When you analyze the concept underlying these classes, it becomes very clear that they're meant to be damage killers. Comparing these -chemantic-type skills to two other damage killing archetypes in the game, monks and bards, we'll notice a few key things. For one, unlike those two archetypes, there is truly no build-up or controlled strategy to achieving that damage kill. The skillsets themselves contain a hodgepodge of passives and backlashes which are entirely outside of the user's control, and then there's some moderate power adjuvant-type skills. Even if there were full control over their afflictions, the chemantic-type gives them in a rapid-fire sort of way that's just cured just as quickly or if not, just a big boom that leaves the opponent stupefied and frustrated.
The general strategy is to fall back on the tertiary to see if it can assist in building the needed affs, but not all tertiaries are good at this and neither do they solve the build-up problem.
Quite simply, without a way to lock down curing to any extent, it simply becomes a battle of throwing as many afflictions at your opponent as you can and hope somehow that some stick on them at the time of the final boom. There's no strategy, no flexibility.
That's really my biggest issue with these skillsets. It doesn't really feel like someone designed them while thinking along the lines of "This is what a runes wildewood would kill like, this is what an ecologist wildewood would pursue, this is what a telepathic aquachem might try"... It generally feels as if these skillsets were designed almost in isolation and that we were meant to figure out entirely on our own how they're supposed to synergize with the rest of the class' design. This is why I asked in one of the threads for a bit of a concept map on them. How were they intended to be played?
So now we have the major problem of this thread. We have these big-boom attacks that destroy groups quickly and decisively and then we have an underwhelming 1v1 offense. Chemantic-type skills just feel like a one-trick pony, which doesn't make for a very stimulating class to play. Combat should be nuanced and require you to actively think about what you're doing. That makes it fun, that makes it balanced.
Right now, instead finding synergy with their other skills, some use them as fallbacks (psionics) or as a quick means to try to spam some affs in time with their adjuvant-type. The class doesn't really have a lot of options in how to pursue their kill method.
Honestly, the entire concept needs to move more toward some sort of build-up/lock/curing denial and a big boom that requires a lot more set-up, planning and thought than what we see here. The class should be flexible and have options, but still be manageable and beatable by other classes. Adjuvants also need to be possibly thrown out and redesigned altogether as now it seems like most of them aren't even used because they're a) needlessly costly b) delayed and foreseeable c) clunky to work with d) Help out with very little at all.
I know a lot of hard work went into these and I want it to be known it's not my intention to put any of that down. I'm also not sure if this is in the scope of this thread, and if not, I apologize.
Considering you can do that burst at range and theoretically time it with other chems, three chems launching it at roughly the same time -will- drop multiple people easily at the cost of 5p/person casting. Now you tell me how there isn't a problem with that? I'm a melder... likely to still be a melder after whatever-wood comes out for BT. I can unleash cudgel and do... the same damage as you (100% cutting, though), provided you're in my meld and provided you don't shield in the time it takes for the damage to resolve (There is a meld-wide warning message). Sure, I can theoretically refresh self/power and do it again as soon as I get balance back, but that's where it ends for me. I can't repeat that act until at least one more hour has passed, and even then... I'll likely only be killing people under severe lag, as I'm constricted to 4s between the two hits. If you're range-nuking, your offense isn't suffering for 18 seconds. You can theoretically sit in the next room and just spam that while the rest of your group engages and drops people left and right with pure damage kills.
It may not be as big a problem as we're making it out to be, but it definitely isn't as small a thing as you're making it out to be either. It also looks like the damage scales based on health, so a warrior with 12K+ health is still vulnerable to your attack. As a comparison, Silvanus obviously took 3k damage from that hit, while I took almost 5k with my higher hp. Anyways, there's no real point in continuing this discussion, just have to remember the deathsights popping up last night, with Morbo dropping 3+ people in single hits without even being in line of sight where mages/druids can fire back at him and possibly try and do something in response to his attack. Iosai is on the case, working to resolve the issue, so we'll wait and see how that plays out before going back to this.
Think mage/druid unleash skills autoraze when they hit.
I don't particularly like being the recipient of misplaced recognition, so just to clarify that I wasn't involved in the testing on the
test server that highlights the extent of the runaway damage stacking
Enyalida posted about. But I did suspect that was the case from the brief
demo log I posted elsewhere, so am happy to have that suspicion confirmed.
I don't particularly like being the recipient of misplaced recognition, so just to clarify that I wasn't involved in the testing on the
test server that highlights the extent of the runaway damage stacking
Enyalida posted about. But I did suspect that was the case from the brief
demo log I posted elsewhere, so am happy to have that suspicion confirmed.
It was in fact Neos and I helping with that testing.
ETA: And Iosai is being awesome with opening the server a lot for us the past few days, thank you!
Think mage/druid unleash skills autoraze when they hit.
