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Comments
Edit: By lowering fashioning speed I mean Vodun Fashioning speed not invoke Maligus, manaleech is meh but it does the same job really. Maligus has always been meh, they nerf or buff it to become either 1. Usable, or 2. unusable so why not just change it to something that adds to strategy rather then something that you can invoke?
Definitely more fun though, what with the fashion spamming being minimized.
You are right, attending to the fact of draining mana against high mana pool (artied) targets is definitely more appropriate, but I bet it is more complicated to get it balanced without sacrificing benefits of getting artefacts. But I do feel appropriate changes may arrive some time in future, for one I am sure bleed, Teraile bleed and Maligus drain can have a scaled effect.
To be fair, Manaleech soulrend can be adjusted to 2 for Shamans without Truefashion, and increased to 3 for Shamans with Truefashion. This will balance the fact that now every Shaman with or without truefashion can manaleech invoke soulrend and get the SAME 3 fashions.
@Tael Your suggestions coming from scaling point of view is right.
Regarding Teraile bleed, that probably shouldn't be scaled. You can't just scale up the amount of bleeding based on someone's mana because bleeding, unclotted, is also dangerous to, and not to mana, but to health. Maligus drain maybe, but passive, scaled drain as a mere side effect of cursing is also a fairly boring. Really, what needs to scale is not the bleeding itself or the direct drain, but the clotting cost - that's the thing that actually targets mana and that's the thing you want to scale on. What is needed is some sort of curse or invocation (hell, maybe manaleech itself) that makes clotting costs scale with max mana.
Regarding artefacts still being useful, that isn't a problem for health artefacts and attacks that target health. Health artefacts are among the most popular despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of attacks that target health have a percentile component. The crucial thing is that attacks have both a static and a scaled portion - the existence of that static portion means having a larger pool is still useful. And artefacts that reduce how much mana it costs to clot would still be very useful too.
I can think of some aura/attunement to a spirit, say even Maligus itself, that makes enemies in the same room as the Shaman cost more mana to clot, and this effect can have flat and scaled cost to mana.
Also could potentially remove the manaleech effect for an extra skill in vodun that made fashion give 2 fashions everytime instead of one. This would be a slight nerf to fashion count, but I think Shaman could take it. Have a bunch of other ideas I plan on submitting next classleads, we'll have to see how that goes.
Ok, had to neglect this for the last day or two for other things, sorry about that. But yes, this was not really what I had in mind with the change to manaleech/soulrend. Mostly comes down to how the attacks are evaluated; I intended for manaleech to need to be stuck for at least one round to secure a bonus, rather than just being loopable.
Expect that to change (sorry shamans, if its too good to be true it probably is). Its intended for manaleech to be a less easy option to deal with higher profile targets (as they should be harder, but possible to secure soulrend on).
I'll also go on record and say we have no plans to give shaman more hinder as of this time. I'm pretty happy with where it stands in that regard (its one of its weaker points but still fairly strong). You'd need a very compelling classlead to change that stance. That is one of those things we definitely would not touch outside of a classlead round either way, as it would be a very difficult thing to balance given shaman's offensive potential.
1) Blight, probably the best possible option at the moment. The second everyone realizes they can just trigger blight to send curing predict manaleech because we can't take advantage of them being off smoke balance, they will. This also knocks down two birds with one stone, allowing a check of whether or not blight gave asthma. This is not a long term option.
2) Straight swiftcurse to stick manaleech. The fastest possible combo I see is:
0: manaleech/cured
1: manaleech
1.5 cured
2:manaleech
3: soulrend, manaleech cured
5: Restart
This is 5 seconds balance for 3 fashions. This is actually slower than normal fashioning on average, and this also isn't taking into account any hindrance thrown at us, or the need to put up swiftcurse. I guess this was why the bonus was initially so high, that makes sense heh.
