I think cauterize as an instakill is a good concept, but perhaps it should cure the target of aurawarp instead of giving them more aurawarp. This way, a healer can use it as a damage route, but if he wants to go for an aurawarp kill, he can't just spam it - if he misjudges, he'll set his own progress back.
Alternatively, instead of nerfing what cauterize does when it fails, we could nerf the afflictions given by bentaura a bit. Randomly giving aeon/transfix might not be a good idea. Perhaps the big hindering affs should be removed from the bentaura pool. That'll help to address Veyils' concern that building aurawarp is the same act as hindering a target for a healer.
I like the Cauterize idea.
Also, I think the Phlegmatic in group in particular should be looked at. Ideas were thrown around to make sure the transfix respected blindness (or remove it entirely). I thin the aeon already respects quicksilver, though for Institute that's less of an issue.
I'm not so sure it does respect quicksilver 21:45:30.497 in the log shows me smoking a pipe to cure and instantly having my speed aura stripped and aeoned in the same motion.
I do like the sound of removing the transfix and aeon chances. Perhaps as an idea you could have aurawarp levels reduce when the target is afflicted with hindering afflictions that way the healer has to balance building and offense with hinderance? May be too complicated to do.
Two recommended adjustments based on further sparring:
Make hindering the healer's aurawarp build more possible somehow. (Powerfocus cures double aurawarp?)
Make aurawarp cure faster when not in the same room with the healer, via either: Double curing rate OR Passive fade when away from the healer. We could tie this into bent aura. With the following setup:
Aurawarp cure rate is doubled OR A natural regen is implemented. AND Bent aura is assigned to which healer gave it to you, and it functions only in their presence. In addition to its current effects, bent aura slows your curing or disables your aura's natural regeneration.
I think the aurawarp mechanic is pretty good as is, and that healing is a really nicely designed skillset. The main problem I see is that it's really hard to actively do anything to stop the aurawarp buildup, and running doesn't help because it takes so long to cure off that the healer can just chase you and keep building your aurawarp up to cauterize.
I think the aforementioned suggestions would go a long way to alleviate that issue. I really am starting to like the idea that focus/powerfocus/beastfocus aurawarp could cure double aurawarp because it gives people a bit more of a chance at active counterplay and forces people to make a decision.
Edit: Note: I'm not positive that people are curing aurawarp well, but I assume that Wobou's curing is relatively good. All of my observations are dependent on the assumption that people are curing fairly optimally.
Veyils makes a good point that aurawarp as is currently functions a lot like deepwounds on steroids. It takes a long time to cure off, but basically you can build aurawarp a lot faster than wounds and there's no way for the victim to parry you. While I think that warriors could use a buff, I think that aurawarp could probably take a slight tweak down.
Right now it's possible to sit at 100 empathy and still have BendAura, Flay and Bedevil working fully except for aurawarp output. It's also possible to sit at 0 empathy and have Bolster, Attend and curing otherws working fully as well as a full suite of auras.
I think making 50 empathy as a major threshold could be good: - BendAura can only be used below 50 empathy. - Bolster and Attend can only be used above 50 empathy. - Below 50 empathy, you start losing the abilitiy to radiate one aura per 10 empathy. So 0 auras at 0 empathy.
And some other potential tweaks: - Bedevil has a higher chance of working at higher empathy, but also drains empathy as it does currently. - Cauterize cures aurawarp and also drains empathy (maybe 25). - Eq cost for self-curing under 50 empathy.
Also, I had a vague idea that instead of self-curing draining empathy, being attacked could drain empathy. In this way, empathy is kept as an attrition mechanic to reduce self-curing impact in combat, but won't affect hunting anymore (which was and is a big draw of the skillset for many people). Not sure how feasible this would be to implement.
I think you'd need to add some other ways to regen empathy then if strict empathy management became necessary. Otherwise you'll end up always stuck at 0 empathy 1v1 with no flexibility.
It's a cool direction to go, and I'd have fun with it personally.
As it stands I can pretty much have my cake and eat it too with 0 empathy.
Some folks would probably be frustrated with how complicated it is, but you have my support if the admin are onboard!
I like Shedrin's suggestions listed above, plus removal of aeon and transfix from ever being available as a random tic passive.
Healing allows an offense that is also based on removing hindering and afflictions. So most offenses can be undone instantly, while also building toward a kill. What is the counter to this? If they do not use bedevil they can still easily and routinely just cure it off themselves. A mana cost is an unusable cost if someone cannot do something about it. Mana killers might be able to do something if you spam, but I believe auras might be the better option.
