Classleads - January 2015

Ernam

@Jarrod Your specific suggestion (having fashions burn down while out of area) is actually pretty amazing, and would actually completely fix almost every problem with the class (including arena hit-and-run).  I would add the suggestion of not having this take place if you're within 3 rooms, or having the out-of-area decay be a factor of actual distance between the players.  Either of these would prevent riding an edge of an area in a 1v1 fight, in order to easily reset puppets/dolls.

Here are a couple of other ideas loosely based on yours: (although again, I actually think yours is the best)

Make travel to a different area work, but destroy a puppet instead of burning fashions.  Since this use of Travel implies that you're traveling to a friend (probably in a city), all this means is that it'd take considerably longer to re-fashion another doll to repeat the loop.  This solution allows Travel to remain as a viable escape tactic, but I'd still have to recommend some kind of mild delay or prevention affliction.

or

Simply make puppet decay a function of distance, and ignore areas entirely.  1-5 rooms it doesn't decay at all, 5-10 rooms decays enough to notice, but not quickly, 10-20 would be perhaps 2 fashions every 3 seconds, and anything over 20 just drops off very rapidly (4 fashions every 3 seconds).  Considering that this momentum loss is still dramatically slower than anything else in the game (other than limb damage, which you can just reset with a break), I don't think there's much room to complain.  Basically, this idea is the same as yours, but using range instead of areas (avoids abuse of area borders).

In any case, Shamans and Jesters both have alternate methods of fast-travel continent-wide (and can both use earrings/portals/wings), so the loss of being able to puppet travel shouldn't affect anything other than losing the ability to instantly do so during combat (which is desirable).

Bluef

Earrings/portals/wings are costly artefacts. Not every shaman has access to those.

Basically what you're proposing is that shaman, who already routinely have people flee back to the safety of their cities during fights due to doll decay times in 1v1, should also have to constantly chase people around to keep the few fashions they manage to get off.

I don't see anything noted in existing classleads in terms of a reduction in the balance costs for fashioning to off-set those fashioning losses. Guessing you don't view that as necessary?

Achimrst

Ernam said:

@Jarrod Your specific suggestion (having fashions burn down while out of area) is actually pretty amazing, and would actually completely fix almost every problem with the class (including arena hit-and-run).  I would add the suggestion of not having this take place if you're within 3 rooms, or having the out-of-area decay be a factor of actual distance between the players.  Either of these would prevent riding an edge of an area in a 1v1 fight, in order to easily reset puppets/dolls.

Here are a couple of other ideas loosely based on yours: (although again, I actually think yours is the best)

Make travel to a different area work, but destroy a puppet instead of burning fashions.  Since this use of Travel implies that you're traveling to a friend (probably in a city), all this means is that it'd take considerably longer to re-fashion another doll to repeat the loop.  This solution allows Travel to remain as a viable escape tactic, but I'd still have to recommend some kind of mild delay or prevention affliction.

or

Simply make puppet decay a function of distance, and ignore areas entirely.  1-5 rooms it doesn't decay at all, 5-10 rooms decays enough to notice, but not quickly, 10-20 would be perhaps 2 fashions every 3 seconds, and anything over 20 just drops off very rapidly (4 fashions every 3 seconds).  Considering that this momentum loss is still dramatically slower than anything else in the game (other than limb damage, which you can just reset with a break), I don't think there's much room to complain.  Basically, this idea is the same as yours, but using range instead of areas (avoids abuse of area borders).

In any case, Shamans and Jesters both have alternate methods of fast-travel continent-wide (and can both use earrings/portals/wings), so the loss of being able to puppet travel shouldn't affect anything other than losing the ability to instantly do so during combat (which is desirable).

If the length of fashions staying on a doll is lowered, I would love to see it be time based so that all prep from the attacking class was recovered from if they simply ran away to escape vodun.

Having them fade from being out of the area makes no RP sense either, since it's a doll not kai or some other resource like that. Most shaman take a lot of prepping being hit with almost no defense while simply fashioning or while setting up for mana to be lowered enough to gain fashions through Maligus.

