Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Classleads - July/August 2015
A place to discuss the coming round of classleads, since I haven't seen a discussion for it yet
0
Comments
/thread
"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else."
-Albert Einstein
Sylvans: Range might be OP, otherwise no one cares
Runewarden: Some changes wanted regarding variety of kills
Alchemist: Wants more afflictions mostly
Blademaster: Needs nerfs (although most of the suggested nerfs were submitted by a Blademaster so who knows)
Druid: Druids exist?
Infernal: Infernals sux, make it a bit better
Jester: Jester pretty op, nerf some things
Monk: Telepathy is broken
Occultist: Lots of requests for buffs?
Paladin: Nothing other than a piety change that I saw
Priest: ^
Sentinel: Nothing at all
Dragon: Dragon is boring and needs buffed
Serpent: Some whacky classleads for changes
Shaman: Some changes/small buffs requested, some people wanting curses or vodun abilities nerfed because they die to them.
Apostate: Not scary anymore so need changes?
Bard: Not much in classleads, small nerfs.
The main (Knight) complaints seem to be that doubleslash with forged scimitar isn't quite fast enough, and that disembowel for DWC is still too easy to avoid. Neither of those are really surprising. Everybody knew 228 speed was crap for years before Knight changes were released, and nothing has changed for tumble, torso damage or disembowel itself since before the Knight changes were released at the beginning of the year. I haven't really liked any of the proposed changes for the disembowel/tumble issue, though.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Seems a little bit heavy of a nerf, for a class that's just starting to make a come back.
I suggested in my censure instead of completely nerffing Kai for group combat (classlead106), that there is a % decrease in kai generation (2-2.5%) for every individual on your enemy list in the room.
For example, Zukomonk moves to clouds with Aodfionn, Rohai, and Dannyl (all enemied for kai). Proficy, Xer, Xinna, and Ainly arrive (also enemied) for the fight. That is 7 enemies total. So when I generate kai with all of them in the room, I am generating 83% of what I normally would.
It's not a major nerf, but at least it doesn't take the fun out of group combat for monks. It would substantially reduce their kai gain in big groups (40-50% reduction maximum), so they would only be available for a power play on entry.
Edit: Now that I think about it, could even be a 3% reduction. So at maximum, a 60% kai reduction for group combat. Still leaves some potential, but forces some time in between the monk's attacks.
There's one in Shindo where solution 1 is a cooldown on phoenix, solution 2 is letting weariness block phoenix, and solution 3 is both and also delete fitness. Another one on evade has solution 1 remove evade solution 2 make evade cost 75% of mana and solution 3 delete blademasters. Another one explains that the writer refuses to even fight blademasters.
Someone mad.
On a more serious note, I'm pretty disappointed by the blademaster classleads. I was really hoping someone would come up with a better, more interesting way to tone them down, perhaps while also addressing issues like the nigh invulnerability that a high mana pool can grant thanks to clot not having any kind of scaling based on mana pool. And, while I know people disagree, I also still hope that some day they'll see some even modest ranged ability - even if it means they have to be balanced like other classes in melee (that's always struck me as a limp balancing strategy - they're allowed to be oppressive and frustrating to play against 1v1 because they have to face frustration in ranged encounters?).
On another serious note, can something be done about these "joke classleads"? I feel like I have to read through a bunch of them every round of classleads. This doesn't seem like the place to make "lol delete this class" jokes, particularly when admin are eventually going to be spending time reading them.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
This also leads to a problem with Shaman and their bleeding being hilariously overpowered against people with small mana pools, and practically worthless against others. The simplest solution for this would probably to make clot -always- have a percentage mana pool component, with impaleslash increasing that, and a nerf to the flat mana cost of clot.
Yeah, shamans don't, but BM already have clot scaling via impaleslash. I really don't think high mana targets are a problem for BMs. They might require more effort than low mana targets, but that's just like any class. Certain things make some people harder to kill than others.
Phoenix -does- need a lengthy cooldown, to put it in line with every other curing ability.
That said, I was never a particularly stellar combatant, and I haven't played in quite a while, so caveat lector and all that. Still curious about the state of things, though.
I think it's a combination of large mana pools (making the flat part of the cost very low both in terms of proportion of the pool and how many clots each mana sip amounts to) and also artefacts that make mana expenditure and recovery less costly. Robes of the Magi seem like the biggest offender against BM. And shaman is even worse without anything that makes clot scale like impaleslash, which is pretty sad given how many interesting strategies spiritlore clearly intends to set up around bleeding.
