Wildewood Special Report

Enyalida

This is the thread for the Wildewood special report! Please, questions pertaining to things on it, and for suggestions/comments/concerns about related things. If you want to know how a skill generally just works, ask on the skills thread! 

Right now things are still basic, so most of the stuff on this list is non-crunchy. That is, a lot of it involves either utility concerns or general desires for changes of a type. As things are tested, the list will probably shrink as things are decided to not be problems, or suggestions are deemed inappropriate.

RACE CHANGES: 

+2 con (to 16)

+1 cha (12) 

-1 str (16) 

+1 dex (10)

 -1 fire weakness (2)

 -1 elect weakness (0) 

 =Remove eq cost on Perspective. 

=Add eq-less GLANCE GROUND when perspective is in trees.

 =Add emotes to the things heard from both elevations. 

 CLASS SIMPLE / "BUG" FIXES: 

=Add an unlink syntax for coppice. 

=Make garland work exactly a talisman for all purposes. 

=Change source on all attacks not already so typed to 'Brute Magic' source. 

=Remove reagent cost from treehug. 

CLASS CHANGES 

=Add the ability to use vines in any terrain. This is mostly thematic, but also compensates for the lack of FORESTCAST FOREST or Dryad calling. 

=Include something to deal with Elder trees/totems. Totemcarving is preferred, but extending the barkguard ability to elders. It would still at very best be a stopgap measure to cover it until totemcarving, putting the onus for all carving on a percentage of the guild, which should be avoided, I think. 

=Add mulching. Read the mulch message and the Wildewood theme and tell me they don't make sense together. Also, see above about shunting all of the work involved onto a portion of the guild. Bound to breed resentment.

=Add a good method of getting people down out of trees as a class skill. I suggest a class version of SHAKE TREES. 

=Add in a good second bashing attack. Comparable to the chalice reagent attack is asking a lot (As that ability is INCREDIBLY powerful), but a 100% damage type that isn't commonly resisted would be nice.

Estarra

Some good suggestions but keep in mind the skillset has been out just a few hours! We'll definitely be looking at a report in the future but we're not going to be doing anything immediately (unless it's a bug or we find some huge imbalance).

Keep up the brainstorming though!

Saran

Enyalida said:

=Make garland work exactly a talisman for all purposes. 

=Add the ability to use vines in any terrain. This is mostly thematic, but also compensates for the lack of FORESTCAST FOREST or Dryad calling. 

I thought the first was a previously envoyed thing for druids and the second was for wiccans. 

Karlach

Enyalida said:

 =Remove eq cost on Perspective. 

I assume you are able to be attacked on both elevations at once, and not just the one you have perspective of?

Saran

Morkarion said:

Enyalida said:

 =Remove eq cost on Perspective. 

I assume you are able to be attacked on both elevations at once, and not just the one you have perspective of?

Checked, we can only be targeted in the one our perspective is focused on and you'll see us as normal on that elevation, however you'll still see our branches or trunks in the other elevation.

Karlach

Then the EQ cost makes sense, otherwise what's to stop shift up/shift down spam to just constantly dodge someone while you sip/apply healing?

Eventru

Does climbing cost balance, or only require it? I feel like the latter for some reason.

Placeus

It requires balance/eq and doesn't consume them.

Karlach

Eventru said:

Does climbing cost balance, or only require it? I feel like the latter for some reason.

It is the latter, but unless I misread Elevation, it doesn't state there needs to be trees in the area to shift perspective.

Sakr

Sorry to nitpick, but isn't wood more of an insulator for electricity? Unless directly hit with lightening, then the water inside would heat up and explode, but that is taking it a bit far. 

Llandros

I don't mean to be unkind but the race changes are not realistic.

You get some serious buffs, several that are unique. You have to pay for that somewhere.

Reistance to blunt - lvl 2 (meh)

Terrain based level 3 H/M/E regen (not too shabby and unique for having all 3 health types)

Faster herb balance lvl 1(meh)

Passive chance to stun with attacks lvl 1 (awesomesauce and unique)

Perspective thing (unique and will be cool after some very reasonable tweaksl)

If you want to tone down the penalties you have to make up the difference somewhere. Adding 4 stat points and removing two levels of damage malus for the cost of one str is not going to 'cut' it. 