Not sure... been some time since last I unleashed... (staff, as a mage... doing a 100% cutting AoE attack is a bit underwhelming) and I did a double unleash at the time too, with refresh and all... got absolutely nobody even though my team was engaged in a fight with the enemy and it seemed rather... underwhelming in the end, considering the fact that nobody died for a solid 30 seconds after. Now, demesne watch was up, nobody ran out of the meld, so I think they either ate the damage and moved on... or simply shielded up and thus nothing useful happened.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Staff/cudgel unleash does go through shields. The damage isn't enough to kill on its own. I tended to pair it with phantomsphere detonates to ensure a kill when I was a mage. Obviously not applicable for druids.
You can use other tricks with a druid to kill people with unleash 1v1, there just usually isn't any point, it takes some trick timing and an enemy who is predictable (the way to escape getting destroyed by it is a little counter intuitive). It's theoretically possible though. Remember that most of the wildewood attacks (including the 'big' finisher one) are at least half physical and don't go through shields at all, also a little underwhelming.
I agree with Rivius's post, wholeheartedly. It's why I went through every tertiary for Wildewoods and went 'Okay, how can an ecologist kill with this skillset. How can a runist kill with this skillset. How can...' and so on. It's also why I was so desperate for admin feedback: I had (and still don't really have) and idea how admins want this skillset to work, so I'm having to play a game of 20 questions (but in reports, each question a month apart) to try and work out what the design vision is, so we can make it happen.
We're coming up with an alternate unified idea to try and suggest in place of adjuvants, or in addition to whatever ultimately replaces them. It's still in the conceptual stage, so I'm not going to try and post an explanation right now, but send me a pm and I'll run my ramble of ideas past you.
My entire problem with the bombs and the idea of bombs is that they gave Mages/Druids an Unleash staff outside of the meld, that can be stacked with other chemancers/woods, and hit everyone in the room while keeping yourself in relative safety. Boulderblast was nerfed within 6 months of Lusternia opening, fast forward a few years and the same mistake is being made.
Unleash Staff used to be much stronger, but also entirely stopped the Mage/Druid using any offense after that. They used to break the staff/cudgel, and stopped all demesne effects. These bombs are just a better version of that pre-nerf version of Unleash Staff, while also allowing multiple mages/druids the ability to do it outside of a meld. For cheaper cost.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Sounds like you need to learn to avoid people to me. Targeting a single person is hardly a new thing.
Because it's hard to hinder someone just enough to let the damage attack hit? Really?
You realize they can stand and do these attacks from a distant, send in their allies to hinder a few people and they just blast you away with no warning? All they have to do is get a few of the group and they can easily tip the balance.
I can't wait till I can run in and contagion with a couple other Necros spamming untargetted ectoplasm for mass hindering while my allies bomb you from afar.
And we will toss in a few omens for good measure.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
I'm starting to wonder if these skills could move more towards a move dedicated builder/consumer style mechanic like what you see in The Secret World, Magna Carta 2, and most of the superhero theme mmos.
Effectively the idea would be that rather than growing your flowers, or whatever, and leaving them there til you consume them in the giant bomb, you would be constantly raising them and consuming them. Obviously removing the bombs in their current incarnation, but then looking at the spore-type abilities more in terms of tiers.
So tier-two would be any ability that consumes two flowers, primarily instant abilities maybe with small power costs. Probably not damaging but more a variety of effects to support the end goal of the skill.
Tier-three would trend towards bigger effects for three flowers, and tier-four would be a nuke designed to be at it's most powerful if you've been using your consumers properly.
Though a builder would be needed too. Anyway, have at that.
I'm starting to wonder if these skills could move more towards a move dedicated builder/consumer style mechanic like what you see in The Secret World, Magna Carta 2, and most of the superhero theme mmos.
Effectively the idea would be that rather than growing your flowers, or whatever, and leaving them there til you consume them in the giant bomb, you would be constantly raising them and consuming them. Obviously removing the bombs in their current incarnation, but then looking at the spore-type abilities more in terms of tiers.
So tier-two would be any ability that consumes two flowers, primarily instant abilities maybe with small power costs. Probably not damaging but more a variety of effects to support the end goal of the skill.
Tier-three would trend towards bigger effects for three flowers, and tier-four would be a nuke designed to be at it's most powerful if you've been using your consumers properly.
Though a builder would be needed too. Anyway, have at that.
Doesn't sound like that good an idea. Any curable afflicts will be cured, effectively making your end-nuke useless. If we're talking uncurable afflicts a-la allergies, that's probably a bad way to do things, at least in my opinion. I would personally love to get rid of stuff like allergies and the build-up to inquisition that does absolutely nothing more than allow you to use your next skill on the list and has no other way of being removed than staying away from the caster for x amount of time.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
When allergies were originally proposed, what Saran is talking about is more or less what I imagined it would end up as, not what we have now. Basically, it would be nothing but momentum-esque tokens that are consumed to make attacks, like they are to use the intoxicating flower attack. Ah well.
