Stealth could definitely use some envoy loving.
Almost 3/4ths of its skills serve no useful beneficial purpose, and
even less manage to do so well. I understand that the skill theme
intended to encapsulate 'sneakiness', however in Lusternia there is
absolutely no benefit from such behavior. In comparison to a strong
utility and combat secondary like Harmony, Stealth really falls short.
As
such the blowgun skills are one of the worst offenders, truly serving
absolutely no beneficial purpose in the hands of -monks-. I'd like to
suggest making darts a bit more useful, by allowing darts to pierce and
break shields when they hit for a power cost, or to launch multiple
darts at once for a power cost.
Stealth is a skillset that has some of the most useful utility abilities in the game. Certainly, it has zero of Harmony's regeneration or combat applications, but nevertheless, Stealth serves a niche that replaces some artifacts and stunts only demis can pull off. It has great circumstantial use, quite a bit to do with questing. Of course, if you're not a questor, then it's pretty much a skillset you learn up to adept for the minor stat boosts and then forget about. Certainly, it would be nice to see Stealth get more viable use in combat, since the few combat related abilities in the skill is rather lacklustre. You could ask your envoy and those of your city's envoys to look into it, I suppose. Here's a list to help you get started:
- Stealth waylay It is a great combat skill in groups. Makes pinning down those single-person raider who runs a little easier, and can possibly change the outcome of a team fight if you waylay the correct person and disrupt a crucial tactic (scissor/gpent etc). It is, however, out-matched by a tracker's pit in almost every single conceivable application (not saying that it should be better) and it is pretty much utterly useless in 1v1. Weaknesses include having a balance cost which is incurred when the effect is triggered, which is longer than the stun it causes, making it impossible to perform any action before the target is standing again. The chance to block movement is also decidedly low, and does not cause any kind of balance loss, making repeated movement commands almost a guaranteed bypass of the block. You could look at boosting the 1v1 aspect of it, lowering the balance time on waylay triggering, or perhaps buffing the block, but not the balance time etc etc.
- Ghostwalk Costs 3p, has a 15 room limit, same channeled requirements as a teleport. Basically a silent teleport with an extra room-radius limit. It's useful if you are trying to move into an afk person's room silently. Has little application anywhere else. Many ways to improve this, remove the power cost or remove the room limit, alternatively buff the effect, ie. allow it to move you to the target as long as they are still within the room radius when the channel finishes, even if they are no longer in the original room when you cast this, alternatively, buff waylay and have it apply waylay on your target when you enter the room successfully, etc etc.
- Truss (Rush) and Drag Applies a writhe affliction to the target if they are already prone, fails if not. Basically a weaker web enchant. Rush adds a power cost to make it possible to truss without the prone req, and doable from an adjacent room. Drag moves the target in specified direction with you if they are trussed. Not really useful for its balance cost (3.5-4s on neutral), but has theoretical application in team fights. Of course, in a team fight, a monk is better off doing their normal kata forms, but theoretically, you can help stack writhes on a target. Dragging as a forced movement ability is inferior to its counterparts, since the only way to be able to drag after the balance cost is when the target is already writhe-stacked and did not tipharet/summer out. In which case it's probably better to leave the target in the room so he can be finished off. There is theoretical application, however, in that you can drag a target into a pit and mess them up even more without moving them away from harm, though I'm not 100% sure dragging will trigger pits. Still, requires coordination for a good possible reward. You could look to making dragging easier to pull off, either by lowering truss balance cost significantly, but keeping the prone req, or you could try to make truss more useful by removing the prone req, adding a stun if the target is already prone, etc.
Darts is already being envoyed, you could always brainstorm for more ideas if the current report doesn't make it through, of course. Darts being deleted or replaced have already been rejected, so keep in mind that as you brainstorm.
Hope this helps.
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Idea: Make soulless tarot commands (rub, sniff, fling) usable with cards' item numbers. Currently you can only "rub/sniff/fling soulless" which will pick the most recent one to enter your inventory.
It's possible to juggle multiple soulless with containers, but this is an unnecessary pain. Show tarot some love!
3
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Soulless and tarot need no love. Nor does keeping a pre rubbed soulless stockpile ever need to be a thing. I think that the way it is for a reason.
Soulless cards decay in one weave and this isn't stopped by stockrooms, slow-decay, non-decay containers etc. Nothing in the idea would change that.