Atalkez

If you kill your target the doll should vanish too. Having a ready-made kill setup immediately after killing once or twice or three times, is OP. Mainly a Shaman issue moreso than Jester but they both need to be adressed.

Addama

Monks and Knights have their prep fade in three minutes.  Given, it's quicker than Shaman/Jester slow prep, but running and getting back into the fight soon after is an actual option against Monks/Knights.

On the other hand, the only option against Shaman/Jester once they have their prep in place is to hide for an hour.  You either totally give up the fight or die.

Achimrst

Addama said:

Monks and Knights have their prep fade in three minutes.  Given, it's quicker than Shaman/Jester slow prep, but running and getting back into the fight soon after is an actual option against Monks/Knights.

On the other hand, the only option against Shaman/Jester once they have their prep in place is to hide for an hour.  You either totally give up the fight or die.

Or kill them? Is there no option to kill shaman anymore?

Achimrst

Atalkez said:

If you kill your target the doll should vanish too. Having a ready-made kill setup immediately after killing once or twice or three times, is OP. Mainly a Shaman issue moreso than Jester but they both need to be adressed.

If you have killed your target using the doll, most of the time you have very few fashions left to do much with. Or else you would have just done the least fashion kill route in the first place.

Addama

Achimrst said:

Addama said:

Monks and Knights have their prep fade in three minutes.  Given, it's quicker than Shaman/Jester slow prep, but running and getting back into the fight soon after is an actual option against Monks/Knights.

On the other hand, the only option against Shaman/Jester once they have their prep in place is to hide for an hour.  You either totally give up the fight or die.

Or kill them? Is there no option to kill shaman anymore?

Yeah just kill them while you're fully prepped.  That always works for me.

Atalkez

Achimrst said:

Atalkez said:

If you kill your target the doll should vanish too. Having a ready-made kill setup immediately after killing once or twice or three times, is OP. Mainly a Shaman issue moreso than Jester but they both need to be adressed.

If you have killed your target using the doll, most of the time you have very few fashions left to do much with. Or else you would have just done the least fashion kill route in the first place.

Disagree. With Maliguus or whatever it's called if you slowlock then bleed them out with haemo then you're getting a full doll before killing.

Achimrst

Addama said:

Achimrst said:

Addama said:

Monks and Knights have their prep fade in three minutes.  Given, it's quicker than Shaman/Jester slow prep, but running and getting back into the fight soon after is an actual option against Monks/Knights.

On the other hand, the only option against Shaman/Jester once they have their prep in place is to hide for an hour.  You either totally give up the fight or die.

Or kill them? Is there no option to kill shaman anymore?

Yeah just kill them while you're fully prepped.  That always works for me.

It sounds as if you aren't going to hit the shaman at all, are you not trying to prep them yourself? Are you afk and they are lol ganking you? What is stopping you from prepping them while they are gaining fashions?

I'll admit that an hour is a bit long to have a doll with what, 10 fashions on it, I can maybe spam you with dizzy five or six times yet it's completely useless for killing you with. Usually once someone runs away they don't tend to come back, yet anyone can run from another person but a Shaman is not getting a full doll of you in seconds with no way for you to attack them.

Bluef

We can't assume that every shaman utilizes Maligus. There are different ways of approaching combat as a shaman. Use of Maligus is one tactic. Every shaman won't necessarily have that spirit bound.

If shaman were half as OP as this thread is making them out to be, there would be many more shaman combatants in the top tier than there currently are. 

Jarrod

It's perfectly valid to assume that Shamans approaching PK will approach it in the most efficient method. There has never been balancing around inefficient strategies, and there should not be. If you do not even prepare for combat correctly, then you're going to make mistakes until you learn the good spirits to bind.

Achimrst said:

It sounds as if you aren't going to hit the shaman at all, are you not trying to prep them yourself? Are you afk and they are lol ganking you? What is stopping you from prepping them while they are gaining fashions?

Once a full doll is made, you don't have capability to attack, generally, while they're executing their kill setup. It doesn't matter if you have them prepped as well, you're focusing on curing through their kill method while you're hindered by them as well.

