There is discussion in the neighbour topic on how to keep newbies in the game. And I think that one of the main sloth problems there is unintuitive class order system. It doesnt work as a newbie may expect. I.e. if I was a newbie, my first character would be probably wa/cl. As paladin is pretty balanced class in most RPGs. Unfortunately not in sloth. Where wa/cl is poor choice. While unintuitive wa/dr is much better choice. That brings the topic I would like to discuss. About the fact that some support classes are very useful(such as mentioned druid). And some are completely useless.
I am gonna list support classes that I consider useless and propose some ways to fix that:
- Thief. Probably number in “useless support classes” rating. Experienced players prefer to put it to the 6+ position in the class order. Maybe it would be good idea to introduce stab damage bonus depending on the thief position. Same way as there is damage reduction bonus for monk.
- Warrior. The hp bonus of that support class doesnt worth spending precious class position. So experienced players prefer to put the warrior class as far as possible. While many newbie monks choose mo/wa. And they often regret later in the game. As it is painful to live without mana and manaregen. I propose to introduce innate ac bonus depending on the warrior class position. Or maybe weapon damage bonus. Or maybe both (ac and weapon dam bonuses). It’ll definitely ease pain of warriors second (that also applies to ba/wa which is also popular newbie choice).
- Cleric. Frankly it’s not that useless. However benefits of that choice end after gaining eudaemon. So experienced players prefer to put it 4th or even 5th. One of the ways to fix it would be to add some heal bonus depending on the cleric position. Another original solution would be add bonus melee damage against undead and demons. Finally supplications after eudaemon could be reviewed and made more useful. Making choosing 2nd cleric class sensible will make the game easier for newbies.
- Bard. Having bard at 3rd+ position makes sense. Because bard adds both hp & mana. However some newbies put it second and lose mana regen bonus they could get from caster. We have several wa/ba who have tons of mana they’ll never be able to regen. Therefore I think it would be cool to give secondary bards some manaregen.
Thank you for reading so messy post. :)
I’d hardly call thieves a support class. It’s a damage dealer class.
However, when group needs it, thieves can heal or blast disints - that’s their support part.
Also, only one thief stabs in a group, but all thieves circle. So circle would be also useful.
I’m not going to debate whether to add bonuses people already have higher caps for.
Thief position in classo isn’t related to stab dam at all, it’s related to its prime skills. Either you can apply poison and circle, or you can not. If you can’t, you use other classes to deal damage in groups.
What would prioritize thief is a non-prime melee attack, but I don’t think it’ll compare with strike or broadside/maxed flail, so nothing will change for thieves.
Thief - shadowwalk, urban stealth, search, backstab
Warrior - highest innate hitroll in game, contributes to stab/grip success, critical hit, entrench, double attack, AC equipment restrictions, etc… Warrior is good every which way around. To me the biggest tragedy is that second wind is prime restricted….so unfair…
Cleric - seriously? cleric as a useless support class? bah.
Bard - yeah, this is a crap support class. Non prime bards don’t have the charisma to make the important skills work and gods of war is nerfed so that it’s useless for grip/stab.
My thoughts are, I would un-nerf gods of war, let the full damage bonus for gods feed into stab and grip, to make it a valid play style. Currently people put bard into their classo not knowing that singing and stabbing/gripping is a shit combination.
And for cleric, I would have the battle supplicants auto-assist, (same for necropets). And or reduce the insane order lag.
It seems that if charisma did more than help at rarely used songs, and people cared about charisma cap like they care about spell bonus/-saves caps, they’d put bard earlier in their classo.
And yeah, make gods work on stab.
Sorry for unclear formulations.
I was talking only about choosing a class order for an individual character(not about different roles in group, etc) and only about non-prime choices(that is what I called support classes).
My two points were:
Sloth class order system isn’t newbie friendly. As many popular newbie choices(i.e. wa/cl, mo/wa, wa/ba, ba/wa) aren’t really good. And when they become experienced players they might regret their choices. I dont think it is right.
There’s no real difference in the class order position for many support classes(ones that I listed in the original post) and therefore experienced players tend to put thief, bard and warrior to the end. Of course, skills of those classes are useful. However, is there a single reason to make, say, thief 2nd?
I’m skeptical of your logic. I don’t know if “Is there a single reason to put thief 2nd?” is a useful question or not. The question implies a lot and I’m not sure I concur with any of the implications.
Cl/Th…why not? Mo/Th….sure Wa/Th….ok
There is no reason why these classo’s can’t work. I’m not a big fan of the logic that druid should be 2nd to all caster class for mana regen either. It’s a miserable 5 mana while standing, outdoors only. Yawn! The reason to take druid 2nd is to have access to the higher forms. And the reason to take thief 2nd would be because you want to stab things or because you really like shadowwalk.