Also, the lvl 1 electric malus is pretty minor. You might get better traction leaving that one be.

Xenthos

Eventru said:

Does climbing cost balance, or only require it? I feel like the latter for some reason.

You are correct; it only requires it. However, for everyone else if you climb up you can be hexagrammed / highjumped /geysered /etc.

That's why I feel the cost to shift is appropriate. They mostly just need a balance skill to drag a person to their perspective's elevation. Unless they have one and I missed it.

Estarra

We looked into having treeform exist in both elevations at once but it wasn't possible code-wise (or at least not realistic in the amount of effort it would take). Thus, though you can see the druid in treeform in both elevations, you can only target and interact with it in the shifted elevation. Thus, giving the druid the ability to instantly shift between the elevations is a nonstarter. In fact, we may have to look into ways of forcing a druid to shift elevations (since there's no way to really force a druid into tree or ground), but that's something we can look into.

Enyalida

The stun chance on blunt damage is pretty low.

Morkarion said:

Then the EQ cost makes sense, otherwise what's to stop shift up/shift down spam to just constantly dodge someone while you sip/apply healing?

Crunching the numbers, I'm seeing exactly the opposite problem:people using CLIMB UP|DOWN spam to constantly dodge a wildewood. 

Let's say I hit you and am off balance, though that's not necessary for the technique. You climb up and cling, throwing yourself of balance for 2 seconds. I chase you up with perspective, throwing myself off balance for 3 seconds. You climb down before I can get back eq. I perspective down, it repeats. Your climbing and clinging outpaces my elevation change.

To recap: 

-Perspective takes ~3.3 seconds eq at neutral balance.

-Climb up + cling takes ~2.2 seconds balance at neutral balance.

-All of our tree knockdown methods are neutralized by cling.

-Therefore, someone spamming Climb down / Climb up+Cling will outpace a wildewood, not the other way around. 

In other words, wildewoods are  actually at a disadvantage fighting in a terrain with a tree level! The best fix is to chop the eq so that this doesn't happen. If you hit and I change perspective, just follow with free climb and continue hitting, it's not like we get any more powerful in the trees. Methods to move people down would also be mostly okay. You geyser us in the face, which makes us go down to look who is so rude, or whatever. If those go in, I hope they have fail chance or some protection measure similar to cling. 

@Llandros Raising the stat points and changing the maluses were two different problems. Looking at the other 'classic' Druid race: Elfen, you see a total of 66 stat points (outside of size), with the changes you see an equal number of stat points in wildewood. 

Elfen have regen (level 1, two stats), faster herb balance (level 1), and psychic resist (level 1, this is a rare type.

Wildewood have two more levels of regen over the elfen, and resistance to blunt, but will also have 4 levels of damage malus that Elfen don't, on top of the as yet unquantified large malus to waking. 

Even looking at the stat distribution from a spec'd Elfen to a Wildewood bears out the comparison:

Elfen have: 

-17 in class primary stat (Int. Note this is also a vitals stat)

-No stat below 10. A 16 (cha, vitals, influencing), 12 dex, 11 con, 10 str. 

- That's a spread of 17/16/12/11/10

With this change, Wildewood will have:

-16 in class primary stat (Str, not a vitals stat)

-No stat below 10. 12 cha, lower dex, more con. 

- That's a spread of 16/16/12/12/10. 

The spreads are comparable, if not slightly worse. 

Also, remember folks: regens are effected by enchants. In a forest terrain, a Wildewood gains no benefit from regen enchants, but an elfen is bumped to Level 2 mana/health regen, level 1 ego regen. Functionally, the Wildewood only has +1 level of mana/health, and +2 levels of ego

Race recap:

- Change brings it into line with the druid spec-race, statwise. Seeing as it's a REALLY spec'd race, that seems fair.

- Even dropping the maluses by one stage keeps the advantages and weaknesses in balance. 4 levels of weakness total, to two of the most common damage types is quite a lot to counteract the bonuses. 

-Currently, climb/cling allows someone to beat out a wildewood in their own terrain. Lowering or removing the cost of perspective and possibly including some way for those with a elevation changing skill (hexagram/highjump/etc.) to move Wildewoods fixes this. 

EDIT: Note also that anything that stops climbing appears to stop perspective, including broken limbs.

