Skills you have that you'd love to see changed!

Kaie

Greetings, I was staring at my skillsets as I'm one to do when I noticed a few skills I never ever use nor see anyone use. I started thinking why they aren't used and what if they were better. So, I'd love to hear about other skills people don't use or feel they can't in today's combat or in general. I'll start with a few.

Tarot:

Wheel: This one is almost never used for quite a few reasons. The main being that it's illegal to use in PK. It generates random stat/xp changes. Could gain a very small amount of exp or lose it. Or, it could increase/decrease a stat point by 1. It's also not usable on yourself! So, I'd like to see the xp changes taken out and make it a stat type attack usable on yourself as a chance of buff or something.

Justice: This one I never use because it's a simple cure and I don't afflict fast enough to stack anything with it. It deals back some of the damage the opponent deals to you. However, if I'm managing to stack afflictions there's a really good chance they aren't in any condition to be attacking me and i'm not likely to need to use it. Though, since Jester class has almost no pvp damage mitigation (slipperiness only works against denizens) it'd be interesting if it was instead changed to operate on a timer rather than an herb cure allowing me to lesson the damage and reflect some of it back onto the opponent for a short while.

Puppetry:

Burn: I never use burn because it's a mending cure which doesn't stack well. It doesn't stack well because you can specify limbs and cure around it. It also does next to no damage and even if the opponent is incapacitated it's extremely slow to rack any damage. An example of how weak, is that I turned off curing and let some one burn me. I sat there for about 2 minutes watching as boar kept my health full from the burns. It looks cool as hell but.. was less than impressive in function. Plus, illusioned mangles are far better for throwing salve balance. I have no suggestions on this one. maybe making burns steal the first application of mending.

Pranks:

Backhandspring/handspring: these two actually I do use occasionally but rarely to any great effect. I'm just throwing them in becuase i feel the balance time on them is a bit wonko for what they do. Afflicts small damage (around 500 range) and prones at a 3.5 balance cost. While it does nothing on it's own but that, it is chainable with a mangle however, you'll find yourself often better off using butterfly bombs or just commanding sit. It's a hell of a lot quicker and 3.5 seconds means curing that mangle is well underway. It'd be nice if it was a bit shorter enabling some actual skill chaining with it or caused a stun to pick up some of that slack.

Mickey: Mickey replaces the next herb that you try to eat and afflicts nausia. Mickey is great, especially in aeon but, curing systems will simply double eat off that so fast you can't actually get an aff stack rolling off mickey without aeon. It'd be awesome if it stole herb balance aswell.

Before anyone rages.. I realize these are likely to -never- happen but,  they are just things I think would be cool. This is not a jester specific thread, you can post about any class or skillset in existence.

Hasar

I thought mickey was incredibly useful?

Kaie

Mickey is useful but typically only after aeon hits unless you're running for a hunger attack and banking on illness to hit. Otherwise, they just eat the herb instantly before you recover balance from what ever attack. However, if mickey took herb balance it'd be more interesting I think. Actually.. a lot of people who asked me about mickey already thought it did. I don't know if it used to and was changed or what.

Arditi

Lightwall. Make it transfix if someone walks through it.

Xith

It takes like 2.5 seconds to give a mickey, which is like herb balance + sluggishness. It doesn't consume herb balance so all it does is add nausea really.

Which is okay now that we can theoretically make use of vardrax/ginseng in attempted riftlocks.

The reason jester stuff can't get fixed is because the randomness is simultaneously the greatest and suckiest thing about it. So it's like taking 3 or 4 different gambles and hoping they coordinate themselves just right.

Kaie

I feel this is like saying because I can concussion after 40 fashions it's okay that Justice doesn't do much of anything. Also, I'd like to maybe alter my comment on Justice. Maybe if Justice could be flung at yourself to swap it's function to be a defense rather than an affliction.

Yae

METAMORPHOSIS

I've only been a druid, and not a sentinel, so I won't be able to touch on the sentinel side of this. The numbers are the amount of lessons needed to reach the morph, and can be fairly right or wrong. Also, I am relatively new to Achaea, so I don't really know the past changes to metamorphosis to be what they are right now.

Given that metamorphosis is a druid's early and only on combat and bashing skill, druid novices will reasonably stuff most of their starting lessons (170) into it. We have three skills we can use on denizens: scratch, claw, and maul. In the Druid house, the first skill we tell them to get is Hyena's claw, which makes scratch almost completely irrelevant (I say 'almost' because I'm sure there are some druids/sentinels who stuff all their lessons into Groves and go for a masochistic way of hunting with scratch/kick/punch).

