Chaos Knight

Drot

One of my favorite things about the knight classes is the subtle, or not so subtle, takes on them. I love that targossas and mhaldor have their own takes of the typical "soldier" kind of class, and even eleusis has it's take in the sentinel. What I would love to see is chaos get fleshed out a bit as a faction since bother good and evil have a pair of classes unique to them. The best way to do this would be to give chaos it's own version of the knight, with some occultism. I'm not sure how to implement this, but I'd class swith so damn fast if I could be a knight wth tentacles and chaosrays. Any ideas on how this could be implemented? What are some chaos abilities that would be useful with knight? Would it be best to modify occultism a bit for them or would an entirely new skill line be necessary? 

Ahmet

Doubtful. Sarapis & co seem quite against releasing more factional classes anytime soon.

Drot

It's really only adding one skill line at most, or modifying an existing one. Two of the skills are already done

Ahmet

Drot said:

It's really only adding one skill line at most, or modifying an existing one. Two of the skills are already done

Except with combining that new set of skills comes months worth of balancing and playtesting and tweaking and all kinds of other nonsense.

I mean, it'd be cool to see, but I'm ready for whatever the hell we've been waiting on for so long already :bleep_bloop:

Drot

I get that. It's not easy for sure, but it isn't as involved as an entirely new class. Factions are the best part of the game imo

Cynlael

Drot said:

I get that. It's not easy for sure, but it isn't as involved as an entirely new class. Factions are the best part of the game imo

Said no one, ever. New classes would be cool, new factional classes however, would not be cool. The ones currently in existence are still barely balanced compared to one another.

eta for seriousness: You're severely underestimating how much work it would be, regardless of it being 'just a single skill' - It's one skillset yes, but you also have to factor in exactly how it would function with Knight's current abilities (in this case it would be Chivalry+Weaponmastery) which is in fact 5 skillsets to work between, not two like every other class. Look at how long it took for the tradeskill-replacing skillsets to actually come to Achaea, if you want an idea. If it's factional, you'd also have to see how it functions alongside Occultist (you said it's chaos-aligned, so yeah), makes shit even harder since Occultist is amazing 2v2 with virtually anything.

Devran

I think factional classes ARE really good so long as you're a member of that specific faction. Otherwise I agree with the 'said no one, ever' part. @Cynlael is right about the workload though. It's a huge task, especially considering Knights are 4 classes now and not just one.

Tahquil

You place a new factional class in and everyone else whines they didn't get one. Poor admin .

Omor

Tahquil said:

You place a new factional class in and everyone else whines they didn't get one. Poor admin .

This is the true problem. Unless they're releasing a factional class for every faction simultaneously, someone is going to bitch that they didn't get a class. 
And that doesn't even account for all the bitching of "well <faction>'s class is stronger than ours, waahhh"

Aerek

In truth, I actually don't think Occultism would be too hard to adjust as a 4th Knight skill. Enough of it is already analogous to Necromancy that only the big-name abilities would really need to be vetted, and the big offenders can just be made Occultist-only just like Necromancy and Devotion already do for Infernal/Apostate and Paladin/Priest. With a cursory amount of thought, I see several strong possibilities, but the only thing I can really think of that would be over the top is mostly revolve around leg breaks going into Truename. S&B and 2H would do well with Occultism, but DSL and DWB might need new Occultism additions to help synergize a little better.

Personally, I'd say the Admin have been avoiding making a Chaos Knight just because it'd be rehashing a trope that we already have 3 of instead of making something new, not because it'd be inherently OP or too much work to balance out. New factional classes don't bother me, either. Sure, everyone wants to play a new class, so they'd be upset by the personal inconvenience of the addition being factional, but I don't see anything inherently -wrong- with new factional classes, and you could make the argument that the other "factional" factions all have at least 2 versions of their factional classes, where Ashtan only has 1.

Zayn

Maybe I'm biting at the wrong end of this, but Chaos faction class: Occultist.

Archaon

Chaos knight.