In general, it seems like there's a pretty large consensus that for the most part BM needs to be toned down, and I think a really nice way to do that would be to tone it down vs most opponents and give it a little bit of love against the very high end of people who can clot through anything via mana pool, regen, sip, and mana cost reduction artefacts. It's pretty lame that a combination of artefacts like that can make you almost completely impervious as a constant, passive effect requiring no input - historically when pretty much the same problem has happened with health pools, additional mechanics have been introduced to amplify the damage like the several finishers that now scale off of torso damage or how successive BBTs stack damage until it's functionally unsurvivable regardless of health pool.
I was hoping someone would classlead something about clotting (or at least clotting+artefacts that buff it) after that shaman thread (where BM ended up in the discussion too briefly). I'm hesitant to classlead anything myself, but I guess I probably should have, if for nothing else than to see the responses.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Baby steps aren't the only kind of steps. If your hands are somehow tied and they're the only steps you can take, sure - but it isn't as though classleads involve defeating a filibuster.
I think the mentality that "BM needs a nerf well before it ever gets a buff" is disappointingly reductive - here and in a lot of balance discussions I see on the forums. Class power isn't on some single sliding scale. A class can need to be tuned down in a lot of cases and need to be tuned up in others and nothing really precludes doing those at the same time so long as you have a solid understanding of the changes you're making. Fixing the cases where BM is too strong does nothing to ameliorate the cases where BM is too weak, just like fixing the cases where BM is too weak doesn't necessarily entail worsening the situations where BM is too strong. The problems have independent causes and there are pretty clear independent solutions. No real reason not to pursue them.
Fair points. Considering I was the only one to even do BM Classleads outside of the other two that I considered troll classleads to begin with, something tells me that BM isn't as big of an issue as people thought.
I like that you have these points to make, but my question is why didn't you do a classlead? If you felt there were issues, discussing them here does nothing to fix them. That's the entire point of classleads. Complaining about the classleads that -were- submitted, while not doing any yourself, seems contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Not saying you are, just how that can be construed.
I (as a lvl 3 band BM) saw issues with some of the skillset, and I classleaded ways to fix them. By no means are any of my ideas "great", simply an alternative to the status quo. I don't really think there is anything that BM "lacks", so to speak outside of a range ability. The issue of artefacts scaling too well and making a class suffer versus highly artefact'd targets is hardly limited to just Blademaster. Things were added to reduce some of this, and I figure there will be things added for Blademaster too. I didn't feel like this was the time to address it personally, so I didn't.
In regards to the clotting issue: Anyone with Robes+Lvl 3 mana sip+Lvl 3 mana regen is basically impossible to kill with a traditional Brokenstar setup, including a torso break. This is not to say that there aren't ways around this with a bit more thinking (ice infuses, bad prioritites, quad breaks to push salve balance) - but that doesn't necessarily change the viability of it. Most people that are this artied are going to know what to do to limit your time-to-kill as far as number of twists you can get. Ie: Tumbling around walls, into wunjo/nairat, mindthrow off impale/battlecry and things of that nature, which coupled with their high mana/regen pools it essentially nullifies the attempt.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."
Blademaster locking is a gimmick, at best. Hypochondria is powerful yes, but any kind of defensiveness in response to the pommel/striking and it nullifies the entire setup. Any kind of break setup that you do is much less guaranteed than a Brokenstar setup.
Prone parry is helpful for sure, not necessarily sure that it -needs- it, but there are several instances where it was the only way I survived setups.
I don't think it needs Evade taken completely, no.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
[ SnB PvP Guide | Link ]
As far as BM goes, I think the real issues revolve around Bands more than the class itself. Evade is pretty rough for a slow-prep class to have, especially on the momentum-based classes that revolve around stopping your escape, but I only have legitimate gripes with BM once they have a lvl 2 Band or better, where the prep time starts getting very short and the margin for error becomes sub-zero. Un-Banded/lvl 1 BMs don't bother me, but some days it feels like the only way to survive a Banded BM is to own Robes.
Intelligent pre-apply, use of icewalls, and room defense measures can all beat a BM.
Fake tumbling is also very strong. People don't use a lot of these measures though. Unhindered, yeah you're going to have a tough time staying alive.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
For the pummel, popular tactic is to hypothermia on a broken torso (same cure, broken torso is cured before hypothermia) so keep an eye on your torso damage.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
@Tharvis That's what I was doing, and I can indeed avoid Destroy and Pummel almost permanently via that and Tumble, but that leaves me permanently prone while I stave off death. The last few fights I've had have essentially been matters of going down on that first leg break and never standing up again if the Magi chases well. That's what I have to figure out before I feel qualified to make any assessments on the class.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
Because I would really like more exits from Gare.
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."