Occultist Classlead

Grandue

Thoughts?

Dunn

Gotta take a hit to get 1v1 buffs that are needed very badly.

Only thing that surprised/piqued my confusion was the doppy seek nerf. The hangedman one was necessary.

Grandue

I haven't finished playing with it yet but it definitely looks like it makes 1v1 way more viable.

It completely changes the utility of Occultists in raids, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think I may shed a few tears for a while on the doppy seek nerf. Hangedman was necessary and I'm glad they got rid of pit. I think Instill could get a slight speed boost but meh.

Kyrra

Does this mean @Babel got nerfed too? What happens if those giant flying earthworms come back to Ashtan?!

Zii

Shunsui

If Pandora can still use obliterate, I see no reason why Babel can't still use pit. Nerf gods.

Makarios

The balance times were as accurate as the testers could get them, but do appreciate they were mostly calculated against people with very generic curing for the class so some may be slightly too slow (or too fast, you can't trust those people).

Feel free to post up any concerns and we'll take a look once people have had time to play around with it some.

Dunn

Make the contemplate trait also make readaura eqless and we'll be square.

Lianca

Trait reset for all occultists? This rework moves us pretty squarely from nimble needing (for tarot reliance) to quick-witted for eq.

Dunn

^That too. I'm tapping my credit card on my desk trying to figure out if I want to not eat for a week.

Santar

It's my understanding that the doppleganger change(other than hangedman) was a buff.

They can still effectively move the doppleganger anywhere within their own area using doppleganger move combined with an auto mapper(not difficult to set up). On top of this, they can also doppleganger line of sight across area lines now.

So they didn't really lose anything from the seek change(except for places where movement would be prohibited), but gained the ability to doppleganger line of sight from across area.

Sounds like a buff to me.

Dunn

Fortunately, seek change was not the major nerf point here. You aren't going to have auto mapper set up Occies all the time, either. It took me awhile to set up. Just because it is -possible- via a convoluted workaround in the Mudlet mapper does not mean it's a buff.

Blujixapug

Autowalking your doppleganger to a location at a speed approaching instantaneous would require extensive automation. For any situation where LOS between areas is a buff, there will be a situation where not being able to walk your doppleganger through a closed door or non-standard exit is a nerf.

Regardless, I welcome nerfs to area-wide combat, as it sucks to be one of the chumps in a raid who can't doppleganger/choke/thurisaz/meteor.

Bambizlo

@Dunn @Makarios @Blujixapug Autowalking a doppleganger sounds like an unintentional loophole to the classlead changes though. If it doesn't exist already, moving a doppleganger between rooms should probably get a delay per room moved.

Dunn

It's been like that for years. I understand the necessity in the hangedman removal from tarotlink, 100%, but to shift a lot of raid utility out of the class is dumb.

Removing pit and doppy hang was more than enough.

Echald

Moving around slowly, homunculus style.

Bambizlo

I understand that it's been there for years (so have the chaos entity powers before today), but seems to me that the classlead change for doppie seek wasn't just meant to see who can make mapper pathing scripts and who can't so it can't hurt for some clarification on that point from the Garden. Not being able to send a doppie into a closed room doesn't seem like the only point that change was meant to address.

Santar

Bambizlo said:

I understand that it's been there for years (so have the chaos entity powers before today), but seems to me that the classlead change for doppie seek wasn't just meant to see who can make mapper pathing scripts and who can't so it can't hurt for some clarification on that point from the Garden. Not being able to send a doppie into a closed room doesn't seem like the only point that change was meant to address.

Yeah, that's what I was pointing out. The announce post removed doppleganger area-seek. Why did they remove doppleganger area-seek? Because they wanted dopplegangers to only be used in line of sight(that was my understanding).

I already knew about doppleganger move when I read the announce, and I immediately was wondering if there was a workaround. Like Blubear The Bambizinator said, I don't think they changed it so that people could all add it to their systems.

Edit: Got mixed up on who said what.