The suggested functionality (having more than one soulless on the go) is already possible and I'm sure being done by more people than just me. The purpose of the change is to allow tarotists to use more complex rub/fling strategies without an unnecessarily large amount of client side scripting.
which will sniff any soulless tarot in your inventory that has been rubbed on the targeted player when the [player] argument is added
and having
RUB SOULLESS ON <target> FLING SOULLESS AT <target>
be changed to prefer soulless tarots that have been rubbed the target previously, then soulless tarots that have not been rubbed, then all other soulless tarots. Assuming it doesn't work like that already?
When you sniff a card, you'll see: "You sniff the card of the Soulless, and sense it has been imprinted upon \w+ (\d+) times." so there's no trouble telling who has been rubbed by a particular card.
It gets complex if you want to have multiple cards being prepared at the same time to fake people out with missed flings under blackout, extra rubs etc. Currently, you have to put all but the one you want to be working with somewhere other than your inventory. If you want to switch to another, you have to put the first away and retrieve the original one from wherever you put it.
All that isn't really necessary if you can identify the particular card you want to use in the rub, sniff or fling command.
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited November 2012
They could probably use the shadowtwist code for a bit of convenience. No matter how many shadows you have collected, if you target a person, it will always twist their shadow, even if it's not the first in your inventory (though you'll always probe the first). The difference however is that shadows decay at dawn, every dawn, so they have a tendency to spontaneously poof in the middle of a fight, don't kill a person, and use power.
As an envoy, if I ever saw this report, I'd probably reject it and suggest no more than one soulless be active at any given time. Just as an FYI. If you want to juggle containers and script for days, I won't stop you, but considering similiar mechanics in other more limited skills...I won't support it. It's not that I think it'll be too powerful, I just don't think you need it.
Probably a good idea about the snarkyness.
edit: Personally I think removing trick flings and blackout/fling would be a blessing to balance everywhere.
Any report saying "all other warriors have a weapon aura, give us one" is doomed to failure these days. The idea would have to survive on its own merit (in terms of balance and flavour), and none have thus far.
Sentinels need some sort of Weapon Aura like ALL THE OTHER WARRIORS
While it's not quite a weaponaura, I've recently made another draft for an Aeonics ability that benefits Sentinels. Report 996. Let me know what you make of it, or if you have suggestions for alternate ability!
This really isn't the place to philosophize about lore and semantics, but technically, Hallifax doesn't "control" time, as far as I understand it, at least not to the extent that the words "control" and "stop their own deaths" imply. The exact degree and application of Hallifax's ability to understand and/or manipulate time depends on your style of RP and imagination, but even putting aside game balance concerns, I never got the impression from IC lore that Hallifaxians can create a time portal and jump through, or do a "ZA WARUDO" time-freeze kind of thing.
Although, it might be reasonable from an IC point of view if some Institute member created a contraption that could put someone or something in a temporal freeze, ala cryogenic stasis that might literally "stop" a fatality in progress.
An idea for illusions: Add in a new illusion ability called Refined or something like that. The syntax is: WEAVE REFINED <illusion name> [REVISE] [FOCUS] <delay> [COLOUR <colour>]
and either weaves the specified illusion (using the mana costs for improved illusions) or, if you add the revise argument, takes you into the editor to enter the text of your illusion. 0 power for newlines, but has a 20s EQ on it (E: and a border of ***** marks around it to make it obvious that it is an illusion.)
The idea behind this is to let people make custom fireworks and aciii art illusions without it looking weird because of client side screwiness.
E2: Also, let us do something similar with stage effects please.
I... don't really like that idea at all. Even at a 20s EQ. Bam hello wall-of-text.
At least with emotes and says you have to actually be saying something to make it extend that far, and ASCII art in the game proper is something that should probably be left to the Administration's discretion. It's a text game! Make an illusion describing your art and what you want me to see, don't bludgeon me over the head with it.
Well illusions aside, I think it would be a nice change for the theatre. Having to describe fireworks and special effects in a medium where they would be readily visible is annoying.
I have no objections to the concept being added to stages. I think it can be a very nice addition (see: ASCII art in books), but it's not something I want to see slammed into the main game via illusions which can be done any time, anywhere.
You choose to "read" a book; it might have illustrations. You choose to "watch" a play, and it may have 3d popout art. In both cases it's not terribly immersion-breaking (to me) if I see a picture on my screen.
I would just hate to have lawl-cats start showing up at the Ravenwood in graphic detail.
Been pondering on the concept of a swing for Pureblade (possibly Axelord) that goes across the head/arms (Thinking 30/60/30 in % chances)
Being a swing it doesn't benefit from sever nerve, but you've an alternative to hackdown for behead chances. As opposed to constantly building wounds on the chest, you've a chance at Collapse Nerve (or if you're fortunate enough to keep hitting the same arm, an amputate) As things stand, hack down doesn't feel rewarding enough considering you've had to strip defences to pull it off, and you can't behead off an assault or cleave (as it's a jab) And I don't see another envoy on hack down changing much.