The auras still allow you to counter aeon setups. Burst vessels USED to be the counter to healers, but bedevil sends them over faster than delivery (4s bal, countered with 3s eq).
We need to remove the cure aspect OR remove the transfer aspect, or, as suggested, make low empathy stop curing things (but you deal aurawarp).
Healing has the "perfect wall" problem. It is not fun to fight someone you cannot do anything to, nor is it really fair to balance. You should never have an instance where you have a wall that can kill people. In general, I think it needs to cost eq for curing, weaken bedevil, remove some afflictions from bedevils curing (shouldn't sent transfix, entangle, aeon, vessels, aurics, etc). Passives should not be able to cause transfix and aeon. Etc etc.
Healing should be brought down to make them slayable. Once you can point to several guilds and find no routine to kill someone, the game is over, you found the broken option.
I've just been testing it a little and one quality of life improvement I'd suggest is that we could add an affliction line to every single ability that causes an increase in aura warp levels.
Just at the moment they can hit you with flay and you know your aura warp is higher but you dont know the level until you cure it.
So if it was like Such and such flays you/Your aura is warped and is now moderately warped or something like that.
Agree, bedevil needs to also be stopped by most hinders. It's pretty lame that people basically can't stop aurawarp buildup because if they hinder the healer, they'll just get bedeviled with their own strong afflictions + more aurawarp.
/late, but, I just wanted to give my initial comments on this skillset based on limited usage (basically just 5 war seal fights) and my raw theory-crafting. It's not going to include an assessment on warp build, because I don't have a good sense about that right now but that's something I hope to comment on in the future.
Curing: Curing strips insomnia, truedeaf, and trueblind defenses; this shouldn't be happening, for both self and targeted cures.
Auras: Similar to above Curing, remove those defenses from being cured via auras. I also feel like the ego drain from aura upkeep could be increased. At 5 auras it's negligible, and it should feel like more of a cost for that perk.
Fractures: Currently I feel this is too good at countering physical afflictions, many of which are needed for warrior instakills, and it undermines the affliction design which intentionally has long, delayed cures. I recommend to reverse the cure priority order, and/or to impose the cure delay as ice would normally take in accordance with the relevant limb wounding.
Anesthesia: Incurable recklessness is too strong in group combat. This has been likened to a "run or die" mechanic, especially given the prevalence of mana and, to a lesser extent, ego vitals pressure in the current combat meta. The Healing kit currently has viable offense with aurawarp and affliction pressure, and does not need this skill. I recommend removing it entirely. If the intent is to support primary guardian kills (i.e., mana kills, except stupid Institute which nobody cares about...) then could have aurawarp also contribute to a longer HME sip balance.
Bolster: Limit bolstering to one target at any time. It's only a matter of time before someone uses this for smobs/guard raids/other unscrupulous deeds...
Phlegmatic: This comment probably applies to all of the cure categories, but it's most prevalent here. Healing afflictions do not seem to respect target defenses. E.g., aeon and transfix afflictions should be respecting speed and trueblind, but this should also be extended to things like teas, karma chaos and death blessing, Paradigmatics Gnosis, etc. Right now I think flay and bedevil are unnecessarily bypassing defenses.
Bendaura: This might be ticking a little too frequently from a passive aurawarp perspective. I don't have a recommendation since I don't want to comment on warp without more experience, but I want to revisit this later.
Vitality: I don't see what the point of this skill is. You don't take health damage from Healing, unless you draw bleeding via sanguine (which I imagine won't even proc this) or use sacrifice, which also doesn't proc this. Am I missing something?
Sacrifice: So I'm not quite sure how this is intended to work, but this is how (I think) it currently works (without killing myself over and over again to verify it further). If you have >66% of your max hp, this knocks you down to 33% max hp; if you have <66% max hp, this kills you. I'm guessing that this instead should just take 66% of your max hp, regardless of current hp, and kill you if it would drop you to 0. So, my next comments assume that it should work like that. Increase the cost to 5p; this is way too good for 2p. Increase the health damage to 85% max hp so it burns vitality and appropriately increases the risk of use. Alternatively, add a cool down (once per day).
