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Org Class Synergy-Magnagora
One of a small series of threads, wherein I wish to address the game's general imbalance in a way that will better benefit all with bringing a given org's group combat synergy into a better, more even keel. Glomdoring is known for having great synergy in combat, as most if not all of their classes have strong means to push for and support the application of a given affliction combo that will drive hard for ease of killing across the board. That being a synergy between Bleed and thus Mana pressure, leading to either death from the initial aff if not cured, or death to rapid toading if it is.
Magnagora. (pulling from my comment from a prior thread that got this started)
Magnagora could have Bruising and Dust to work off it, minor use via mana kills IF we had Nihilists ever around able to Wrack but it's no insta kill like Celest's Absolve. Bruising seems harder to build and has generally far fewer sources to build from regardless and doesn't proc save on a cooldown based on the targets offensive actions...once per combo for a time after the nerf it took when EVER move would proc bruising in its entirety....and movement which has no cooldown to punish spam runners, but able to just be spam clot and far less negative impact should it be removed that way compared to Bleeding as again, no insta exists in Mag based off half or lower mana, just a damage burst. Damage to straight health output (nerfed by various 'fixes' over the years, Vitality to all, and Illself which was thankfully fixed most recently so that was good for all), with heavy dust stacking to TRY and push for the absurdly hard to hit kill routes available to Necromancers only....no other class in Mag can really work with Dust stacking to get an insta, though QueensLament for Cacophony doing a burst damage (that then clears ALL said plague-dust affs when used so it's a one-shot) comes somewhat close. Just doesn't quite finish the job, is the problem...always felt like Mag can get right up to the gate, but then the bar is bugged and won't let our toll pass let us slide through for one reason or another. Unlike Glom's synergy, dust stacking has a few nice affs in it but will NOT kill the target on its own.
As pointed out in following comments, 'Mag also gets touted as having this deathmark synergy and how great it is. It is so great, only 2/5 classes can even do anything to or with it, and that's only because ur'Guard have access to Necromancy. When it comes to the plague affs, only the Cacophony have a real way to make use of them, unless we're going to speak on the fringe case of maybe 100 bonus hemo if a Ninja hits a target with pox. But we have no real org themed synergy, the closest we get is, "Hey, ignore your killpath entirely and just focus on this one thing, while I do damage based on that." That's the summary of Mag's best combo (Ninjakari + BoneCrusher).' as per @Lycidas
'In the case of Magnagora, I think they were hit with a lot of nerfs and I don't think that their Nihilist rework had the same "security" that both the Night Twist rework and the Institute rework had. Deathmarks have diminishing returns (what????) while timewarp, tempinsanity and mana drains/bleeding stacks don't. Their balance loss stacking method was quickly targeted by certain envoys, removing another tool from their toolbox. The Wrack killpath is a little undertuned from when I last saw it in action.
Magnagora. (pulling from my comment from a prior thread that got this started)
Magnagora could have Bruising and Dust to work off it, minor use via mana kills IF we had Nihilists ever around able to Wrack but it's no insta kill like Celest's Absolve. Bruising seems harder to build and has generally far fewer sources to build from regardless and doesn't proc save on a cooldown based on the targets offensive actions...once per combo for a time after the nerf it took when EVER move would proc bruising in its entirety....and movement which has no cooldown to punish spam runners, but able to just be spam clot and far less negative impact should it be removed that way compared to Bleeding as again, no insta exists in Mag based off half or lower mana, just a damage burst. Damage to straight health output (nerfed by various 'fixes' over the years, Vitality to all, and Illself which was thankfully fixed most recently so that was good for all), with heavy dust stacking to TRY and push for the absurdly hard to hit kill routes available to Necromancers only....no other class in Mag can really work with Dust stacking to get an insta, though QueensLament for Cacophony doing a burst damage (that then clears ALL said plague-dust affs when used so it's a one-shot) comes somewhat close. Just doesn't quite finish the job, is the problem...always felt like Mag can get right up to the gate, but then the bar is bugged and won't let our toll pass let us slide through for one reason or another. Unlike Glom's synergy, dust stacking has a few nice affs in it but will NOT kill the target on its own.