I’m not against ideas to improve the classes. I just don’t buy into your assertions that so many classos are complete bunk. And as to this issue of people regretting their classos, it’s really not as big a deal as you think. Eventually every player starts to feel pretty damn powerful (even Sochi). I do get many requests to delevel people, so they can reorder which is no problem. They don’t really care about the lost xp, cuz at some point they end up in a big group and get a huge chunk of xp and they’re happy. If this were really such a problem we would see people quitting over it or complaining more. You are a unique case because you are an experienced player who likes making all these different unique mid-level alts, which is cool, but I don’t see a widespread problem here.
@Taron This bard does care very much about bonus charisma, because luck gods and cry of the avatar. And charisma does matter for reign of confusion and reprieve, the 2 most important bard skills. So please stop saying it doesn’t. And it’s really fine that charisma doesn’t matter for some group bonus skills like valor and gods. It could be argued that luck gods is the most powerful skill in the game and it doesn’t work so good without bonus charisma.
@JB, if you looked at older statistics http://www.slothmud.org/wp/live-info/song-statistics, you’d have seen that what you think is important and what people use are quite different.
Here’s a glimpse of what it was, because stats have been reset:
Taron wrote: This brings us to songs that should be also affected by charisma:
gods of war, 3d most used song (tho if we sum up gods and lions, they come up first)
song of the mist (added: since it’s a prime song, can scratch it off the list)
knight’s blessing/prayer (added: since it’s a prime song, can scratch it off the list)
brothers in arms/valor, the 2nd most used song
lion chorus - 4th most popular
dreams of the castle
rina cruinne
march of the heroes, the most used song ever
fare thee well, #5th most popular
Cry is the 6th most popular song.
It’s very odd to see someone in 15 charisma providing a lesser gods bonus, than a bard in his regen gear. I can see how a naked and low level bard can know better songs, but how can his songs be more powerful?
While luck gods was the primary reason for making a bard, it isn’t used as often as I’d like for several reasons:
it’s troublesome to get a bard out for every repop
the bard needs 25 charisma for a good chance of success, so he needs 5x40
luck gods don’t work in “won’t repop with people” areas.
I bet you can count times you used it per week on one hand. Compare it to march or valor.
Hung, where are you going with this? :shock:
My favourite part is the part that lists cleric as a useless support class.
My second favourite part is where other people responded to the allegations seriously.
Again, I just didnt express my thoughts clearly. I didnt mean that there are useless support classes, but that there are support classes which positions in the class order doesnt really matter. Probably I need to rename the topic.
I.e. in case of cleric you can put it even 5th and still get the eudaemon eventually (and there are no really useful abilities afterwards).
So, there are support classes where the position matters: druid, necro, monk, mage.
And where it doesnt really matter: thief, warrior, bard, cleric.
I think that is wrong, because, first of all, newbies often choose wrong class orders(wa/cl, mo/wa, ba/wa, wa/ba). And if they made an error in second class it is unlikely they’ll ask an imm to delevel it. As understanding of that error comes much later in the game(i.e. after making 4x40).
Second, I think the game will become much more fun, if all classes will offer relatively equal pros and cons in favor of choosing it as support high in the class order.
Sorry for the misleading initial post again.
I do agree that new players make shoddy classo decisions, mostly on their past experience on other games.
What would help is:
brief class info and how it fits in the class order, when players pick a class
ability to “help class” during prime class selection
a pointer towards “help classo” and “help classes”, etc when your “isnewbie” flag is turned on and you try to level the 1st level in a secondary class.
Also, warrior does play a big role in the first 4 classes, as does monk. Afterwards, their place in classo doesn’t matter that much.
I think that the warrior plays role only if it has been chosen as prime class. No point of taking it from 2nd to 4th. What for? For hp bonus? Well, there is common consent that mana/manaregen is better choice, so a caster class is preferred.
And in rare cases when you really want some more hps, you’d better go with monk. As it’ll give you hp bonus(slightly smaller then warrior though) and innate damage reduction. That’s why ne/dr/mo is popular choice among experienced players.
While all non-prime warrior skills and abilities will be gained eventually independently of it’s position in the class order.
Sorry, but I can’t name any good class order that has warrior from 2nd to 4th position.
“will be gained eventually”
The order you get skills in does matter. Waiting to 8x40 for massive crit would suck. You reason as if players start at 9x40 instead of level 1.
Massive crit hit is prime skill as far as I remember.
Ordinary crit hit is level 25 which isn’t very far away even if warrior is 8th.
There are two other warrior useful high-level skills: entrench and 3x attack.
However entrench isn’t vital, it’s used quite rate. Also it is only level 28th. So it could be gained in a few months.