Xenthos

No, don't chop the eq (for the reason I already presented). The easy / best solution is a skill that drags the person to your perspective, just like the skills other people have to move them around.

It could even do some damage. Or... just expand treehug. Allow it to work regardless of whether or not the target is on the ground or in trees, and if they are on a different elevation, it pulls them to your perspective's in addition to the current effect.

Enyalida

If we have a skill that drags someone to our perspective (presumably an active one, on balance?) what's to stop them simply climbing the other way again, far before we regain balance?

Xenthos

You mean what everyone else has to deal with if the person just keeps climbing up again after being knocked down..?

I don't think that you can climb with broken limbs and treehug breaks limbs, which is why I suggested it. Beyond that, if the person can climb they could also just walk out.

Enyalida

Yes, except that everyone else ALSO just has the option to chase and attack instead of repeatedly trying their knockdown ability. That's not something wildewood have.

Shuyin

Honestly, who cares about elevation changes when fighting wildewood, it's not like they have sap or allergies. Ganks are ganks, too.

IMO, it doesn't really matter then. Either you reduce the EQ of switching perspective or you give them a way to seize people into trees.

My personal, this-would-be-cool opinion/idea? Add a seize ability and make a unique 'Within the branches of DRUID' room whenever the druid seizes someone, then have the move deposit them in there. Have there be no way in or out unless the victim climbs back down (druid can switch in/out as needed). 

This would preserve the 1v1 mechanic (druid grabs a victim, then they have a duel up in the branches (!!!)), adds a use for groups (gets rid of a person), makes people care about fighting in tree level against these druids once again, AND allows the druid to get use out of the perspective mechanic even if there aren't any actual trees in the room. 

From there, you can even buff the spores and stuff to make it work better in "branch" level. You'll probably need a separate syntax to enter the regular "trees" level.

Furthermore, this fulfills the stated intent by admin: it's for 1v1. Can't get more 1v1 than forcing 2 people into 1 room to duke it out.

But I digress, I just thought of that last night:

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1. Treehug should probably change to something like pure asphyx if it's meant to be your alternate damage attack. Having both the regular attack and the alternate damage attack be (even partly) the same thing hits the same issue SD's did in report 881.

2. 5p for manabarbs and succumb each is pretty dumb especially since you don't have octave or anything else to help stick it. My suggestion is to lower the cost or implement a way to stick or have it tick re-apply the aff repeatedly over time.

3. The affs needed for a glinshari spore do not synergize well. They mostly have different cures. You should look into changing the affs needed into something that can be made into a stack to help keep them on an opponent. Furthermore, the affs given by the "mists" are odd to say the least. Vertigo and weakness? Really?

4. Too many bark effects. You can easily combine many/most of these into 1 or 2 skills and open up the way for more "mist" type attacks. Why the hell would you devote 5 skills to something that only works when you're getting beat up?

5. The race weaknesses are lovely. Haw haw. I like the suggestions presented so far.

6. Seems like this spec is designed for DW, which is fine, but you'll need a way to remove your room motes/runes so you can switch them around as needed. Also getting an eternalsleep kill is impossible until you figure out a way to stick your mana drains.

7. There are maybe 3 useful animals called during a wildecall. For a trans ability, it's my opinion that they should all be useful during niche situations. For example, I can't ever see a time when you'd prefer to use a random poison over guaranteed damage reduction. Look into altering treefrog, sapling, and fawn.

8. Is the chance for stun for the wildewood race meant to be something to rely on? Or is it meant for RP? Cause if so, you should bump it up. But then stun is dumb, so your mileage may vary.

Llandros

My recommendation for the race wold be 

Offer up the ego regen and 1 point of cha, you won't be doing much influencing anyway.

for

-1 fire penalty (there is an entire fire based skill set and destruction to worry about this one hurts)

+1 point of dex, or if that goes to much against the theme 1 point of con.

14 con is what elfen lord, viscanti, male kephera, and lucidian have.

The 9 dex is a little more troubling but female kephera pull it off and is better than brood viscanti and Tae'Dae.

Can revisit if later on when it has seen some more action.

Estarra

Stun was meant to be more RP than something to rely on. I'd consider a 1p skill that causes the stun to always fire though.

