. Ring -> Iniar, wtf are you doing? I kid you not
@Azefel and yet we rabidly froth mouth defend banish and fought against making danaeus anything but a banish!
Also, to keep going, hazewards were created primarily to sate the need for "circle specific portal block" so that demonic didn't have to repeatedly break roleplay and metagame to get sigils. The statement of "you can flame a hazeward" directly controverts the purpose/function of hazewards.
Also, this is just dumb:
You point an imperious finger at Apoloc, invoking the curse of masochism.
bal:2.03
A numbing energy runs up your limbs as your attack rebounds off of Apoloc's shield. (<-- dustthrow combo'd with cadmus bypasses prism but not shield) (there is no shield break in shamanism)
Solution: Dust throw used with cadmus (and only cadmus) bypasses shield Solution 1: Add shield breaking skill to shamanism. Solution 2: Go back in time. Do a better job.
If those ruin the game for you, it was ruined all along because those things have literally existed longer than Imperian has.
"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."
To be fair, it's become a lot more common place. Back in the day, monks wouldn't Kryss/Brishi spam kai banish out of a 1v1. Ever since skirmishes and team battles have become common place, crowd control has been front and center. The reluctance to remove something as powerful as banish (a huge mistake) has given rise to terrible classleads and bad design decisions that seek to emulate this and spread it out across the circles to 'balance' the game. The underlying problem is that these mechanics are bad and don't really fit the context of any of the conflict mechanisms. "Hey, you showed up to a fight. Good bye!" Why are we handing this out?
To be fair, it's become a lot more common place. Back in the day, monks wouldn't Kryss/Brishi spam kai banish out of a 1v1
I came to this thread to post another thing I've been thinking of and decided that this deserves a belated response.
We would so totally do this. We would do worse. We were the ones who invented cyanide/banish. Enfeeble/(Absolve|Incinerate) was a main combat doctrine. We brought the cheese to every fight and we did so regularly and relentlessly and without a hint of shame. If most monks weren't doing this, it's because they were dead or locked inside of five attacks and never had the chance.
"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."
See, that's pushing a kill method. I was more highlighting that fact of engage, fight fight, kai banish, walk to Antioch. I don't remember ever doing this We fought until the bitter end.
In some ways, it's a good class and popular class because it has a lot of decisions you can do that actually make a difference. Going back to what I was saying about a less popular class, Diabolist, you make tons of decisions, but most of them are just using afflictions as fodder, and the afflictions-as-damage mechanic of infirmities means that this greater number of decisions does not actually translate into a meaningful gameplay experience beyond what you are coding as an affliction tracker.
Compare this to summoner, where you have a lot of interesting one-shot effects with summoning a demon every 5 seconds. The ability of dameron to double up a demon effect before its cooldown is up is also good. It's true that the "do damage" effect is in there 2-3 times depending on your definition, maybe even 3-4 times, but stuff like Danaeus (forced flight), Arctar (shield someone) and Nin'kharsag (slow their movement) are all pretty good.
Even so, the class could be better. Here's my thoughts.
First, we don't need to duplicate damage dealing. Something like a temporary flood would be really good for a class with two timed kills, but really anything besides more than one damage unleash effect would be better.
The second issue I have is that taint generation is way too linear and simple. The only way to cure taint is to run away for awhile. This makes the Summoner's damage dealing mechanic very linear. As some people have noted, you spam quicken for awhile, then start dealing damage, and if your character is stronger than their character, they will die. While it's necessary for damage classes to be able to damage kill people (as Khizan noted) if there was a way to shed taint without running away, summoner damage could probably be improved.
My suggestion on that end is to create a new survival skill that involves removing taint, let's call it purification. You PURIFY yourself and the taint aura on you diminishes, but it comes with a cost. One concept for the associated cost is that you could get randomly between 1-2 "insanity" afflictions each time you purify off some taint, this could segway into whispering madness every time you purify taint off of yourself or if you purify too much taint off of yourself. The random number of insanities would create some controlled randomness that would prevent the exchange of decisions in the combat process from proceeding in a completely predictable manner, which would discourge the "He beat me once, not fighting him again" phenomenon that has often played IRE's linear combat environments. Presuming that the summoner can see you purifying the taint off of yourself, that player can try to segway from damage to afflictions if they want to. In return for this, summoner damage could be improved at higher taint levels to compensate for the fact that higher taint levels would no longer be a guarantee in each fight, which would lower the buy-in for combat.
The second issue I have is that taint generation is way too linear and simple. The only way to cure taint is to run away for awhile. This makes the Summoner's damage dealing mechanic very linear. As some people have noted, you spam quicken for awhile, then start dealing damage, and if your character is stronger than their character, they will die. While it's necessary for damage classes to be able to damage kill people (as Khizan noted) if there was a way to shed taint without running away, summoner damage could probably be improved.
My suggestion on that end is to create a new survival skill that involves removing taint, let's call it purification. You PURIFY yourself and the taint aura on you diminishes, but it comes with a cost. One concept for the associated cost is that you could get randomly between 1-2 "insanity" afflictions each time you purify off some taint, this could segway into whispering madness every time you purify taint off of yourself or if you purify too much taint off of yourself. The random number of insanities would create some controlled randomness that would prevent the exchange of decisions in the combat process from proceeding in a completely predictable manner, which would discourge the "He beat me once, not fighting him again" phenomenon that has often played IRE's linear combat environments. Presuming that the summoner can see you purifying the taint off of yourself, that player can try to segway from damage to afflictions if they want to. In return for this, summoner damage could be improved at higher taint levels to compensate for the fact that higher taint levels would no longer be a guarantee in each fight, which would lower the buy-in for combat.
