Except at one point you get to circumstances where it's not worth a dreamweaver to do it, ever, because for some reason the dreamweaver is more screwed over if they do it than if they don't.
Isn't the idea supposed to be that they have an advantage since they're pulling you into THEIR dream world, where they can manipulate everything at their leisure?
They can meld still, have 2 passives that hit, and can lock exits (exit locking could use fixing).
You are asleep the entire time there so basically everything hits.
They have lots of advantages, but it should pose RISK to use. Right now there is 0 risk, the weaver can jack you and just run away for awhile to remove you from combat for awhile.
I have a kind of long post in the works. Just wanted to do some quick replies.
It's actually really easy to dreamjack right now - induce the enemy into smoking coltsfoot and curing insomnia and dreamjack in one command. Presto done! I don't know how that will work once coltsfoot smoking is phased out, though.
Dreamweavers cannot dreamweave from manses anymore, you have to stay on the same plane as your dreambody. For most contested areas (bubbles/domoths, cosmic planes) that means your body will have to be in the same area as the fight.
Druids are honestly nothing like the Nirvana threat you're making them out to be. Fix your system to work in Nirvana (with the constant sleep on DIAG and different prompt) and I'll prove it. Even the periodic sprawling won't really help. Chasm will be really dumb though, yes.
The biggest problem will be dreamweavers eliminating other melders from fights, and generally just having an uber maze that basically can't be avoided.
EDIT: I agree that memloss is an anchor. The biggest problem is that druids are still very much in the air, but as is the best way to make DW actually... useful to a druid is to just revert it back to what it was before (or otherwise reintroduce the several periodic hinders it used to have). I (and other envoys probably) am not willing to go that route, partially because it'll be a waste of time and effort.
Chasm's easily stopped by hindering the mage. Any blindness, any proneness(I think), etc. If you don't panic and try to leave the room, you should easily be able to beat a chasm in 1v1.
Druids have long needed a divorce from Sap and Allergies entirely, I don't know why you are complaining about their viability when it is only extremely annoying situations which make sap usable.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Reverting DW to the way it was before seems like an insult to the admins considering that a lot went through during its release(we weren't event expecting it). Seriously, can we not tinker around with what has been given to us instead of saying stuff like that?
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
We aren't tying the work of the event to how much people like or dislike the DW changes. If you think it was better before, that won't hurt our feelings about how the event went.
I have a kind of long post in the works. Just wanted to do some quick replies.
It's actually really easy to dreamjack right now - induce the enemy into smoking coltsfoot and curing insomnia and dreamjack in one command. Presto done! I don't know how that will work once coltsfoot smoking is phased out, though.
Dreamweavers cannot dreamweave from manses anymore, you have to stay on the same plane as your dreambody. For most contested areas (bubbles/domoths, cosmic planes) that means your body will have to be in the same area as the fight.
Druids are honestly nothing like the Nirvana threat you're making them out to be. Fix your system to work in Nirvana (with the constant sleep on DIAG and different prompt) and I'll prove it. Even the periodic sprawling won't really help. Chasm will be really dumb though, yes.
The biggest problem will be dreamweavers eliminating other melders from fights, and generally just having an uber maze that basically can't be avoided.
EDIT: I agree that memloss is an anchor. The biggest problem is that druids are still very much in the air, but as is the best way to make DW actually... useful to a druid is to just revert it back to what it was before (or otherwise reintroduce the several periodic hinders it used to have). I (and other envoys probably) am not willing to go that route, partially because it'll be a waste of time and effort.
You can't weave from a guildhall and follow someone out and to the new place? They even have tesseract to cross planes. Weavers could definitely weave from safe places last I checked. Allergies are still pretty much a kill order at max, and there won't be anywhere to run to evade them.
@Marcella: Prone doesn't stop chasm, you'd have to have blind on hand. Maze is removable from the OUTSIDE, so if need be allies can break it. Would appreciate a way to force a person out of dreamrealm as an ally.
I'm actually curious now if Dreamjacking the geomancer stops chasm.
