Its a fair point that bards used to be less tanky. Now they are one of the tankiest classes in the game in pvp. I can see why they may have had a need for it in the past but you know times change right.
I'm going to post potential fixes for Wonderbrazier Illusoryself, Wonderbrazier Purify and Cement Socks/featherweight charm in seperate threads (with polls for solutions I think)
Some other artifacts that were brought up in emails I've received that I'd like some more feedback on.
Gnomeweapons - Due to how they work, both against entourage classes and just bashing in general, they seem to be necessary to compete in Death/greathunt challenges. Some people think this is too much.
Wonderhorn Buffet - Some classes (guardians/wiccans/melders) are balanced around a long eq shield-break, this allows them to bypass that. Is that too much?
Peppermint Tiphat - Too good at escaping, should be more limited/restricted.
I mean, artifacts being necessary to participate in greathunts/bash at a competitive rate isn't specific to gnomeweapons. Hitting multiple targets with damage overflow instead of just wasting it is definitely strong as hell though.
I honestly preferred a whip until demi, the gnome weapons come with a big mana cost and it's just not efficient without the critical rate to back it. But you might just as well argue that demi is necessary to be competitive with Death too.
I'm going to post potential fixes for Wonderbrazier Illusoryself, Wonderbrazier Purify and Cement Socks/featherweight charm in seperate threads (with polls for solutions I think)
Some other artifacts that were brought up in emails I've received that I'd like some more feedback on.
Gnomeweapons - Due to how they work, both against entourage classes and just bashing in general, they seem to be necessary to compete in Death/greathunt challenges. Some people think this is too much. Peppermint Tiphat - Too good at escaping, should be more limited/restricted.
Gnomeweapon - This is a great bashing weapon in general. I would be ok with some sort of balances for death/greathunt challenges as long as it didn't get applied to the gnomeweapon in general.
Tiphat - I know I'm the odd man out, but I got the hat solely for being able to get into locked rooms for explorers (either from quest-lock that may or may not be broken in the first place. or, a now non-point, temples and such areas). I would rather see it being limited by some sort of combat-related check than having X/month.
I'm going to post potential fixes for Wonderbrazier Illusoryself, Wonderbrazier Purify and Cement Socks/featherweight charm in seperate threads (with polls for solutions I think)
Some other artifacts that were brought up in emails I've received that I'd like some more feedback on.
Gnomeweapons - Due to how they work, both against entourage classes and just bashing in general, they seem to be necessary to compete in Death/greathunt challenges. Some people think this is too much.
Wonderhorn Buffet - Some classes (guardians/wiccans/melders) are balanced around a long eq shield-break, this allows them to bypass that. Is that too much?
Peppermint Tiphat - Too good at escaping, should be more limited/restricted.
Gnomeweapons:
Multi hitting ents is a bit of an issue. You can clear out an entire illumanti or wiccan in a few rounds. If there was a way to limit this to just hitting one at a time or something similar I think it'd be a nice fix.
Not sure what to say about them when it comes to bashing but they seem really strong. But like others have said having crit artifacts or other items such as the wonderwand are important too.
My Invoke Nullify time stamp is saying 2.339 equi usage.
My wonderhorn buffet is hitting at 2.042 balance usage.
Doesn't seem a big deal now i'm testing it but on the flip side I guess changing it wont make much of a different either.
Peppermint Tiphat:
The hat tip is stopped by most anti movement things such as being prone or what ever. It's got similar usage to the aspect power of Manifest Dispersal. I don't really personally see an issue with hattip mainly because Ascendants can get a better version of it that doesn't have a cool down with dispersal. The hat tip gives non ascendants a similar escape on a longer cooldown.
Also of a similar nature to hat tip is wonderclock timewrinkle.
Does buffet have much of a use, really? You can get a razing rune for bashing, what'd be the point if a general skill got the same job done? That one might be up for a change - or just let it be a "free" razing rune for whatever weapons you're using.
Does buffet have much of a use, really? You can get a razing rune for bashing, what'd be the point if a general skill got the same job done? That one might be up for a change - or just let it be a "free" razing rune for whatever weapons you're using.
For bashing the razing rune is better yea but in pvp buffet is advertised as a quicker shield break.
It just doesn't really seem that much quicker than just normal nullify though which is a bit weird.
