I just think it's hilarious that everyone is freaking out about summoner and not one word about defiler. Something something regurgitated comment about years of shitty classleads.
Haha, defiler. Can we upgrade entropy and change the thresholds for seed evolution? Approve classlead. Completely deny the classlead in practice. Add a lot of weird **** that's all on a 30s timer. And Mathiaus complains about being under a time constraint. Pardon me while I laugh. Once you get familiar with splinter timing and splinter utilization...you fear no man. The flip side of this bashing feels like the event horizon of a black hole. The classleads were outside of what was desired and it's really..weird, but it's functional and highly resistant to artifacts.
People who know the class better than you are addressing the MINOR problems in Summoner. Most of them are waiting for you guys to get 'the dumb' out. An example, classlead 69.
Wys covered a lot of my issues with the class.
-I'm living the tank team. High resist. High regen. High hp pool. Something's gotta give (resist) (Wys and I agree distortion -5%)
-The class is balanced around 'slow' unleashes and 'slower' individual releases. Dameron goes against this so I can double up and golgotha/golgotha or danaeus/danaeus.
After that, class is solid. You're going to have a hard time classleading the rest of the summoner because, oh my nuts, this class scales like woah with artifacts. It's the Monk or Druid of Demonic. Luckily, Malignist, Renegade, DK don't scale so good with artifacts.
@ahkan: my only comment was regarding priestess/magician which is ridiculously high (~25%) and was previously approve in classleads. This goes to the same point Wys/you were making. I'm not saying delete it. I'm saying reduce it in accordance with the previously approved classlead.
The only other thing I classleaded was ranged taint generation which I think is pretty straight forward.
If previously approved classleads that were never implemented meant anything, Soulstorm would have a real use and Imbue would have gotten nerfed. Amongst many other reasonable, forgotten changes.
<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 like active healing. I think it's a pretty useful mechanic. The problem is that it's so easily spammable, especially with modern g-bot. There's nothing to stop someone from spam active healing to STALL a fight. If you've ever fought Kliko, you know how this works. I think I'm ok with actively healing in two consecutive balances, but it gets a little fuzzy when I'm chaining 6 balances of active healing. hands/hands/hands/hands/hands/hands. You know? I'd prefer fights be quick and decisive and not stall battles. Also smart turtling != stall battle.
The burden is on you to first prove that Summoner does too much damage and then show why changing Palpatar would be a positive thing.
You have done neither. (And overly modest people like Iniar aren't helping).
The reason why you do see a lot of Summoners nowadays is because the lack of damage professions there are in the Demonic circle and the high barrier to entry (coding) it takes to use certain damage professions like Defiler. It's not because Summoner does an insane amount of damage compared to most professions (in fact it doesn't at all).
Frankly, I believe you're all looking at the wrong issue regarding Summoner damage. The effects themselves are quite reasonable, really, as Belial becomes less effective as your health decreases and Golgotha can only be used infrequently unless the Summoner wants to eat a 15% sip penalty or waste Dameron.
The problem lies in the fact that Summoner A and Summoner B can both just roll up and use the same unleash/flash combos on you. This is usually going to be double Belial and/or double Golgotha... guaranteeing flash relapses. Making the unleash mechanic a bit more similar to that of Runelore's flares would certainly go a long way towards mitigating the impact of stacked effects, this is probably the course you should pursue.
Everyone's main problem with Summoner is same 'main problem' that every circle has dealt with when fighting a hostile group heavy on artifacts. Our summoners, almost without exception, have maxed out damage artifacts. Your fighters, almost without exception, do not have the tanking artifacts or rings of magick bane to negate it.
It happened last year with Magick when Justus and company were rolling new druids, it happened two years ago with AM when we were rolling WD/Monk/Flareknight, and it happened in Magick again four years ago when we were all rolling lighting druids. When one side has the majority of the active artifact investment, the other sides complain about the damage.
You might hate it, and I could understand why you would, but Imperian is largely a pay to win game.
My only actual objection on the Enslavery end is the passive from.. Hecate? that is essentially a free collar. I only object because it us utterly independent of collars and stacks very well with them, but plenty of classes possess these sorts of things.
<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>
My only actual objection on the Enslavery end is the passive from.. Hecate? that is essentially a free collar. I only object because it us utterly independent of collars and stacks very well with them, but plenty of classes possess these sorts of things.
It's not really a free collar though, because it's a part of the class. The damage the class can put out is balanced around using hecate as one of your chosen possessions.
