Dragon alternatives

Taraza

My opinions on the matter have already been stated actually. 

Firstly, I always liked the old dragon where you were able to keep your class skills instead of having an entire new class system to learn and use at your fingertips. Although this granted for some imbalances with some classes. So if this was the case, some major things would need to be tweaked. 

Secondly, I quite like the idea of your dragon form being based off of your organisations such as your City or even your Order (particularly if your Divine of choice allows it). I think this could show your dedication to your City or even rogue life. Yet I think the tricky thing would be when you come to cities such as Ashtan that has a large playerbase with quite a lot of different cultures and ideals under one city (Vastar, Babel, Chaos, Freedom etc) 

Thirdly, I like the idea of basing it off of races and giving them extra powers whenever they go into the mode for their actual greater form. (Or it does it automatically) I think it would be an intriguing idea and actually allow a more expansion on the races' history as well. 

I think it would be intriguing all around to have alternatives for dragon, for those who have more of a fraction aligned or simply it interests them to be something else. Like it is more appealing to be something different than a dragon. 

Makaela

@Taraza Honestly if it was anything Factionally or Racially aligned I would go from hunting to get to 100 someday for a reward I would never use to must hunt 24/7 to get level 100.

Jacen

Factional dragon probably Hashan/Cyrene's only opportunity for a factional class, so yes please.

Klendathu

Would 100% become a whirlwind / dervish / Tasmanian Devil

Draqoom

I'd rather have enhanced races than dragon. I worked at getting dragon for 12 years, not hard or grinding mind you but it took that long, and I was kind of underwhelmed by what I got at the end. Yeah, it's cool that I got it, but honestly Horkval feels so much better at everything to me than Dragon ever will and I'd trade the ridiculous utility of Dragon and the base stats for a flat +2-5 in each stat and maybe some more resistances.

Jacen

Draqoom said:

I'd rather have enhanced races than dragon. I worked at getting dragon for 12 years, not hard or grinding mind you but it took that long, and I was kind of underwhelmed by what I got at the end. Yeah, it's cool that I got it, but honestly Horkval feels so much better at everything to me than Dragon ever will and I'd trade the ridiculous utility of Dragon and the base stats for a flat +2-5 in each stat and maybe some more resistances.

Achaea really doesn't need a bigger range on stats available outside of the ultra-rare "you've done something worth 5 TFs" scenarios.

Also, it might be because I don't have any +CON arties, but dragon is hella more tanky than monk for bashing for me, and is much faster to boot.

Morthif

Faster? Fuck you can go make a sandwich between guts its so slow

Penwize

Yeah, there's no way dragon is faster.  Tankier, sure, nothing's tankier than a dragon, but its bashing is ridiculously slow.

Jacen

Faster in the metrics that matter, being XP, gold, and essence, because I can hunt bigger areas with better gold drops.

Morthif

I still disagree

Nizana

Create a new resource called "<insert name here>" and allow people to go to a state between Dragon and Lesserform that grants slight boost to defenses and stats. It drains that resource at X every 5-10 seconds. Refreshes at the serenade/howling/(w/e you all call it here).

Alternatively, racial things at 99+ = Yes please.. or/and city flavor/perks at 99+ (with a proper City rank of Y, if it is a significant flavor/perk).

First things that come to mind, in any case.

Penwize

Personally, I would like to see multiple alternatives to endgame classes, with a unifying theme.

Best way I could think to go about it would be to split up Dragoncraft into two skills.  One focusing on the veil/ancient magic (veilglance, illusion, incantation, dragoncurse, etc) portion, the other on the big beasty dragon portion.  Make the veil/ancient magic skill shared, and give alternatives to dragoncraft that focus on different aspects of combat/hunting than the current big beasty dragon theme.

Then, expand the veil/ancient magic portion to include skills which consume a new personal essence resource, which is absorbed through denizen corpses.

Klendathu

I like the idea of using denizen corpses to refill a personal resource. Not sure introducing various sets of abilities though, because it seems like it's either going to be a whole load of work to make balanced yet different sets of skills, therefore not going to be even vaguely near the to-do list, or just reskinning the same abilities, which makes it kind of pointless.

Sena

Penwize said:

Yeah, there's no way dragon is faster.  Tankier, sure, nothing's tankier than a dragon, but its bashing is ridiculously slow.

Unless there have been unannounced changes (or announced changes I missed): When fully artied, nearly every class (including dragon) has almost the same DPS. Dragon is slightly weaker than most other classes (only about a 3% difference, not counting the extremely overpowered classes), but monk is actually even weaker than that, having the lowest fully artied DPS of any class. Most classes are 320-325 DPS, dragon is 311 (and a couple other classes are also within 1-2 points of 311), monk in scorpion (the stance with the highest DPS) is only about 295. Monks have the advantage of having the fastest attacks (3 hits in ~2.3 seconds), and with that they probably have better PvE offence than dragon overall (but not better than other fast classes), despite the lower DPS, but dragon definitely shouldn't be "ridiculously slow".

And without offensive bashing arties, dragon is a lot better than other classes.

Penwize

It's the single slow hits at the same DPS that drops its kills per second to dramatically lower than classes with two or three hit combos, especially at higher levels of crit.  3 hits in 2.3s can get a lot more kills than 1 hit in 3s when at least 4% of your hits are kill-shots (Annihilating or WSC).

Tahquil

Someone was saying before about getting a dragon soul when they get high enough.

Did the intro to Achaea change so you don't get the dragonsoul in the trial anymore? It use to be you had it - that's part of why you are an adventurer and not a denizen and when you hit 99 Ash/Scy comes and awakens it in you.

Exelethril

Friztic said:

I do love being a Dragon, but if given the chance I would totally give it up to be a Giant. Some people may see that as a step down on the food chain, but I would revel in being 50 feet tall, with super smashing and stomping abilities.