Ernam said:

Simply make puppet decay a function of distance, and ignore areas entirely.  1-5 rooms it doesn't decay at all, 5-10 rooms decays enough to notice, but not quickly, 10-20 would be perhaps 2 fashions every 3 seconds, and anything over 20 just drops off very rapidly (4 fashions every 3 seconds).  Considering that this momentum loss is still dramatically slower than anything else in the game (other than limb damage, which you can just reset with a break), I don't think there's much room to complain.  Basically, this idea is the same as yours, but using range instead of areas (avoids abuse of area borders).

This is the other thing I was considering. I left number specifics out of my classlead so it can be focused on an idea to address the issue, and specifics can be worked on in testing later. The main counter I thought of to abusing area borders was the delay before decay starts, so the doll user can follow and prevent decay assuming the other person isn't just completely running away from combat. In that situation it's basically the same for all classes, if they get a lead and are determined to escape, they're likely going to escape.

The one additional thing I'm idly wondering about, were the classlead approved, is increasing the rate of fashions in general if the result was difficult to sustain dolls. That's the kind of thing that I couldn't guess on without seeing the results of a change though, so I left it out for now.

Achimrst

Jarrod said:

It's perfectly valid to assume that Shamans approaching PK will approach it in the most efficient method. There has never been balancing around inefficient strategies, and there should not be. If you do not even prepare for combat correctly, then you're going to make mistakes until you learn the good spirits to bind.

Achimrst said:

It sounds as if you aren't going to hit the shaman at all, are you not trying to prep them yourself? Are you afk and they are lol ganking you? What is stopping you from prepping them while they are gaining fashions?

Once a full doll is made, you don't have capability to attack, generally, while they're executing their kill setup. It doesn't matter if you have them prepped as well, you're focusing on curing through their kill method while you're hindered by them as well.

Isn't that what the whole prepping part is for? I mean when a class is about to kill me, you typically cannot get out of it easily. Runewarden impaling and mangling a leg to disembowel you, syvlans mangling a leg and keeping your torso broken to heartseed. Shaman have to focus on curing out of this kind of stuff too, shaman aren't immune to afflictions or being hindered. If I were fighting someone and stood in the room too long without using some form of curses or using vodun to hinder them I would die relatively easily.

Also while a shaman is fashioning they usually are not attacking unless invoking soulrend, which isn't lol stupid easy to gain fashions with.

Bluef

There are several options for 'good' spirit bindings. Not every set of bindings includes Maligus because not every strategy requires focusing on a high yield of fashions. Some shamans won't even have the chief aim of creating a 'full doll' because there are many other lower fashion options for set-ups.

These classlead ideas are suggesting that shamans go from (pre-spiritlore) a fight/flight class to being a fight/chase one in order to maintain fashions. They also ignore the fact that sometimes shamans also need to leave a fight to use some vodun skills properly (so they don't share a message), to heal themselves, to set up attacks, etc. Penalizing them for doing so makes no sense.

Dunn

I very rarely fashion at all in 1v1.

Amranu

This conversation is amusing.

I don't think ignoring Maligus while balancing dolls is a possibility here, and I do agree that it is far too easy to now get a full doll before killing someone with Maligus while they're locked.

I don't think any idea regarding distance from Shaman causing the doll to degrade is a good idea, considering how easy fast travel abilities are accessed and how well that could shut down Shaman prep. Perhaps a modification to the current 1 hour degradation is in order, where instead maybe 10 fashions could be lost every 5 minutes, or something along those lines.

Ideas regarding a loss of a doll on being slain by the doll holder actually sound reasonable given the amazing amount of fashions gained while setting up tzantza on someone truelocked. It's a little ridiculous when the fight is over and I gain 40 fashions just getting ready to kill the person when I'm not even trying to go for fashions.

Mizik

Although, if a doll resets 3 times with no kill, Obliterate is unlocked. Because fk this dude running away n shit.

Jarrod

I don't understand the belief that Shaman/Jester should be singularly immune to lost prep if the target escapes.