The real issue is the lack of alternatives, because outside of a core set, there aren't many worthwhile options for possessions outside of specific situations. The 'powerful' unleashes that give penalties, for instance, are never really worth the extra 20s cooldown reduction on the unleash, because it's really more of a double penalty when it replaces a more useful possession slot.
I dunno. Dsl/flare with the guaranteed strychnine was in the same terrible idea as bellow picking up an extra modifier from strychnine. Hence why both ate the nerf stick pretty hard.
The complaints about summoner coming from Magick are kind of hilarious, really, because Magick is a hilarious clusterbomb of horrifying burst capability that makes Summoners look positively anemic. The only reason Magick isn't utterly terrifying is because they combine the coordination of a Parkinson's patient with the morale of a psych ward.
"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."
Summoner is strong but then again, so are other damagey classes in all circles. The true hideously broken evil is Defiler! I like the part where three quarters of your screen are filled with a sequence of separtor-spaced attacks that do a multitude of horrid effects and you just know in your heart that you're dead.
I really don't know how to feel about this, so I'll crowd source opinions while we're on the subject. It was mentioned earlier that some professions require more ability to code in your client than others... I'm just wondering if that even matters? Is that truly a concern now when considering class balance?
Yes, it totally matters. A significant amount of the classes in this game are basically affliction classes at this point, and they rely on having detailed and accurate affliction tracking to be truly viable in any kind of 1v1 scenario, and quite often to be effective in most team scenarios.
The new player or inexperienced coder who choose Wytch is going to have a far worse experience than the one who chooses Summoner, because while it's possible to pull a Manthari and get by with just curse/choke/[sowulu] spam or whatever your class appropriate spam button is, the fact remains that they are basically driving a Ferrari at 30mph with the left blinker locked on and they damn well know it.
All the skills, all the true functionality of the class... it's all locked behind a skill barrier that's really quite high. I'd be willing to bet that at least 50% or more of the fighters in this game are using a canned offense from either Iluv or Fazlee, and the increasingly high skill bar is why.
In a very real way, I consider Hunter and Wytch to be failures as classes because there's like 2 people in the game who play them 'right' and everybody else just mashes on the damage button and uses <10% of their class' potential. To me, that's a clear sign that they didn't read their playerbase correctly when they designed the class. I've said before that people like Iluv and Kryss are the worst thing to happen to classleads/class design/combat balance in Imperian in years, and that's because they are an incredibly vocal minority that push for an affliction-heavy playstyle that maybe half a dozen people REALLY like and maybe another dozen enjoy at all, which is how we get Hunters going from tanky bruisers to glass cannon affliction blasters that are used properly by maybe 10% of the people that use the class.
"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."
Yeah, very fair point. Of course it doesn't bother me, but I have successfully 1v1'd at top tier with every profession I've ever had since I started really getting into pk. You used a lot of words, but what it comes down to is accessibility. You make more money with more people able to play the game. I still do quite firmly feel that complex aff professions should exist, and due to the nature of afflictions that proper understanding of how and when to apply where and what to whom should give you a whole boatload of wins. Probably just need less professions that focus on afflictions, as opposed to dumbing down the fun times of affwhoring.
In big red letters, Khizan has painted "Can I do this with a branch for an arm?".
Edit:
Some classes are just hard to use because of legacy design, bad design, or just laziness.
Wytchen is a mish mash of 3 barely compatible skills. Curses is ho-hum in its affliction list. Shamanism bridges the gap and the saving grace is cadmus (the only mark). Runelore flaring is just a half-assed mechanic that is barely functional. You will never get your balances to sync up, so don't try. You're always going to be waiting on ****. If you're playing to toxin-lock someone, you're playing it wrong. Then there's random **** slow, which no one can get to stick, but it's absolutely batshit insane when it works. Are you in a team? Forget all the rest of the **** I just said and sketch laguz, ansuz, prop a totem and throw some glitter to choke people. Tell Khizan to suck it, you're a support class. To be a support class you have to know what to do when, which is not newbie friendly.
Malignist was a shitty affliction overload class in Achaea that rolled non-healers. Diabolist was the same here. Malignist clings to relevance through spam numbness. There are better classes out there, by far. This is not newbie friendly. Affliction tracking in this abomination requires really good coding. Want to be a newb? Spam sap and Catharis. We'll give you your Aleutia badge.