I am not opposed to new ideas. I am not opposed to changing things about Demonic. What I -am- opposed to is prioritizing the change of something new (in a likely 'downgrading' sense of the word), over the change of something old (and definitely needs fixing). See limb damage, monk class, wytch marks, resonance shared ceiling. I mean, mathematically, successfully gaining a reset over a limb class is close to Pr() = 9.1^-11 which is somewhere near zero. I don't care if it's on your list of things to do for the last six months, because it isn't done.
Yeah, this is similar to some of the stuff that has been suggested regarding limb classes. Similar to what I'm suggesting with summoner, repairing monk (blunt) limb damage could cost HP as they don't do a ton of physical damage lately if they are a fast balance statpack. Repairing idra and knight limb damage (cutting limb damage) could give afflictions, allowing for a switch to sabres from claymore or the use of darts. What do you think?
Comments
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Iriaen is level 91, trans evasion and has a surcoat. Last time I played, this investment (which costs like $250 on top of the fact that you'd naturally trans your other skills before any of that, plus the many hours of time for leveling) was enough in the past for Iriaen to tank 2 people, possibly indefinitely if I stayed on the defensive instead of attacking. Now I get damaged down by most fighters in anywhere from 20-40 seconds while on the defensive and I've heard rumor that someone (cough) can 1-shot people with 400+ health. It's nearly at original bowmanship levels of "I'm dead, was I fighting?" Finally, I find myself idly wondering if the slightly diminished population in Imperian, despite improvements in most other areas, could be related to this.
My suggestion is that we make changing the to-hit stat a priority for the next classleads, even if it is conceptually difficult. Something as simple as having it effect the damage mitigation of evasion, where more to-hit reduces evasion's effect, might help a lot assuming that evasion's impact were increased.
There are some outliers. There will always be outliers. You can't nerf 100% of the game because Azefel (The exploit king) one shotted someone. That's one person in 300? You know what you should do. You should type score. I bet you're locked into the fast stat-pack. You're rolling into combat with low con, low dexterity, and a level 1 sip malus. A stiff wind could kill you if you're not built properly. Imperian's gameplay has shifted. You can get by with passable builds that are built on compromise. Well, I can't tank in level 2, but I can tank in level 1. I can make this work. Gone is the day where you're locked into the primo affliction/damage statpack known as fast. The game is more diverse with a lot of build strategies that are quite viable. Want to be a super aff/damage god in fast? Pay up.
Actually removing to-hit entirely, if no one wants to put in the effort to balance it, might be for the best because then you can nerf the total points accessible to a weapon and it would be really easy to balance that.
Edit: I would add that I've never found auto-smithing 500 sabres to be an interesting part of the game, so if this change made it easier to get top tier weapons, I don't see many downsides to that. Credits are the ideal gold sink anyway.
"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."
While I initially was pretty excited about the concept of 'demonic sigils' since it was mechanically and roleplay awesome.Hazewards can only resist being picked up with the presence of a defiler (shadowbinding hazeward), which is a small minority within the demonic class schema. One dude per team can really lock down a room to prevent super-running-skills.
Solution: Diamond dust (2) will be used to 'affix' a hazeward in a location. Defilers can do this for free. (See that, differentiation perk + gold sink + comm sink). Using this will not consume balance or eq.
Wytchen: Wunelore
Runeguard: Runelore
After this, you could be able to file individual classleads for the class specific skill. Which reminds me
Malignist: Mecromancy
Deathknigh: Necromancy
Then we can finally go back and put in the oft forgotten Classlead #124 (I'll cite it for you)
I see no problem with the associated solutions for these but I will say that you need a Templar or Cleric to consecrate. You only need a Defiler to manufacture your hazewards and you can carry them from place to place. This is only assuming you are bringing them up on a combat level, though. It is a small distinction (smaller because Templar is played a lot right now), but it is one.
I think the problem Ahkan has with hazewards, on a combat level, is that without a Defiler on board anyone can easily trigger picking up any that they drop, making them inferior to even monoliths (or superior if you're any class that wants to store them in a pet for later use), which usually come with an attached flame sigil.
The biggest problem, to me, is that taking down a consecration in AM territory requires standing there and pounding hazewards into it for a solid minute or more.
Taking down a hazeward or a monolith requires a sapping charge and six seconds and you're off balance for less than half of that six seconds.
"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."
Also, this is just dumb:
Solution: Dust throw used with cadmus (and only cadmus) bypasses shield
Solution 1: Add shield breaking skill to shamanism.
Solution 2: Go back in time. Do a better job.
"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."
I came to this thread to post another thing I've been thinking of and decided that this deserves a belated response.
We would so totally do this. We would do worse. We were the ones who invented cyanide/banish. Enfeeble/(Absolve|Incinerate) was a main combat doctrine. We brought the cheese to every fight and we did so regularly and relentlessly and without a hint of shame. If most monks weren't doing this, it's because they were dead or locked inside of five attacks and never had the chance.
"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."