Announce 4368: Puppet/Vodun Mangle

Antonius

Regular curses are about 2 seconds, right? What's the balance time on fashion? I can't see why you'd ever actually fashion if you can just curse manaleech/soulrend for a guaranteed 3 fashions.

Dunn

That's where I was going with that.

Amranu

Yeah, fashion is kinda redundant now.
Shaman prep is about as fast as Monk/Blademaster now.

Dochitha

Can't say fashion is redundant, it is still required to not mandate attunement to Maligus or anyone not having access to Maligus yet.

But yeah for anyone tri-trans, fashion is redundant, so is Truefashion.

Austere

Amranu said:

Yeah, fashion is kinda redundant now.
Shaman prep is about as fast as Monk/Blademaster now.

So monk/bm have to hit every limb every three minutes or it resets.  How long does fashion, which you don't need to do against multiple body targets, last? Seems a bit lopsided there. 

Dunn

Six minutes. Limbs are three. I made that mistake once.

Xinna

Yeah. Super easy mode now. Though, I never liked the fashion mechanic anyway, so whatever. Might be more fun.

Shaman fashions should definitely decay faster, though.

Dunn

I'd be a fan of removing soulrend from being comboable with curses to encourage stacking into burst fashioning rather than fat fingering a single alias until you can execute.

Then blight would also be incentivized.

Amranu

This is already the case? Blight is already more than incentivized with the recent change, but it may in the end actually neuter blight. Oh I see what you're saying, but no that would not work. One of the main reasons for this change as far as I'm aware was to make soulrend usable against those that refused to let Shaman build momentum to use it. Your change would be a step back in that respect. Blight won't be an option. Trigger blight to smoke valarian problem solved.

Dunn

Then stack herbs like every other aff class, lol. You know how fast you swiftcurse? I think being able to mindlessly curse &tar manaleech invoke soulrend is stupid.

Amranu

What? No, it would still be unusuable against anyone that walked away after 3 curses, like many many people already do

Dunn

You're still glossing over the point that being able to have a static alias doing curse manaleech soulrend is stupid. I'm just spitballing ideas here.

Could have shield stop spiritlore invokes.

Amranu

Fair enough. I mean, it's not the most exciting mechanic out there, but short of Shaman receiving a way to build momentum against people willing to run the moment their mana drains, we're going to have to live with this.

Dochitha

Let's not forget the change also solves the fact that soulrend now works on people artied to the teeth with high mana pools, as bleed / Teraile is entirely flat based.

Mizik

Fashion             Fashion vodun dolls from rope and cloth.
Truefashion         The hallmark of a master of Vodun.

?

And lol @Dochitha 'solves'. It sure does.

Makarios

Oh, hmm. Spiritlore invokes should already be hitting shield. If they're not, that's a bug. Will look into it!

Atalkez

You can't balance the class on people running. That's literally an issue faced by every class. Some have better ways to manage it, but they all have ways.

Shaman decay needs to be looked at, possibly halved to 3 minutes just like limb prep. Shaman can run for 3 minutes and lose nothing atm versus limb prep.

Amranu

In regards to managing people running Atalkez, Shaman has none outside of mangle, perhaps arguably bind. Because of this, and Maligus now being the preferred method for Shaman to gain prep, anyone was completely able to avoid prep from Maligus by leaving before their mana reached appropriate levels. I've heard the argument that Shaman hinders with paralysis, but due to the nature of curses there are always windows between curses where you will not have paralysis to run. The only other one we have is dizziness, but it does not proc nearly as often as any other hinder and is easily cured by focus or eating goldenseal. Furthermore the Shaman is not able to maintain dizziness while using Maligus for fashions anyhow, giving the loss of momentum inherent in the abiltiy. This was a good change to make Shaman's increased fashion gain more consistent.

As for the mangle change, it may or may not need tweaking in the future, as Shaman's potential use of mangle feels limited, mostly owing to their inability to maintain any momentum from the use of it (compared of course with say, Bard which does so balanceless while maintaining momentum in order to prevent someone from running). The tradeoff here is of course Shaman has much easier access to additional legdamage on command, so maintaining momentum may not be necessary. Right now I think Shaman kill reliability might be a bit low, but I honestly don't know if that's actually the case or I'm just biased because previously I had very consistent kills. Need more time to see, will bring it up at next classleads if it continues to be a problem.

