Formulation (Alchemist)

Cynder

For those of you who didn't want to make alts and were wondering:

AB FORMULATION

And here's all the skills indepth

Click me!

So at first glance, how effective do you think this will be in group combat and 1v1? 
Do you think it will be very strong in AoE fights, or paired with a Jester?

Brings ye thoughts here!

Makarios

I encourage everyone to make use of mayology.

Cynder

@Makarios I am trying to Amalgamate Destructive but it says I am lacking an empty phial when I am wielding one and have at least another 19 that are empty. Or do I have to have very specific vials?

Proprietor: Rurin, the Crafter.

--------(Item)------(Description)------------------------------(Stock)--(Price)

        phial218207 a glass phial                                  90      50gp

Nvm. >.>

Arador

Play a game of Chicken with Mayo(logy) ? 

*drumroll*

Vayne

Endorphin, Incendiary, Concussive, Devitalisation, Monoxide all look like they could come in handy in raids. Toying with the alterations and figuring out how to maximise their effects in certain situations seems to be key

Liatris

What does the mask look like?

Amarillys

Liatris said:

What does the mask look like?

Cloth surgical mask.

Cynder

This minimalistic mask is crafted from cloth and would cover the mouth and nose of the wearer.

You carefully secure a protective cloth mask over your mouth and nose.

Blujixapug

Liatris said:

What does the mask look like?

Ernam

There's already a thread for this, but I'll say the same thing I said there - Formulation is friggin awesome, and I am really looking forward to swapping to Alchemist to play with it.

Azelay

Has anyone tested some of the abilities to see how they work? I chugged a petrifying and am not noticing any difference in my PvE tankiness, and I tested endorphin and it's rather weak - even when enhanced in all sorts of different ways. I'm just wondering what's bug and what's intended.

Also, has anyone uncovered a way to 'purge' an imbibed concoction before it runs it's course? 

Sena

I've been testing them.

Petrifying is 10% physical resistance, 5% electric weakness, and slower movement (1 less move per second, before getting the "don't be so hasty" message). None of the enhancements do anything. No way to turn it off as far as I know, which makes me very hesitant to use it unless I'm desperate. It's not like alchemist needed any bashing upgrades though, so it's fine if it isn't generally useful for bashing.

Endorphin heals 9%/11%/12%/13%/14% (depending on potency) of max health every 40/20/13/10/8 seconds (depending on volatility), and lasts for 14 ticks. Stability doesn't do anything. So 2 potency and 5 volatility makes it 11% every 8 seconds, for comparison boar tattoo is 5% every 10 seconds, level 3 health regen (from a level 2 regen ring plus berkana) is 8% every 10 seconds. Endorphin is better than both combined, while it lasts.

Azelay

Would petrifying be useful if it could be thrown on one specific person to slow their movement temporarily?

EDIT: Also, am I missing something with regards to selfishness and the need to relax it before throwing anything? That seems like a big, unnecessary downside to using class skills.

Sena

Azelay said:

Would petrifying be useful if it could be thrown on one specific person to slow their movement temporarily?

Probably. With formulation, alchemist is extremely devastating (even moreso than before) if you try and stay in one room against them, so anything that makes it harder to run away would be useful, and the physical resistance doesn't matter to alchemists.

I hadn't noticed that selfishness prevents throwing phials, that should definitely be fixed.

Cynlael

Can't throw petrifying at people. Only imbibe it.

Sena

Cynlael said:

Can't throw petrifying at people. Only imbibe it.

It sounded like a hypothetical question (would it be useful if it worked that way) to me.

Cynlael

For some reason, my sleep deprived brain made me read that as 'if it was thrown' rather than 'if it could be'

>.>   <.<

ps, PvE tankiness I wasn't really paying attention to its bonuses. Definitely felt the difference of not having it when I was sparring Aaseth (runewarden) though.

Makarios

Imbibing an enhancement compound will immediately counteract the ironform one. Its not a "turn off" so to speak (as making it trivially toggleable was something we wanted to avoid), but it is possible to drop it in that way.