Wildcat (7) - Alertness, Nightsight, Scratch.
Wolf (16) - Bite (adventurer-attack), Fitness, Howl, Nightsight, Scent.

Cheetah (58) - Alertness, Bite (adventurer-attack), Fitness, Leap, Nightsight, Scent, Sprint.
Hyena (134) - Alertness, Claw, Elusiveness, Fitness, Howl (adventurer attack), Leap, Nightsight, Scent, Stealth.

Turtle morph is also an exploration morph. It can let a young sentinel or druid swim, without drowning. It has one adventurer attack, snap. To be honest, this is more a detriment when one can simply buy a pair of relatively cheap (after spending a bit of time hunting rats or catching butterflies) waterwalking shoes that can be found in each city/village, and just walk across water. Turtle morph also doesn't let you breathe underwater (I've tried, from what accidental deathsights tell me). As a druid novice, I've also died once to a little barracuda because morphing from form to form takes balance at that amount of skill, and I'm not sure which you want me to die to: barracuda or drowning.

Turtle (23) - Treading, fluidswim, snap (adventurer-attack).

Also, we have two flying morphs relatively early: jackdaw and owl. It's great that we have flying morphs for exploration purposes also. However, both come relatively early. Like turtle morph, you are pretty much ill-equipped in any combat/bashing fashion when you are in them.

Jackdaw (34) - Fly, land.
Owl (89) - Fly, land (trees), nightsight, spy, swoop (adventurer-attack).

And for some reason, it seems like the metamorpher is given a lot of adventurer only attack early on, when the average rate of them killing anyone with solely snap in turtle morph is about 0 (unless the opponent is afk).

tldr;; There are a lot of morphs in metamorphosis that no one is ever going to use, ever, unless they're slightly masochistic and/or somewhat new and truly have no guidance in the game, and seem to be there just for filler.

Also, abilities like Vitality that follows the metamorpher through different morphs. Is there any particular reason metamorphers need to be in a specific morph to use it unlike skills like Affinity or Bonding? Vitality's EQ recovery and full HP/MP cost of turning it on, along with the fact you can't use it consecutively, seems like it would already be enough to prevent abuse during any fighting. (Given I am already trans-class skills, I don't really think about this much, but it seems clunkyly designed to keep requiring the switch morph deal).


CONCOCTIONS

Lastharvest - Irrelevant with lack of overharvesting.

Iocun

Shrugging.

Hasar

I agree with @Iocun, shrugging should be buffed when used against other serpent's doublestabs! Then, serpents can never kill each other, and they can all be friends!

Iocun

Yay friends!

Zeon

Not every ability is meant to be useful to a trans player. The idea is that you grow with your abilities as you invest lessons in them over time. It's something easily forgettable when 18 year olds commonly start tri-trians (+survival) with a few "necessary" artefacts (and dragon a few rl weeks later). 

Mako

The skill "lead" in alchemy. If I could use it on my enemy it would be worth something but I cannot. Perhaps the only symbol besides suphur and mercury that cannot be used on your enemy and at least those two give something useful. As lead is now it is density that both costs eq and dose not last as long as the density salve. Why would I use this ever, especially considering I can make density fills. PLEASE MAKE LEAD TARGETABLE

Eld

Zeon said:

Not every ability is meant to be useful to a trans player. The idea is that you grow with your abilities as you invest lessons in them over time. It's something easily forgettable when 18 year olds commonly start tri-trians (+survival) with a few "necessary" artefacts (and dragon a few rl weeks later). 

True, though it's a little silly to have abilities that are rendered completely obselete by others that you're likely to get in your first set of level 5 lessons (as Yae seemed to be saying with Scratch in Meta).

Blujixapug

Joust. Make it more strategic, less heavy mount + RNG. Also lower it in Riding, so more people can participate.

Also don't ever touch Wheel. If anything it should be more like a Deck of Many Things, with crazier rewards and more terrible anti-rewards.

Sylvance

Doya.

Nuff said.

ETA: Oh, and Lipreading seems pretty useless unless I'm missing something. It works just fine, fits thematically, and does exactly what it supposed to, but I can't conceive of a single situation when it would be useful in practical terms.

Wysteria

I use Lastharvest to check if people have been harvesting sacred garden spots like in Order Temples and such. It's not too bad too if interested in finding out who keeps harvesting your grove.

Anaidiana

.....isn't this why we have classleads?  >.>

Kaie

Blujixapug said:

Joust. Make it more strategic, less heavy mount + RNG. Also lower it in Riding, so more people can participate.