As pointed out in following comments, 'Mag also gets touted as having this deathmark synergy and how great it is. It is so great, only 2/5 classes can even do anything to or with it, and that's only because ur'Guard have access to Necromancy. When it comes to the plague affs, only the Cacophony have a real way to make use of them, unless we're going to speak on the fringe case of maybe 100 bonus hemo if a Ninja hits a target with pox. But we have no real org themed synergy, the closest we get is, "Hey, ignore your killpath entirely and just focus on this one thing, while I do damage based on that." That's the summary of Mag's best combo (Ninjakari + BoneCrusher).' as per @Lycidas
'In the case of Magnagora, I think they were hit with a lot of nerfs and I don't think that their Nihilist rework had the same "security" that both the Night Twist rework and the Institute rework had. Deathmarks have diminishing returns (what????) while timewarp, tempinsanity and mana drains/bleeding stacks don't. Their balance loss stacking method was quickly targeted by certain envoys, removing another tool from their toolbox. The Wrack killpath is a little undertuned from when I last saw it in action.
They have what they need to succeed, they just need these stupid restrictions that only apply to them to be removed. Also, bring back bal loss stacking - if it was okay for Bonecrusher Ectoplasm users pre-overhaul, it should be okay now.' via @Maligorn.
From this we can move forward, with the various issues pointed out, on how best to address them, moving forward. Constructive disagreements and discussion is welcome, but as always keep it civil. And do NOT namedrop anyone in particular as a specific problem, or derail this attempt. This is a matter important to the general health and well-being of the game as a whole.
From this we can move forward, with the various issues pointed out, on how best to address them, moving forward. Constructive disagreements and discussion is welcome, but as always keep it civil. And do NOT namedrop anyone in particular as a specific problem, or derail this attempt. This is a matter important to the general health and well-being of the game as a whole.
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Comments
ALRIGHT! Mag time finally. We have 5 plague affs, yes only five - epilepsy, dysentery, pox, rigormortis, and scabies. Looking at this sheet, you'll notice that most every class has access to these plagues, however, literally only one class uses plague affs, the Cacophony. They can turn on Dyscrasia which turns off the ego drain of SickeningPlague, to deal 12% max health damage per plague aff. So at max this is a 60% health burst of damage, assuming all five are stuck somehow. None of these plague affs will kill you.
Onto the deathmarks that people say is our synergy, know who gets them? Nihilists and ur'Guard that take Necromancy. Know what it does? Lightly reduces power cost of some Necromancy abilities! Others tout that demonmarks are the synergy...you mean the Nihilist that is the only person that can apply and use them? Brilliant! Thus I have a suggestion that should require little change and would wrap Magnagora synergy up in a pretty little bow:
Treat DemonMarks (Corruption, Damnation, Darkness, Despair, and Pain) as plague afflictions. Still only being done by Nihilists, but if they're allowed to be flagged as plagues then we go from 5 to 10 total possible plagues. It keeps a solo Cacophony at 5 plagues, but in group it can be an execution method assuming allies build plagues. Another thing to note, is that these plague afflictions are random, except in the case of the Nihilist. Necromancy, Cacophony, and Geochemancers afflict with a RANDOM plague.
First off, why are they called plague affs? I know that they are plague affs in the skill descriptions for the Cacophony, and I am assuming that the contagion affs in necromancy are the same affs, but they aren't really very plague-y. How about having them spread?
How would they spread? There are a few options that I can think of. Assuming that the appropriate skills to allow for it are added, they could:
- Have a chance to spread to other people in the room when applied
- Have a chance to move to someone else in the room when cured
- Be given to all enemies in the room if the target has them
- Be given to the target periodically as long as someone else in the room has them
Now what is the point in this, even if you give random affs to other people in the room they will just cure them and it will do nothing because they are not being targeted.This is where Lycidas's idea comes in. Rather than counting demonmarks as plague affs, why not count plague affs on other people as plague affs? This might get a little strong, so it might be necessary to reduce the amount of damage (not ideal due to 1v1) per aff, or possibly count something along the line of <plague affs on the target> + <number of other enemies/people with plague affs>.
Another alternative would be to remove the immunity of liches to contagion, make them immune to the effects of plague affs (but not the affs themselves) and then have it count the plague affs on the target and on the person using the skill. That option would be somewhat reminiscent of Necromancers getting bonuses for being crucified, which is something I always thought was very Magnagoran and a shame that it wasn't really used due to the lack of support and the significant downside. This would almost necessitate damage changes though, as there should be a limit to how much damage can be front loaded in this fashion.
Of course, that still doesn't give us a way for any of the other classes to make use of the plague affs.
Are the random plagues smart (won't pick one that's already there) or not?
