Bards aren't the worst class in the game, in fact I feel they're one of the best balanced (see my speech on tertiary independence when it comes to kills).
But there probably has to be a bottom spec when there are 6 specs of the same thing, so that's where Symphonium comes (?) in. I will admit this partly has to do with no one being around to properly whore it, so we're now getting a good idea of what it can and can't do. Furthermore, you can attribute this new "evaluation" of Symphonium given the release of Dramaturgy, so arguments about Symphonium possibly being too much with the release of Dramaturgy is a fair line of thought.
But anyway.
I think it's pretty trivial to check for lust given the ALLIES/ENEMY (target) command, but it does take a fairly hefty balance to REJECT them (might even require other conditions, can't remember). So I kind of agree that it's a bit iffy to maintain hidden lust for long (especially if you're fighting a known luster), but it is possible to maintain it for a few seconds especially if you have access to aeon -and- stun.
P.S. small eq cost to rejecting no one, doing enemies/allies, and enemying targets please. We can reduce reject eq to an equally short amount in exchange.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
I think the big dispute is coming down to theory crafting fights. Ollie isn't a particularly dangerous combatant, and it doesn't sound like he is not a mugwump which would shave off a huge portion of dramaturgy scene equilibrium. Thus far, systems haven't been designed to track the generic aff message that dramaturgy gives, most likely because that is extremely easy to fool with illusions. So we now have this skill that can give you any affliction they like with any line they like and systems are having to do a 180 to accommodate one skillset. I, personally, think expecting everyone to spam "focus mind/reject ollie" endlessly is a bit irrational.
Is loralaria OP now? I don't know, but this whole reverse lust mechanic is obnoxious and poorly designed. Lust and the lengthy reject has been designed for and balanced around being a hurtle for those with passives to overcome. Suddenly they've flipped the switch and now it's a boon for loralaria? That's just odd, and really impractical to balance around.
@Celina of all my posts, I'm happy to see that's all you picked out to call out. It is likely the most inaccurate, I'll concede the point.
Beyond that, I agree, Loralaria being lust centric sucks for all parties involved. (I know especially since I spar Ollie all the time, and I'm a mage.) I'm just trying to defend against people kneejerk calling for nerfs to something they haven't even considered how to counter. (Because it is counter-able, I assure you) In the end, I don't think there's anything inherently OP about the class, the issue is that it's not really fun to fight.
I think having totally hidden lust is slightly problematic. Tarot style hidden lust at least gives a person a warning to check allies, I think dramaturgy needs something similar.
What if ~2-3s after performing a scene you saw a line like "Ollie takes a bow, his personal performance for you completed." That would not take any power from the system-screwing power of dramaturgy but would give you a warning that a potential lust happened. (Note I'm a terrible writer so don't get hung up on the actual suggested line.)
That being said I'd be all for a redo in terms of how lust works. I tried nerfing psymet pheromones forever ago because it acts as a hard counter against a fair number of people and part of that reason is that in a 1v1 situation to keep me enemied requires you spend 4s of eq every 15s, if we reduced the reject time that would also help alleviate that problem (while keeping pheromones better than love potion which I obviously want).
So discernment has a lot of skill bloat, and one of the skills I feel is fairly meh is powermask. What do people think we can do to this skill to make it actually worth it?
It's true that powermask is pretty much unused. Anyone who attacks planar mobs will get found out, and not from people checking powerlogs. I don't think the other ways of draining power from an enemy nexus is often used either. Generally speaking people commit these hostile acts against an org with the full intention of being enemied for it. There's just little reason to mask powersteals.
I personally feel changing its scope and design entirely would be the best solution, though that'll depend on whether the admin want to do it. Could keep the power and masking aspects and make it hide your power level on discern, or prevent people from powersensing you.
I actually haven't been looking at the forums for a while, and I just noticed the argument that came out due to the Loralaria thing.