I wrote a long paragraph but who gives a crap. Affliction classes are high skill buy in. Affliction classes are gimmicky by nature (See: Kryss). "Good" affliction players put you away after the gimmick fails. It's hard to get to that level. We really need to indicate in the novice system or the ranking system which classes are primarily affliction based, which classes are hybrid, which classes are straight damage. With the multi-classing system you can cut your teeth rolling something 'easy' and slowly transition into something like Knight where you can get your dps on while learning to build an affliction tracker. Then you can dive into a 100% aff class like Malignist or Renegade and have a clue what's scrolling by on the screen.
The system isn't broken. It's just a pick your flavor. Or, in some people's case, chase the next new gimmick to get by.
everybody else just mashes on the damage button and uses <10% of their class' potential. To me, that's a clear sign that they didn't read their playerbase correctly when they designed the class.
Fair enough, so what can we do to make affliction classes more accessible?
Summoner is strong but then again, so are other damagey classes in all circles. The true hideously broken evil is Defiler! I like the part where three quarters of your screen are filled with a sequence of separtor-spaced attacks that do a multitude of horrid effects and you just know in your heart that you're dead.
everybody else just mashes on the damage button and uses <10% of their class' potential. To me, that's a clear sign that they didn't read their playerbase correctly when they designed the class.
Fair enough, so what can we do to make affliction classes more accessible?
Affliction Classes:
Hurdle 1: Tracking afflictions (basic)
Hurdle 2: Deciding what afflictions to use
Then you cycle between (1) and (2) as you refine -how- you track afflictions and what afflictions and when to use them produces the best results.
To become really good at it, you need to test different models of affliction-curing-assumptions - but is this skill? coding ability? player knowledge? The investment pay-off can be really poor. But making the right assumptions is the difference between being able to dsl-lock at 2.35 and not being able to.
Do you then give the players a leg up by writing a tracker for them? As we saw, perfect tracking is a vehement no-no. But you can't write a bevy of tracker-styles and expect people to use the suboptimal ones. Do we then assume general access to trackers will be delivered by clients to other clients (as is done now, via Azefel/Iluv)? If so, what can we do server-side to change Hurdle (2)?
--- Sidetrack ---
Let's look at it from a different angle - why does prioritising (that is spamming the use of) afflictions such as Impatience completely change the affliction ability of a class?
1. Single or double cure afflictions force reactions down a path
2. The effects of said afflictions are in-a-sense multiplicative - once one falls, the rest become easier to topple over.
Why is assumption (2) true?
I believe it's because the afflictions are binary - its effect is either in full force or non-existent. That's why we have that lovely term 'fodder afflictions'.
--- End Sidetrack ---
So, barring major changes to how afflictions work, how can we attack Hurdle (2)? We can't -decide- for people, that takes the fun out of the whole class! But being able to make decisions is reliant on what data (and assumptions) you have made in Hurdle (1).
Hrm.
What if we forego the assumption that we need to track afflictions (or at least track them reliably)? What if the margin for error is larger? Three ideas:
1. Create a skill that gives the player the number of afflictions on the opponent - not the afflictions they have specifically, but the number. This creates a feedback loop that allows players to slowly improve their assumptions client side (automated or otherwise)
2. This has been voiced before: Give players a starting set of 'aliases' that are assigned to commonly used affliction combinations:
'a1' - 'rsl ciguatoxin'
'a2' - 'dsl ciguatoxin metrazol'
'a3' - 'dsl mercury hemotoxin'
'a4' - 'dsl butisol ether'
Players can then alter these pre-made aliases as their experience with combat improves. Combine this with (1) and you may have a basic solution (for now).
3. Change how afflictions work, so that making the wrong assumptions have less of an impact on -decision making-. Change them from a binary option, increase the number of third-party messages, or give third-party messages (and larger effects) when the combination of affliction 1 + affliction 4 are present on the player.
I've said before that people like Iluv and Kryss are the worst thing to happen to classleads/class design/combat balance in Imperian in years, and that's because they are an incredibly vocal minority that push for an affliction-heavy playstyle that maybe half a dozen people REALLY like and maybe another dozen enjoy at all, which is how we get Hunters going from tanky bruisers to glass cannon affliction blasters that are used properly by maybe 10% of the people that use the class.
While it is true I enjoy affliction combat, I don't think that love of that style of combat bleeds into my classlead so that is harmful to the game. I have never pushed a classlead that would:
Turn a damage class into an affliction class.
Make an offense unnecessarily complex.