Next, whichever of the aforementioned skills gives the aff that is decided upon should probably be changed to deal affs from the plague pool instead. The most obvious thing to do with this is to make the skill afflict smartly, however I would like to make an alternative suggestion. Have the aff selected entirely at random, and then have another effect trigger if it would 'miss' and give an aff that the target already has. My suggestion for this effect out be health and mana damage (to enable both damage kills and the Nihilist's Wrack) and also that the target should fall prone as they struggle against the plague which threatens to overcome them. This would (assuming that the wiki is correct) tie into the knockdown/prone theme suggested by Lodestone and Rockslide.
These changes would allow the Geomancer to more effectively contribute to any plague synergy, yet they would still be very limited in how they can benefit from plague affs. This leads to a problem, wherein the skill needs to fill two gaps - ensuring that there is still a good rate of affliction and ensuring that the afflictions can be used once they are in place. Unfortunately, I am somewhat at a loss as to how this should be accomplished.
Moving onto some other skillsets, it would seem that Wrack is the main reason for dealing mana damage aside from the manabarbs common to all bards. Necroscream CarillonKnell supports this, as does Necromancy Leech and any skill which causes bleeding (due to clotting). Assuming that Wrack remains as it is, we could make it more effective by increasing the opportunities for mana damage, preferably in a way which allows for pressure to be placed on multiple vitals.
Deathmarks and/or Demonmarks - These should probably tie into the other synergies rather than attempting to stand on their own.
Plague aff spreading - personally I like the idea of a pair of skills, across different classes. One of these skills would cause a target to periodically gain plague affs if another person (enemy?) in the room has them and the other would cause them to (have a chance to?) spread to someone else when the target cures them.
Finally, I have a few random ideas which may be completely unbalanced. These are for discussion and should not be taken as complete suggestions in their current form.
Poison - This can be cast in a single tainted location or throughout your demesne. The land becomes a poisonous wasteland, which occasionally releases clouds of noxious gasses. Deal poison-type damage per plague affliction on enemies within your demesne. Those enemies who try to escape by burrowing within this tainted earth will have their flesh slowly eaten away.
Sickening - This can be cast in a single tainted location or throughout your demesne. Those of your enemies who walk upon the tainted earth will contract a random plague affliction and will make healing these afflictions more difficult. If it is cast for your demesne, it will only affect the location of the demesne where you stand and adjacent locations that also reside in the demesne. But, as you move throughout different areas of your demesne, it will shift location with you.
It's a small change from the original. Poison right now is just a flat damage smack akin to the other melders and does vomiting since hunger attrition was lost forever ago. New suggestion for it is scaling damage based on how many plague affs on the enemy, encouraging those types be focused. As for Sickening, does something along the lines of what Nelras was saying, give it a way to generate plague afflictions and then make it harder to remove them.
Do you have a preference as to a replacement for epilepsy?
Let us look at QueensLament vs what is, as far as I can tell from the wiki, the closest comparison - Discordantchord.
QueensLament
Targetable: Yes
Power: 2 (Megalith of Doom)
3 (Megalith of Doom) (Dyscrasia)
This song mimics the voice of Queen Nifilhema, and must be directed at a target. The victim will be bound and subject to unspeakable tortures.
If Dyscrasia is active, this song will also cause damage and stun proportional to the number of plague afflictions on the target.
Changelog:
DiscordantChord
Damage Type: 100% Magic
The discordant chord is tuned to especially harm those ears which are already suffering the tonal ailments of a musician, doing greater damage the greater the number of these afflictions the victim has. The power cost is 2 power for each affliction the victim has from among: manabarbs, egovice, and an achromatic aura. If the hapless victim suffers all three of these tonal disorders, and powerspikes, their suffering shall be grievous indeed - losing half their mana and ego in addition to immense pain.
If you have an octave active in the room, its magical ability to block the curing of auric ailments will prevent then from being consumed by the discordant chord. Additionally, it will increase the damage of your chord for no extra power cost.
QL has a current maximum of 5 afflictions compared to the 4 available to DCC.
DCC consumes afflictions unless an Octave is in place. QL, as far as I can see, does not consume afflictions.
Octave can prevent the curing of steam afflictions. There is no skill currently in place to prevent the curing of dust afflictions on the same level as octave.
QL requires 3 power (Assuming Dyscrasia) while a full power DCC uses 8.
QL equilibrium recovery can be halved by encore - another 3 power.
Both of these skills will stun a target and put them on low health.
