Why is this still a thing?

Tael

Atalkez said:

Tael said:

@Dortheron While I like the direction of those, they seem a little overcomplicated. SHIN MEDITATE as it's currently set up is already pretty complicated - an ability with a duration and a cooldown that gives access to another ability. Having that plus a thing that does something similar, has a cooldown on being hit, has a windup, and has an interaction with the other cooldown, is getting a little too crazy.

The best BMs have repeatedly stated, pretty much since complaints about evade started coming up, for years, that they didn't think evade was necessary for the class in 1v1. I think that's the right solution here. You already have leap, highleap, and bound to get away (in addition to regular old tumble). And in terms of raw survival, you have phoenix, vitiate, alleviate, augment, health and manatrans, not to mention toughness and weathering.

If you just put a windup on SHIN MEDITATE and let it grant access to evade, but have it be lost on being hit or taking offensive actions, that would completely solve the problem. And it should just be normal evade, not some special, worse blademastery version - blademaster needs the ability to move unhindered and stealthily in raids more than any other class if they're going to remain melee only with no outside-of-melee raid utility.

And if SHIN MEDITATE worked like phase, there would be no need for a 10 second cooldown - that's redundant with the windup, which already prevents you from using it in combat after someone hits you and breaks it.

Vitiate is an offensive ability, not necessarily anything to help you stay alive outside.

With that said, I suggested the following to @Makarios earlier today.

 <msg> Repurpose Shadow to work like the Shaman ability to tether/move a direction. It won't be as good as Evade because it will have a small 2-3s windup before you actually make the move <dir>, yet it still allows the Blademaster to move freely during raids without the instant escape of Evade (barring them not using Meditate yet) -- Shadow as it sits is pretty worthless in most situations unless you have an etheral shroud/Shadowcloak to follow people. Not really a skill that the BM kit can make use of, since we're not a hidey/eavesdrop class

Whoops - I was thinking of vitality, which is in kaido, but not shindo.

But like Amranu said, that isn't really how INVOKE PROJECTION works.

As for shadow, it seems like the obvious solution would be to classlead having it hide the shadower movement from the shadowed. Honestly, it's always been pretty silly that that wasn't how it worked anyway.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on what I suggested though - removing EVADE entirely from 1v1 (you're one of the people who I know has on at least a few occasions suggested BM doesn't really need evade 1v1), and repurposing SHIN MEDITATE to be like other raid movement abilities (like blackwind or phase), but via granting access to evade: gives you normal evade, no duration, no cooldown, 5ish second windup (whatever phase/blackwind are, I don't remember).

Atalkez

I'm not opposed to a wind-up ability that grants Evade and drops on any action that isn't Evade/say/PT/emote/shield -- so essentially anything done -to- you and any offensive action drops Meditate. As it is though, we -do- still have some ways to move around, just not near the capacity that we had before.

I don't think having to deal with totems/piety/ghands/tendons/isaz is a bad thing in the slightest in a 1v1 scenario or a raid. The issue really lies in raiding in that we have nearly no effect on anything that can happen in a raid until we're all in the same room. 

Blademaster has lots of ways to stay alive, moreso than many classes and it can be compounded tremendously with artefacts. We also have extremely potent offensive capabilities, the only thing I personally feel the kit lacks is some sort of LoS ability. I don't need to scout around totems if I can toss some throwing stars or something. I classlead changing Burst to a LoS ability to combat the "wait until they're in room" mechanic. The main reason you scouted before hand was because that was all you could do. Evade/Annihilate/Evade back is still possible, and Evading away from a focus is till possible as long as you haven't burned your Evade earlier anyway. 

In the end, the change is fine in my opinion if we get some sort of consolation to help augment our raid effectiveness. That can be the windup ability allowing the scouting again, or a LoS ability that negates the need to scout. Serpents are scounts because they have the kit to do it. Blademaster has too many abilities seemingly stolen from other classes, that randomly were thrown together that don't necessarily mesh well with the class as a whole

Tael

Alternatively, if we want to keep this SHIN MEDITATE, perhaps blademaster should just get a phase-esque ability.