Cauterize: First, the AB file says that the non-instakill version is 1p, but in reality it's costing 2p. I actually think 2p is more appropriate, so just fix the file. Second, I haven't been able to test this much, but I think the damage at completely twisted might be too much. I'll have to get back on that. Third, I really hate that one of the instakill conditions - a physical affliction - cannot be given by Healers except through Beast trample (onerous to pull off and stick in its own right) or through bedevil (which requires you to be fighting specific classes and to unreliably trade the aff). I recommend adding ablaze to the pool of physical afflictions which may satisfy that instakill requirement.
A related comment, which probably could be an envoy report: Burnout is a frustrating mechanic; you should not be locked out of a skillset for a painful duration. Introduce an ability to recover from burnout (healing and psionics): 10p cost, 10-second-channeled action that's stopped by prone. This would be impractical to do mid-fight, but alleviates an otherwise harsh penalty imo.
Cauterize works as an instant kill at high enough warp. At high warp levels it does damage akin to unleash. So for group combat there isnt any opportunity cost for trying and failing like other instant kills
The damage might be high from what I've heard (I haven't tested it) and could be tweaked down, but regarding opportunity cost, well, it does cure an aff. Previous suggestions were to have it cure warp also, which I don't really have an opinion on but it's not a bad idea.
I'd note that there are other instakills out there that still do a desired effect when you don't meet the insta requirements. To be transparent, I opposed that aspect of the new-ish Minstrel ego insta for that same premise of not wanting to reward failure, but, since it went through... parity...? In reality, since Healing has succor there's not really a scenario where you should actually derp and fail your cauterize insta.
Cauterize does wild damage at high aurawarp in my experience. From memory I'd do something like 5-6k damage if I'd derp and cauterize when they weren't at fully unraveled.
The highly warped + 3 affs is almost irrelevant. I guess it could be worthwhile in small groups if you're working with another class that can give physical affs more on demand.
With testing it once your at highly warped its pretty easy to push it upwards to the fully twisted with the healing slow down. The tipping point seems to be around midish moderate warp. Once it gets to that point the passives with a little bit of active basically build it faster than you can cure it. Run or die mechanic at that point. So for groups you can push to mid moderate then start doing a bit of damage or extra hinder while the aura warp builds on its own or try and force the aurawarp higher quicker with actives if you want to go for the kill quicker.
Its a pretty flexible tool to have, high damage, good hindering afflictions and your building to an instant kill at the same time.
Ignoring defenses is a pretty big thing though. For that'd me my number one thing to adjust. Without it it does way to much hindrance passively and activtly for a build to kill ability.
I honestly don't mind Anesthesia that much. On paper it sounded quite scary but in practice its easy enough to switch the sipping prios around based on the attack, I've not been toaded/absolved due to it yet. Outside either being so messed up in the group I'm dead anyway or outside of a succumb team being able to burst you to toadable/absolveable range in under a three seconds, but thats succumb thats broken not anesthesia.
@Kamanahai Regarding vitality, you do take damage from healing others and farhealing others. Vitality protects you in the case you overheal and don't pay attention to heal yourself, or the damage is too much for you to handle in one go, esp since you don't know how much damage you're absorbing from that person off yonder. It saves you from burnout and essentially death.
You wouldn't ask a baby empath compared to a circle 80 empath to farheal (hp), but if they do, without vitality it's a hard hit and could be fatal.
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I'll have to go back and test it, but when I checked curing was draining mana and ego, not health. Not sure if I checked heal, but I thought that was ego too. If it saves you from burnout, then OK, I just read the AB wrong (physical backlash??).
Comments
Also, I think the Phlegmatic in group in particular should be looked at. Ideas were thrown around to make sure the transfix respected blindness (or remove it entirely). I thin the aeon already respects quicksilver, though for Institute that's less of an issue.
I do like the sound of removing the transfix and aeon chances. Perhaps as an idea you could have aurawarp levels reduce when the target is afflicted with hindering afflictions that way the healer has to balance building and offense with hinderance? May be too complicated to do.
I think the aurawarp mechanic is pretty good as is, and that healing is a really nicely designed skillset. The main problem I see is that it's really hard to actively do anything to stop the aurawarp buildup, and running doesn't help because it takes so long to cure off that the healer can just chase you and keep building your aurawarp up to cauterize.
I think the aforementioned suggestions would go a long way to alleviate that issue. I really am starting to like the idea that focus/powerfocus/beastfocus aurawarp could cure double aurawarp because it gives people a bit more of a chance at active counterplay and forces people to make a decision.
Edit:
Note: I'm not positive that people are curing aurawarp well, but I assume that Wobou's curing is relatively good. All of my observations are dependent on the assumption that people are curing fairly optimally.