Mizik

I would agree if fashions came/went more fluidly/flexibly or wasn't a "do nothing else" while accumulating. If other offensive actions gave fashions, for example.

Bluef

When a shaman or their target run away, fashioning via Maligus is also already slowed because the person will undoubtedly heal the issues with their 'mental fortitude.' Thus requiring the shaman to re-start that strategy. That's exactly what you're asking for (a type of reset) and it's already built in.

One cannot assume Maligus is even in play though; there are many different PvP strategies for shaman. If they've not bound it, fashions will be gained at a pretty slow rate thus making it questionable why you'd need this reset.

Shamans also move frequently to blight afflictions, which is part of the momentum itself (and yes, sometimes we do have to move more than 3 rooms away to get a chance to do this successfully). 

If fashions decay every time we move a certain distance, shaman would be almost forced to bind Maligus in order to gain enough fashions in order to have any left over after any movement decay, thus diminishing the agility of the class.

Jarrod

Mizik said:

I would agree if fashions came/went more fluidly/flexibly or wasn't a "do nothing else" while accumulating. If other offensive actions gave fashions, for example.

That's what I was thinking when I put the classlead in. Adding in a way to passively gain them for Jester similar to how Shaman can get them would be something I'd want to see if the gradual reduction was put in. Making dolls a more fluid part of combat for Shamans/Jesters as opposed to how Jester has to halt everything else to gain fashions currently, more or less.

Bluef said:

One cannot assume Maligus is even in play though; there are many different PvP strategies for shaman. If they've not bound it, fashions will be gained at a pretty slow rate thus making it questionable why you'd need this reset.

The one top tier PvP Shaman keeps it bound all the time. He's also looking into ways to make the less necessary bindings more easy to swap in temporarily given how important a set of them are. Once again, assuming a Shaman fighting lower than optimally with binds is not where we start balancing. You balance around what is available, not whatever you happen to bind.

Ernam

I don't think fashion speed really matters that much - much like limb prep time for knights.  It's all about the kill sequence.  It's good to have more time to attempt a momentum kill or to counterprep, but it's always going to come down to who is better at surviving the other, with Jester (something that Jester seems to always have a big advantage at).

For Shamans, they're just as much a momentum class as a prep class - so it's almost a different issue entirely for them.  Unlike Jesters, they have to build momentum before any standard kill strategies can be pulled off - so unlike Jester, it's realistic for a momentum class to try to race a Shaman to a lock or kill when they reach a point where they're confident enough to try it.  Shamans are also significantly less adept at hit-and-run, running away, preventing people from chasing them, bypassing obstacles, etc, compared to Jester, so again, I think that should be taken into consideration.

I still don't see a problem with slow decay near your opponent, and fast decay if you run from a fight.  That encourages actually "fighting" people instead of hit-and-run that seems to be unanimously hated.  There's honestly no justification for this mechanic, aside from (lets face it) Jester's original design which was quite clearly "built" to grief (and has since had nearly every ability it started with rebuilt, replaced, or simply deleted).

Just be sure to make considerations for Shaman... because the classes really don't have much in common - so parallel changes to Vodun and Puppetry are not necessarily required or even a good idea at all.

Bluef said:

Earrings/portals/wings are costly artefacts. Not every shaman has access to those.  See: Wayfare  ( and my classlead for puppet stretch, which is a travel/escape ability that doesn't involve worldwide instant, unstoppable, hindrance ignoring teleportation. )

Basically what you're proposing is that shaman, who already routinely have people flee back to the safety of their cities during fights due to doll decay times in 1v1, should also have to constantly chase people around to keep the few fashions they manage to get off. So it would work like every other prep class in the game?  Sounds fine (and better) to me.  Every monk, knight, magi, priest, and sylvan has had people do this regularly - but at the expense of losing any progress they've made as well.  If this means that you need to learn how to initiate sooner or prep faster, then that's on you .  Also, I'd have to say that when it comes to "fleeing" to a city to abuse prep timers, it is far more frequent to see the Jesters/Shamans themselves doing this, as they can do it without actually losing their own prep - while totally resetting their own limbs, healing up afflictions/health/mana, etc.