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited December 2015
Just to be clear, allergies are OP as shit in 1v1s. In normal combat and groups, this isn't a huge deal and very situational (almost to the point of not being used other than as a passive). You just don't 1v1 druids and avoid the situation. In a forced closed location, it's a problem.
I bring it up because there needs to be changes to nirvana and dreamjack to make it actually useful for melders. As is, it's just an awkward maze where you chase someone around a huge area for a few minutes.
What that change is, however, depends on things like chasm and allergies. Unfortunately, outlier skills are dictating balance for everyone else, which sucks, but I don't imagine we can force through an envoy change on these skills just to make weaving work.
If these skills don't change, I don't really see dreamweaving working for anyone. Why would I take a gimpy skillset (over awesome telekinesis, for example) just to drag people into a dream world so I can chase them around for 7 minutes? Short answer: I wouldn't.
It has to go one of two ways: either jack is going to force an encounter or it's going to force people to waste time. The hurdles to a forceable encounter are allergies and chasm. I was going to say burns, but those really require TK to be dangerous. A DW pyro is not so scary. (I personally don't agree chasm is a problem in 1v1s, but I'll include it since people keep bringing it up). For a solution that works for all melders, those hurdles have to be addressed first. If they can't be, we might as well just move on.
Speaking as a mostly non-com, was hoping to see some more fun utility stuff. I know it's primarily a pvp skillset, but stuff like psychiclift in telekinesis.
Dreamweaving Chasm is just trying to time it within the ridiculously long blackouts, where you flick memoryloss/chasm/meld procs memoryloss. Fix the super long blackout time from flicking and that fixes itself.
Or, they are passing out from hunger/sleepmist, that they can't get out in time, which takes about 7 minutes of fight time to get to (hunger wise). If people carried food around with them, this wouldn't be an issue. Geomancer passive meld attacks will wake you up pretty often.
The real problem is Sap/Allergies. Everyone agrees that there is a problem and it has needed fixing for awhile, just no one has had any good ideas or people haven't been willing to make the sacrifice to fix it. I am willing to use up an envoy slot for something that would be good.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
What if Sap amplified haste, or however you say that?
Like with exteme weather. I remember Calesta or someotherrShaman, once made moving around in faethorn take forever with shamanism. So Sap still exists and still slows you down, but just in a different way. So trying to go anywhere takes forever but no aeon?
I've never seen allergies do anything, what's the problem with allergies?
**************************[ Bodyscan - Regeneration ]************************** Stat Effect Value Max ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health Mercy 2 6 Health Dreamform -13 -13 Total -11
Mana Perfection 2 6 Mana Dreamform -13 -13 Total -11
*****************************[ Bodyscan - Vitals ]***************************** Stat Effect Value Max ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health Dreamrealm 1 8 Total 1
Mana Philosophy 1 4 Mana Analytics 1 4 Mana Dreamrealm 1 8 Mana Trance 5 10 Total 8
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited December 2015
Normal. Dreamform has always removed regen and buffed your health/mana/ego. Well not always, the regen was removed after people could outregen violet and nether and never die
The way buffs work means that -13/0 would do nothing at all. Buffs and debuffs are calculated separately, and then summed afterwards. A -13/0 debuff would be analagous to a 13/0 buff, i.e. it does nothing. If anyone was paying close attention during the end-ish of the dream event, they'd have noticed that the gods "disfavour" debuff was modified a few times, precisely because of this reason (which I hadn't realized when I first put it in).
Um, for a demigod probably not. I'm in my 80ies and it seems good for me. Lower levelers might try it in groups. The people haven't grouped on me. Or called anyone for aide(well, non have sumoned guards or the like).
First, some responses to comments up thread and general observations.
On prime, you can conceivably dreamweave to a location from a safe place, with some effort. You still cannot dreamweave cross plane, even if you link to and follow someone across planes. A few seconds after moving to a plane different to that on which their body is, the dreamweaver's silver cord snaps them back to their body (just like bodysnap). For this purpose, orgbix rooms appear to act as their own special planes - you can't even slip into the dreamrealm from an orgbix room without snapping - though this is buggy right now.