And 3x attack is just a small power-up, though it looks cool. But it doesnt really change things, even if you wave dark mace.
wa tert is a good addition of hps, x3 attack and ac to any caster class.
[40m 40d 40w 40o 40c 38b 21n 19t 20a] Mage - Obsidian dragon crest clasp broken?
Everyone playing will gain 3x attack and ac one day or other.
If one really wants to get it faster, he’d better put warrior 5th. It’s not really long time to wait.
But I dont think there’s a reason to spend on it precious spot from 2 to 4.
Yes, it gives hp boost. But caster in that position gives like 100 mana(don’t remember the exact amount). Which is about 1.5 restores ~ 300 hps. And 300 hps is far more than any warrior hp addition. And it could be even more with healing attunement and avatar heal bonus/eq.
And Mage is exception. Most of experienced players avoid to put warrior from 2 to 4. And even if they did, in most case it happened in the old days when they werent such experienced.
Since we’re just riffing on the classes, here’s my fantasy suggestions for each class:
Wa: broadside only knock you down when u use it on too big a mob or on a critical fail. not on a normal fail.
high level warrior weapons that supercede valor
Ma: gets a mirror at level 1
gets a selective dispel skill, advanced aura management, or some such, ava 1 or something
Cl: make lowbie/mid-level combat supps auto assist, reduce order lag
Ne: same, for necropets
also improve infuse soul a bit to make it the dominate healing strategy for necros
Ba: add creative success messages similar to the high armor proficiency message
the "who i'm singing to" list wouldn't foul up when moving from room to room
make oghams give a boost to grip/stab/strike/ etc... (success rate, not damage)
rethink all the instruments. increase variety and specialization.
Th: add fail messages that indicate the stab would have been successful if the mob had not seen the player,
i.e. something like, X sees you coming and engages you! ..to give us a feel for how sneak, invis is helping us.
eliminate circle dam altogether, just apply stabdam as +mod to the circle (not multiplied).
Dr: apply many more minor abilities to the forms, such as giving many of them infravision or darksight
Mo: reduce the number of actions which can be performed while gripping drastically
add prime monk forges/quests comparable to the hand dam gear in drachma shop
increase the amount of dam reduction gear in game
JB, those all are great ideas.
However I think that proposed skills(and maybe existing ones) should somehow scale with the class order position.
As I think a solution should be found to the problem when newbies making shoddy class orders and regret about their decisions half year later when they gain the game mechanics knowledge.
Along the lines of Hung’s last post, I feel like classes like bard or thief would show up more often 2-4 if the class slots were setup like this:
1: Primary Class gets all skills at 100% damage/usefulness + prime skills
2: Secondary Class gets all skills at 80% damage/usefulness
3: Tertiary gets all skills at 70/%
4: 60%
5: 40%
6: 30%
7: 20%
8: 10%
Caps would scale similarly. This would be a major deviation from where we are now and would probably nerf a bunch of currently players.
I don’t think that’s the direction to go in. That would accomodate people like Hung who appreciate the game on a fine level and create all these specialized mid-level characters, but it would dissuade people from progressing on thru 9x40. If the further you get in levels, the more useless all your skills become, that’s not driving you to go forward. I’m already irritated at the inherent futility installed into some of my skills, for example the short duration of frenzy combined with long lag (even long lag on failed frenzy) and the frequent fails of counterattack…it get’s to a point where players just won’t use stuff and that’s not the goal.
Caps do the work fine as it is, imho.
For example, I’m a mage 7th, so:
I have a spell bonus cap of 45, which I got to 78% in my stab mode without buying a lot of drachma sb gear or avatar shop bonus. Especially that the amount of sb gear for non-mage primes is abysmally low.
I fill half of my -saves cap with runes
All this means that my blasts are far inferior to the blasts of those with mage in 1-4 position (let alone mana amount).
I have monk 5th, so my dam reduction cap is -16. I can fill it with my innate bonus, sanctity, 1 rune and avatar shop bonus. wa secondary has a cap of 23, which is a farcry from my cap - and which is why I’m rebirthing into a wa/mo.
My 8 thief means that I’ve already capped stab bonus with runes and a clasp, so I can’t improve it by buying more clasps and avatar bonus. That being said, stab bonus is probably not that powerful, compared between 4 and 8 classes. I also don’t see a huge diff between stabbing in stab mode and ac mode, apart from hitroll.
So the limits are there, they are not known to the newbies.
Drastically reducing skill effectiveness at 6-8x40 would remove any motivation to level them, like JB said.
I like previous JB’s post, assuming the skills he’s talking about are non-prime. However, from the experience in another multi-class MUD with 7 classes, people choose them by unique major skills that are worth leveling for, mostly - and maybe by 1-2 utility skills, which are similar in 2-3 classes.