I don't see anything noted in existing classleads in terms of a reduction in the balance costs for fashioning to off-set those fashioning losses. Guessing you don't view that as necessary?

As I mentioned above, I don't think that fashion speed is really that significant at all.  Either the kill sequence is OP, or the kill sequence is not OP.  The only thing that prep time affects is how long people have to try to kill a Jester/Shaman before they get to it.

The big reason everybody hates slow prep is because the entire strategy revolves around achieving an extremely lethal prep that often results in death, without ever actually giving your opponent a chance to counterprep or build any form of momentum.  This applies not just to fashion-running, but also to things like alternating fashion & hangedman (against momentum classes).

The fast-decay at a distance concept solves several different, and major, problems with dolls, but I think the big one to mention here is that it would basically "change" Jester/Shaman combat in away that fashions are seen more as momentum than prep.  By forcing a doll user to stay near their opponent and maintain pressure, you are forcing the doll user to give their opponent a chance to build their own - thus "fixing" the fashion-run problem (but not the hangedman one =/).

Bluef

Jarrod said:

Mizik said:

I would agree if fashions came/went more fluidly/flexibly or wasn't a "do nothing else" while accumulating. If other offensive actions gave fashions, for example.

That's what I was thinking when I put the classlead in. Adding in a way to passively gain them for Jester similar to how Shaman can get them would be something I'd want to see if the gradual reduction was put in. Making dolls a more fluid part of combat for Shamans/Jesters as opposed to how Jester has to halt everything else to gain fashions currently, more or less.

Bluef said:

One cannot assume Maligus is even in play though; there are many different PvP strategies for shaman. If they've not bound it, fashions will be gained at a pretty slow rate thus making it questionable why you'd need this reset.

The one top tier PvP Shaman keeps it bound all the time. He's also looking into ways to make the less necessary bindings more easy to swap in temporarily given how important a set of them are. Once again, assuming a Shaman fighting lower than optimally with binds is not where we start balancing. You balance around what is available, not whatever you happen to bind.

Just because one shaman always binds Maligus does not mean that everyone should. It is not necessary to all strategies for shaman combat. Your argument is essentially that everyone who isn't binding Maligus is 'doing it wrong' and thus shouldn't be factored into the equation for classlead changes that impact every shaman. That's just sophistry.

Ernam

Bluef said:

Just because one shaman always binds Maligus does not mean that everyone should. It is not necessary to all strategies for shaman combat. Your argument is essentially that everyone who isn't binding Maligus is 'doing it wrong' and thus shouldn't be factored into the equation for classlead changes that impact every shaman. That's just sophistry.

No, their argument is that any Shaman can do it, not that all Shamans necessarily will**.  Combat is balanced around what is possible.  Not every Knight uses battleaxes, but combat is still balanced around their existence and possible use by any knight, regardless of whether or not they bring some to a fight.

** But it's unclear to me (and apparently others) why you would ever not have Maligus, in PVP.

Achimrst

Ernam said:

I still don't see a problem with slow decay near your opponent, and fast decay if you run from a fight.  That encourages actually "fighting" people instead of hit-and-run that seems to be unanimously hated.  There's honestly no justification for this mechanic, aside from (lets face it) Jester's original design which was quite clearly "built" to grief (and has since had nearly every ability it started with rebuilt, replaced, or simply deleted).

Just be sure to make considerations for Shaman... because the classes really don't have much in common - so parallel changes to Vodun and Puppetry are not necessarily required or even a good idea at all.