Druids and sap need (yet another) thread of their own. The short is that yeah, sap and druids are problematic for a lot of reasons. No, it's not as simple as deleting sap (or allergies, which are WAY overblown). You're just going to have to trust me that, as things stand, dreamweaving offers nothing to Druids (or indeed most melders) outside of memloss spam. In Nirvana, even with the new passive abilities and dream tower, druids get even less out of the skillset. There just isn't anything substantive left after sleeping is removed from DW, the only 'unique' benefits of DW at that point are easy access to epilepsy and blackouts. Allergies is (stupidly) a 1v1 oriented ability, but at this point, it's geared towards use by ecologists more than anyone else. With the demise of sleep attrition, daydreaming, and narcolepsy, advanced and well-calibrated systems do not have difficulty escaping a full allergy dreamweaving Druid. The Pyromancy DW report was, as I pointed out in that report, entirely strong nerfs with regards to DW druids. It's whatever. As I also pointed out in that report's comments, trying to account for sap is a lost cause at this point.
A few skills have been removed from Dreamweaving. Osmose, Spook, Deepsleep, and Void were removed. Osmose was obsolete, and Spook was removed pursuant to my report on reducing DW skillbloat. Report 1333/1116, which removed the attrition mechanic of dreamweaving, changed deepsleep and void to function towards achieving sleeplocks or extended sleeping in a target. Post that report, deepsleep was a double-sleep attack and void increased the difficulty of WAKEing successfully. With their removal, and no addition of any additional corporeal mechanics, Dreamweaving's coffin is firmly nailed if there aren't more dramatic changes.
So. The Dreamweaving additions.
Here is the thing: I generally like the idea of a skillset that encourages non-arena 1v1s with less running away. However, it will be very hard to balance that against the overwhelming emphasis on group combat. It's actually a lot easier (right now) to dreamjack someone in the middle of a fight than I originally assumed. This means that a prime strategy will be to dreamjack the most dangerous enemy in any given fight (like, the melder) and play keepaway for the duration of the dreamjack. There are plenty of ways to mitigate this problem, but I think it will end up being very hard to balance appropriately. Either it's too easy to dreamjack maze someone or it's too hard and pointless. I think that, in addition to some of the above suggested changes like creating a separate dreamjack arena-esque area inside Nirvana, decentralizing that mechanic is a good idea.
The nirvana changes provide a good mechanism for updating and revamping Dreamweaving into something better and more interesting than a (bad) vehicle for sleep attacks. The thematics of summoning/crafting objects from the Dreaming and Nirvana allows for more interesting mechanical conceits than DW has previously had. I'm still working on some ideas, but the problem I have is figuring out what the centralizing mechanic should be. For now, I have some notes on fixes for the skillset. They do not fully buff skills, make them fully balanced or complete - they are just suggestions to iron out obvious problems.
Dreamtower
- Needs to have an off-toggle for the user. Make it take a few seconds to fade out. - It should fade when the caster leaves it.
- It should show up in the room, warning others from entering that room on squint or glance.
Dreamblade
- Dreamblade should work like mindblast, attacking all three vitals.
Dreambeast
I'm honestly not sure what to do with this. Anything better than flinging random motes would be fine. Perhaps some ability that tries to grab and drag the target to the caster at range in the dream realm - like a tracking bond that moves you if it ticks when you're grabbed. Not sure.
Memoryloss
-Halve the blackout. Why not. The original point was ostensibly to create a window where the dreamweaver had sufficient time to drop insomnia, strip kafe, and sleep the target. That's not really... viable anymore anyways. (Insomnia being stripped IS hidden by blackout, btw.)
Dreamjack
-Add a dreamjacked arena to the Nirvana area. This area should be accessible to the dreamweaver ahead of time, but limit leaving it while it has a foreign dreambody ensnared.
-Make dreamjack a timed effect. The dreamweaver must be in dreamboddy and be linked to their victim (blocked by shield). They may then begin to dreamjack. After X seconds, the victim is pulled to Nirvana if they are still linked to the dreamweaver.