The reason I'm not sure if this is worth extending to Axelords, is that Hack Down building wounds across the middle of the body is useful for their execute special, and a swing across both arms would give them access to fracture as well as break.
This is more me shooting ideas that I've been thinking rather than trying to submit any final idea. But anyone else who's interested on trying to work on a balanced alternative to HD for PB's feel free to help out.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
The issue lies with chain hitting the chest, the brief stun immunity negates any afflictions on that second hit. Without any real risk to the chest at Critical for PB, chain hitting it gives the target enough time to cure most of the headwounding.
My only other thought was adding an affliction at critical to chests, but I'm still unsure as to what would be suitable/balanced.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Stun immunity is less than one second, it's gone before you hit chest again. And stun/dulak (presumably) should slow wound curing. If you want to build head wounds, strike or assault it- don't hack down. The only time you need to hack down as a pureblade is if you're going for slitthroat (presumably you've tendoned first, so you'll be aiming for hardlock with senso) or behead. Or just to spread out stance and parry away from legs/arms, I guess. Which stun is also good for.
You also really shouldn't be hitting chest that much on hack down, as there's a 75% chance for head and 25% chance for chest.
You should be spending most of your time on legs/arms until they're good and stuck with regeneration affs (tendon, collapsenerve) keeping them down, or stunned/bleeding from amputations. That's when you wail away at head.
Well, you'd be hard pressed to buff hack down after a statement like "even two hit amps these days."
Just FYI.
I don't think Hackdown the skill needs changing, infact I don't actually think I've asked for any changes to be made to it.
Also, two hit amps aren't from hackdowns, that's assaults (which can't behead) on people with poor robes and no skill in Resilience. It's far easier to amp than it is to behead, and that's before you take into account parry/stance/rebounding.
Like I said, this was me more elaborating on something I'd pondered and wanted opinions though, so thanks for the feedback.
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
What, man I know hack down does not amputate. I was a warrior at one point. What you are basically asking for a is new "hack down." Swing that hits head and possibly arms, head being the important part.
The point was, if you are having such an easy time building wounds, I'm not sure giving you more options is the best argument to make.
Comments
Stealth is a skillset that has some of the most useful utility abilities in the game. Certainly, it has zero of Harmony's regeneration or combat applications, but nevertheless, Stealth serves a niche that replaces some artifacts and stunts only demis can pull off. It has great circumstantial use, quite a bit to do with questing. Of course, if you're not a questor, then it's pretty much a skillset you learn up to adept for the minor stat boosts and then forget about. Certainly, it would be nice to see Stealth get more viable use in combat, since the few combat related abilities in the skill is rather lacklustre. You could ask your envoy and those of your city's envoys to look into it, I suppose. Here's a list to help you get started:
- Stealth waylay
It is a great combat skill in groups. Makes pinning down those single-person raider who runs a little easier, and can possibly change the outcome of a team fight if you waylay the correct person and disrupt a crucial tactic (scissor/gpent etc). It is, however, out-matched by a tracker's pit in almost every single conceivable application (not saying that it should be better) and it is pretty much utterly useless in 1v1. Weaknesses include having a balance cost which is incurred when the effect is triggered, which is longer than the stun it causes, making it impossible to perform any action before the target is standing again. The chance to block movement is also decidedly low, and does not cause any kind of balance loss, making repeated movement commands almost a guaranteed bypass of the block. You could look at boosting the 1v1 aspect of it, lowering the balance time on waylay triggering, or perhaps buffing the block, but not the balance time etc etc.
- Ghostwalk
Costs 3p, has a 15 room limit, same channeled requirements as a teleport. Basically a silent teleport with an extra room-radius limit. It's useful if you are trying to move into an afk person's room silently. Has little application anywhere else. Many ways to improve this, remove the power cost or remove the room limit, alternatively buff the effect, ie. allow it to move you to the target as long as they are still within the room radius when the channel finishes, even if they are no longer in the original room when you cast this, alternatively, buff waylay and have it apply waylay on your target when you enter the room successfully, etc etc.