Maybe SHIN FLOW (I like that name a lot) takes 5ish seconds to wind up, and then you can move around as though phased, but unlike phase, still being able to be hit and knocked out of it without requiring an eye sigil or anything like that, and still being able to be detected by non-phased people, and all that stuff. So a sort of worse version of phase (to go with their worse version of evade) that gets you through guards, totems, traps, and walls, but is easier to be knocked out of (and you can do damage/giving an affliction while knocking someone out of it, rather than having to spend balance throwing a sigil or whatever) and easier to track.

That would allow them to keep the new SHIN MEDITATE, solve the problem of getting around in raids in a way that parallels how other classes solve it, and be less awkward than moving around by going EVADE, EVADE, EVADE. It would also go with the sort of stealthy ninja-ish theme blademaster was supposed to have.

Edit: I realise that would constitute more things "stolen from other classes", but a lot of classes have some sort of other "mode" of movement, so it's not like it's stealing the mechanic from any particular class - and given that the class can only do things in melee, I think a strong argument could be made that it needs it more than many of those other classes that already have it.

Caladbolg

Tael said:

@Dortheron While I like the direction of those, they seem a little overcomplicated. SHIN MEDITATE as it's currently set up is already pretty complicated - an ability with a duration and a cooldown that gives access to another ability. Having that plus a thing that does something similar, has a cooldown on being hit, has a windup, and has an interaction with the other cooldown, is getting a little too crazy.

The best BMs have repeatedly stated, pretty much since complaints about evade started coming up, for years, that they didn't think evade was necessary for the class in 1v1. I think that's the right solution here. You already have leap, highleap, and bound to get away (in addition to regular old tumble). And in terms of raw survival, you have phoenix, vitiate, alleviate, augment, health and manatrans, not to mention toughness and weathering.

If you just put a windup on SHIN MEDITATE and let it grant access to evade, but have it be lost on being hit or taking offensive actions, that would completely solve the problem. And it should just be normal evade, not some special, worse blademastery version - blademaster needs the ability to move unhindered and stealthily in raids more than any other class if they're going to remain melee only with no outside-of-melee raid utility.

And if SHIN MEDITATE worked like phase, there would be no need for a 10 second cooldown - that's redundant with the windup, which already prevents you from using it in combat after someone hits you and breaks it.

Evade is useful in 1v1 for tentacles,rite of piety,hands and such it's so useful it could bring a tear to your eye.

However most people that i've seen complaining about it over the years complain that the bm evade preps. which .. isn't necessary because of all the defensive abilities that Blademasters have (except that one weakness of straight damage ouch)

Serpents the other class with evade however, Have been used as an example because Blademasters keep the preped legs while Serpents lose the affliction stack. 

What people really fail to understand is that to get a kelp stack up as a serpent is like 12-15 seconds or so before you go to throw the pain on. 

Blademasters have to pre-impaleslash which gives them a 30 second kill window that your target is also trying to run. and in certain situations your trying to balance your opponents mana,impaleslash, limbs resetting, Hamstring, and sometimes breaking torso with out them noticing.

As someone who's played both Serpent and Blademaster I felt that resetting a fight for a few seconds as a serpent was less taxing than as a Blademaster. and have always kinda felt the blademaster didn't need Evade for 1v1 as more of a I don't want this other class to have my awesome ability type deal.

Although just for the record Blademaster needs evade in 1v1 about the same as a serpent needs evade, well maybe a little less since they have leap as a class skill. but same goes it's a powerful ability that's been on the class for 4-5 years now and has become one of the things that makes blademaster blademaster.

If it's evading out of soulspears in a raid, getting past alertness with out being noticed, getting under mindnet while your tracking down that contract.  or if it's slapping that sexy sexified married citymate on the bum and evading away just in time for them to slap the air.  It made being a blademaster a blademaster.

Dortheron

Atalkez said:

Blademaster has lots of ways to stay alive, moreso than many classes and it can be compounded tremendously with artefacts. We also have extremely potent offensive capabilities, the only thing I personally feel the kit lacks is some sort of LoS ability. I don't need to scout around totems if I can toss some throwing stars or something. I classlead changing Burst to a LoS ability to combat the "wait until they're in room" mechanic. The main reason you scouted before hand was because that was all you could do. Evade/Annihilate/Evade back is still possible, and Evading away from a focus is till possible as long as you haven't burned your Evade earlier anyway.

I remember @Sarapis (I think it was him) saying that the reason blademasters were made with extremely potent offensive capabilities and high survivability was because of the lack of LOS and that bm's melee or survival capabilities would have to be toned down some to compensate. Whether that's still the case, or that this change is needed despite the drawbacks I can't say. But I definately agree that SOME change is needed to increase raid participation for bm's.