Gnomeweapons being a must have for hunting/events is kinda true, sadly. It's damage outpaces everything, though it's also a death sentence against certain mobs like Larva spawn in Icewynd. I'm mostly miffed there was no Megaman-esque armcannon design As to its use in PK, given the sudden re-introduction of Choke to grant Aeon, it's been about the only way to manage against SD/MDs. However, I do agree it's overly unfair to have it being able to just...wipe out the entire group in a couple of balances, faster if you happened to get a crit before engaging, on something else. Meant to be balanced by applying Disloyalty onto the target, not having an artifact that gets you maybe 1-2 balances of hindering affs you need on the target before they've wiped out your fae. Easy fix would be what the Illuminati have, no generic-name that applies to ALL ents...so remove the 'fae' descriptor for keywords, bam. Forces the person targeting to have to target by specific name instead.
I have no idea how to suggest for balancing for the Death event though. They really are a strong hunting weapon, and nerfing them ruins the point of getting it over just the whip. And both the Gnomeweapon and Wonderwand use Mana, so the only advantages Gnomeweapons have over is the multihit, and higher overall damage once enough gearboxes are put in.
I don't see Buffet used, so cannot comment. The hattip-to-safety bit had been an issue back at the start before we worked out how to counter it. Broken limbs, monos, etc, prevent its use...biggest problem remains that the person just reappears in a random room in the area, and depending on the size of that area, could be rather far away from the fighting. Even Trill or Furrikin escape methods only goes a couple rooms at most. Limit it to Masochism down, Hattip works as far as 5 rooms away?
I suppose .5 is sort of significant but most mages, guardians and wiccans will be stacking eq buffs anyway. Knowledge karma, celerity and the arti gets anyone to 5 equi buff without any class stuff. Balance buffs are harder to come by and these classes are less likely to want to be stacking them.
So that's 2.5 knocked down to 2.25 on average.
Not a bad buff but nothing crazy. Either way vs someone spamming shield your going to break then cast 1 normal ability roughly 3 or 3.5ish seconds base time for most mage/wicican/etc style classes before they get balance back. Then if they spam you'll still be breaking then casting again.
Ok Just sort of sketched out a rough test. Ignoring balance and equi buffs. On an average 12 second window of shield spamming then hitting with a 3 sec balance ability as soon as you can after breaking. Either 2 or 2.5 sec are getting in about the same amount of attacks under the 12 second mark. Over a longer period the 2 second breaker starts to take over and get more attacks in. So its definitely a buff against long term shield spam but not noticeable vs short term shield spam.
That's just talking about shield spam though I guess. If your talking more using a single shield to avoid timed effects then hmm thats a lot more specific and hard to say. You'd need to look at each situation and ponder it from there.
Practically for me switching from a 2 sec break to a 2.25 sec break isn't going to really change anything I do I guess so I'm happy enough to see it change I just don't think it'll make much difference for most people.
Gnomeweapons: as an illuminati people killing ents in a single balance is a pain. It's what, 3.5s balance to kill one vs 4s and 2 power to resummon one.
I'd been thinking of putting a report in asking for non-homunculus ents to die in two hits rather than one.
Oh ok just was going through timed effects I do and when I may need to break shields at short notice and oddly the class that this buffet is most useful for is the Monk for me. The biggest buff for is a monk doing their instant kill.
This may sound odd at first glance but a monk trying to do their killer move out of form against someone who is shielded needs to ka raze that shield which is significantly slower than buffet or oddly significantly slower than invoke nullify as well.
The hattip-to-safety bit had been an issue back at the start before we worked out how to counter it. Broken limbs, monos, etc, prevent its use...biggest problem remains that the person just reappears in a random room in the area, and depending on the size of that area, could be rather far away from the fighting. Even Trill or Furrikin escape methods only goes a couple rooms at most. Limit it to Masochism down, Hattip works as far as 5 rooms away?
I don't really have an issue with the distance it travels with other escape things like dispersal letting you escape up to 10. Most conflict happens in fairly small areas as it is that you can easily scent and rush to. But then I don't think it'd be a problem to reduce it down to 5 rooms either.
If people feel the distance is an issue I'd be totally fine with limiting it to moving you 5 at max.