- Truss (Rush) and Drag
Applies a writhe affliction to the target if they are already prone, fails if not. Basically a weaker web enchant. Rush adds a power cost to make it possible to truss without the prone req, and doable from an adjacent room. Drag moves the target in specified direction with you if they are trussed. Not really useful for its balance cost (3.5-4s on neutral), but has theoretical application in team fights. Of course, in a team fight, a monk is better off doing their normal kata forms, but theoretically, you can help stack writhes on a target. Dragging as a forced movement ability is inferior to its counterparts, since the only way to be able to drag after the balance cost is when the target is already writhe-stacked and did not tipharet/summer out. In which case it's probably better to leave the target in the room so he can be finished off. There is theoretical application, however, in that you can drag a target into a pit and mess them up even more without moving them away from harm, though I'm not 100% sure dragging will trigger pits. Still, requires coordination for a good possible reward. You could look to making dragging easier to pull off, either by lowering truss balance cost significantly, but keeping the prone req, or you could try to make truss more useful by removing the prone req, adding a stun if the target is already prone, etc.
Darts is already being envoyed, you could always brainstorm for more ideas if the current report doesn't make it through, of course. Darts being deleted or replaced have already been rejected, so keep in mind that as you brainstorm.
Hope this helps.
SNIFF SOULLESS [player]which will sniff any soulless tarot in your inventory that has been rubbed on the targeted player when the [player] argument is added
and having
RUB SOULLESS ON <target>
FLING SOULLESS AT <target>be changed to prefer soulless tarots that have been rubbed the target previously, then soulless tarots that have not been rubbed, then all other soulless tarots. Assuming it doesn't work like that already?
They could probably use the shadowtwist code for a bit of convenience. No matter how many shadows you have collected, if you target a person, it will always twist their shadow, even if it's not the first in your inventory (though you'll always probe the first). The difference however is that shadows decay at dawn, every dawn, so they have a tendency to spontaneously poof in the middle of a fight, don't kill a person, and use power.
As an envoy, if I ever saw this report, I'd probably reject it and suggest no more than one soulless be active at any given time. Just as an FYI. If you want to juggle containers and script for days, I won't stop you, but considering similiar mechanics in other more limited skills...I won't support it. It's not that I think it'll be too powerful, I just don't think you need it.
Probably a good idea about the snarkyness.
edit: Personally I think removing trick flings and blackout/fling would be a blessing to balance everywhere.
Although, it might be reasonable from an IC point of view if some Institute member created a contraption that could put someone or something in a temporal freeze, ala cryogenic stasis that might literally "stop" a fatality in progress.
WEAVE REFINED <illusion name> [REVISE] [FOCUS] <delay> [COLOUR <colour>]
and either weaves the specified illusion (using the mana costs for improved illusions) or, if you add the revise argument, takes you into the editor to enter the text of your illusion. 0 power for newlines, but has a 20s EQ on it (E: and a border of ***** marks around it to make it obvious that it is an illusion.)
The idea behind this is to let people make custom fireworks and aciii art illusions without it looking weird because of client side screwiness.
E2: Also, let us do something similar with stage effects please.
At least with emotes and says you have to actually be saying something to make it extend that far, and ASCII art in the game proper is something that should probably be left to the Administration's discretion. It's a text game! Make an illusion describing your art and what you want me to see, don't bludgeon me over the head with it.
You choose to "read" a book; it might have illustrations. You choose to "watch" a play, and it may have 3d popout art. In both cases it's not terribly immersion-breaking (to me) if I see a picture on my screen.
I would just hate to have lawl-cats start showing up at the Ravenwood in graphic detail.
Being a swing it doesn't benefit from sever nerve, but you've an alternative to hackdown for behead chances. As opposed to constantly building wounds on the chest, you've a chance at Collapse Nerve (or if you're fortunate enough to keep hitting the same arm, an amputate) As things stand, hack down doesn't feel rewarding enough considering you've had to strip defences to pull it off, and you can't behead off an assault or cleave (as it's a jab) And I don't see another envoy on hack down changing much.
The reason I'm not sure if this is worth extending to Axelords, is that Hack Down building wounds across the middle of the body is useful for their execute special, and a swing across both arms would give them access to fracture as well as break.
This is more me shooting ideas that I've been thinking rather than trying to submit any final idea. But anyone else who's interested on trying to work on a balanced alternative to HD for PB's feel free to help out.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
My only other thought was adding an affliction at critical to chests, but I'm still unsure as to what would be suitable/balanced.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
It sure doesn't feel like 75% on headwound. I've probably had a bad patch of RNG stand out again.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Well, you'd be hard pressed to buff hack down after a statement like "even two hit amps these days."
Just FYI.
Also, two hit amps aren't from hackdowns, that's assaults (which can't behead) on people with poor robes and no skill in Resilience. It's far easier to amp than it is to behead, and that's before you take into account parry/stance/rebounding.
Like I said, this was me more elaborating on something I'd pondered and wanted opinions though, so thanks for the feedback.
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Change gatemastery so that bonding to a gate doesn't make it unusable for everyone else.