Tael said:

You should not have to buy an artefact to have access to literally any gameplay at all during substantial parts of many raids. Again, no other class has to do that.

Totally agree. "Buy an arte bow" is just a lazy excuse, not a practical solution to a problem that the class faces. Serpents, Priests, Occultists, etc do not HAVE to buy artes to be involved in aspects of single or group combat outside of melee, as they have options like LoS, healing/reviving, spying, hindering enemies, etc. Blademasters can ONLY melee without some LoS or the scouting capabilities of an effective evade-like ability and thus are left to twiddle their thumbs until a rush happens.

Jovolo

Blademaster does not need evade like serpent needs evade. One is momentum, one is limb prep. There's a stark difference and that difference is the reason evade was taken away from blademasters in the first place. I have an idea to increase blademaster raid relevance but worried it would be too difficult to implement. Will post it in a bit

Antonius

Any ideas to increase Blademaster raid relevance should ideally just be a general shift to raids including more (non-guard including) melee fights, rather than just allowing yet another class to participate in ranged combat.

Tael

Antonius said:

Any ideas to increase Blademaster raid relevance should ideally just be a general shift to raids including more (non-guard including) melee fights, rather than just allowing yet another class to participate in ranged combat.

It's a nice thought, and I certainly don't like the idea of giving BM a ranged attack (or group utility - I like their current totally-melee-focused theme), but realistically there are probably always going to be ranged fights, unless they just completely remove ranged attacks from the game. And given how non-decisive they tend to be comapared to melee fights, they're probably always going to last a while. And even if the ranged part were miraculously, say, 75% less a part of raiding than it is, that would still leave BM as the only class with no option but to twiddle their thumbs during that remaining 25% of the time.

I had an idea about a year ago for a way to allow BM to participate in melee combat in raids inbetween group melees, hence without having to hope that you can shift the entire raiding landscape to make BM more relevant (and dealing with the fallout of a lot of other classes with good ranged utility suddenly feeling less relevant).

I've been kicking it around in the back of my head for the last year and wrote it up a few times, though never satisfactorily. This thread got me working more seriously on it over the last few days and I think I finally got it into a decent enough state to email it to Tecton (the ideas forum doesn't seem very amenable to combat-affecting proposals, and classleads don't really seem amenable to proposing significant new abilities like this either - email seemed like the way to go).

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I do think there is a solution here that would make things more fun for everyone.

Cynlael

I like how Achaea forum threads always end up going in a completely different direction to what was referenced in the OP.

Aerek

Tael said:

...and classleads don't really seem amenable to proposing significant new abilities like this either - email seemed like the way to go)....

You do realize that Weaponmastery BRAIN, INTIMIDATE, CONCUSS, Hypnosis IMPRINT, and Shindo MEDITATE itself are all brand-new abilities suggested via the classlead system just this last cycle, right? Technically Runelore OTHALA would count too, because it was completely repurposed to meet the request of a classlead.

Do what you want, but classleads are honestly the best way to get stuff like that done. Even if the idea isn't fully fleshed out, if you can make a case for why a class should have something in a classlead, Mak&T will consider it seriously and invent a solution that fits if they feel its warranted.

Mishgul

Antonius said:

Any ideas to increase Blademaster raid relevance should ideally just be a general shift to raids including more (non-guard including) melee fights, rather than just allowing yet another class to participate in ranged combat.

yes

Tesha

Why would you not just... go into melee? Use annihilate, and have your group rush. I never used a bow the second time I was a paladin and I did fine in groups. Ranged fights are incredibly boring. I don't understand why moving around totems is important to the class identity of Blademaster. It isn't. Blademaster has always been about being a melee powerhouse. Scouting has always been Serpent's area. The fact that Blademasters had scouting too was just a remnant of being spoiled by evade. You can still squint around and look for someone to pick off, then meditate and evade in if you want to do that. Nothing's stopping you but yourself.

Sarapis

Dortheron said:

I remember @Sarapis (I think it was him) saying that the reason blademasters were made with extremely potent offensive capabilities and high survivability was because of the lack of LOS and that bm's melee or survival capabilities would have to be toned down some to compensate. Whether that's still the case, or that this change is needed despite the drawbacks I can't say. But I definately agree that SOME change is needed to increase raid participation for bm's.

