Spellweavers/Battlemage

Xith

Disclaimer: Not a class idea anymore. I'm aware classes are no longer being released.

Disclaimer: Obviously was in the works too. Certain names for abilities and skills were just placeholders and in terms of skill balance just a rough draft.

Well, a few years ago (a year before alchemists came out), I started designing a class dubbed "Spellweaver". I did a lot of work but ultimately didn't get around to the flavour text (although I had a lot in mind).

1st Skill

The first skill was Spellweaving, a different type of casting where a spell had to be woven in advance before casting, but with effects that could alter a person or room for the duration of the spell. It went through a few different builds but here's how it ultimately ended up. (Note: Haven't worked on it for about a year so this is before area combat was reduced)

Each spell requires an amount of 'Weaves', and the total weaves a Transcendent Spellweaver can hold is 5.

Some spells are continuous and occupy the weaves for their duration, others are instant cast and free up their weave slots again after use. WEAVE <spell>, then INVOKE <spell> <target>.

The signature move never got a cool name, but I called it Unload. It releases all woven spells at the same target at once.

Another was Severance (3 weaves), which is continuous and disables one of the target's skillsets. Spellbind allows the spellweaver to move rooms without spells breaking Occupation (mutually exclusive with spellbind), allows the spellweaver to invoke spells on any target in the area. Ideally the spellweaver would use the Roots spell (just like grove roots) with occupation to prevent being mind thrown and losing any continuous spells. (1 + 1, leaving 3 weaves open for casting).

Here is the left half of my Mac spreadsheet as a scrolly .gif so you can have a look. Note that mangle was removed, and I hadn't gone through pruning the others but as fun as Unloading 2 lock affs at once would have been, probably best to remove from a mage class.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

                             Descriptions of abilities. A few new features in there. Please point out any that you'd like to see in game.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Many of the spells focus on altering a room or person to make them easier to kill or fight, using an ongoing spell, while the bulk of the combat was done in the other two abilities.

______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______

3rd Skill

The 3rd skill was a sort of tradeskill called -- brace yourselves -- Talismans. Yes, I thought of Talismans 3 years ago, but they're not the same thing, obviously. They were a sort of sigil type item with magical effects. Each talisman had up to 5 effects.

POINT AT ME

POINT AT <adventurer>

POINT AT ROOM

POINT AT <item>

DROP

The effects were a combination of new functions and old functions, some combat and some utility (you can figure out which). They either had a number of uses or months worth of uses.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Given their power, talismans were made of a number of pieces you had to join together, called "splinters", the result of some grand Meropis event or something. Funny coincidence, huh? :P

Splinters could be found in ship trades or Shop of Wonders bundles and so on. I did talk to a few people in Partytells so I don't know if I inspired any of the current talisman incarnations but either way...

2nd skill

I came up with the 2nd skill in the set last. Being a battlemage, it had to involve staff fighting, which is nearly nonexistent in Achaea. The placeholder I chose was Tansuda.

Sounds like "Tekura" a little but is actually a corruption of "Tang Soo Do", the martial art I took. Tansuda is a semi-acrobatic martial art, little bit of anime flavour, that really was never fleshed out very much. I took a different approach to limb balance, where limbs recovered balance at different times so that instead of 1-2-3 combos like Tekura, it would be 1-pause-2-pause-3-pause-4-pause... as each limb got balance, resulting in a continuous and somewhat rapid assault from one limb at a time.

With a lot of raid utility in mind, one nifty and shamefully anime move that stood out, I dubbed "StarHop". Meant to be a melee engage from anywhere in the area, the battlemage would channel for a moment, then launch themselves skyward and become essentially a human meteor. Upon landing, battlemage breaks all shields, prones everyone else in the room, and everyone (including caster) receives 1 second stun. Requirements include a wielded staff and no mass or levitation.

I know, pretty cuckoo stuff.

Other features include Doublestance, which channels two environments for different benefits. The second stance has 50% reduced benefit.

So if you stance Mountain (+10% Defense, -10% damage) then doublestance Desert (-5% defense, +5% afflict), you get (+5% aff, +5% def, -10% dmg).

The affliction chance is a bonus to the probability of your battlestaff's talisman effect.

Battlestaves can be Affixed with one talisman that will last 30 months (staff is permanent and can be summoned back like a Daegger, only 1 staff). While affixed, the battlestaff can be POINTed to function just like its Talisman. In addition, every strike the staff makes has a % chance to cause an additional effect based on its type. So yes, it's like a Runeblade mixed with an enchantment.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

The right column has the on-hit effects. If you notice, some of the effects are undesirable for combat. For example the Gemini talisman, which has high utility, may create a hostile clone of the target that will attack you. Similarly, the Nest, which acts like a reusable Hermit to one location, may banish your target to that location. Depending on the location, could kinda suck.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

As you'll notice, I had ideas about aerial combat, where you'd use a high leap in order for some fancy staff maneuvers, essentially fighting on top of their heads. I don't know what Dragonstrike was supposed to be as I didn't give it a description... but I'm sure it was badass.

Notable skills:

• Windmill strike - like shatter, but has a 40% chance to add a break level to any limb (procs 4 times on completion)
  
• Splitkick, Staffkick, and Kickstaff - seriously just read those and tell me it's not badass.
  