So perhaps a few major skills would tilt the favor in underappreciated classes.
Still, though, if we are digging in the class choosing process, we need to inform newbies of the nuances of their choice: right now there’s little info during the whole process about how best to do it.
Agree with JB & Taron. Such radical change wont fix things.
I think the solution lies in another area.
If we compare “good” classes with “bad” then we’ll see that every “good” class has cool ability that scales with the order position:
necromancer - pets
mage - spell_saves cap & huge mana bonus
druid - outdoors mana regen bonus
monk - innate damage reduction
cleric - supplications (though I think they are useless after eudaemon)
“Bad” classes can’t offer anything close to the above (that scales with the order position). Especially bard and thief.
So I think the solution is to add something to the underappreciated classes. So putting bard second would become equally justified as druid.
10% spell/skill efficiency means 8th cleric will heal 18hp with restoration.
I think it’s not what we want to get :)
I guess most old class bonuses works for first 2 positions only. New ones, like caps, works fine.
What about remaking them to something like this:
Warrior, to hit bonus
Position bonus
1st — +5 to hit
2nd — +4 to hit
3rd — +3 to hit
4th — +2 to hit
5th — +1 to hit
6th — no bonus
7th — -1 to hit
8th — -2 to hit
Warrior, AC bonus
Position bonus
1st — -0.3
2nd — -0.2
3rd — -0.1
4th — -0.1
5th — no bonus
6th — no bonus
7th — +0.1
8th — +0.2
Thief, damage bonus
Position bonus
1st — +2 dam
2nd — +2 dam
3rd — +1 dam
4th — +1 dam
5th — no bonus
6th — no bonus
7th — -1 dam
8th — -1 dam
Thief, to hit bonus
Position bonus
1st — +3 to hit
2nd — +3 to hit
3rd — +2 to hit
4th — +1 to hit
5th — no bonus
6th — -1 to hit
7th — -2 to hit
8th — -3 to hit
and so on…
I can see what you are coming from with your original post. Yes, most classes in class order wont end up as what you expected them to be. And that wont change much even with reworking classes, or adding more explanation of class in-working for newbies. Even experienced players probably wont understand hundred percent what they are getting into when creating new character. I don’t know how much of joke it was - but Katie said that 4xnc char was created as class order with less incentive to play as possible. Yet it worked in the end.
Now about the classes. Prime thief is very different from non prime thief. I understand why it goes low in classo, I got it 7th myself (darn, had to check hall of fame as i did not remember if its 7th or 8th!). I used backstab a lot, made quite good damage set, even bought golden dagger from drachma shop. Even so, adjusting stab damage wont do a thing for me. Aside from thief primes, secondary to eight thieves do not care about stab damage that much; sure there some points here and there, but not to the point of hard calculating whole eq set. I would suggest breaking stab multi according to thief position in class order, but that might have too much implications on game play i dont want to consider.
Again, warrior is too damn awesome as prime compared to all other positions in classo. But that done with by a single skill - second wind. It is only my not very humble opinion, but that skill is one very powerful and very cool even after nerf from s3. As for non-prime warriors, there are plenty of benefits for having it high (second for example) and not low. It is not only about some healing/spell caps after all. For end game you might consider your max_str cap, for mid-low game, you will have some equipment easier to use if you have warrior in second or third. It is not as problem as there are alternatives for other non-casters, yet there are still some nice pieces for warriors.
I agree with the sentiment that supplication need some reworking. If you are not cleric prime, the healing cap probably is not an issue for you to worry about. So its mostly supplications to consider when you position your cleric in classo, and aside from mare/rabbit, even fighting supps are not worth it. If its about picking 20+ more mana regen / or potential swordwraithes at 40 av versus extra 20 heal bonus / thunderbird, then I would pick druid or necro over cleric for secondary. But even then it still makes good third or quad class.
Nothing to comment about bard. Again, and similarly to other classes, what works for main class focus when its prime, like caps on something, is not that much of issue when its not prime. You just learn(and you do it all the way to 40 av!) to play with what you have, and whine sometimes, about how everything is unfair.
For Jb infuse soul idea - make infuse souls heal undeads (yes, pets included) and also add some incentive to necromancer to become undead. We have undead visage already, we have vampirism disease, why not actual turning into undead? That could make for interesting benefits/penalties for a player.
Supplication/undead pets. I dont have much of idea how to improve those, but let me remark on smth once again: it always struck me odd that we have a lot of pets type spread on levels which are fastest to pass(level) up. So if later pets are intended to be better than earlier ones, we are to use some type of pet for about 10 levels, quickest ones at that, only to never use again. And later we get new pets only on very grand occasions such as new 40 level.