As far as I can tell, the reason that QL is allowed to be repeatable twice, with half an equilibrium between the uses, is that the afflictions can be cured. If the number of available afflictions were raised to a point where a sufficient number could not be cured quickly enough, or if some of the afflictions could not be cured, I worry that there would be no room for a target hit by one QL to escape the second one, depending on how long the stun lasts. Not to mention what would happen if there were two bards and therefore not even the half-equilibrium gap between uses. Of course, this is assuming that plague afflictions are expanded through the rest of the Magnagoran skillsets and that, therefore, they can be built in a significant fashion.
Despite this assumption, I would look towards ensuring that the existing afflictions can be applied rather than just increasing how many afflictions count.
Is your concern that Magnagora would lose its identity if they focused more fully on plague afflictions? I would disagree, for the same reason why I wouldn't expect Glomdoring to complain that non-Glomdoring warriors and monks do bleeding, but I can understand where you are coming from if that is the case. Is there something that you would prefer?
One option that I can see, albeit one which would require a much larger rework, would be remaking deathmarks into a stacking affliction like timewarp or tempinsanity. I think that there would be more identity loss there, personally, as a lot of that design space has already been explored between Hallifax and Gaudiguch (Although the latter could also use a rework if the comments from their thread are anything to go by.)
Can you think of any other possibilities? I don't think that demonmarks could be expanded in this way due to their thematic ties to the Nihilists, although you should feel free to prove me wrong if you wish to.
If demonmarks are a no-go for being counted as a plague affliction, make it a lichdom power, Archlich or not. If in the presence of a lich, you have a chance of not curing a plague affliction when you eat dust. We could also have deathmark change and allow plague afflictions to build stacks on it. Right now only a handful of Necromancy abilities build deathmark stacks with a truly minimal effect. However, it could be improved in one of two ways:
1) If target is afflicted with a plague affliction, double the amount of stacks your Necromancy skill generates
2) Add a stack to the deathmark for each plague affliction on the target of a Necromancy ability that builds stacks.
I like the idea of making deathmarks count plague afflictions as deathmark stacks as a way for Necromancy to interact with plague. Deathmarks would need to be improved to make that worthwhile though.
As for the lich idea, how about adding that to deathmarks instead? Perhaps you have an increasing chance to fail to cure a plague affliction based on how heavily deathmarked you are.
Another, separate, option would be to have deathmarks directly able to add plague afflictions, although that leaves the necromancer with less room to use them.
Here is a potential skill, just as an idea of how the two could be tied together:
Putrescent Decay
DARKCHANT DECAY <target>Power: some, I don't know. Probably a fair amount. (Megalith of Doom)
Drawing upon the mark you have placed upon your enemy, you begin to turn their flesh into a semi-liquid, rotting state. This process rapidly afflicts the target with plague afflictions while draining the deathmark upon them.Furthermore, should the target attempt to cure any plague afflictions while they are in such a state, they will <Bad things, what do necromancers want? Damage? Broken limbs?> and will also find that the mark grows darker once more.
This effect will end either when there is no deathmark remaining on the target or if they manage to escape your presence.
theatre due to the snowy weather.
hungering malice.
Deathmark
DEATHMARK SENSE [target]
Place a grim mark upon your victim so you may sense him better, aiding in his demise. Use of several Necromancy skills will cause the mark to darken further. As the mark darkens, so will your abilities to sense things about your victim increase. Should you seek the means to torture him, the mark will make it ever so painful. It will also cause your victim a longer time to recover his balance while on a crucifix and more apt to fall to the worst of a contagion plague. Finally, the victim will find it harder to cure deepwounds when applying a healing potion as the mark darkens.
Note: TOUCH darkens mark by 3 levels. OMEN, DISFIGURE darkens mark by 2 levels. SHRIVEL, FEED, MARKWEAPON darkens mark by 1 level.
Necromancy attacks against a target with 20-25 levels of deathmark will cost 2 power less.
Writhing with 20+ deathmark levels will take longer.
As for deathmarks making it harder to cure plague afflictions, it would need to be explored in more depth. How are deathmarks cured currently? Is it one cure = 1 level? If so, that is rather slow given the numbers involved and, I would imagine, would make it rather impractical to attempt to cure deathmarks during combat. I am not going to specifically say whether that is a good or a bad thing, only that it would need to be balanced around either way.
I can think of a few ways to make curing more difficult:
- A percentage chance to fail to cure
- A minimum amount of plague affs based on deathmarks (borrowing from hemorrhaging here)
- Increased cure balance after curing a plague aff
- Bad things happening when you cure a plague aff based on how many deathmark levels there are, be it damage or something more inventive.