Here's the way it went... Ollie does his dramaturgy thing with lust/subtext anorexia. Considering the fact it pops in as an emote and I'm still not used to dramaturgy, I pretty much go... eh, he's emoting in an attempt to fool me into scrubbing. No biggie. The whole thing about lust/anorexia didn't even come to mind at the time of the fight. Anyways, that said... I have never fought a symphonium one:one, and while I've looked at the skillset on several occasions, the whole double sleep/double aeon thing didn't even enter my mind at the time either. Yes, metawake might have helped... a bit, but anyways, going off on a tangent here. Passive music tics up, I get double-sleep. It is immediately followed by active music hit (Literally before the system could even attempt waking) which afflicts with double-aeon and stun. System tries to cure sleep under aeon, ends up stunned... from that point on, it's pretty much a case of hoping that you can get out of it. Before I can wake up, I'm smacked with a shield stun for yet another several seconds, at which point the fight is over as a beast spit of crotamine has been ticking since the sleep. By the time I manage to wake up, I get smacked with another double sleep which ends up with me without even the protection of kafe. Game over. (Mind you, I did manage to wake and got to the point of an attempted sip of phlegmatic to cure the aeon, at which point it realized I was also anorexic)
I doubt metawake would have done much to save me from this particular situation as I'm under a long stun one way or the other. I might have gotten out if I could've focused mind, but probably not under the aeon, as at that point, it's getting to be a rather ridiculous situation. Even without the added issue of Wyrdenwood being slow to wake.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
I doubt metawake would have done much to save me from this particular situation as I'm under a long stun one way or the other. I might have gotten out if I could've focused mind, but probably not under the aeon, as at that point, it's getting to be a rather ridiculous situation. Even without the added issue of Wyrdenwood being slow to wake.
Can we get away from the generalizations? I really wish you wouldn't decry the need for a nerf because you died once without using nearly all the options to counter available to you.
It's kind of ridiculous to say "metawake may have helped, but I don't think so, even though I haven't tried it." Then follow up with saying the skills should be adjusted. You should adjust your own approach to fighting Ollie first.
One day I will create a tactic and everyone will make me famous! (can we get a different thread for the Loralaria thing, please? )
Can we get a skill for bards that'll allow us to discern which auric afflictions affect a target? I know this may be done by highlighting and stuff, but still!
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!"
#bringShikariback
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EveriineWise Old Swordsbird / BrontaurIndianapolis, IN, USA
It should be the Siam Maneuver, and will go right up there with the Picard, Riker, and the Adama Maneuver.
Everiine is a man, and is very manly. This MAN before you is so manly you might as well just gender bend right now, cause he's the manliest man that you ever did see. His manly shape has spurned many women and girlyer men to boughs of fainting. He stands before you in a manly manerific typical man-like outfit which is covered in his manly motto: "I am a man!"
Daraius said: You gotta risk it for the biscuit.
Pony power all the way, yo. The more Brontaurs the better.
Its illusions you cant see through, that you can hide afflictions, and many of them are very powerful afflictions.
Dramaturgy should require you NOT be imitating a current skill, similar to how you cannot illusion a prompt, you should not be able to drama anything thats obviously false. Covering you with slime when there is none, causing your head to bleed when you could tell there is no blood, etc. Dramaturgy should be a fanciful way to use afflictions, it should not just be a replacement for illusions.
1) Buckle down on using them as illusions. I am ok with using them unusually for custom RP, but things you cant reasonably act out, or that I would notice is false should not be usable. 2) Lust should not be hideable, give it a solid message like "You swoon for <person>."
As an aside, Symphonium are not the weakest bards. But I do recall saying Symphoniums were the next Bardians, dramaturgy on demand affs made cantors and symphonium better at it than many guardians. Aeon, anorexia (or similar effects as cantors used to), etc. I love being proven right ^_^
It's pretty obviously not meant to be illusion-esque because it gives aff messages. Which is why I think they should include a way for systems to at least trigger on them without it. It seems like a very sloppy implementation otherwise to be frank.
Dole out a rule where people shouldn't be allowed to copy real attacks!
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!"
I doubt metawake would have done much to save me from this particular situation as I'm under a long stun one way or the other. I might have gotten out if I could've focused mind, but probably not under the aeon, as at that point, it's getting to be a rather ridiculous situation. Even without the added issue of Wyrdenwood being slow to wake.