Veyils makes a good point that aurawarp as is currently functions a lot like deepwounds on steroids. It takes a long time to cure off, but basically you can build aurawarp a lot faster than wounds and there's no way for the victim to parry you. While I think that warriors could use a buff, I think that aurawarp could probably take a slight tweak down.
Right now it's possible to sit at 100 empathy and still have BendAura, Flay and Bedevil working fully except for aurawarp output.
It's also possible to sit at 0 empathy and have Bolster, Attend and curing otherws working fully as well as a full suite of auras.
I think making 50 empathy as a major threshold could be good:
- BendAura can only be used below 50 empathy.
- Bolster and Attend can only be used above 50 empathy.
- Below 50 empathy, you start losing the abilitiy to radiate one aura per 10 empathy. So 0 auras at 0 empathy.
And some other potential tweaks:
- Bedevil has a higher chance of working at higher empathy, but also drains empathy as it does currently.
- Cauterize cures aurawarp and also drains empathy (maybe 25).
- Eq cost for self-curing under 50 empathy.
Also, I had a vague idea that instead of self-curing draining empathy, being attacked could drain empathy. In this way, empathy is kept as an attrition mechanic to reduce self-curing impact in combat, but won't affect hunting anymore (which was and is a big draw of the skillset for many people). Not sure how feasible this would be to implement.
It's a cool direction to go, and I'd have fun with it personally.
As it stands I can pretty much have my cake and eat it too with 0 empathy.
Some folks would probably be frustrated with how complicated it is, but you have my support if the admin are onboard!
Healing allows an offense that is also based on removing hindering and afflictions. So most offenses can be undone instantly, while also building toward a kill. What is the counter to this? If they do not use bedevil they can still easily and routinely just cure it off themselves. A mana cost is an unusable cost if someone cannot do something about it. Mana killers might be able to do something if you spam, but I believe auras might be the better option.
The auras still allow you to counter aeon setups. Burst vessels USED to be the counter to healers, but bedevil sends them over faster than delivery (4s bal, countered with 3s eq).
We need to remove the cure aspect OR remove the transfer aspect, or, as suggested, make low empathy stop curing things (but you deal aurawarp).
Healing has the "perfect wall" problem. It is not fun to fight someone you cannot do anything to, nor is it really fair to balance. You should never have an instance where you have a wall that can kill people. In general, I think it needs to cost eq for curing, weaken bedevil, remove some afflictions from bedevils curing (shouldn't sent transfix, entangle, aeon, vessels, aurics, etc). Passives should not be able to cause transfix and aeon. Etc etc.
Healing should be brought down to make them slayable. Once you can point to several guilds and find no routine to kill someone, the game is over, you found the broken option.
Hopefully we can fix this before ascension.
Just at the moment they can hit you with flay and you know your aura warp is higher but you dont know the level until you cure it.
So if it was like Such and such flays you/Your aura is warped and is now moderately warped or something like that.
Curing: Curing strips insomnia, truedeaf, and trueblind defenses; this shouldn't be happening, for both self and targeted cures.
I'd note that there are other instakills out there that still do a desired effect when you don't meet the insta requirements. To be transparent, I opposed that aspect of the new-ish Minstrel ego insta for that same premise of not wanting to reward failure, but, since it went through... parity...? In reality, since Healing has succor there's not really a scenario where you should actually derp and fail your cauterize insta.
The highly warped + 3 affs is almost irrelevant. I guess it could be worthwhile in small groups if you're working with another class that can give physical affs more on demand.
Its a pretty flexible tool to have, high damage, good hindering afflictions and your building to an instant kill at the same time.
Ignoring defenses is a pretty big thing though. For that'd me my number one thing to adjust. Without it it does way to much hindrance passively and activtly for a build to kill ability.
I honestly don't mind Anesthesia that much. On paper it sounded quite scary but in practice its easy enough to switch the sipping prios around based on the attack, I've not been toaded/absolved due to it yet. Outside either being so messed up in the group I'm dead anyway or outside of a succumb team being able to burst you to toadable/absolveable range in under a three seconds, but thats succumb thats broken not anesthesia.
You wouldn't ask a baby empath compared to a circle 80 empath to farheal (hp), but if they do, without vitality it's a hard hit and could be fatal.
I'm a consent-based roleplayer! Kindly ask first, and I will return the favour. Open to developing tinyplots.
Atlantis is my client of choice! (Guide)