I'll leave it to you Makarios, although honestly with the changes to vodun I felt the new increased fashion speed worked pretty well. We have similar reliability for vodun kills now compared to other prep classes, and the speed up allowed us to match other prep classes in kill attempts (although I was exceeding the speed of Blademaster after the initial kill attempt. This is more a problem of vodun costs than it is with the increased fashion speed though).
sure you may hit your ultimate goal of say 30 fashions at the same or faster speed just fashioning but you are not hindering or pressuring anything on your opponent which means that they should outprep you.
this change helps vs higher mana pools because you can safely always use momentum to get fashions whereas before u were risking never getting any.
Previous to the swiftcurse change to soulrend, I had a curse string that stuck manaleech. People would consistently run as soon as manaleech was stuck regardless, so I stopped wasting my time with it.
I can see your concerns, but a few things to note:
1: blademaster is very, very fast. I try to use that as the upper limit of prep speed, as its built to be very good at that with some significant drawbacks in other areas to accommodate that potency (shaman is strong in a lot of the areas blademaster is weak). DWC and SNB knights are a much closer ballpark to what I'd hope to aim for with shaman.
2: I more intended manaleech as a seudo momentum mechanic. Just to clear up confusion (as I noted some earlier from some people in the thread), the manadrain from curses is percentile, not flat. Clot is flat. The issue you get from dealing with artefacted people tends to be that their sip is absolutely huge compared to unartefacted people, but that should be accountable for to a degree (impatience halving mana sips might be something to investigate there, for instance).
3: the manaleech thing is also useable as an opportunism thing. For instance, you could fashion sometimes and manaleech/relapse when Syvis is not on cooldown, etc.
You can be sure I'll be keeping a closer eye on this particular issue than previously though, I'd not heard many concerns about it until recently.
0: manaleech relapse manaleech
1: manaleech
2.5-3: soulrend
4.5-5: balance back, 3 fashions.
Normal fashioning:
0: fashion, 1.5 on average
2: fashion, 1.5 on average
4: balance, 3 total fashions and also don't need to worry about your momentum being screwed up.
Anyhow regardless of the theorycrafting, the main problem I've reiterated several times is the ability to actually maintain momentum. In for instance a change to impatience to halve mana sip, or sticking manaleech these all require time to become effective. Time which prep classes don't allow, as they walk away from a cursing Shaman and laugh while they maintain momentum. This ability to walk away from curses is of course the main place where vodun finds use, to hold people in place to attempt a kill.
So in effect, any change requiring more momentum to gain more fashions only helps against classes that Shaman is already well suited to fight with a minimum of vodun, however the cost increases are hurting Shaman against classes where they actually need vodun, and cannot really drain mana effectively without giving those classes incentive to walk away having gained prep whilst the Shaman futilely gained little or no prep attempting to drain enough mana to use Soulrend.
Hopefully that's clear, I think I've reiterated this point more than enough now. I'll shut up I promise >.>
EDIT/Disclaimer: This is not a post saying Shaman need movement restriction of any kind. This is mainly a post detailing where vodun is effective and where maligus is effective. Why these are different, and why this is a potential problem with vodun prices being balanced around Maligus. This is stating the reality of Shaman as it exists currently (minus current manaleech stuff), and requests no changes -at all- to the class. Really. Seriously.
I also get that you are trying to make Shaman a basic generic unfun class like all the others, but the best part of Shaman is how many different ways you can play with it. If you are planning to make it like other classes what is the point of having the class? If I wanted to be DWC I would roll a knight and I definitely don't want to be SNB that shit is blah and boring.
Shaman hasn't really changed at all in terms of how it gets kills and the amount of variety it has. The reference to knights was only that shaman -prep- time should be similar to other classes, for fairness and balance.
Unsure what you're on about in terms of somehow making it more boring or bland.
I mean all Makarios said was " DWC and SNB knights are a much closer ballpark to what I'd hope to aim for with shaman." Which is true, SNB ~= Curses for locking/tzantza while DWC ~= Bleeding Inflame kill.
We aren't knights! Plz stop trying to make us one?
It should be pointed out that the current bonus of 3 is half of what it was originally. Makarios has already stated he wasn't expecting the current usage. A bonus of 6 on any of that theorycrafting would work fine for instance. Still slower than currently, but that's reasonable.