Can we get away from the generalizations? I really wish you wouldn't decry the need for a nerf because you died once without using nearly all the options to counter available to you.
It's kind of ridiculous to say "metawake may have helped, but I don't think so, even though I haven't tried it." Then follow up with saying the skills should be adjusted. You should adjust your own approach to fighting Ollie first.
The word you're looking for is an opinion. It is my opinion that it wouldn't have saved me in that situation. That said, I normally don't walk in locations with metawake up at random. Sure, I probably could've put it up somewhere during the fight, but everyone has perfect 20/20 hindsight.... and some of us get the whole adrenaline thing going when they're fighting, which usually doesn't help clear thinking at the time.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Envoys should request a review of Avenger so we can stop having BS issues and bugs. Iron out whats wrong with it or get rid of it, stop blaming players of abusing it when it works as intended. Fix the "loopholes" in it, and address being able to help the person without declare, since in the instance of defilers and such that is abuse of its own.
Also, make healing require declare to give auras. So you cant give insomnia stripping without declare to help in a fight.
I don't want to open a can of worms here, so maybe we'd like to open a new topic, but do you think we should just remove the auto-declare on shrine defiling instead? It doesn't really make sense that someone can place a shrine anywhere on prime and automatically be able to keep it up while anyone wanting to take it down has to face a one-sided disadvantage of dealing with avenger. This also ameliorates the stupid abusable mechanic of activating invasion and killing off lowbies without getting status.
There are so many bugs, mistakes, and issues, and I am not in a positive enough mood to put it eloquently or reasonably. So I will go with the ever popular "they are broken and are likely to never be fixed". If shrines were going to be fixed they would been fixed during the supervoy period with Shuyin leadin things, but invasion and such was never touched soooo yeah.
Invasion and wrath powers should only target people on Prime if they are on enemy territory, defiling the Shrine itself or it's a special free for all event.
I disagree with removing the auto declare, but perhaps make it so that you can't jump in through ally? Edit: Further clarification. If you defile a shrine, you're FFA to members of that Divine Order, but people can't ally them and defend them to attack you.
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!
Invasion and wrath powers should only target people on Prime if they are on enemy territory, defiling the Shrine itself or it's a special free for all event.
I disagree with removing the auto declare, but perhaps make it so that you can't jump in through ally? Edit: Further clarification. If you defile a shrine, you're FFA to members of that Divine Order, but people can't ally them and defend them to attack you.
I guess it's just my personal view of things and I generally avoid Prime shrine defiling. However, I've always felt like people putting shrines wherever they like (even in places where it might understandably offend someone rp-wise) shouldn't be defended by Avenger the way it is now. I could feasibly go to a place that hates my org, put a shrine juuuust outside in a common entrance and giggle and pat myself on the back knowing that if they defiled it (and my order has sufficient combatants) there's little they can do without getting status. It feels very...backward to me. I feel like both sides should have to declare.
Say someone sticks up a Terentia shrine in the middle of Shallach, which goes and pisses off a bunch of Mags. So some guys from Morgfyre go up there and defile the nuts out of it. The Terentia folk turn up and in that area alone they and the Morgfyre followers can then freely engage each other. Everyone else follows the same rules as per usual regarding avenger if they want to get involved.
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!
Big orders would have huge advantages with impunity, and small orders would have 0 they could do.
Shrines should be a major investment from an Order. We throw them everywhere, make the powers for areas weaker or removed altogether, respect avenger, and not swing whole fights.
Shrines should have a notable impact when destroyed. Damage to a gods essence, weakening of their realm mobs (also removing ability to empower), and damage to all favours they have issued perhaps. Woah Malarious I like my 30 day TFs and 100+ realm mobs, what are you trying to do? I am trying to make it be a vested choice to put up a shrine somewhere. It should come with major and real consequences. In exchange shrines should have defenses. This could get wordy so I will make an example.
A shrine on merian isle is slated to be defiled.
The first defile is done, the shrine calls for help and defends itself. Invasion is triggered as various numbers of rooms are destroyed, these mobs will track after a delay or if they see someone. In addition another power is called based on shrine type.