Oh, and that would be a good racial alternative for Human. I like the racial alternative y'all are coming up with, but you seem to be drawing a blank for Humans. It would be AWESOME to go all Apache Chief (eeeeenuckchuk!) with my legendary Human.

Nizana

Tahquil said:

Someone was saying before about getting a dragon soul when they get high enough.

Did the intro to Achaea change so you don't get the dragonsoul in the trial anymore? It use to be you had it - that's part of why you are an adventurer and not a denizen and when you hit 99 Ash/Scy comes and awakens it in you.

The new intro is you waking up in a pygmy dungeon, which leads to a bunch of quests involving pygmies, the great rock, etc etc. All through TASK.

Tahquil

Oh.   

Tezcatlipoca

I really like the idea of:

Targossas gets Beings of Light (Archangels/Seraphim)
Eleusis gets Forces of Nature (Ents!)
Mhaldor gets Greater Demons (Pit Fiends)
Ashtan gets Chaos Entities (Chaos Lords)
Hashan gets Beings of Shadow (Like a Balrog without the flame or Ungoliant or a Shadow Dragon)
Cyrene gets Mountain Spirits(? I can't think of anything more thematic) (Wendigos? The Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains? Alternatively: Runic Knights from a Crystal Plane)

Klendathu

The problem with city-specific end-game beings is the way in which people chop and change citizenship. The same issue also arises with race-specific end-game beings, especially for those people who have a gem of transmutation.

Kez

I'm not sure why that would be a problem. There are a number of things that require participation in specific organisations in order to use to varying degrees. For example, a rogue sylvan *ahem* gets a diminished version or no access at all to some grove abilities.

Jukilian

City hoppers are also less frequent than race hoppers

Sena

I don't see it as a problem either. Race-specific endgame forms would lose some of their impact when you can change between them on a whim, but that's only because exactly the same thing is already true of races. For cities, it seems like even less of an issue.

You could make it so the racial forms don't work well with the gem of transmutation; maybe using the gem prevents you from using the form for a while, or using the form prevents you from using the gem for a while, or simply choosing to have a racial form (instead of going with dragon or any other alternative) could greatly extend the cooldown on the gem or even prevent it entirely, locking you into your race. You could do something like that for cities too, not letting you use a city's form until you've been there for a certain amount of time.

Klendathu

But but but Klendathu doesn't want to be a "chaos lord" or anything else akin to that. He wants to be an incorporeal whirlwind, able to make doors slam, old ladies say "ooh, isn't it nippy?" and tornado hunters fumble for their camcorders...

Tharvis

Klendathu said:

But but but Klendathu doesn't want to be a "chaos lord" or anything else akin to that. He wants to be an incorporeal whirlwind, able to make doors slam, old ladies say "ooh, isn't it nippy?" and tornado hunters fumble for their camcorders...

win the next staff of nicator and wish to be turned into a wind elemental!

Valaria

Tezcatlipoca said:

I really like the idea of:

Targossas gets Beings of Light (Archangels/Seraphim)
Eleusis gets Forces of Nature (Ents!)
Mhaldor gets Greater Demons (Pit Fiends)
Ashtan gets Chaos Entities (Chaos Lords)
Hashan gets Beings of Shadow (Like a Balrog without the flame or Ungoliant or a Shadow Dragon)
Cyrene gets Mountain Spirits(? I can't think of anything more thematic) (Wendigos? The Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains? Alternatively: Runic Knights from a Crystal Plane)

i would return targossas in heartbeat. i remember last time Sarapis said no when i asked about angel being playable.  who know. since Tecton is on the helm currently.

Nizana

I'd suggest something other than Chaos Lord for Ashtan, though. There are already Chaos Lords (Transmogrified Occultist) but I'd be all for this idea! Even if everyone keeps Dragon as an endgame sort of 'class/race' but gains special transcendent sort of races based on city... but I imagine they'd be purely aesthetic with maybe some emotes and non-com abilities attached to them. (would still so do it though)

Halos

The hows and whys of dragonhood are written into the story of Achaea, I thought. Only the hardiest ormyrr became Dala'myrr. Only the most dedicated Achaeans become greater dragons, etc. Something something about the sparks from the Fire Behind the Flame in our souls fanned into mighty flames or something poetic like that.

It's the metaphysical explanation that I'm interested in. As long as they write something in that doesn't contradict or completely ignore the established history (or at least Ashaxei's/Han-Tolneth's/Sycaerunax's version of it)

ETA: I found this:

"On the world of Starhome, or 'Krenindala' in the language of Dragons, they were born," spoke Han-Tolneth, his voice filled with awe. "Opposite poles of the power of the Fire. Or, perhaps, two sides of the key to the logical order of the power of the Fire. Somehow, the Dragons and Dala'myrr, perhaps both or perhaps just one of them, seem to be tied into maintaining the delicate web of perfect push and pull, ebb and flow of the basest of powers."

Halos

Basically, dragonhood isn't just an endgame bonus. Being a Greater Dragon is tied to the nature of existence in the Achaean mythology. It was Sycaerunax that was able to refan the flame of Yggdrasil. It was possessing those embers from the corpse of Ashaxei (among other things) that allowed the Dala'myrr to create Bal'met. The embers also let Achaeans temporarily possess five or more class skills at the same time. 

ETA: I'm cool with having other end game goals. But, uh, it'd be great if we could not make the process of becoming a chaos lord or an angel equivalent to just being a great basher. It'd be strange (but not impossible) to imagine the pure-souled, empathic being following me around and absolving my enemies as simply just another version of Penwize (Not that I'd mind having my own level 135 dragon follow me everywhere).