Anyways, I'm still not liking 'unveiling' a possible "new" idea before it's polished, but Saran hit close to the sort of idea I had in mind:
Basically, it would be a mechanic in three parts: An opener, a sustaining attack, and a finisher. For each category of attack, you'd have something like three different options, sorted into defense, offense, and mixed-type attacks. To use a 'finisher' attack, you would be required to first successfully use an opener followed up by a sustaining ability. The sustaining abilities would always be available for use, but would have less effect if they didn't follow behind an opener. Using these abilities could look something like this:
1) Use an opener ability, this gives you an x second window (let's say 20).
2) Use a sustaining ability, to unlock your finisher, provided you used the sustainer within the window from the opener. Possibly could have a separate timer of x seconds (let's say half the opener).
3) Use the finisher, only possible if you've done the above steps, and you still have all previously opened windows of opportunity going (So, within 20 seconds of using the opener and 10 seconds of using the sustainer.). Closes all timers.
4) Return to step 1 and continue to cycle through.
This basic pattern can be expanded on and refined to make using it very much not like spamming the inquisition line, in a great many ways:
One such interesting refinement would be to limit which sustain/finish you can use based on what went before. In other words, from a pure offense opener, you cannot use a pure defense sustain, you need to switch into the mixed (Which would be balanced to be a weaker effect than either of the two focused effects), and from there you could use any of the three finishers... of course, stacking a defense sustain with a defense finisher would be better, so you'd be penalizing yourself for doing so.
Another sensible change would be to make these windows of opportunity double-sided. That is, you need to hit after a certain point, but before the end of the window. That would make it less a race to spam a macro over and over, because you'd need to do something else in the meantime. Of course, this wait time shouldn't be too long, but it could make things interesting.
How this would look thematically for each spec would be different, depending on that spec. Looking at the three currently out, it's fairly easy to come up with ideas, though. Talking with Neos, Aquamancers would be using an alchemical/chemist angle at it, throwing chemicals onto a target, where they have reactions. Chuck vial of HCl (ouch, burns)! Chuck Magnesium (Bubbles, how distracting)! Light match, boom (oh no, that previous reaction unleashed hydrogen gas, and it exploded)! I see Wildewoods doing folklore-y little magical rituals, with the three phases being ritual parts that build on each other. Something like burning incense, creating a talisman, and finishing with a chant/action. Aerochems could use gidgets to set up stacking resonance cascades or something!
Anyways, like I said: Not polished, but the underlying idea is there, and I think it's fairly cool/interesting. Some of the individual effects can still be group target if that's wanted, but you wouldn't be likely to run into the silly problems we have now with the adjuvant effects. The way that the choices are organized could work out differently, and they could be spread out over the skillset, instead of packed into three skills (which they would be if we just replaced the adjuvants) Honestly, a skillset based around that kind of mechanic could reasonably replace these entire specs without too many eyes being batted from my end, and I think it would be a lot more fun type of strategy to play around, a style that doesn't really exist in the game yet.
If you wanted to see a hopeful and optimistic future of combat, at least in relation to the woodchematics line of skillsets, that is my vision of it, hope it sounds interesting.
I'm starting to wonder if these skills could move more towards a move dedicated builder/consumer style mechanic like what you see in The Secret World, Magna Carta 2, and most of the superhero theme mmos.
Effectively the idea would be that rather than growing your flowers, or whatever, and leaving them there til you consume them in the giant bomb, you would be constantly raising them and consuming them. Obviously removing the bombs in their current incarnation, but then looking at the spore-type abilities more in terms of tiers.
So tier-two would be any ability that consumes two flowers, primarily instant abilities maybe with small power costs. Probably not damaging but more a variety of effects to support the end goal of the skill.
Tier-three would trend towards bigger effects for three flowers, and tier-four would be a nuke designed to be at it's most powerful if you've been using your consumers properly.
Though a builder would be needed too. Anyway, have at that.
Doesn't sound like that good an idea. Any curable afflicts will be cured, effectively making your end-nuke useless. If we're talking uncurable afflicts a-la allergies, that's probably a bad way to do things, at least in my opinion. I would personally love to get rid of stuff like allergies and the build-up to inquisition that does absolutely nothing more than allow you to use your next skill on the list and has no other way of being removed than staying away from the caster for x amount of time.
Obviously individual considerations for each skill, the spores also wouldn't need to always be afflictions, they should be tools designed to support the end goal which could be adjusted as appropriate.
@Enyalida: Hrm, similar but yeah that looks more like a GW Assassin(Hard-coded I think... lead attack, off-hand, and dual which resets the combo) or TSW Exploiter style (certain skills are stronger/modified by existing states on either yourself or your target)
The one thing I'd really want is to keep the wildewood appearance of them rarely moving (except for treehug) but things happening around them.
Comments
Good envoys. /pet
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Blocking lowers your shield, to prevent being beckoned. And there are far less Celestine's able to beckon then nihilists.
Breakin the meld you are fighting in prevents shielding.
Defiling the shrine that is probably there prevents shielding.
Counter bombing will mean no shields for anyone doing the bomb.
And really, it's pretty hard to avoid something that can be done from five rooms away.
Just another layer of defense added on. When can I dig my trench?
And we will toss in a few omens for good measure.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.