Any Order members who show up to defend will be under the effect of Vendetta and an additional power based on shrine.
If no Order members are in the local area of the shrine (or areas) it will call invasion every few unsanc'd rooms.
Fighting breaks out, heavily in the Orders favor of course. Somehow the shrine dies as everyone goes combat happy.
As the shrine is destroyed it sends out ripples of pain to those nearby, potentially killing them (this is a non avenger causing status, shrine dying does NOT grant suspect/veng). The godrealm shutters as the mobs become weakened (attempts to influence them shows them all as weakened) until the shrine death timer runs out. TF's might drop by 15% per person or from TF to SF sort of thing. Eventru zaps his Order because he just lost a large portion of his essence.
That would hurt, its painful, it is what we should expect. We play with shrines as toys and treat em like quick demesne's. In reality they should be a serious investment that an Order is ready to take great pains to protect. We need to make them either have far less value power wise and be more RP bound (and thus more reason to defile them to make a statement) OR we need to make them stronger and have HUGE costs attached (instead of like 100K essence, it should be 2 million or 10% of divines essence, whatever is higher). It should be major costs for major effects.
Could open a mechanic for restoring a divine whose spark has weakened too, if anyone goes crazy on shrines.
The detriment should have an equal effect. If Eventru has only a small amount of essence at the time perhaps some of his rooms explode or he goes negative (again we can have some new mechanics for empowering divine back to normal). If he has a bunch it takes a bunch! I would not treat Eventru and Zvoltz the same for example, I assume Eventru has much stronger ties and bonds, so breaking one should hurt him more.
But its not fair to hurt one divine more for having more stuff!
He has a bigger Order, it needs to be offset. % wise it should cause about the same level of issue.
Comments
What if ~2-3s after performing a scene you saw a line like "Ollie takes a bow, his personal performance for you completed." That would not take any power from the system-screwing power of dramaturgy but would give you a warning that a potential lust happened. (Note I'm a terrible writer so don't get hung up on the actual suggested line.)
That being said I'd be all for a redo in terms of how lust works. I tried nerfing psymet pheromones forever ago because it acts as a hard counter against a fair number of people and part of that reason is that in a 1v1 situation to keep me enemied requires you spend 4s of eq every 15s, if we reduced the reject time that would also help alleviate that problem (while keeping pheromones better than love potion which I obviously want).
Someone give me a medal.
I personally feel changing its scope and design entirely would be the best solution, though that'll depend on whether the admin want to do it. Could keep the power and masking aspects and make it hide your power level on discern, or prevent people from powersensing you.
Here's the way it went... Ollie does his dramaturgy thing with lust/subtext anorexia. Considering the fact it pops in as an emote and I'm still not used to dramaturgy, I pretty much go... eh, he's emoting in an attempt to fool me into scrubbing. No biggie. The whole thing about lust/anorexia didn't even come to mind at the time of the fight. Anyways, that said... I have never fought a symphonium one:one, and while I've looked at the skillset on several occasions, the whole double sleep/double aeon thing didn't even enter my mind at the time either. Yes, metawake might have helped... a bit, but anyways, going off on a tangent here. Passive music tics up, I get double-sleep. It is immediately followed by active music hit (Literally before the system could even attempt waking) which afflicts with double-aeon and stun. System tries to cure sleep under aeon, ends up stunned... from that point on, it's pretty much a case of hoping that you can get out of it. Before I can wake up, I'm smacked with a shield stun for yet another several seconds, at which point the fight is over as a beast spit of crotamine has been ticking since the sleep. By the time I manage to wake up, I get smacked with another double sleep which ends up with me without even the protection of kafe. Game over. (Mind you, I did manage to wake and got to the point of an attempted sip of phlegmatic to cure the aeon, at which point it realized I was also anorexic)
I doubt metawake would have done much to save me from this particular situation as I'm under a long stun one way or the other. I might have gotten out if I could've focused mind, but probably not under the aeon, as at that point, it's getting to be a rather ridiculous situation. Even without the added issue of Wyrdenwood being slow to wake.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Can we get away from the generalizations? I really wish you wouldn't decry the need for a nerf because you died once without using nearly all the options to counter available to you.