Enyalida

@Shuyin

2+9: Yeah. The stun chance only functions to inject some hindering into the class, besides spamming entangles. That's also why treehug does blunt, I think it's safe to say. However, treehug also does 

=~1440 damage on Sondayga with 7200k health. Has resilience but no robes on, no other resistance dmp. I've got a TF on, a resultant 19 strength, and 30 offensive blunt dmp (from class). 

=~1259 with 54 blunt protection from armor.

=Obviously asphyx resists (from blue, etc.) and HOLD BREATH will lower the damage more. Lowers it to ~550 damage, scaling back up as hold breath phases out. 

=Also obviously, this damage will scale to health at least partially.

Overall

3. Agreed. The adjuvant-type mechanic isn't particularly great. The effects can be stopped simply by shielding, moving, lusting the caster, or blinding the caster, and you get a nice long warning time. Not to mention that they do eat up flowers and large chunks of power! Would you suggest that these work more like normal active abilities simply requiring but not consuming certain flowers? Possibly they could just knock out those abilities for a round instead of consuming them, or something?

4. Going to look at the affs. Vertigo and weakness are likely to both go away. We keep looking to find what the design intent was here, as surely there is something this particular set of affs is intended to accomplish, but no one has found it yet.

5. I personally like the idea of 'Root' effects, which would work like more traditional defenses. You'd activate them and give up a certain amount of mobility (Perhaps one room before hasty message) and get some kind of ticking defense or nice defensive ability. This skillset really has the feel of being intended to tank your opponent, that would further that quite nicely. 

6. What do you think about proposed race changes to bring them in line with the other druid spec-race?

8. I feel like wildecall could stand to be less power. The abilities seem pretty buggy right now, though. Getting numbers is pretty hard, and it looks like they only hit against damaging attacks but so far: Frog hits only very infrequently, Wolverine is a nice hit of bleeding (~250) and hits at medium rate, Badger appears to fire every single attack, and the sapling works possibly 10% of the time, when you don't shrug? Like I said, hard to get definitive numbers. I'll be heading to the arena to do things like spam sip potions and have people spam hit me here soon. 

Cyndarin

 

Estarra said:

Stun was meant to be more RP than something to rely on. I'd consider a 1p skill that causes the stun to always fire though.

Isn't the stun like 2.5 seconds? That's too long for 1 power, they'll just mash their damage+stun button.

Cyndarin

Llandros said:

My recommendation for the race wold be 

Offer up the ego regen and 1 point of cha, you won't be doing much influencing anyway.

for

-1 fire penalty (there is an entire fire based skill set and destruction to worry about this one hurts)

+1 point of dex, or if that goes to much against the theme 1 point of con.

14 con is what elfen lord, viscanti, male kephera, and lucidian have.

The 9 dex is a little more troubling but female kephera pull it off and is better than brood viscanti and Tae'Dae.

Can revisit if later on when it has seen some more action.

Female keph do not pull it off. I played a female keph mage, you might as well turn off stance and parry.

Cyndarin

Personally I think the seize into a special room thing is a terrible idea. Not even going into the permanent lock out scenarios with brumetower, the ability to repeatedly remove someone from combat over and over and play turtle isn't so much strategic as just really abusable. Joe the midbie combatant seizes steve the artied pker into special room over and over and spams shield when steve hits back. There's a reason maze and the like cost so much.

Cyndarin

As for the rest, I fully support Enyalida's proposed changes to Wildewood race. I also think the report needs to be approached with a lot of caution. Things can go from bad to lolOP in a single report, and while I agree with Enyalida thus far, I'd prefer not to see a "buff everything" shamanism report again.

Enyalida

Glinshari spore is on the list for chopping down. While it's overly costly and terribly easy to avoid/negate it's hitting for thousands and thousands of damage with exactly no affs on the target. 

Llandros

Enyalida said:

 

=~1440 damage on Sondayga with 7200k health. Has resilience but no robes on, no other resistance dmp. I've got a TF on, a resultant 19 strength, and 30 offensive blunt dmp (from class). 

. 

Magic based physical damage should bypass robes and armor. Maybe it's different for 'brute magic' but if it is I would double check that to see if it is a bug.

Enyalida

That may be. I'll test on someone with normal armor armor later, that may have been the magic dmp.