Gnomeweapons: as an illuminati people killing ents in a single balance is a pain. It's what, 3.5s balance to kill one vs 4s and 2 power to resummon one.
I'd been thinking of putting a report in asking for non-homunculus ents to die in two hits rather than one.
Problem with that, you either kill that ent, or you die when facing Illuminati. But gnomeweapons at least won't kill ALL your ents in one balance, as MD/SD have to deal with, so there's that =/
Gnomeweapons: as an illuminati people killing ents in a single balance is a pain. It's what, 3.5s balance to kill one vs 4s and 2 power to resummon one.
I'd been thinking of putting a report in asking for non-homunculus ents to die in two hits rather than one.
Problem with that, you either kill that ent, or you die when facing Illuminati. But gnomeweapons at least won't kill ALL your ents in one balance, as MD/SD have to deal with, so there's that =/
Wow, I'd not realised it was worse for wiccans, that's crazy!
Is it the sludgeworm you need to kill or die to meteor/soulless? Illuminate's definitely not going to happen without ents. Edit: Or anyway as it's power hungry and mental affs get bounced or cured really quickly, but even less so without ents.
I mean. There will always be something that you need to be competitive in death. If not gnome weapons, then wonderwands. If not wonderwands, then you have to be monk or whatever. Also re ent killing, for most ents you can't crit so you're not wiping out an entire fae entourage in a couple balances and if you do choose to target "fae" then you're killing random ones, not the dangerous ones. But keep in mind that wonderwand has higher base damage than gnome weapon as well.
Just checked and I killed two fae in one balance one time. The rest were all 1 fae/balance. That means 12 balances to wipe out my entire entourage without any special fae.
(This is with 13/13 buff on the damage type I was using so pretty close to optimal fae slaying)
I mean. There will always be something that you need to be competitive in death. If not gnome weapons, then wonderwands. If not wonderwands, then you have to be monk or whatever. Also re ent killing, for most ents you can't crit so you're not wiping out an entire fae entourage in a couple balances and if you do choose to target "fae" then you're killing random ones, not the dangerous ones. But keep in mind that wonderwand has higher base damage than gnome weapon as well.
That's a good point. Even without gnome weapons in Death, people need to stack crit and damage buffs (Lvl 4 crit rune, damage runes, wonderpie) so adding another thing that top bashers already have isn't unreasonable. Also the last thing I did before reading this thread last night was buy a gnome weapon.
It takes me two hits to kill my own ents with a wonderwand and max damage buff (2 hits x4 ents = 8 balances to wipe them out vs 4 balances from a gnome weapon) so there must be more than base damage for gnome weapons to make them so effective at killing ents. I'll find someone to test when I get home. Two hits would give the guardian at least a small window to react. I think it always takes 2 kether to drain the charge from an institute gem.
If it's fine that ents die in one attack I could try a report to reduce illuminati ents cost to 1 power off Vortex, like wiccan fae. I get the point about sludgeworm but there needs to be something to keep a target in the room. Mucus works 50% of the time, knocks off bal for 1s, and doesn't trigger on tumble.
The gnome weapon is meta and needed to min/max. It isn't as bad as it was pre-crit changes. It is just easier to get then a wonderwand. Gnome weapons doesn't break the game for anyone else like illself. Everyone can get them. If we nerf gnome weapons then we will shift meta and min/max to wonderwand which I would argue isn't that far behind since last I heard base damage is greater than gnome weapon. Also, daily credits was balanced around gnome weapons a Nerf to them would need to be along side a buff to bashing in daily credits. However, if we are dead set on a gnome weapon then my suggestion would be keep base damage the same slightly under wonderwand then change it to have a max of two or three hits.
2 hit option - weapon and 4 gears equal 1 hit and everything over this would go into the second hit.
3 hit option - every three gears equals a hit.
Just to clarify, I do not support a major change to gnome weapons since the crit change has already happened. As Yendor pointed out, it isn't wiping out entire ents, but I do support removing fae keyword to make sure it's not truly an issue.
The gnome weapon is meta and needed to min/max. It isn't as bad as it was pre-crit. It is just easier to get then a wonderwand. Gnome weapons doesn't break the game for anyone else like illself. Everyone can get them. If we nerf gnome weapons then we will shift meta and min/max to wonderwand which I would argue isn't that far behind since last I heard base damage is greater than gnome weapon. Also, daily credits was balanced around gnome weapons a Nerf to them would need to be along side a buff to bashing in daily credits. However, if we are dead set on a gnome weapon then my suggestion would be keep base damage the same slightly under wonderwand then change it to have a max of two or three hits.