Definitely not me. Blademasters were conceived of and implemented during the years I was pretty much gone from Achaea.

Ahmet

Tesha said:

Why would you not just... go into melee?  Use annihilate, and have your group rush. I never used a bow the second time I was a paladin and I did fine in groups. Ranged fights are incredibly boring. I don't understand why moving around totems is important to the class identity of Blademaster. It isn't. Blademaster has always been about being a melee powerhouse. Scouting has always been Serpent's area. The fact that Blademasters had scouting too was just a remnant of being spoiled by evade. You can still squint around and look for someone to pick off, then meditate and evade in if you want to do that. Nothing's stopping you but yourself.

Trolliest question I've ever seen on the forums. One BM's lack of utility isn't going to make any group rush into an unfavourable melee engagement. Specially if the rest of your group has strong LoS presence.

Makarios

For reference, meditate is also meant to stop implanted totems on movement. Looks like there is an issue with the interaction there, it'll be fixed shortly.

Dortheron

Sarapis said:

Dortheron said:

I remember @Sarapis (I think it was him) saying that the reason blademasters were made with extremely potent offensive capabilities and high survivability was because of the lack of LOS and that bm's melee or survival capabilities would have to be toned down some to compensate. Whether that's still the case, or that this change is needed despite the drawbacks I can't say. But I definately agree that SOME change is needed to increase raid participation for bm's.

Definitely not me. Blademasters were conceived of and implemented during the years I was pretty much gone from Achaea.

Well, I said I thought it was you. Must of been some one else obviously, or maybe I'm just delusional. Lets go with the last one

Tesha

Ahmet said:

Trolliest question I've ever seen on the forums. One BM's lack of utility isn't going to make any group rush into an unfavourable melee engagement. Specially if the rest of your group has strong LoS presence.

Blademaster can do crazy things if they're really skilled. It can absolutely make rushing the best option. Obviously there will be times they shouldn't try this, such as if the enemy group is on a stack of guards, but that's alright. It's fine if you disagree, I just doubt Blademaster will ever get anything for ranged. It's already incredibly powerful, easily one of the strongest classes in the game for groups as long as you know what you're doing. Blademaster Mizik was terrifying.

Atalkez

Tesha said:

Ahmet said:

Trolliest question I've ever seen on the forums. One BM's lack of utility isn't going to make any group rush into an unfavourable melee engagement. Specially if the rest of your group has strong LoS presence.

Blademaster can do crazy things if they're really skilled. It can absolutely make rushing the best option. Obviously there will be times they shouldn't try this, such as if the enemy group is on a stack of guards, but that's alright. It's fine if you disagree, I just doubt Blademaster will ever get anything for ranged. It's already incredibly powerful, easily one of the strongest classes in the game for groups as long as you know what you're doing. Blademaster Mizik was terrifying.

You're fooling yourself if you think that had nothing to do with Evade being what it was.

Tesha

It was relevant, but I don't think Blademaster Mizik would be useless today even in a ranged fight. From the sound of this thread, some people seem to think otherwise, just because Blademasters can't directly contribute to standard LOS fights. Achaea's combat system is so much more dynamic than that, though. It's such a waste if people think every class needs to be able to follow, target, and spam LOS in a direction. Most classes specialize in something. Play to your strengths depending on the group.

Atalkez

No, he wouldn't be. You're discounting the fact that being able to Evade in and out of a room with 6 enemies and not die, though. 

Any typical class can't "go melee" a group of enemies alone. Blademaster isn't a juggernaut to the point where you can take 6 people alone and survive, without the crutch of Evade. I'm not saying the class isn't amazing in melee, because it is, but your idea of "just rush" isn't an accurate reflection of a real fight.

All combat has been ramped up lately. Nearly every class is hard as hell to live through now, and getting targetted in a group scene usually is going to be death for you. We're good, but we're not gods. Annihilate doesn't make the class somehow raid relevant because you can enter the enemy room and have a -chance- at throwing them away. Without Evade, you're simply suiciding yourself by rushing the group alone. I'm not saying the class is neutered in raid situations, but it's without question not as good as it was before this change. 