Bluef said:

Earrings/portals/wings are costly artefacts. Not every shaman has access to those.  See: Wayfare  ( and my classlead for puppet stretch, which is a travel/escape ability that doesn't involve worldwide instant, unstoppable, hindrance ignoring teleportation. )

Basically what you're proposing is that shaman, who already routinely have people flee back to the safety of their cities during fights due to doll decay times in 1v1, should also have to constantly chase people around to keep the few fashions they manage to get off. So it would work like every other prep class in the game?  Sounds fine (and better) to me.  Every monk, knight, magi, priest, and sylvan has had people do this regularly - but at the expense of losing any progress they've made as well.  If this means that you need to learn how to initiate sooner or prep faster, then that's on you .  Also, I'd have to say that when it comes to "fleeing" to a city to abuse prep timers, it is far more frequent to see the Jesters/Shamans themselves doing this, as they can do it without actually losing their own prep - while totally resetting their own limbs, healing up afflictions/health/mana, etc.

I don't see anything noted in existing classleads in terms of a reduction in the balance costs for fashioning to off-set those fashioning losses. Guessing you don't view that as necessary?

As I mentioned above, I don't think that fashion speed is really that significant at all.  Either the kill sequence is OP, or the kill sequence is not OP.  The only thing that prep time affects is how long people have to try to kill a Jester/Shaman before they get to it.

The big reason everybody hates slow prep is because the entire strategy revolves around achieving an extremely lethal prep that often results in death, without ever actually giving your opponent a chance to counterprep or build any form of momentum.  This applies not just to fashion-running, but also to things like alternating fashion & hangedman (against momentum classes).

The fast-decay at a distance concept solves several different, and major, problems with dolls, but I think the big one to mention here is that it would basically "change" Jester/Shaman combat in away that fashions are seen more as momentum than prep.  By forcing a doll user to stay near their opponent and maintain pressure, you are forcing the doll user to give their opponent a chance to build their own - thus "fixing" the fashion-run problem (but not the hangedman one =/).

I see a huge problem with fashions decaying depending on range from your target. Shaman have to run away when fashioning because fashioning takes a lot of time to do, any runewarden or other prep class will kill a shaman standing in the room before they ever got a change to get enough fashions to counter anything. Without running away a shaman is just a test dummy, standing there doing nothing while dying to whatever the person is doing to kill them. Unless Shaman fashion speed is as fast if not faster than swiftcurse I doubt there will be much of anything a shaman can do in combat other than ignore vodun entirely and use only curses. Curses of course being "OP" because we can peace and paralyse people into doing absolutely nothing while we set them up for tzantza or inflame.

Ernam

Achimrst said:

Ernam said:

I still don't see a problem with slow decay near your opponent, and fast decay if you run from a fight.  That encourages actually "fighting" people instead of hit-and-run that seems to be unanimously hated.  There's honestly no justification for this mechanic, aside from (lets face it) Jester's original design which was quite clearly "built" to grief (and has since had nearly every ability it started with rebuilt, replaced, or simply deleted).

Just be sure to make considerations for Shaman... because the classes really don't have much in common - so parallel changes to Vodun and Puppetry are not necessarily required or even a good idea at all.

Bluef said:

Earrings/portals/wings are costly artefacts. Not every shaman has access to those.  See: Wayfare  ( and my classlead for puppet stretch, which is a travel/escape ability that doesn't involve worldwide instant, unstoppable, hindrance ignoring teleportation. )

Basically what you're proposing is that shaman, who already routinely have people flee back to the safety of their cities during fights due to doll decay times in 1v1, should also have to constantly chase people around to keep the few fashions they manage to get off. So it would work like every other prep class in the game?  Sounds fine (and better) to me.  Every monk, knight, magi, priest, and sylvan has had people do this regularly - but at the expense of losing any progress they've made as well.  If this means that you need to learn how to initiate sooner or prep faster, then that's on you .  Also, I'd have to say that when it comes to "fleeing" to a city to abuse prep timers, it is far more frequent to see the Jesters/Shamans themselves doing this, as they can do it without actually losing their own prep - while totally resetting their own limbs, healing up afflictions/health/mana, etc.

I don't see anything noted in existing classleads in terms of a reduction in the balance costs for fashioning to off-set those fashioning losses. Guessing you don't view that as necessary?

As I mentioned above, I don't think that fashion speed is really that significant at all.  Either the kill sequence is OP, or the kill sequence is not OP.  The only thing that prep time affects is how long people have to try to kill a Jester/Shaman before they get to it.