-Make the WAKE command eventually pop a dreamjacked person out of Nirvana. That way, if the dreamjacker just avoids all combat, the jackee can wake up. This should be a pretty long channel though, tbh.
General Nonsense
-Delete Puncture and the punctured aura mechanic
-Allow Violet/Kether sever to break dreamweaver links after a hit or two.
-Change evaluate to check health and ego (instead of mana).
I have some ideas for new skills that I will post shortly.
For the dreamjack suggestion, why not make the arena something the dreamweaver crafts while in Nirvana? A command could create an instance of a static arena that the dreamweaver could enter beforehand to prep and which would disappear after a certain amount of time. For extra convenience, this could also be based on the weavers org so BT will always weave a Wyrden arena or the Aero's would weave a cloudy one.
If others should able to enter the arena then it could have an entrance in Nirvana where it is created, or if not then the only way would be through the creating dreamweaver slipping or jacking.
Manipulating your personal arena could be cool too, but not sure how that might work.
I thought about something like that, @Saran, though my idea was a skill that would allow the dreamweaver to change the terrain of the arena all at once, to help setup there.
I've been asked to write a special report for dreamweaving to adjust the skillset further after the recent changes. I will use this thread to make suggestions and gather feedback before I email the report in.
There are a few essential problems with the skillset as it stands, some of which have been mentioned in this thread already:
1) The skillset offers little in the way of corporeal utility or power. Skill-native triple sleeping has been removed, along with the most effective motes. The real draw of dreamweaving for mages has therefore been reduced to memoryloss spamming, a noted poor mechanic. Many of the effects that drew druids to dreamweaving have also been removed, with the removal of daydreaming, narcolepsy, and passive sleeping.
2) Dreamjacking is very easy (more on that later), but getting properly engaged as a melder in Nirvana is very hard. Due to the large size of Nirvana and random nature of dreamjacking, you cannot depend on your target landing in your prepped demesne and you getting to them fast enough to tower them in place (nevermind that not being a good strategy for some classes who rely on mobility for survivability). This means that currently the only way to guarantee that a target is in your demesne in Nirvana is to travel to them, dreamtower them in place (hopefully trapping them in one room, with you...) and then raising your demesne with them attacking you. This gives momentum and affliction based enemies a massive lead. It doesn't help that dreamjacking has a 'random' release timer, based on a hidden world timer. This means you can jack someone and they immediately pop back out before you can deal with them. On top of that, no sleeping attacks work in Nirvana, further neutering the skill in what is supposed to be the dreamweaver's stronghold.
3) Dreamjacking is very strong and dramatically too easy for the effect of removing the victim for a potential long duration. Though it is hard to fight 1v1 in Nirvana, it's pathetically easy to target the strongest or most vital enemy in an opponent's group and utterly remove them from combat for a random period. This can be fixed by weakening dreamjacking, but without fixing any of the other problems this removes all incentive to pick dreamweaving.
There is a complex set of fine lines here, that will lead to one of several scenarios if not tread carefully.
*Weak Dreamjacking, Weak Nirvana : Why pick dreamweaving?
*Strong Dreamjacking, Weak Nirvana : Welcome to the maze.
*Strong Dreamjacking, Strong Nirvana : Welcome to my gank.
*Weak Dreamjacking, Strong Nirvana : Can't ever get a target into your gank.
My preferred solution is the last one, Weak Dreamjacking, Strong Nirvana, with updates and dramatic improvements to corporeal body/prime plane use. This means that the dreamjacking mechanic will become dramatically more difficult to use, but that once it is successful, your target has a far higher chance of being in a sticky situation. Improvements to corporeal dreamweaving will help to shift away from "you must dreamjack to do anything" towards "if you can get a dreamjack off, congrats! Otherwise, keep on participating in combat anyways". This solves the issue of being able to quickly and cheaply maze target by making dreamjacking more difficult, the issue of Nirvana being a space for endless running around instead of 1v1s by strengthening the dreamweaver's control over that fight, and thereby removes the need to centralize the skillset around a rocky mechanic.