Caladbolg

Tesha said:

It was relevant, but I don't think Blademaster Mizik would be useless today even in a ranged fight. From the sound of this thread, some people seem to think otherwise, just because Blademasters can't directly contribute to standard LOS fights. Achaea's combat system is so much more dynamic than that, though. It's such a waste if people think every class needs to be able to follow, target, and spam LOS in a direction. Most classes specialize in something. Play to your strengths depending on the group.

Blademaster's are amazing in groups yes. but they're also EXTREMELY BORING AND UNFUN in groups. Your pretty much there to throw hangedman with an extremely small chance to get a kill with impale. Having other Blademasters in the raid makes this even worse because most of the blademasters i've ever raided with auto impale with triggers. Might as well follow someone and go afk.

Tael

Aerek said:

Tael said:

...and classleads don't really seem amenable to proposing significant new abilities like this either - email seemed like the way to go)....

You do realize that Weaponmastery BRAIN, INTIMIDATE, CONCUSS, Hypnosis IMPRINT, and Shindo MEDITATE itself are all brand-new abilities suggested via the classlead system just this last cycle, right? Technically Runelore OTHALA would count too, because it was completely repurposed to meet the request of a classlead.

Do what you want, but classleads are honestly the best way to get stuff like that done. Even if the idea isn't fully fleshed out, if you can make a case for why a class should have something in a classlead, Mak&T will consider it seriously and invent a solution that fits if they feel its warranted.

I don't know about all of those since I haven't read all of the classleads for the last couple of rounds, but MEDITATE for instance wasn't really a new ability in a classlead, it was a small suggested tweak like I was talking about in the form of "delete evade" or "put a cooldown on evade". It got implemented as a new ability with substantially more complexity, but classleads don't seem as amenable to actually putting up an idea for a fully fleshed-out ability in the first place, despite the fact that they sometimes result in those abilities (the sense I have is that the problem is less "even if the idea isn't fully fleshed out" as it is "when the idea is fully fleshed out"). I'm also unsure that presenting something that is more about relevance and raid dynamics rather than strict class balance to classleads makes a lot of sense, for the same reason that class proposals go into emails and not into classleads. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't think of any time I've seen a novel significant, complex ability that isn't addressing a fairly low-level balance issue proposed in a classlead. Which sort of makes sense - classleads are about polling the playerbase to try to help address balance concerns, whereas deciding on the actual direction raids and class concepts should go in is typically more of an admin thing.

Anyway, I already emailed it, so what's done is done - it would probably take too much coding time to ever get implemented anyway.

Synbios

Makarios said:

For reference, meditate is also meant to stop implanted totems on movement. Looks like there is an issue with the interaction there, it'll be fixed shortly.

I want to make sure I'm understanding this right, @Makarios: once fixed, a bm with meditate up should be able to bypass impkanted totems 100%, like a steriod'ed softfocus?

Antonius

@Synbios According to the latest Announce post, it should be fixed already.

Mizik

Makarios said:

For reference, meditate is also meant to stop implanted totems on movement. Looks like there is an issue with the interaction there, it'll be fixed shortly.

+1 or +2 movement speed while Meditate is up, pls.

Morthif

Mizik said:

Makarios said:

For reference, meditate is also meant to stop implanted totems on movement. Looks like there is an issue with the interaction there, it'll be fixed shortly.

-1 or -2 movement speed while Meditate is up, pls.

Ftfy

Synbios

@Makarios: Noticed that shin meditate doesn't work off implanted shaman totems. Could that be looked into as well?

Aerek

That might actually be a neat perk for Shaman totems, though. Unless I'm mistaken, Shaman totems seem pretty inferior to Runewarden totems in every other instance, given their inflexibility and Softfocus' 66% to negate them completely.

I bet it wouldn't change much, don't think anyone would switch over to Shamanic totems overall, but I like that kind of diversity in Achaea, and so since there are two different types of totems, they should have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Makarios

Mizik said:

Makarios said:

For reference, meditate is also meant to stop implanted totems on movement. Looks like there is an issue with the interaction there, it'll be fixed shortly.

+1 or +2 movement speed while Meditate is up, pls.

<Lorielan style="emphatic">No</Lorielan>

Atalkez

Makarios said:

Mizik said:

Makarios said:

For reference, meditate is also meant to stop implanted totems on movement. Looks like there is an issue with the interaction there, it'll be fixed shortly.

+1 or +2 movement speed while Meditate is up, pls.

<Lorielan style="emphatic">No</Lorielan>

Rude.