The big reason everybody hates slow prep is because the entire strategy revolves around achieving an extremely lethal prep that often results in death, without ever actually giving your opponent a chance to counterprep or build any form of momentum.  This applies not just to fashion-running, but also to things like alternating fashion & hangedman (against momentum classes).

The fast-decay at a distance concept solves several different, and major, problems with dolls, but I think the big one to mention here is that it would basically "change" Jester/Shaman combat in away that fashions are seen more as momentum than prep.  By forcing a doll user to stay near their opponent and maintain pressure, you are forcing the doll user to give their opponent a chance to build their own - thus "fixing" the fashion-run problem (but not the hangedman one =/).

I see a huge problem with fashions decaying depending on range from your target. Shaman have to run away when fashioning because fashioning takes a lot of time to do, any runewarden or other prep class will kill a shaman standing in the room before they ever got a change to get enough fashions to counter anything. Without running away a shaman is just a test dummy, standing there doing nothing while dying to whatever the person is doing to kill them. Unless Shaman fashion speed is as fast if not faster than swiftcurse I doubt there will be much of anything a shaman can do in combat other than ignore vodun entirely and use only curses. Curses of course being "OP" because we can peace and paralyse people into doing absolutely nothing while we set them up for tzantza or inflame.

Shamans have ample methods of handling the scenario you just mentioned already, however I'd once again like to point out that I suggested giving both Shaman and Jester a short-range escape ability (classlead #67 - solution 1), specifically designed to do exactly what you are asking for.

What I wish people would come to realize is that there is a huge difference between running a few rooms away to heal up/turtle for a few seconds, and insta-traveling to a guard stack every 15 seconds to completely reset yourself without losing anything (which is exactly what happens now, because there's no reason not to).  Having fashions decay slowly while nearby but quickly while very far away allows doing exactly this - which hopefully would force Shamans/Jesters to participate in "real" combat more often (not that all of them are offenders).

Achimrst

Ernam said:

Achimrst said:

Ernam said:

I still don't see a problem with slow decay near your opponent, and fast decay if you run from a fight.  That encourages actually "fighting" people instead of hit-and-run that seems to be unanimously hated.  There's honestly no justification for this mechanic, aside from (lets face it) Jester's original design which was quite clearly "built" to grief (and has since had nearly every ability it started with rebuilt, replaced, or simply deleted).

Just be sure to make considerations for Shaman... because the classes really don't have much in common - so parallel changes to Vodun and Puppetry are not necessarily required or even a good idea at all.

Bluef said:

Earrings/portals/wings are costly artefacts. Not every shaman has access to those.  See: Wayfare  ( and my classlead for puppet stretch, which is a travel/escape ability that doesn't involve worldwide instant, unstoppable, hindrance ignoring teleportation. )

Basically what you're proposing is that shaman, who already routinely have people flee back to the safety of their cities during fights due to doll decay times in 1v1, should also have to constantly chase people around to keep the few fashions they manage to get off. So it would work like every other prep class in the game?  Sounds fine (and better) to me.  Every monk, knight, magi, priest, and sylvan has had people do this regularly - but at the expense of losing any progress they've made as well.  If this means that you need to learn how to initiate sooner or prep faster, then that's on you .  Also, I'd have to say that when it comes to "fleeing" to a city to abuse prep timers, it is far more frequent to see the Jesters/Shamans themselves doing this, as they can do it without actually losing their own prep - while totally resetting their own limbs, healing up afflictions/health/mana, etc.

I don't see anything noted in existing classleads in terms of a reduction in the balance costs for fashioning to off-set those fashioning losses. Guessing you don't view that as necessary?

As I mentioned above, I don't think that fashion speed is really that significant at all.  Either the kill sequence is OP, or the kill sequence is not OP.  The only thing that prep time affects is how long people have to try to kill a Jester/Shaman before they get to it.

The big reason everybody hates slow prep is because the entire strategy revolves around achieving an extremely lethal prep that often results in death, without ever actually giving your opponent a chance to counterprep or build any form of momentum.  This applies not just to fashion-running, but also to things like alternating fashion & hangedman (against momentum classes).