Makarios

We'll look into this. We don't really want to over nerf things, but we also aren't promoting a scripting contest. I'm sure we'll find something that will serve to limit the ranged aspects while retaining doppleganger scouting utility and such.

Bambizlo

@Makarios A possible compromise would be to have ORDER DOPPLEGANGER CHANNEL <ability> require LoS while still allowing it to move as it does currently. That way it'd retain the current scouting ability but also address the ranged aspects of the skill.

Seftin

RIP Hirst.

Dunn

I'm still not sold by any of this that this nerf is required. The seek and hangedman nerfs alone would have been fine even if they left Pit as it was, god forbid. Put your torches down, people.

The loss of hangedman will deter a lot of people from group combat as an Occultist when compounded by the loss of seek. We should let things settle a bit.

Jhui

in regards to scripting doppie walking:

The general concern prior to these classleads with doppie were combining instant area hinder with other abilities like kai choke to prevent insta-orbing, running, and holding breath.

There are a lot more unintended consequences if doppie use is limited to LoS only.

Ally area empress, star tarot, and a few other things off the top of my head are affected which add a lot of fun strategies to the game.

Not everyone combats doppie the most efficient way either.  Dropping mono's until you can safely reject and orb'ing on aeon go a long way to tame the area attacks by occultists.

We should give the current incarnation some time and see how it affects the landscape before we nerf it further.

Icaru

Agree to the trait reset for Occultists. 

I personally think the class is headed on a good way combat wise. Sure, group combat will need new strategies, but this opens up for new possibilities. Like it was suggested, if area wide abilities from certain classes are looked into to balance modern day workings, this could make group combat quite interesting. 

As for individual combat, still on a few things to fix and tweak, but thanks to Makarios for the prompt responses. 

Tesha

Removing doppleganger seek was a really good change in my opinion, it takes away some of the huge gap between Ashtan ranged and the ranged of everyone else. Even without factoring in the huge numbers Ashtan can get in fights or their number of veterans/artifacts, Ashtan had the strongest area-combat without sacrificing anything in melee or LOS. Other cities just had monks, meteors, the rare cataclysm, and line of sight. This change suggests, to me, that that is what the admin want Ashtan to have, too; which is perfectly reasonable and a very welcome change. 

I look forward to seeing the extent of these 1v1 buffs, they look like they will add some much needed 1v1 strategies. 

(also yes, trait reset for occultists would be very appreciated, maybe race too!)

Kaie

I feel pretty certain I speak for everyone when I say occultist is completely OP now with Skyrax or what ever it's called.

Dunn

Skyrax is a tentacle tattoo.

Antonius

I assumed he was joking. Perhaps I gave him too much credit?

Jovolo

He's a jester with a shackle

haha

Xith

Overall, it's an obvious nerf. But one that was needed. There was a lot of screwability because of entities alone. Speaking as a jester, getting attacked passively in the middle of one of your time-essential hindering combos is terrible. The class had everything. Tons of raid utility, could go for damage/hinder/prep/lock or any combination of them. Occies were cool but unfortunately led the game in terms of 'overpowered'. Nerfs approved.

That being said, while not "OP", the new ent system is actually a move in the right direction in terms of strategy and technique. They're now geared toward a more obvious affliction model that is less chance/spam based than old ents were. Means less dreary combat than the (as Lilliel once put it) "aeon, aeon, faceroll, faceroll, whisper, enlighten". Strategy buff approved.

That being said, the "ent" balance is not-so-subtly just like alchemists, who strongly resembled Occies from the start with their studious pseudoscientific nature and controlling a twin creature from afar. Someone behind the scenes clearly likes the Alch model. But at least occies have more to manage now than just ordering their passives to attack. Added some user-difficulty while retaining/adding the spammy potency. Alchemist mimicry meh.

Kaie

lol, I was joking. I'm pretty interested in seeing how this changes pk though. I feel like we'll see more enlighten and unravels now that the skills seem better geared towards sticking mental affs. Raid rage is diminished but, it's picking up slack in 1v1 which is pretty satisfying when you kill some one solo.