I am not saying that all of these are appropriate depending on how other things are balanced, and we definitely shouldn't use all of them. Again, I would rather add this either to the deathmarks or to archliches, rather than to all liches.In any case, I would like to wait to see what other people have to add. I know that @Vatul posted about making a post for the Cacophony, and I am sure that there are other people who would have something valuable to add based on their experiences either with the skills or with Magnagora as a whole.
It might be good to keep it in mind if it does present a strong hindrance to building an offense, else if I'm wrong then whoops.
Counting a few other affs in the dust family as plague...both to replace those quantities lost from the overhauls, and to potential replace Epilepsy as one given its randomly oriented curative balance from the rest...would compensate for the first point. Whether we count Deathmarks as one or more based on scaling is eh...since only 1.5 classes even can apply that particular aff, the rest do nothing to do so and can...at best...indirectly support with dust stacking, stuns, blackout and occasional aeon to maintain for just those two. (1.5 being Nihilists, and Necromancy Ur'guard, Trackers do nothing for this at all)
A few changes have been put through, such as QueensLament, that changed their calculations to reflect the lesser amount of Plague affs. If necessary, recalculations would suit to reflect the change above and better balance out things there.
Removing the bias against diminishing returns when bleed sources have none...since again the basis of all this is to catch up to the one org that seems to be well designed enough to require the rest of us adapt...would attend to the Deathmark build issue. Particular since, as stated, only 1.5 classes can actually apply and build them directly. If we gave Deathmark building to ALL classes in Mag for....some reason that would have to be discussed further if we even went that route, wouldn't make sense currently...that'd be different. Right now, the diminishing returns really doesn't do much at all, especially since they are a pre-req for getting a kill, cannot actually kill on their own, as opposed to other focuses. Only real way for such to make sense would be if mana/ego drains and bleed/bruising/hemo applications had diminishing returns when from multiple sources in the same room, but also is a hell of a lot more work than just removing it from Mag's Deathmark build.
Balance loss scaling....I can see why that's a thing, quite strong on its own, a stun-less stun if you would. But...cannot really say it's a bad thing to have removed, despite as a Warrior I always made good use of it, especially when Bonecrusher. It's a pain to deal with and feels a bit cheap, just was so vital as all the REST of Mag's issues piled up over the years that such a measure became kinda necessary just to make headway. Fixing the other things, this aspect's nerfing won't even matter in the long run.
Rework to Deathmark, the wiki is wrong so I'm going to give what we're suggesting - Writhing will take longer as long as one level persists. For every 5 levels of deathmark, one less limb break is required for Sacrifice. At every 10 levels of deathmark, one less power is required for Necromancy abilities.
This is already how it works, 10 levels is 1p discount, 20 levels is 2p discount. Extended writhe timer so that sacrifice can even happen, and limbs required to be broken for Sacrifice scale like this as is. The only change is making the writhe an immediate thing rather than a later.
Next on the docket is altering the Cacophony skills SickeningPlague and QueensLament. SickeningPlague currently afflicts with one of the five plague afflictions and deals 9.5% max ego damage per plague affliction an enemy has. When Dyscrasia is active, SickeningPlague always hits with Pox and one other plague, but no longer drains ego. I would like to outright remove the ego drain, as it is honestly quite useless in Magnagora, and instead make it darken a deathmark one level per plague affliction.
Dyscrasia costs power to use and alters SickeningPlague until you change it back, thus they have a synergy now with the Necromancers to make Sacrifice work. While still on the topic though, QueensLament currently does 12% max health damage per plague affliction on the target. It costs power to play and target it, so it is balanced as is. However, I'd like to change it to 5% health damage per level of deathmark. This gives another viable executioner of the deathmark and then begins to build a synergy with the city, as now three classes can partake and execute. Next up is making Geomancers and Ninjakari blend into the mix.
In an earlier discussion, we agreed that the Geomancer melds should apply more plague afflictions than it actually does, and I believe suggestions were made, so I'm going to overlook that for now and just let it be noted that is the desire. NOW we're getting to the good part. I'd like Ninjakari to have a method to apply Necromancy's DeathWeapon to their chain. What the weapon currently does is upon a successful hit, it darkens a deathmark by 1 level and has a chance of causing a plague affliction. This is all fine and good, just need a way to put it on the Ninjakari chain. My suggestions are as follows - replace Barbs in Ninjakari and let us instead add necrotic spikes or whatever, making it act as a deathweapon and that is the only change. Or, we have to give deathweapon as a base lich power because the only people who can use it anyway are warriors and monks.