2 hit option - weapon and 4 gears equal 1 hit and everything over this would go into the second hit.
3 hit option - every three gears equals a hit.
The wand and the gnome weapon are roughly the same price crystal to goop. Depends a bit on how low prices are at any day but you know roughly speaking they are worth a similar amount on the current market prices.
The wand and the gnome weapon are roughly the same price crystal to goop. Depends a bit on how low prices are at any day but you know roughly speaking they are worth a similar amount on the current market prices.
I think goop is about 40:1. Crystals let's say 1:40, but I think it may be a bit more than that. A full gnome weapon is 18,500 goop or 462.5 credits. A full wonderwand would be 20 wc or 800 credits.
It's kinda sad that class weapons are outclassed for bashing by wonderwands and gnome weapons. It actually takes away from the game for me when using my class weapon to hunt is sub-optimal and I have to buy this other thing. It's not really the having to buy artifacts that bothers me, I would totally buy an artifact that boosts my chalice/staff/cudgel hunting damage to the level of gnome weapons. Even having gears attachable to class weapons, or the possibility to merge the wonderwand into it or something. I'm probably the only one who cares this much about class identity, but it's why I love rpgs.
The original suggestion that led to gnome weapons was "an artifact that split your attack into up to three different streams" (so it would work on class attacks, wands, whatever).
Turns out that it would have required coding each and every attack over again to make it work out, so we got gnomeweapons instead.
I would have preferred the initial route though, split three ways is not as significant as a 10-way split.
Still, class attacks are outdone even by a divinus whip, so people would probably have still been moving in that direction. Would be neat if the whip was a modifier to your class attack that upped the damage and changed the type to the whip's output. Would let you keep your thematic class flavour without everyone using paeans of heavenly whatever-it-is.
Are divinus whips more powerful than my chalice divinus attack? I thought whips were the same as class weapons for some reason. But even if they are, they'd still be better as they don't cost regaents.
I also would rather my attack description be my class'. Before I open this can of worms, I do not want artifact weapons per class. However, what if we created generic bashing runes level 1,2, and 3. The rune would change base of your bashing attack to x for whatever class you currently are. Rune 1 would be 250 credits, rune 2 would be 500 credits, and rune 3 would be 800 allowing you to upgrade. We could convert current weapons to these levels based on the amount of investment within each.
Comments
Some other artifacts that were brought up in emails I've received that I'd like some more feedback on.
Gnomeweapons - Due to how they work, both against entourage classes and just bashing in general, they seem to be necessary to compete in Death/greathunt challenges. Some people think this is too much.
Wonderhorn Buffet - Some classes (guardians/wiccans/melders) are balanced around a long eq shield-break, this allows them to bypass that. Is that too much?
Peppermint Tiphat - Too good at escaping, should be more limited/restricted.
Gnomeweapons:
Multi hitting ents is a bit of an issue. You can clear out an entire illumanti or wiccan in a few rounds. If there was a way to limit this to just hitting one at a time or something similar I think it'd be a nice fix.
Not sure what to say about them when it comes to bashing but they seem really strong. But like others have said having crit artifacts or other items such as the wonderwand are important too.
Wonderhorn buffet: https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/mbvKFGKp
My Invoke Nullify time stamp is saying 2.339 equi usage.
My wonderhorn buffet is hitting at 2.042 balance usage.
Doesn't seem a big deal now i'm testing it but on the flip side I guess changing it wont make much of a different either.
Peppermint Tiphat:
The hat tip is stopped by most anti movement things such as being prone or what ever. It's got similar usage to the aspect power of Manifest Dispersal. I don't really personally see an issue with hattip mainly because Ascendants can get a better version of it that doesn't have a cool down with dispersal. The hat tip gives non ascendants a similar escape on a longer cooldown.
Also of a similar nature to hat tip is wonderclock timewrinkle.
For bashing the razing rune is better yea but in pvp buffet is advertised as a quicker shield break.
It just doesn't really seem that much quicker than just normal nullify though which is a bit weird.