All the necro pets are plain fighter ones with small quirks of their own, and that - being fighters - could be adapted for cleric supplications for most of them.
Alris is out!
There was a rumor at some point that excruciating blow chance was affected by thief position. I never tested it though.
Getting the prime skill(s) of a secondary class would add some nice drama to the selection of classos.
Thief second might be attractive if it comes with Poison. I could see some mages going warrior second, sucking up the huge mana and regen penalty to get second wind, parry, and a nice warcry. Why turn into a piasa when you can cast mirror image and turn into six piasa with reflection! Would love to see a warrior cleric tearing into ethereal mobs with a dark mace and a pet pit fiend, or a necromancer walking around playing the bagpipes for his minions.
Warrior/Necro might be a better tank than warrior/monk though, which might be awkward… but the warrior monks would have focus, prediction, and wraithtouch.
I would assume that is a good possibility, as much of the stuff I coded was affected by class order…
I too had been musing with the idea of learning another classes prime skill as a remort.
What I like about the idea is it opens up amazing combinations… it extends the game for players… but I admit the idea is a slippery slope, and once again waters down the concept of primes which I am kind of fond of. I also note that it’s proponents are “power players” whose thirst for awesomeness will never be quenched.
Hung part of your suggestion already exists. Your 2nd class choice affects your innate hitroll. The highest being warrior, then thief and monk. I know you don’t see it, but it’s there. I keep trying to tell people this, that th/wa and wa/th make some sense for this reason. Perhaps it should not be invisible.
Thanks everyone for sharing their opinions.
Well, I agree probably someone may see it is worth putting warrior to 2-4 class order slot. Because of hp bonus, invisible hitroll and max_str cap. However personally I would never do it. As trading order position for 100 more mana seems much better investment for me.
Anyway the question persists for at least thief and bard. As almost everyone agreed that there’s no point of spending high class order positions on it unless it is prime.
About the bard - I really liked the JB’s suggestion to make the whole gods of war damage go into grip/stab. Moreover the proportion of gods of war damage going there could be tied to the bard class order. Like 10/8/7/6/5/4/3/3. It’ll make the bard class order matter. And will fix the problem of new guys making wa/ba and realizing it was a crappy choice half-year later.
Yes, it’ll add +6(as lion chorus is +4 already) damage to the prime bard’s grip/stab. And it seems to be overpower and balance breaker. However, right now, bard is exceptionally weak in terms of solo. Much weaker than even cleric. So it wont break balance.
Well to me the thing that makes it not overpowered is that the bard is expending almost as much mana as a blast to give this damage and if they are doing stab, then they are probably blasting on top of it and breaking song. If they sacrifice blasting in favor of singing, then they deserve to enjoy a good size damage boost. It’s not like there’s that many bards, and when we do get invited to stab with someone, it’s to blast, not sing. Would be nice if people actually wanted us to sing for them during stab/grip runs.
I love having bards on my grip xp runs! I can never keep my own songs going. And I want you singing and striking, not blasting.
The only problem is that 1x40 bards are amazing and 8x40 bards are… identical. All things equal, I want the one that doesn’t take all the xps.
That’s the thing, Josiah.
Bards only get higher charisma with 40s and maybe bonus charisma, because they have little else to spend drachma on.
But higher charisma doesn’t contribute to your grip runs, unless you do mobs that are standing alone, which is exceedingly uncommon and dangerous.
I don’t see why 9x40 gods of war wouldn’t give you more damage, compared to 1x40 gods of war. It’d make it worth to get mid-high level bards with you to splork much larger mobs. In large groups, bards would be more inclined to keep singing, rather than blasting. Of course, they could heal, if needed.
Or we need a resonator that lets a bard focus his cry at a particular mob.
Two ways a bard can be more useful: a stronger song+strike or a strong single-target blast with charisma.
Since these are two various gamestyles diff bards use, both would be good.
And yet JB doesn’t agree with me completely about higher damage for all aspects of gods, and then complains his bard is made to firewind rather than do his bard work.
I have no problem with bards blasting or striking, but it sucks, when their prime skills aren’t more useful past 4x40.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not complaining about any such thing. I blamed myself for putting mage late in classo because I got blasting late, but never have I suggested that Bards should be blasters. No bards should not be blasters. No Bards should not have their own special melee attack. It’s not what they do. If you don’t want to be a support char, then don’t play one! Don’t ask to turn bard into some super do-everything great class because it suits you.
Charisma does matter. Reign of confusion, reprieve, eye of beholder, haunted dirge, cry of the avatar, and seven luck gods are all charisma dependent! And they’re all cool abilities.