Shuyin

Celina said:

Personally I think the seize into a special room thing is a terrible idea. Not even going into the permanent lock out scenarios with brumetower, the ability to repeatedly remove someone from combat over and over and play turtle isn't so much strategic as just really abusable. Joe the midbie combatant seizes steve the artied pker into special room over and over and spams shield when steve hits back. There's a reason maze and the like cost so much.

Climb down then. It's not as bad as you think. If joe the midbie turtles, just climb down, doesn't even take balance.

Shuyin

Here is the basic idea that I am getting, after seeing this and Aquachem: mists, sheens, and adjuvants are all probably going to functionally remain the same between all the specs, so I'm not sure how much leeway can be taken with regards to changing how your spores/branches work.

Given that, I'd recommend trying to alter the skills first, combine/add effects to them first before trying to change them completely, i.e. I wouldn't recommend changing branches to roots that tick.

Onto other things:

1. Looks like your numbers look fine re: treehug, but I'd still recommend changing it to pure asphyx to get around someone completely stacking their defs towards blunt. The important thing to acknowledge is that asphyx damage increases over time as hold breath fades, so I wouldn't recommend a damage increase, just maybe a damage type change.

2. Adjuvant Problem:

Adjuvants can be easily avoided due to its very precise delay and it scales too harshly into OP territory. The adjuvant mechanic is designed to be a powerful effect that fires after a certain amount of time. We already discussed my idea to fix it / make it more useful on envoys, but here it is for posterity:

Solution:

a. Change the scaling and make it do less with 0-2 affs and more on 3-5 affs. Currently, with 0 affs, it does over 50% of a target's max health in one shot. That's broken. Ideally, you'll want something that scales like meteor damage, where the top end is basically an instakill.

b. Add a new mechanic that lets you specify how long the delay is between activation and firing. This can be between 1-10 seconds,

c. Scale the power costs to reflect the delay, where 1p = 10s and 1s = 10p, and so forth.

The end result is a new and unique mechanic for adjuvants: now it becomes tougher to avoid owing to the user's ability to change the delay to suit the tactic, its costs are now lower, and it scales a bit more fairly towards requiring 3-5 affs to kill someone properly. Lastly, the big thing: it doesn't involve changing anything huge.

3. My suggestion for changing the affs for glinshari spores: make it all mending cures. Change some of the mists to do mending affs, then you can stack them with the broken limbs towards a glinshari spore. Have the vertigo mist do broken skull or something (really angsty spore that pisses off squirrels to toss a large nut on your head), etc etc. Please remember that I make these suggestions off the assumption that you change the scaling.

4. Branches Problem: 

Branch effects are too unreliable. Branches have a low firing rate, multiple numbers of them can fire, and they only work on damage attacks. 

Solution: 

a. Reduce the number of branch effects that can fire when they tick 

b. Increase how often an individual effect ticks

c. Change the requirement for firing to aggressive actions, not just damage attack. 

The end result is less multiple effects firing and a more reliable defensive effect owing to an increased tick chance and more opportunities for it to tick.

5. I am fine with your proposed race changes at this moment.

6. Wildecall Problem: 

Wildecall is too random and unreliable. It also only works when the druid is getting attacked, Wildecall functions like this: you put up the def, then for an amount of time, the random animal that you summon has a 10% chance of working (except for fawn) whenever the druid gets hit. That's silly for a trans skill. You put it up, wait an amount of time and then pray you get a decent animal which only has a chance of working when you're getting beat on.

Solution: 

a. Make it a standard 10p unstrippable def like drawdown. 

b. Change the syntax to allow for summoning a specific animal via WILDECALL (animal), whereupon you will summon the animal after little to no delay. Might require an increase in eq or power depending  on how good the effects are.

c. Change the various animal effects to tick on the right kind of action; offensive effects like bleed or a poison will fire on offensive actions, defensive effects like reduced damage will fire on getting attacked. 

d. Increase how often it works - have it always work/fire while the animals is summoned, but in exchange, have it either last a certain amount of time or have it last a certain number of ticks, either/or.

The end result is that wildecall actually becomes a reliable trans skill. Once you're able to get the various animals to work reliably, then you can look into nerfing/buffing the individual effects. IMO, there's not much point in changing those if they fire so infrequently. Please bear in mind that depending on how good the effects are, summoning an animal should probably take power or increase in eq proportionally.