Also don't ever touch Wheel. If anything it should be more like a Deck of Many Things, with crazier rewards and more terrible anti-rewards.

It's so damn rare that you ever use this and a shame you can't even use it on yourself. It's not like I'm gonna level myself to dragon off it. Changing it to do some random crazy ass stuff would be cool but, keep in mind it's a shrubbable offense to use it on an unwilling target.

Iocun

Sylvance said:

Doya.

Nuff said.

ETA: Oh, and Lipreading seems pretty useless unless I'm missing something. It works just fine, fits thematically, and does exactly what it supposed to, but I can't conceive of a single situation when it would be useful in practical terms.

Wind.

Sylvance

Iocun said:

Doya.

Nuff said.

ETA: Oh, and Lipreading seems pretty useless unless I'm missing something. It works just fine, fits thematically, and does exactly what it supposed to, but I can't conceive of a single situation when it would be useful in practical terms.

Wind.

Conceded.

Jonners

Ok that's retarded. There should be no skill that is available to the playerbase that some novice could get, not know the house rule about, and get shrubbed for!

Averi

I agree with the handsprings. They do as much damage as a martellato jab with a longer balance time. ><

I didn't really use them as a not tri-transed person either. 

Edit: @Yae I actually liked a lot of the earlier morphs simply for RP quality.  Although I agree that some are sort of useless but I used owl/jackdaw a lot before I was transed and I still use turtle a lot.  It helps me not drown when I don't have shoes.  But I agree with you for some of your other points.  Esp the wildcat morph. that one kills so slowly that it's more efficient to kick things, but I think scratch causes bleeding?  So maybe I was using it wrong. 

Cynlael

Magi.


Just Magi.

Nakari

Sylvance said:

Doya.

Nuff said.

ETA: Oh, and Lipreading seems pretty useless unless I'm missing something. It works just fine, fits thematically, and does exactly what it supposed to, but I can't conceive of a single situation when it would be useful in practical terms.

I think that lipreading is your only way to hear people while phased

Yae

@Zeon

I'm going by what Eld pointed out for me. I am also only mentioning the morphs that you can gained with about 35 lessons leftover just coming out from the Trial.

If you can get Hyena's claw with the first few sets of lessons at Level 5, there doesn't really seem to be a good point in using Wildcat's scratch. I know that not all skills will be useful, hence the metamorpher outgrowing Hyena when we get Jaguar. Just the attack morphs before Hyena seem.. irrelevant.

@Averi

Yep! For Turtle morph, it is just a small iff with me. I don't really see many other classes finding waterwalking a difficult issue without a skill to go across water. Magi's have a water weird, but they also have other skills to defend themselves properly against other attacks. Novice druids are limited to that morph's attack. And kicking and punching, etc. I don't really want to take them out, but it feels like it could be adjusted a bit in that aspect.

As for jackdaw/owl, my point is that if you have owl, you wouldn't use Jackdaw. Like the point I was making with Wildcat/Hyena, if you can get it with the first few lesson sessions, is there a reason the lower one is needed aside from a bit of metamorph RP?

Naisar

Skills should never be made obsolete.  They can be shoved into narrow niches, but when one completely encompasses the other bad design is happening.

Sylvance

Naisar said:

Skills should never be made obsolete.  They can be shoved into narrow niches, but when one completely encompasses the other bad design is happening.

No way. There's nothing wrong, per se, with skills being made obsolete. As has been said, the problem is when the obsoletion happens so quickly (i.e. within bunch of learning) that the user doesn't even realise it happened until they sit down a few weeks down the line and start really getting to know their skills.

This is what starts to happen when a skill system designed on the premise of steady-but-slow progression meets a player base with increasing amounts of disposable income, and/or more and more players that, through whatever means, are able to 'buy' a tri-trans character straight off the bat.

ETA: punctuation fix

Nakari

Nakari said:

Sylvance said:

Doya.

Nuff said.

ETA: Oh, and Lipreading seems pretty useless unless I'm missing something. It works just fine, fits thematically, and does exactly what it supposed to, but I can't conceive of a single situation when it would be useful in practical terms.

I think that lipreading is your only way to hear people while phased

yup, this was totally wrong. Whoops, sorry!

Achimrst

Stonefist? Although it was already changed. Maybe I'm missing what it is useful for.

Nyboe

Shin burst needs to be changed. 

Kyrra

My sylvan used stonefist for hunting for a long time because firelash was so much weaker.

It's also another useless def that can be stripped in favour of other things.