The smart bard doesn’t WANT to NEED charisma gear to use gods and valor, the smart bard would rather outfit in AC, hitroll, hand damage, etc… sometimes and yet still have those melee bonuses available. From my perspective as a bard, this is not a smart request. You’re asking for a nerf.
Hell..before we talk about useless 2nd to 8th support classes, can we tweak the prime benefits that are horrendous to use?
Just from a mage’s perspective:
reflection= useless for the most part when you look at blanketed spectral shield benefits, reflection mana cost, and length reflection actually lasts
mirror images= too time consuming to use on runs, we have hella lag in between casting it 4, yes 4, times to get full mirrors for a matter of 10 secs for 80 mana to get full mirrors back up…when a cleric gets aerial servant in one cast for 45 mana, go figure. By the time a mage takes damage on the multiple mirrors, he could have just taken the dam and healed without the need for 10 sec lag on remirror cast, which is why mirrors are essentially useless at higher levels. FFS, please just make mirrors 1 cast for 4 mirrors.
second wind= warriors can do more blast damage than even mage primes. I appreciate that it’s been tweaked to make it harder, but i still see it happen. Second wind should be available to all classes like it was on s3. Warriors already still have a ton of valuable prime advantages if this was made available to all classes. Even most warriors would agree this is likely a necessary change.
Just my two cents, I love my prime and sec class, but I’m with Gorka…I don’t think we should be worrying as much about newbies who pick their secondary class weakly as much as newbies who a look forward to skills in their prime class and get dejected because all of these supposedly awesome skills really don’t have any luster.
JB, your reasoning applies to the prime bard. However, let me ask you some questions related to this topic. Would you recommend to a newbie taking bard as 2nd class? Does high charisma cap justify such choice? If not, what game mechanics changes would you propose to make 2nd bard good choice? Taron’s proposal does that.
In any classo it depends on the player, whether they’re looking forward to 4x40 for 9x40. In the shorter run, necro/bard could be fun/viable. In any case I don’t see how giving bard a special offense attack would justify placement in classo. 3 wraiths x 5? damage for non-prime gods x 3 attacks is 45 damage per round? Not terrible, but yeah prolly not worthy of high placement in classo. What if non-prime gods gave same as prime gods +10…and then Bard prime gained a new skill, one which enables the bard to remove his name from the mobs pissed list, i.e. if target is same align as bard, then mob forgives bard on successful charisma check.
@Ezekiel, I agree wholeheartedly. Second wind as warrior prime is not fair. As if achieving ridiculously low AC, plus parry weren’t enuff to choose warrior, second wind also? It is a skill that helps so much and makes the game more enjoyable, it’s a real shame that it’s prime. As for mirrors, if necro can summon 4 wraith instantly, then let’s give same courtesy to mage. As well as some sort of mirror at level one and the ability end dispel selected effects. I can’t speak to your opinions on reflection, I’ve never played with it.
Okay, let’s continue discussing the necro/bard example.
Normally, you get:
3 wraiths
with 3 attacks
+6 gods of war non-prime in any charisma
=54 damage per round, if they all hit (that’s a big if)
What I’m suggesting, a necro can wear ac +charisma eq and runes to get +10 charisma, so he can use:
+3 wraiths
with 3 attacks
with +7dam from gods of war from higher charisma
=63 damage per round, if they all hit.
As a high level bard, you wear about +12-15 charisma in your gear, so you’d get some increase. If you need to wear a heal set, that’d be a tradeoff for between heals and damage, like everyone else does now.
It just boggles my mind that bard’s prime attribute doesn’t affect the most popular songs. It’s not about sets or anything.
And yes, it is a nerf for those, who don’t wear charisma gear. You don’t expect to heal with 300 restores w/o a heal set, right? And you also need healers with heal set to heal, so the demand for bards with high charisma will be the same as for clerics with great heal bonus.
What if we gave second wind to everyone, but increased the movement cost for non primes? That would give everyone the quality of life improvements from the skill (weblag sucks) while making it it too expensive for mages to go crazy spamming it.
Right now it costs 30 mv until avatar 1, and then costs 15 mvs. I’d support everyone getting it for 30 mvs, and the cost reduction to 15 being the warrior prime benefit.
Better we should add rebirth within prime skills variant , get 9x40, reborn, pick warior second and viola! :)
That’s not a bad idea Filk, but 2nd wind would still be better non-prime. I’m not sure it even needs to be penalized compared to warrior. I just don’t like the idea that warriors have an advantage in speed, how many actions they get in the same amount of time. The coliseum couldn’t be more rigged to help casters, and yet still somehow the warriors are at the top because they can blast faster than a mage and strike faster than a monk.