I wasn't around when the new Hunter was released and I had no bearing the design of the class. The one classlead I have worked on with Gurn was to limit the afflictions one can triggger with (in place of Gurn's original classlead idea of giving Hunters 4 triggers) and to me that is the opposite of what you claim I do.
The last classleads from the sessions that I worked on and had passed had nothing to do with pushing an affliction heavy playstyle on others. The most recent one was a change to the taint cost of Incinerate. Before that, I had classleads approved for the Diabolist profession. The profession has always been an affliction heavy class. After the healing rate changes and the slowing down of evileye, the profession was unworkable. My classleads (daegger hunt and fiend) made it an accessible profession.
Similarly, the classleads I have listed now (taint adjustment on infuse, nerveburn damage on dehydrate/nervewrack and weaving) all work towards making professions more accessible without adding unnecessary complexity. You might be confusing me with Garryn.
everybody else just mashes on the damage button and uses <10% of their class' potential. To me, that's a clear sign that they didn't read their playerbase correctly when they designed the class.
Fair enough, so what can we do to make affliction classes more accessible?
I'm not sure it's possible, honestly. I realize that's not super helpful, but it's my opinion. Afflictions have always been for the more dedicated coding sorts who build systems to track them. It's not casual. You can't do it without a large time investment or buying a system that automates the process. It's not a huge issue because these days because conflict is primarily on the team v team level. I don't know how you fix it for 1v1 without watering it down to the point where it's not afflictions anymore.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Comments
After that, class is solid. You're going to have a hard time classleading the rest of the summoner because, oh my nuts, this class scales like woah with artifacts. It's the Monk or Druid of Demonic. Luckily, Malignist, Renegade, DK don't scale so good with artifacts.
The only other thing I classleaded was ranged taint generation which I think is pretty straight forward.
I never said the damage was over the top.
That's really brute force too. If I'm pushing and end-game, I'm holding onto my unleashes for longer so it's
Frankly, I believe you're all looking at the wrong issue regarding Summoner damage. The effects themselves are quite reasonable, really, as Belial becomes less effective as your health decreases and Golgotha can only be used infrequently unless the Summoner wants to eat a 15% sip penalty or waste Dameron.
The problem lies in the fact that Summoner A and Summoner B can both just roll up and use the same unleash/flash combos on you. This is usually going to be double Belial and/or double Golgotha... guaranteeing flash relapses. Making the unleash mechanic a bit more similar to that of Runelore's flares would certainly go a long way towards mitigating the impact of stacked effects, this is probably the course you should pursue.
The real issue is the lack of alternatives, because outside of a core set, there aren't many worthwhile options for possessions outside of specific situations. The 'powerful' unleashes that give penalties, for instance, are never really worth the extra 20s cooldown reduction on the unleash, because it's really more of a double penalty when it replaces a more useful possession slot.
"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."
Yes, it totally matters. A significant amount of the classes in this game are basically affliction classes at this point, and they rely on having detailed and accurate affliction tracking to be truly viable in any kind of 1v1 scenario, and quite often to be effective in most team scenarios.
The new player or inexperienced coder who choose Wytch is going to have a far worse experience than the one who chooses Summoner, because while it's possible to pull a Manthari and get by with just curse/choke/[sowulu] spam or whatever your class appropriate spam button is, the fact remains that they are basically driving a Ferrari at 30mph with the left blinker locked on and they damn well know it.
All the skills, all the true functionality of the class... it's all locked behind a skill barrier that's really quite high. I'd be willing to bet that at least 50% or more of the fighters in this game are using a canned offense from either Iluv or Fazlee, and the increasingly high skill bar is why.
In a very real way, I consider Hunter and Wytch to be failures as classes because there's like 2 people in the game who play them 'right' and everybody else just mashes on the damage button and uses <10% of their class' potential. To me, that's a clear sign that they didn't read their playerbase correctly when they designed the class. I've said before that people like Iluv and Kryss are the worst thing to happen to classleads/class design/combat balance in Imperian in years, and that's because they are an incredibly vocal minority that push for an affliction-heavy playstyle that maybe half a dozen people REALLY like and maybe another dozen enjoy at all, which is how we get Hunters going from tanky bruisers to glass cannon affliction blasters that are used properly by maybe 10% of the people that use the class.
"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 system isn't broken. It's just a pick your flavor. Or, in some people's case, chase the next new gimmick to get by.
Fair enough, so what can we do to make affliction classes more accessible?
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”