Protection/Dissolve

Synkarin

Problem:

 1) A recent (good) change has been that melds dissolve upon the death of the melder. While this is overall a positive change, it makes it more likely that a melder will sit out of a fight, standing a room away, to help prevent the loss of the meld. Melds in general are necessary components to any large group fight. 

2) Dissolve/Protection are odd mechanics. Some meld effects are stopped by protection being up, but there is no opportunity cost to the melder to dissolve protection due to the fact that dissolve does not require equilibrium to use. It only requires balance, so a melder can use an eq-based skill and follow up with a dissolve. There is also no cost to attempting to dissolve someone without protection. This allows melders to send 'dissolve <target>' on every enemy and they will never waste that balance. Protection on the other hand does have an opportunity cost in that it costs equilbrium to put up. This means you can stop your offense to put up protection, just to have it stripped immediately again at no cost to the melder. It's not really worthwhile to put protection back up in the middle of combat.

The following are some changes to protection/dissolve mechanics that will have little effect on 1v1, make 'playing it safe' strategies less effective and encourage the melder to be more involved in the fight. It changes the dissolve/protection mechanics encourage the use of protection and the more heads up use of dissolve.


Solution 1:  Change dissolve to take balance if a mage attempts to dissolve someone without protection up. This should be the same balance it takes when it's successful. 

Solution 2: Change protection to not require and consume equilibrium to instead require and consume scroll balance. The delay in raising protection should remain as is.

Solution 3: Give melders a 5p ability that will strip protection and cause a loss of scroll balance for 5s. This will give a large window for the melder to ensure that the entire meld hit has a chance to hit the entire group.

Solution 4: Have unleash staff do reduced damage (25-33% less) to targets with protection up.


As pointed out in the problem statement, the premise is to make playing it safe less effective and encourage being in the fight more, Specifically in breaking down fortress situations. These changes should have little effect on 1v1 fighting, but require the melder to pay more attention to protection. 

Falaeron

Alternative: Delete protection. Melders can now focus their melds on a single target, much like chemwoods can, and all effects will hit them (maybe only if they're enemied as well). Only non-protection effects will hit other enemies. We can look at each meld and adjust which become "general" and which need to be "focused".

This will allow us to look more closely at the power of melds in 1v1 while giving us the means of curbing their effectiveness in group battles.

Synkarin

I think leaving protection in has the advantage of opening up more avenues of teamwork and team strategies and makes multiple mages more effective and synergistic in general. Granted it's not a lot, but it's something.

Falaeron

Melders may now link to each other. Every melder in the link can focus the meld on one target, but the meld is still held by one person for all purposes such as enemy list/dissolve on death etc.

Saz

I agree that the mechanics are odd (and favoring the melders). While I honestly don't comprehend how they effect with non-HS. In my experiences I've seen the elaborated situation above at its worst when people set their system to keep protection up whenever it's dissolved. You can imagine how it goes. But I don't think the advantage is that significant in other scenarios.

Synkarin

Turning them into another chemwood doesn't really seem fun either.

Ciaran

I support all mentioned solutions from Synkarin.  I also like Falmiis' idea, in that it would open up some possibility for melds to be buffed for 1v1 situations, but I suspect it would take a significant amount more work to implement.

Synkarin

The one stipulation (maybe intended, but not specifically mentioned) on @Falmiis' idea would be that it should require the mage to be in the room with the target and not adjacent like other meld effects. 

Lerad

Personally, I think there is merit to removing protection/dissolve mechanics and rebalancing/rethinking the role and power we want melders to have in combat. As it is now, the difference between meld output when protection is up and when it is down can be quite a big difference, and variable between guilds, which complicates how we think about and justify different melds having what kind of effects.

That is, of course, peripheral to the "encourage melders to put themselves more at risk, for more reward" goal that Sidd has in the first post, and which I think is a very valid point. Tweaking protection mechanics to require the melder to do more upkeep, however, might not be the best way to go about it, is just my opinion, because of how much it already complicates things. Dissolve as it is now allows melders to bring their full meld effects on their targets reasonably, whereas protection offers a measure of mitigation to prevent melds from being an instant bulldoze mechanic (more than it already is, that is) in larger fights.

One suggestion I have (which might be seen as needlessly complicated, I know, but which I feel might be an interesting option to consider): Rebalance the meld effects to be slightly weaker for when the target's protection is down (while still ensuring it is noticeably stronger than if the target has protection up), and then make it so that the melder's presence in the room lifts the protection effect (but doesn't strip it) passively from people in their enemy list. We can then delete dissolve.

Basically, this is aimed to make melds always give full benefit in the room the melder is in the location - and always give weakened benefit when the melder is not (if the target didn't prepare combat stores and didn't put up protection on his own, then he won't get the protection) without need for upkeep/dissolve from either the melder or their targets (beyond enemy list maintainence).

Enyalida

Yes, or: Do as Lerad suggests but instead repurpose dissolve to something sort of like Falmiiss suggestion wherein you can designate one target in your room who will receive the full effects even adjacent, so that in small groups or 1v1 you can't step one room away on tic and right back to dodge effects.

Tridemon

How would you make the effects weaker for a protected target? 

Enyalida

Make them act as they do now, only some of the binary effects hit, scale down damage effects,

Maligorn

EDIT: Actually I like all of Sidd's solutions.

Yarith

Support for sol 1-4. Lerad's idea works too.

Synkarin

My only problem with Lerad's statement is that while it does encourage the meld to be in the room, it also keeps the mechanic that hits everyone with the full effect for basically free. It's not hard to strip everyone in a fight currently.

Lerad

Yeah, which is why I also suggested re-looking and re-balancing the full effect (ie. no protection effects), and maybe re evaluating where we want melders to be. Naturally, if the current status quo and potency is desired, then a passive lifting of the protection effect might not be as good an idea, since the "full effects" in that case would certainly be very strong - possibly too strong. In which case we'd have to go with the potentially more cumbersome route of tweaking the dynamic of dissolving/protection mechanics instead.

Synkarin

Seems like general support of this in general. I'll probably report this next month with the suggested solutions mostly because 1) It adjusts existing mechancs rather than adding entire new ones, 2) I like the idea of it being something you have to actively keepup versus a set and forget strategy and 3) I'm reporting it so I'm bias and I like my idea.

Saran

I always though scrolls were added just to limit meld effects when you were away from the melder? Which is why dissolve works the way it does, while at the same time you can generally expect to be hit by the full demesne hit if you're in the same room.

Lerad's idea seems in line with this, I'd suggest maybe specify a "Verge" effect and an "Inner"(?) effect for each ability.
The Verge effects would always take place if you're not in the same room as a melder, and the inner effects would always take place when they're present.

This might offer a straight forward way to offer the weaker effect though it would eliminate protection scrolls.