Azelay

So, if you haven't learned that far, you're just out of luck? Seems like there should be some kind of 'purgative' that can be made earlier in the skill to cleanse out the effect.

I was just pointing out the petrifying others thing as a hypothetical, yes. Alchemists (probably) don't need  more effects to keep someone in the room, but some effect to increase their ability to chase would be nice, especially now that you can't spam truewracking paralysis as well to try and hold someone down. 

It would also be really cool to be able to use the homunculus in combination with these abilities in some way, perhaps as a delivery agent, using the hands ability to 'throw' phials.  Perhaps this could be part of the way to step around selfishness, you hand your homunculus the phials and they activate them on their balance instead! More useful and offensive abilities that aren't truewrack/temper spam are a plus, imo. Totally jelly of artificing and their golem's interaction with their skills.

Tael

It sounds like the idea is that there isn't actually a way to turn it off.

Enhancement counteracts it, but it sounds (at least from the ab file) like enhancement has drawbacks too.

So a purgative would actually add an option that isn't currently there - the ability to just turn off every modifier on you.

Letting homonculus throw vials is an awesome idea - just give the phials their adjacent-room effect when thrown by a homonculus (and maybe it dissolves the homonculus too?). Also probably limit the range to a few rooms to keep it in line with all the changes to ranged combat. So you can get a balance-less phial (possibly with a couple rooms more range), but only one, and it costs you your homonculus, and you get the lesser effect of the phial.

Azelay

But if you're bashing, there decidedly is a way to turn off petrification with no real downsides, there just isn't if you don't have enhancement yet..

Cynlael

Tael said:

It sounds like the idea is that there isn't actually a way to turn it off.

Enhancement counteracts it, but it sounds (at least from the ab file) like enhancement has drawbacks too.

So a purgative would actually add an option that isn't currently there - the ability to just turn off every modifier on you.

Letting homonculus throw vials is an awesome idea - just give the phials their adjacent-room effect when thrown by a homonculus (and maybe it dissolves the homonculus too?). Also probably limit the range to a few rooms to keep it in line with all the changes to ranged combat. So you can get a balance-less phial (possibly with a couple rooms more range), but only one, and it costs you your homonculus, and you get the lesser effect of the phial.

DEFINITELY not a worthwhile tradeoff in any situation, except probably group combat. Perhaps disable its attacks for 1 or 2 rounds, but not outright dissolve it.

Azelay

Just make it take homunculus balance.

EDIT: Another cool idea would be concoctions that work on your homunculus. It feels more in line to be experimenting on your meatpuppet instead of chugging potions yourself, and it opens up avenues to homunculus that aren't totally set-it-and-forget-it

Vayne

Toying with intoxicant has been interesting, from my initial tests it seems that its damage is not consistent but varies increasingly wider with potency to the point that enhancing to 5 potency shows a range of almost 7.9%.

Vayne

Sena

I never saw any variation at all (without changing potency or max health) on intoxicant, that's interesting. It was always approximately 10.64% of max health (tested with health from 1990 to 4220), increased by 0%/20%/30%/40%/50% for potency 1/2/3/4/5.

Devitalisation was also 5%/10% for me, not 6%/11%.

Nizana

Would it be silly to give Alchemists a sort of 'phial belt' like a Tarot Deck or Quiver, for their formulation stuff.. or what? I haven't had any opportunity to play, or talk, to people who use the skill, but I was curious.

Sena

I'm not sure about rift-like storage, but I think being able to group phials (at least empty ones) would be pretty helpful. If you use formulation regularly at all, you'll need to keep a large number of phials on hand (I would probably keep 50+ at all times just for bashing (if I bashed much), someone who raids/fights frequently would probably want more), which clutters your inventory/phiallist a lot. It's also frustrating that they only last 15 months, so you have to constantly restock them. If empty phials were groupable then they could be kept in a bag of stasis, which would help a lot.

An artefact phial pouch (or phial belt or some other kind of container) that can store 50 or so phials and prevents them from decaying would also be useful, if it's not too expensive (maybe 200 credits at most; I think 100 would work since it would be comparable to dragonskin quivers before the recent change).