Cooper

If you can't think of a way to hinder people trying to run from you as a Shaman you might want to re-think your class. Shaman has EXTREMELY powerful chase, and access to more in-room hindering than the majority of classes.

Dunn

It's okay cause it's all gonna hit shield now.

Amranu

Extremely powerful chase, completely disagree Cooper sorry.

Jinsun

Stop asking for room hindrance. Just quit being a scrub and buy bracers of frost.

Tesha

When you're discussing the balance of your class, it's a mistake to assume your class should be capable of not only killing someone that's actively playing defensively, but also trying to escape from you. If your class is capable of killing someone that's both trying to play defensively while you're prepping and trying to escape while you're executing, that's too strong. Currently, every class suffers when their opponent plays good defense, and every class has trouble when their opponent escapes at inopportune moments. It's what makes Achaea's PVP system more than just a mathematical race of who can reach their guaranteed kill first; and through that, it's what makes Achaea's PVP system interesting. 

I get the impression you're looking at this too much from the perspective of optimized/scripted offenses rather than what your class design is based around and how Achaea's PVP system works. You aren't supposed to have a guaranteed, unblockable kill. People are supposed to be able to survive against you. You are supposed to get the majority of your kills from the mistakes of your opponent rather than the fact that your class has an unavoidable kill. If Shaman was meant to have an unblockable kill once they got enough fashions, Makarios would just put obliterate back in. 

Shaman is a very powerful affliction class with exceptional control over their opponent once they get fashions. The changes to mangle does not render Shaman suddenly unable to kill anything. To put it bluntly, mangle was a crutch. You can figure out how to fight without it.

Atalkez

Getting stuck in Aeon with the shaman in room for more than 2 seconds is pretty much a guaranteed kill for them at this point, too.

Dochitha

Atalkez said:

Getting stuck in Aeon with the shaman in room for more than 2 seconds is pretty much a guaranteed kill for them at this point, too.

Yep, pretty much the more reliable way for a Shaman to kill. That said, many still cure out. Aeon takes 3.7s balance so it's quite a good window to cure out of, even with asthma relapsing into it. 

For instance, Sir @Aerekcure out of all Aeon attempts, be it asthma into aeon or concussion into aeon and he simply does not allow concussion+asthma+aeon to happen at all.

Talysin

You guys are making me miss Jester

Amranu

Tesha, your post is filled with so much wrong I don't even know where to begin. But we'll start with the assumption that my entire offense is scripted. This is completely false, as I've stated multiple times. Regardless, as I already stated in my last post I'm unsure if Shaman at the moment is more unreliable than it should be, or if I'm biased.

As to being completely unable to kill someone if they're playing defensively during a kill attempt, that's frankly complete bull. Every single class in the game is designed around being able to kill someone regardless of their actions -some- of the time if they've built up their prep properly, or they have enough momentum.

To put it bluntly, mangle is the only option Shaman have to hinder someone to start a real kill sequence, which is going to be a problem if it's too weak. But as I've already stated twice now I do not know if this is the case currently.

Jinsun

Not only do I vehemently disagree with you regarding your second paragraph, I'd challenge you to name one scenario where that balancing is actually substantiated.

Cooper

Amranu, your post is filled with so much wrong I don't even know where to begin. So I'm not going to because it's not worth it.

Jovolo

Concerning your last paragraph, is the point you're making then that if mangle is too weak to serve as a method of movement hinder, shamans might need compensation in the form of hindrance buffs - as opposed to outright saying that shamans need hindrance buffs? From what you said before I got the impression it was the latter, but if it's the former then I think that's a reasonable comment. 

Although I'm not sure having to walk away every two or three curses is really viable counter-play to shamans as you mentioned further up the thread. If that's true, then Shaman affliction power should probably be looked at too. 

Could you provide some examples for your comment against Tesha too? Achaea has been historically designed to make all class offence survivable with perfect defense, and thus you rely on your opponent's making mistakes either through forcing pressure on them or just a lack of knowledge in how to cure effectively. That's the way it has been, and how most people involved in balance think it should be. In recent years each class has been given more tools to apply that pressure, but there are very few classes with unavoidable kill sequences and these are pretty "sleeper"* OP.

*I think everyone knows by now that Jester has a kill sequence that can't be avoided and artied monk does (did?) over 180%+ max health damage within a sip balance. I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but those are very rare cases.