• Feint punch - part of the locking strategy in tandem with Unload/Spellweaving. Prep twice with it, on the 3rd fake, impatient.
  
• Concussion/Sweep combo -
  
• Peaceofmind and Trance - both based around how intently the Battlemage has to juggle willpower vs. endurance
  

All the % afflict attacks mean that it benefits from attacking very often. I didn't have a particular endgame with the class unfortunately. It's definitely all over the place.

But enjoy. It'd be great to see bits and pieces added to Magi or other classes. Hope my spoilers worked.

Neso

God, I like that battlemage...

Shecks

Would take a lot of embelishment and beta testing, but as a concept, it's pretty cool.  

I noticed you gave them cataclysm, -and- an area-wide damage+stun attack, which is pretty... bold?

Also, did the admin say they're not doing more classes?  That'd be silly if so.

Rispok

Shecks said:

Would take a lot of embelishment and beta testing, but as a concept, it's pretty cool.  

I noticed you gave them cataclysm, -and- an area-wide damage+stun attack, which is pretty... bold?

Also, did the admin say they're not doing more classes?  That'd be silly if so.

Sarapis said:

Even US $100,000 wouldn't be worth it for a custom class for us due to the ongoing balancing work it would create. 

Shecks

For $100,000 you could hire two more programmers. (and have $40,000 left, if you recruit in Ohio)

That doesn't make sense!

Aepas

Windmill strike - like shatter, but has a 40% chance to add a break level to any limb (procs 4 times on completion)
Splitkick, Staffkick, and Kickstaff - seriously just read those and tell me it's not badass.
Feint punch - part of the locking strategy in tandem with Unload/Spellweaving. Prep twice with it, on the 3rd fake, impatient.
Concussion/Sweep combo -

Honestly sounds like Litche Feye Ling if I didn't know any better.

Antonius

@Rispok Context is key. That was in response to somebody suggesting they auction off the option to design a new class.

@Shecks For 100k you could hire two more programmers -for a year-. After that you're starting to lose money having to pay them or you have to let them go, and you still have all of the problems that a new class introduces. If they're working for as little as 30k USD/year they're also likely not experienced or are just plain bad.

Ultimately though I'm not sure new classes bring in enough revenue to justify them, which isn't all that surprising. Some people might buy credits for alts or to switch class on their main but a new class probably isn't going to result in new player retention on a large enough scale.

Mithridates

Should replace staff with guitar and make some kind of badass metal guitarist that can play riffs and do spells based off that. Like bard, but brutal.

Sarapis

Antonius said:

@Rispok Context is key. That was in response to somebody suggesting they auction off the option to design a new class. @Shecks For 100k you could hire two more programmers -for a year-. After that you're starting to lose money having to pay them or you have to let them go, and you still have all of the problems that a new class introduces. If they're working for as little as 30k USD/year they're also likely not experienced or are just plain bad. Ultimately though I'm not sure new classes bring in enough revenue to justify them, which isn't all that surprising. Some people might buy credits for alts or to switch class on their main but a new class probably isn't going to result in new player retention on a large enough scale.

The comment Shecks quoted from me was referencing a custom class. A class for everybody is a different story, but new classes aren't on the radar right now in any case. 

Antonius

Mithridates said:

Like bard, but brutal.

Clearly you never experienced pre-nerf tremolo in groups.

Jacen

Sarapis said:

Antonius said:

@Rispok Context is key. That was in response to somebody suggesting they auction off the option to design a new class. @Shecks For 100k you could hire two more programmers -for a year-. After that you're starting to lose money having to pay them or you have to let them go, and you still have all of the problems that a new class introduces. If they're working for as little as 30k USD/year they're also likely not experienced or are just plain bad. Ultimately though I'm not sure new classes bring in enough revenue to justify them, which isn't all that surprising. Some people might buy credits for alts or to switch class on their main but a new class probably isn't going to result in new player retention on a large enough scale.

The comment Shecks quoted from me was referencing a custom class. A class for everybody is a different story, but new classes aren't on the radar right now in any case. 

You could have just rigged it so that Seftin won, and then you wouldn't even have to balance it before he class-changed out of it.

Xith

Shecks said:

Would take a lot of embelishment and beta testing, but as a concept, it's pretty cool.  

I noticed you gave them cataclysm, -and- an area-wide damage+stun attack, which is pretty... bold?

Also, did the admin say they're not doing more classes?  That'd be silly if so.

They have nothing "on the radar", and considering the radar probably spans about 24+ months into the future I'm betting no new classes. But with multiclass coming they really don't need to add anything. Plus like 7 or 8 classes are getting plastic surgery so... hawt.

Note the Disclaimers at the very top of my post. I decided to unload this fruitless shrubbery into the public because it's moot at this point. And also because it could inspire Magi additions.

The Occupation weave requires 1 continuous weave, and because it can't be used with Spellbinding, you'd want to also use Roots (similar to grove roots). That leaves 3 weaves open, and Stun uses 1, so you could do 2 of the cut/bash damagers but I didn't envision those being much more powerful than Sowulu runes, as Spellweaving was more for status effects than damage. So you could do limited stun + damage with it. 1.5 stun, 4s to weave another one and 2s EQ to invoke it. You could weave 3 Stun spells and invoke one at a time strategically to keep a target still while your teammates chase him.

Spellweaving is like a support mage spell.