I think warriors are near the top in coliseum because Alris, Taron, and I play warriors.. not because warriors are inherently superior. Warriors run out of mvs really fast in the coliseum and if you stop to cast refresh you aren’t killing things.
Back when coliseum was first put in, I led the rankings with my druid/mage and people claimed druid was overpowered.
Cizin did amazing things as a thief in the coliseum despite all the ethereals and nostabs. I think it’s more players optimizing their characters rather than it being biased against specific classes. Although I admit, I’m not sure how to do well as a bard prime.
Dr isn’t in the top place at level 9 only because he has no interest in the coliseum.
Same for Ezekiel, I guess, I haven’t seen him there often.
I’m sure if they put as much effort into coliseum as I did, they’d (easily?) top my score at levels 8-9. Esp that I’ve set the 9th level record, when I was 8x40, so Dr has a huge upper hand there.
Sadly, he’s now disappointed by our arguing, says Sloth doesn’t interest him and is consumed by WoW .)
Haha, that’s funny…him disappointed by us arguing! Seriously funny. I love the guy as much as anyone, but if you haven’t noticed, the mud has been rather peaceful lately.
@Josiah, you’ll never convince me that warriors deserve more actions per round than any other class. I guess it’s good for you I’m not in charge of such things.
I have no argument against everyone getting access to second wind. I would be happy if there were far less prime skills. Casters, monks, and perhaps thieves can use the skill better than warrior primes, but not dramatically so.
My suggestion that second wind be more expensive for non warriors was a simple attempt to compromise directed at a problem that may not exist. Cheaper second winds would be adequate for warriors to not cry about the loss of their best prime benefit.
The question is, what else would you give warriors to replace the loss of their most powerful prime skill? Giving full access to second wind to everyone would be a dramatic buff to all other classes, and is effectively a big nerf to warriors.
Is there a valid case that warrior is so good that everyone else needs a dramatic buff? If not, warriors will need a new skill, or every class should mainstream one of its prime skills.
@Juggleblood, I like the Taron’s idea to scale gods of war damage with charisma. As it’ll address the issue discussed in this topic. We already have charisma cap tied to the bard class position. So if the Taron’s idea will be implemented. And if, say, 2nd bard’s gods with max charisma will be +12 damage. While 8th bard max charisma will be only +6. It’ll be more than valid reason to put bard high in the class order.
Can’t say I support the resonator idea. Here I tend to agree with you that if someone wants strong blast, he’d better play prime mage.
@Ezekiel, I completely agree with you too. I am pretty sure that If some kind coder will add an avatar spell to cast all mirrors in one cast. That coder will see GRATITUDE in the eyes of every mage.
I am coming around to the idea, within such reasonable limits as you just said. Ideally also this damage would fully tie into stab and grip, to achieve your desired end of greater diversity of viable class orders. I like that the damage would scale with class placement, but not with charisma. I’m thinking if you want to put charisma more properly into play, then make it affect the number of people you can sing to. I think that’s more logical than trying to scale gods of war to it.
@Josiah…scale warcry bonus health to class order placement?
Charisma could affect how inspired you are by someone’s song, though.
Funny, just today I’ve thought that buying quest +charisma eq likely wouldn’t be worth it for necros anyway, because they’d get more profit from spell bonus (also used in groups) or hand damage, if they go the hd route.
Josiah wrote: I would be happy if there were far less prime skills.
hissing jeering throwing fish :twisted:
Josiah wrote: The question is, what else would you give warriors to replace the loss of their most powerful prime skill? Giving full access to second wind to everyone would be a dramatic buff to all other classes, and is effectively a big nerf to warriors.
Is there a valid case that warrior is so good that everyone else needs a dramatic buff? If not, warriors will need a new skill, or every class should mainstream one of its prime skills.
Totally agree with Josiah here. I’m not against others having second wind, but seriously I would not have chosen warrior prime if I knew this was going to be the case and therefore I’d feel like my investment in Gorka was a waste of time. I’d be totally bummed to become effectively a “useless support class” (sic).
Although I do think that the mage class needs a “small crinkle” ironed out, I’m amused that 7 other classes and the “power players” who play them, are licking there lips, well professing to help out the mages of which we could all count on one hand.
Prime classes and skills give players identity, it’s a mistake to mess with this. Fix mage mirrors, or allow there mage prime to cast another spell in a round. No need to give 2nd wind to everyone and therefore denigrate the warrior class.
Second Wind should have never gone in-game for warriors :)
Its safe to say we moved it and nerfed it for a reason :|
Gorka,
Though I agree allowing some blast benefit to make up for warriors outblasting may be made in lieu of blanketing second wind..I think your reasoning against opening up second wind is somehow unfounded. Just because one of your prime skills gets opened up (and likely at a greater cost) to other classes does not make you less powerful. That is only a comparative illusion in your mind. If you think that one skill basically shifts your whole character from strong prime into useless support..it shows you just how overpowered and unbalanced that skill is and needs to be addressed as such.