Can we get a skill for bards that'll allow us to discern which auric afflictions affect a target? I know this may be done by highlighting and stuff, but still!
Its illusions you cant see through, that you can hide afflictions, and many of them are very powerful afflictions.
Dramaturgy should require you NOT be imitating a current skill, similar to how you cannot illusion a prompt, you should not be able to drama anything thats obviously false. Covering you with slime when there is none, causing your head to bleed when you could tell there is no blood, etc. Dramaturgy should be a fanciful way to use afflictions, it should not just be a replacement for illusions.
1) Buckle down on using them as illusions. I am ok with using them unusually for custom RP, but things you cant reasonably act out, or that I would notice is false should not be usable.
2) Lust should not be hideable, give it a solid message like "You swoon for <person>."
As an aside, Symphonium are not the weakest bards. But I do recall saying Symphoniums were the next Bardians, dramaturgy on demand affs made cantors and symphonium better at it than many guardians. Aeon, anorexia (or similar effects as cantors used to), etc. I love being proven right ^_^
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Also, make healing require declare to give auras. So you cant give insomnia stripping without declare to help in a fight.
I disagree with removing the auto declare, but perhaps make it so that you can't jump in through ally? Edit: Further clarification. If you defile a shrine, you're FFA to members of that Divine Order, but people can't ally them and defend them to attack you.
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!
You so funny.
(May turn out weird due to being on the mobile site. Forums really need a preview button.)
Signature!
Say someone sticks up a Terentia shrine in the middle of Shallach, which goes and pisses off a bunch of Mags. So some guys from Morgfyre go up there and defile the nuts out of it. The Terentia folk turn up and in that area alone they and the Morgfyre followers can then freely engage each other. Everyone else follows the same rules as per usual regarding avenger if they want to get involved.
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!
Big orders would have huge advantages with impunity, and small orders would have 0 they could do.
Shrines should be a major investment from an Order. We throw them everywhere, make the powers for areas weaker or removed altogether, respect avenger, and not swing whole fights.
Shrines should have a notable impact when destroyed. Damage to a gods essence, weakening of their realm mobs (also removing ability to empower), and damage to all favours they have issued perhaps. Woah Malarious I like my 30 day TFs and 100+ realm mobs, what are you trying to do? I am trying to make it be a vested choice to put up a shrine somewhere. It should come with major and real consequences. In exchange shrines should have defenses. This could get wordy so I will make an example.
A shrine on merian isle is slated to be defiled.
The first defile is done, the shrine calls for help and defends itself. Invasion is triggered as various numbers of rooms are destroyed, these mobs will track after a delay or if they see someone. In addition another power is called based on shrine type.
Any Order members who show up to defend will be under the effect of Vendetta and an additional power based on shrine.
If no Order members are in the local area of the shrine (or areas) it will call invasion every few unsanc'd rooms.
Fighting breaks out, heavily in the Orders favor of course. Somehow the shrine dies as everyone goes combat happy.
As the shrine is destroyed it sends out ripples of pain to those nearby, potentially killing them (this is a non avenger causing status, shrine dying does NOT grant suspect/veng). The godrealm shutters as the mobs become weakened (attempts to influence them shows them all as weakened) until the shrine death timer runs out. TF's might drop by 15% per person or from TF to SF sort of thing. Eventru zaps his Order because he just lost a large portion of his essence.
That would hurt, its painful, it is what we should expect. We play with shrines as toys and treat em like quick demesne's. In reality they should be a serious investment that an Order is ready to take great pains to protect. We need to make them either have far less value power wise and be more RP bound (and thus more reason to defile them to make a statement) OR we need to make them stronger and have HUGE costs attached (instead of like 100K essence, it should be 2 million or 10% of divines essence, whatever is higher). It should be major costs for major effects.
Could open a mechanic for restoring a divine whose spark has weakened too, if anyone goes crazy on shrines.
OK done with random brainstorm.
Also, good thing there are only like 3 Eventru shrines in existence.
Signature!
But its not fair to hurt one divine more for having more stuff!
He has a bigger Order, it needs to be offset. % wise it should cause about the same level of issue.