The fast-decay at a distance concept solves several different, and major, problems with dolls, but I think the big one to mention here is that it would basically "change" Jester/Shaman combat in away that fashions are seen more as momentum than prep.  By forcing a doll user to stay near their opponent and maintain pressure, you are forcing the doll user to give their opponent a chance to build their own - thus "fixing" the fashion-run problem (but not the hangedman one =/).

I see a huge problem with fashions decaying depending on range from your target. Shaman have to run away when fashioning because fashioning takes a lot of time to do, any runewarden or other prep class will kill a shaman standing in the room before they ever got a change to get enough fashions to counter anything. Without running away a shaman is just a test dummy, standing there doing nothing while dying to whatever the person is doing to kill them. Unless Shaman fashion speed is as fast if not faster than swiftcurse I doubt there will be much of anything a shaman can do in combat other than ignore vodun entirely and use only curses. Curses of course being "OP" because we can peace and paralyse people into doing absolutely nothing while we set them up for tzantza or inflame.

Shamans have ample methods of handling the scenario you just mentioned already, however I'd once again like to point out that I suggested giving both Shaman and Jester a short-range escape ability (classlead #67 - solution 1), specifically designed to do exactly what you are asking for.

What I wish people would come to realize is that there is a huge difference between running a few rooms away to heal up/turtle for a few seconds, and insta-traveling to a guard stack every 15 seconds to completely reset yourself without losing anything (which is exactly what happens now, because there's no reason not to).  Having fashions decay slowly while nearby but quickly while very far away allows doing exactly this - which hopefully would force Shamans/Jesters to participate in "real" combat more often (not that all of them are offenders).

Shaman have a short range escape ability, it's just not worth the spirit bind it costs to use it. Vodun Travel is running away completely, not running a couple rooms away. And again, all short range travel abilities usually have conditions on them such as prone and paralyse or a monolith sigil that make them useless in a fight. Shaman do plenty of "real" combat, I'm sorry if a shaman running to heal from being beat on for 10 seconds is a pain in the ass for you but the shaman is most likely not attacking you during that 10 seconds and has at best 10 fashions, although likely less from just fashioning, by doing it. 10 barely being enough to vodun bleed once or give you confusion, which you would immediately see and heal.

You are also talking about two different things here, I'm talking about fashion speed needing to be a lot faster to be used how you want it to be used. Not talking about vodun travel, if used in combat vodun travel is typically used to run away or they already have all the fashions they need to kill you so there is no need to stay in the area unless they were going to use an area wide vodun ability.

Alaskar

I'm going to classlead my first classlead ever, for destabilise cataclysm. I want it to create area wide retard for an IG year, and prevent any cures from working for the duration of it. The Magi is not affected.

Am I doing it right?

Achimrst

Alaskar said:

I'm going to classlead my first classlead ever, for destabilise cataclysm. I want it to create area wide retard for an IG year, and prevent any cures from working for the duration of it. The Magi is not affected.

Am I doing it right?

You're doing gods work.

Ernam

@Achimrst First of all, thanks for being civil and explaining your point of view.

However, I'm in no way saying that a Shaman should not run a few rooms away to heal up.  This is an integral part of combat, which is carefully balanced by hindrance abilities, location abilities ( alertness, sense, detect, farsee ), movement speed, traps, and so on - and I'm a huge fan of it.  I think your post indicates that you think that this isn't fair, but that's certainly not the case - and in fact, I suggested strengthening Shaman/Jester's ability to "run" so they can heal (or leave the room to mask vodun afflictions).

For Shaman specifically, I don't think that they should lose a significant amount of fashions during this time.  I do think that it would be appropriate to lose some since during that time, your opponent is losing all of their momentum, but this could easily be compensated by a slight increase in fashion speed.  In general, I think everyone agrees with what you're saying (and we're kinda saying the same thing), we just don't think you should be able to Travel to cities and then come back (often, repeatedly), without losing fashions.