I think 0.5s is significant enough, especially when timing things is important.
*Edit - I'm not saying that it's overpowered or needs changing, I'm just saying that a 0.5s difference is significant enough to at least discuss
I have no idea how to suggest for balancing for the Death event though. They really are a strong hunting weapon, and nerfing them ruins the point of getting it over just the whip. And both the Gnomeweapon and Wonderwand use Mana, so the only advantages Gnomeweapons have over is the multihit, and higher overall damage once enough gearboxes are put in.
I don't see Buffet used, so cannot comment. The hattip-to-safety bit had been an issue back at the start before we worked out how to counter it. Broken limbs, monos, etc, prevent its use...biggest problem remains that the person just reappears in a random room in the area, and depending on the size of that area, could be rather far away from the fighting. Even Trill or Furrikin escape methods only goes a couple rooms at most. Limit it to Masochism down, Hattip works as far as 5 rooms away?
So that's 2.5 knocked down to 2.25 on average.
Not a bad buff but nothing crazy. Either way vs someone spamming shield your going to break then cast 1 normal ability roughly 3 or 3.5ish seconds base time for most mage/wicican/etc style classes before they get balance back. Then if they spam you'll still be breaking then casting again.
Ok Just sort of sketched out a rough test. Ignoring balance and equi buffs. On an average 12 second window of shield spamming then hitting with a 3 sec balance ability as soon as you can after breaking. Either 2 or 2.5 sec are getting in about the same amount of attacks under the 12 second mark. Over a longer period the 2 second breaker starts to take over and get more attacks in. So its definitely a buff against long term shield spam but not noticeable vs short term shield spam.
That's just talking about shield spam though I guess. If your talking more using a single shield to avoid timed effects then hmm thats a lot more specific and hard to say. You'd need to look at each situation and ponder it from there.
Practically for me switching from a 2 sec break to a 2.25 sec break isn't going to really change anything I do I guess so I'm happy enough to see it change I just don't think it'll make much difference for most people.
I'd been thinking of putting a report in asking for non-homunculus ents to die in two hits rather than one.
This may sound odd at first glance but a monk trying to do their killer move out of form against someone who is shielded needs to ka raze that shield which is significantly slower than buffet or oddly significantly slower than invoke nullify as well.
I don't really have an issue with the distance it travels with other escape things like dispersal letting you escape up to 10. Most conflict happens in fairly small areas as it is that you can easily scent and rush to. But then I don't think it'd be a problem to reduce it down to 5 rooms either.
If people feel the distance is an issue I'd be totally fine with limiting it to moving you 5 at max.
Is it the sludgeworm you need to kill or die to meteor/soulless? Illuminate's definitely not going to happen without ents. Edit: Or anyway as it's power hungry and mental affs get bounced or cured really quickly, but even less so without ents.
(This is with 13/13 buff on the damage type I was using so pretty close to optimal fae slaying)
It takes me two hits to kill my own ents with a wonderwand and max damage buff (2 hits x4 ents = 8 balances to wipe them out vs 4 balances from a gnome weapon) so there must be more than base damage for gnome weapons to make them so effective at killing ents. I'll find someone to test when I get home. Two hits would give the guardian at least a small window to react. I think it always takes 2 kether to drain the charge from an institute gem.
If it's fine that ents die in one attack I could try a report to reduce illuminati ents cost to 1 power off Vortex, like wiccan fae. I get the point about sludgeworm but there needs to be something to keep a target in the room. Mucus works 50% of the time, knocks off bal for 1s, and doesn't trigger on tumble.
2 hit option - weapon and 4 gears equal 1 hit and everything over this would go into the second hit.
3 hit option - every three gears equals a hit.
Just to clarify, I do not support a major change to gnome weapons since the crit change has already happened. As Yendor pointed out, it isn't wiping out entire ents, but I do support removing fae keyword to make sure it's not truly an issue.
The wand and the gnome weapon are roughly the same price crystal to goop. Depends a bit on how low prices are at any day but you know roughly speaking they are worth a similar amount on the current market prices.
I think goop is about 40:1. Crystals let's say 1:40, but I think it may be a bit more than that. A full gnome weapon is 18,500 goop or 462.5 credits. A full wonderwand would be 20 wc or 800 credits.