I've talked about some of these problems and some potential solutions before, but here I'll compile all of the ideas I have so far. There are some basic changes that need to happen, and then at least two different directions that the skillset can go in with additional changes. I'll cover the utility changes and other things I feel will be the least controversial first. I will post the more substantive changes and suggestions in my next post, later today.
Remove Puncture/punctured aura, allow motes to always hit.
Make mote weaving free in Nirvana
Change the dreamform regeneration malus from mana to ego.
Remove the dreamform regeneration maluses for dreamweavers only in Nirvana. Potentially replace them with bonuses.
Add Void and Deepsleep back to dreamweaving. These don't work in Nirvana, there isn't any reason they should have been removed.
Halve Memoryloss blackout time time
Allow Dreamweaving Link to be severed by any skill with the existing sever command. Dreamweaving burst will also sever links. (Should take more than one hit for sever. One hit is fine for burst)
New dreamrealm skill, some time before dreamjack: Dreamjaunt. Allows you to bring allies into Nirvana for indefinite periods. Has a CONFIRM syntax on their end, put a skill limit on the number of people you can jaunt in at once - one to start, up to xxx at max. Dreamjacking successfully slips everyone dreamjaunted out of Nirvana. Dreamjaunting people can do something like PULL CORD to snap themselves back into reality early and the dreamweaver can do a command for the same thing.
Standardize dreamjacking duration to a personal timer. Someone shoot a good time, is 2 minutes okay? 1 minute isn't enough for a fight, 3-4 might be too long. Right now it's functionally random, which makes it hard to balance.
Add a message for the dreamweaver when a person they have dreamjacked or jaunted leaves the dreamrealm.
Put a toggle on dreamtower, so that the dreamweaver can lower it after a short delay.
Make dreamtower drop if the dreamweaver leaves the room. (So that they can't dreamtower an enemy and center away. Or not, if that's intended to allow the dw time to set up a demesne.
Dreamblade should do the same damage (300 every 10s) to all three vitals.
Dreamblade and beast should not vanish if the user moves to the tree elevation, and should track up and down across trees/ground.
EDIT: I've got an appointment, and need to think about some of my other proposed changes a bit more before posting them. I'll get to it tonight.
Comments
Dreamweavers cannot dreamweave from manses anymore, you have to stay on the same plane as your dreambody. For most contested areas (bubbles/domoths, cosmic planes) that means your body will have to be in the same area as the fight.
Druids are honestly nothing like the Nirvana threat you're making them out to be. Fix your system to work in Nirvana (with the constant sleep on DIAG and different prompt) and I'll prove it. Even the periodic sprawling won't really help. Chasm will be really dumb though, yes.
And is Nirvana good for bashing?
Stat Effect Value Max
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Health Mercy 2 6
Health Dreamform -13 -13
Total -11
Mana Perfection 2 6
Mana Dreamform -13 -13
Total -11
Ego Performance 2 6
Ego Beauty 2 6
Total 4
*******************************************************************************
*****************************[ Bodyscan - Vitals ]*****************************
Stat Effect Value Max
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Health Dreamrealm 1 8
Total 1
Mana Philosophy 1 4
Mana Analytics 1 4
Mana Dreamrealm 1 8
Mana Trance 5 10
Total 8
Ego Netzach 1 2
Ego Histrionics 1 4
Ego Magnetism 1 4
Ego Dreamrealm 1 8
Total 4
*******************************************************************************
So, this is a thing.
-
On prime, you can conceivably dreamweave to a location from a safe place, with some effort. You still cannot dreamweave cross plane, even if you link to and follow someone across planes. A few seconds after moving to a plane different to that on which their body is, the dreamweaver's silver cord snaps them back to their body (just like bodysnap). For this purpose, orgbix rooms appear to act as their own special planes - you can't even slip into the dreamrealm from an orgbix room without snapping - though this is buggy right now.