Nicola

While I won't comment on the topic in specific, I will say that we've worked very hard the last few years to make each class distinct. Creating classes that simply share skills with other classes, even within factions, is something we actively avoid.

Jovolo

Fuck limb breaks with truename. Any kelp stack into truename/arc would do the trick. I'm not sure Occultism synergises that well with knight classes compared to Devotion and Necromancy. Enervate could be a problem. Whispering Madness could be a problem. 

I picture it like Paladin that doesn't need any limb prep.

It won't happen regardless. Admin have zero interest in this.

Blujixapug

I never got the appeal of chaos knight as a class that just recycled Occultism, Chivalry, and Weaponmastery. It's less fun to play a class that has nothing of its own, no unique abilities. It's hard to balance them when every buff and nerf is also applied to another class.

Maybe if they had a new skill or two.

Pledging their sword, armour, steed, and falcon to different Chaos Lords to be warped in different ways for different powers. A sword that lashes like a tentacle (Scrag) or wounds your victim's aura (Glaaki). Full plate covered with blinking eyes (Marduk) or dripping slime (Nin'Kharsag). A shield growing toxic spines (Buul), or crawling with Chaos-born vermin (Palpitar) that are knocked free by every blocked blow to skitter over your enemy. Instead of a falcon they could have a hound (Lycantha).

That as one skill. Weaponmastery as one skill. Occultism, or elements of Occultism. And elements of Chivalry - but with their own version of a falcon.

They'd be less occult mystics, and more like footsoldiers of Oblivion.

Would that fit in Ashtan? I've never felt that each city needs its own breed of knights. Is it too reliant on perpetual war for mission and context? Does it undermine occultists?

Aerek

By contrast, I think it's neat when two classes share a skill, you get to see different strategies emerge using the same abilities, and unique abilities are afforded to each of the classes to give them some of their own flavour and mechanics.

Bit of a moot point, though.

Blujixapug

Aerek said:

Bit of a moot point, though.

Yeah, since the next two classes will be pirate and barbarian...

Razzlo

I think a Barbarian class with a third skill for chaos, darkness, and nature would be much cooler. Kinda an anti-knight. 

Makarios

From a balance perspective, I can safely say we'd not add more knight classes (at least ones that conform to the weaponmastery/chivalry model).

You only need look at the current controversy surrounding a potential impale change to see why: the more classes you have that revolve around the same core set of skills, the more limited your options become. A change that runewardens might desperately need can get hard locked out because it'd be too strong for paladin, or an infernal change could be too strong when combined with runeblades, etc.

Anedhel

Makarios said:

From a balance perspective, I can safely say we'd not add more knight classes (at least ones that conform to the weaponmastery/chivalry model).

You only need look at the current controversy surrounding a potential impale change to see why: the more classes you have that revolve around the same core set of skills, the more limited your options become. A change that runewardens might desperately need can get hard locked out because it'd be too strong for paladin, or an infernal change could be too strong when combined with runeblades, etc.

I don't know what you're talking about. Paladins getting Vivisect seems totally reasonable to me.

Greys

@Makarios Not to play devil's advocate but isn't there precedent for there to be differences in shared skills ala elementalism and devotion for the different classes? Granted, that may be more of a headache than you guys need. 

In either case, I'm Empire when it comes to Warhammer Fantasy. Faith, Steel, and Gunpowder.

Drot

Beastmen all the way, boo empire.

Keorin

Greys said:

@Makarios Not to play devil's advocate but isn't there precedent for there to be differences in shared skills ala elementalism and devotion for the different classes? Granted, that may be more of a headache than you guys need. 

In either case, I'm Empire when it comes to Warhammer Fantasy. Faith, Steel, and Gunpowder.

Elementalism was lost by sylvans, though. There's still cases of it, yeah, but it seems they've pretty clearly been moving away from it.

Makarios

There are cases of it, but typically the classes that share those skills play very differently (and hence have different finishers, typically in a nonshared skill). This gives us much more leeway. With something like knight a lot of the power is tied up in chivalry/weaponmastery, so when you share those skills its much more significant than say, sharing devotion.

Mindshell

RIP runelore shaman