I’ll give you an example…say, hypothetically, all classes had frostbolt opened to them at a higher mana cost. That doesn’t affect the fact that I have a whole set of spellbonus and saves eq and higher caps for both to make my bolts still stronger. It also would only make an incremental difference for non-primes using it, as frostbolt is not that much greater in base power than firewind (especially with all the heat and sun houses and lack of winters). The mana cost would likely lead them to continue to use firewind. The difference in the strength of the spell does not go down for me, and it minimally increases the power of those around me. That is balance.
Now take a skill like heavy armor proficiency…same thing. You could open up endless ac to say mages, but likely goes against their play style and they wouldn’t be able to incorporate enough ac and maintain a decent level of spellbonus and spell dam which their chars are more geared for. It wouldn’t make any difference to your power, since you will innately be structured more for ac anyway and hit your restricts faster even…and those who newly had it opened up to them likely will only see minimal, if any, benefit in chasing the max ac beyond what was previously allowed for their classo. That is balance.
With second wind, that is not the case. The use of it by warrior primes doesn’t take a whole eq set to manufacture strength over other classes in or use stat caps over other classes in. It allows you to use any secondary skill (order lag, winds, shifting, strike, anything) and do it faster than a prime can, simply by learning the second wind skill. If you opened it up, even at a greater cost to non-primes, they would likely use it to affect the tactics/skills they should more likely be using faster as primes (but you are using at an increased rate). This is where I think your objection comes in, as there is no measureable comparative difference at the point which it would be changed, even if at an increased mv rate, since the skill can be used on any spell/skill. That shows you how unbalanced this skill is.
Do you think you should strike faster than a monk, shift faster than a druid, order faster than a necro, blast faster than a mage, all because you read a book at lev 32 prime? Sorry if you based char design on an overpowered skill, but if it is to remain..it’s only sensible to fix what’s broken and at least try to come up with a means for balance where you’re not outdoing primes at their own class skills.
-Zeke
Yeah, understood Eze, Perhaps a poor choice of words on my part… if others got second wind my “POINT OF DIFFERENCE” would go down, not my “POWER.” I support prime classes and prime skills all the way. The “power players” want everything… I don’t think that makes for a better game or encourages people to work together. I’d consider warriors with only parry and riposte a “weak prime.” I’d probably rebirth Gorka as mage/warrior type if that happened.
I’d fix the mage issue by implementing a “fast blast” skill for prime mages, rather than giving every man and his dog second wind.
Other classes also have to realize that second wind is usually used to rescue, deathblow and other group warrior orientated tasks sparingly… we don’t often have the spell dam, mana/regen to use the skill to potential… I only use it for house of sun/heat in the coliseum. A grip, a second wind or two and a deathblow and we are down 100 moves. If people think we second wind with firewinds all day everyday, that’s simply not true.
Mages and Necro’s have more to gain from second wind than warriors themselves. You won’t see me second winding a broadside or a kick.
If there “IS” a problem with warriors having second wind… it’s not the skill itself… it’s the fact you can second wind everything… it probably should be skill/class specific… but I’d be unhappy if they changed warriors unless they properly fixed broadside or berserk in return.
A bit more discussion with Ezekiel in game, and we kind of think that second wind should be warrior skills only… but warriors should be compensated… with a new prime skill… or vastly improved broadside or berserk.
I don’t think the change would be popular… cue follow up posts from power players and wa/mo’s… But all this trouble started basically because second wind can be used to do better than another prime in one of his skills. That’s not really right… when you look at things in an “imm/balance” way.
I think a proper solution would look something like this…
Second wind removed…
New warrior prime skill added… or improved riposte frequency/broadside/berserk…
New avatar skill called “improved speed” which enables specific spells or skills depending on their prime to be second winded at avatar level in a more balanced and fair way.
Awww more peaceful.
We should keep it that way, see ya when I see ya :)
Sends my love to Pixie!
Cya and gluck!
M
I think I’m on the losing side of this argument so I won’t elaborate much, other than say I think Warrior is OP, they shouldn’t get more actions. Second wind is **fun **and awesome, and we should all have it, for about 50 moves a pop. Warrior prime doesn’t need compensated apart from maybe giving them back their ripostes on berserk (yes, it works from a realism sense…he’s berserk…no it doesn’t work from our skill balance sense). That’s my parting shot on it.
Ah..and as Gorka pointed out, yes second wind is bugged. You should not be able to 2nd wind order lag, although I realize it would be a lot of work to create lag categories.