Druids and sap need (yet another) thread of their own. The short is that yeah, sap and druids are problematic for a lot of reasons. No, it's not as simple as deleting sap (or allergies, which are WAY overblown). You're just going to have to trust me that, as things stand, dreamweaving offers nothing to Druids (or indeed most melders) outside of memloss spam. In Nirvana, even with the new passive abilities and dream tower, druids get even less out of the skillset. There just isn't anything substantive left after sleeping is removed from DW, the only 'unique' benefits of DW at that point are easy access to epilepsy and blackouts. Allergies is (stupidly) a 1v1 oriented ability, but at this point, it's geared towards use by ecologists more than anyone else. With the demise of sleep attrition, daydreaming, and narcolepsy, advanced and well-calibrated systems do not have difficulty escaping a full allergy dreamweaving Druid. The Pyromancy DW report was, as I pointed out in that report, entirely strong nerfs with regards to DW druids. It's whatever. As I also pointed out in that report's comments, trying to account for sap is a lost cause at this point.
A few skills have been removed from Dreamweaving. Osmose, Spook, Deepsleep, and Void were removed. Osmose was obsolete, and Spook was removed pursuant to my report on reducing DW skillbloat. Report 1333/1116, which removed the attrition mechanic of dreamweaving, changed deepsleep and void to function towards achieving sleeplocks or extended sleeping in a target. Post that report, deepsleep was a double-sleep attack and void increased the difficulty of WAKEing successfully. With their removal, and no addition of any additional corporeal mechanics, Dreamweaving's coffin is firmly nailed if there aren't more dramatic changes.
So. The Dreamweaving additions.
Here is the thing: I generally like the idea of a skillset that encourages non-arena 1v1s with less running away. However, it will be very hard to balance that against the overwhelming emphasis on group combat. It's actually a lot easier (right now) to dreamjack someone in the middle of a fight than I originally assumed. This means that a prime strategy will be to dreamjack the most dangerous enemy in any given fight (like, the melder) and play keepaway for the duration of the dreamjack. There are plenty of ways to mitigate this problem, but I think it will end up being very hard to balance appropriately. Either it's too easy to dreamjack maze someone or it's too hard and pointless. I think that, in addition to some of the above suggested changes like creating a separate dreamjack arena-esque area inside Nirvana, decentralizing that mechanic is a good idea.
The nirvana changes provide a good mechanism for updating and revamping Dreamweaving into something better and more interesting than a (bad) vehicle for sleep attacks. The thematics of summoning/crafting objects from the Dreaming and Nirvana allows for more interesting mechanical conceits than DW has previously had. I'm still working on some ideas, but the problem I have is figuring out what the centralizing mechanic should be. For now, I have some notes on fixes for the skillset. They do not fully buff skills, make them fully balanced or complete - they are just suggestions to iron out obvious problems.
Dreamtower
- It should fade when the caster leaves it.
Dreamblade
Dreambeast
A command could create an instance of a static arena that the dreamweaver could enter beforehand to prep and which would disappear after a certain amount of time. For extra convenience, this could also be based on the weavers org so BT will always weave a Wyrden arena or the Aero's would weave a cloudy one.
If others should able to enter the arena then it could have an entrance in Nirvana where it is created, or if not then the only way would be through the creating dreamweaver slipping or jacking.
Manipulating your personal arena could be cool too, but not sure how that might work.
There are a few essential problems with the skillset as it stands, some of which have been mentioned in this thread already:
1) The skillset offers little in the way of corporeal utility or power. Skill-native triple sleeping has been removed, along with the most effective motes. The real draw of dreamweaving for mages has therefore been reduced to memoryloss spamming, a noted poor mechanic. Many of the effects that drew druids to dreamweaving have also been removed, with the removal of daydreaming, narcolepsy, and passive sleeping.
There is a complex set of fine lines here, that will lead to one of several scenarios if not tread carefully.
I've talked about some of these problems and some potential solutions before, but here I'll compile all of the ideas I have so far. There are some basic changes that need to happen, and then at least two different directions that the skillset can go in with additional changes. I'll cover the utility changes and other things I feel will be the least controversial first. I will post the more substantive changes and suggestions in my next post, later today.