A change of pace here, can we prevent mortal favours/highfavours from stacking on players? Especially if it's out of the sect?
I know this may shock you, but people are stacking highfavours to pick up x2 stat bonuses and x2 damage resistance. You'll also notice that the people doing this aren't exactly what you would call 'involved' in anything. It's a pretty easy fix that shuts down an easily exploitable powergaming system.
Or maybe, you can only favour someone not in your sect as a mortal?
I believe Fitness skill should be accessible for everyone in Survival skills.
With the right restrictions, I could definitely get behind this, especially as AM is uniquely positioned in terms of access to Fitness. Some classes that are already very heavy on curing options would need some downtuning for this (Priest comes to mind, obviously).
Well, Demonic has afflictions and AM (even though not every classes) has curing. I believe it's just quite fair and it suits to RP well. Besides Priests have fitness with Bliss and they use it and they don't need the skill. It was just suggestion for all users on the game. Not just for AM. However if you want Fitness for just Demonic, (it's what I understand from your restrictions idea), good luck with that.
I was referring to the fact that AM has access to six classes with fitness, while demonic has one. I would love to see Fitness become a Survival skill with a cooldown or other restrictions attached, since the effectiveness of affliction classes fluctuates massively depending on whether or not the target has access to Fitness. It would make balancing those numbers a bit easier when you can consider it a component of every defense.
Ranger/Amazon (I consider those one class, really) Outrider Templar Monk
Realistically, four. Not six. Predator has shrugging, Priest has Seraph Care, Wardancer has Spurn dance, etc.
While Demonic does not have Fitness, they do have abilities that passively cure such as Demon Siphon or passively transfer affs to an opponent like with Defiler. Truthfully, giving everyone Fitness doesn't really sound like a great solution. For one, you have to balance affliction classes around the premise that full locks are likely no longer possible. In addition, that kind of homogenization is outright boring and probably bad for the game in the long run. I'm personally of the opinion that if fitness is viewed as necessary on classes because of how potent affliction offenses are, that's indicative of something wrong with affliction offenses being too overbearing on anyone without fitness rather than the availability of fitness and lack thereof.
Realistically, four. Not six. Predator has shrugging, Priest has Seraph Care, Wardancer has Spurn dance, etc.
While Demonic does not have Fitness, they do have abilities that passively cure such as Demon Siphon or passively transfer affs to an opponent like with Defiler. Truthfully, giving everyone Fitness doesn't really sound like a great solution. For one, you have to balance affliction classes around the premise that full locks are likely no longer possible. In addition, that kind of homogenization is outright boring and probably bad for the game in the long run. I'm personally of the opinion that if fitness is viewed as necessary on classes because of how potent affliction offenses are, that's indicative of something wrong with affliction offenses being too overbearing on anyone without fitness rather than fitness being the problem.
First off, the homogenization argument is wrong and awful and you are bad for thinking that. Curing rates need to be relatively equal for affliction offenses to have any kind of balance at all, and Fitness is incredibly common. Half of the Magick classes have it and more than half of the AM ones have it, so you kind of have to balance around it, much to the detriment of everybody who doesn't get it; currently a profession without Fitness is difficulty to justify as being 1v1 viable for high-tier combat.
Secondly, yes, affliction offenses are too overbearing; they have far too much control without sacrificing their offense to get it, and their pacing is very very fast. They don't deal with avoiding parry and setting up a window with a no-pressure offense or playing the attrition game to get health/mana down to a kill level, or anything like that. They just activate their passives and floor it. It is not a case of "Your healing will eventually be overwhelmed" or "They're trying to force you into making a mistake", it's a case of "their affliction rate outstrips your healing rate by a ludicrous amount right out of the gates."
Of course, their defense for that is "This is balanced because otherwise you'll just damage me to death". This is problematic because damage kills need to do huge amounts of frontloaded burst to compete with that and so it starts a vicious cycle of "Septus can three shot me so I need better afflicting ability or more tanking ability" versus "Mathiaus can disable me in the span of three DSLs so I need to be able to kill within those three DSLs."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I believe Fitness skill should be accessible for everyone in Survival skills.
With the right restrictions, I could definitely get behind this, especially as AM is uniquely positioned in terms of access to Fitness. Some classes that are already very heavy on curing options would need some downtuning for this (Priest comes to mind, obviously).
Well, Demonic has afflictions and AM (even though not every classes) has curing. I believe it's just quite fair and it suits to RP well. Besides Priests have fitness with Bliss and they use it and they don't need the skill. It was just suggestion for all users on the game. Not just for AM. However if you want Fitness for just Demonic, (it's what I understand from your restrictions idea), good luck with that.
I was referring to the fact that AM has access to six classes with fitness, while demonic has one. I would love to see Fitness become a Survival skill with a cooldown or other restrictions attached, since the effectiveness of affliction classes fluctuates massively depending on whether or not the target has access to Fitness. It would make balancing those numbers a bit easier when you can consider it a component of every defense.
Ranger/Amazon (I consider those one class, really) Outrider Templar Monk
Realistically, four. Not six. Predator has shrugging, Priest has Seraph Care, Wardancer has Spurn dance, etc.
While Demonic does not have Fitness, they do have abilities that passively cure such as Demon Siphon or passively transfer affs to an opponent like with Defiler. Truthfully, giving everyone Fitness doesn't really sound like a great solution. For one, you have to balance affliction classes around the premise that full locks are likely no longer possible. In addition, that kind of homogenization is outright boring and probably bad for the game in the long run. I'm personally of the opinion that if fitness is viewed as necessary on classes because of how potent affliction offenses are, that's indicative of something wrong with affliction offenses being too overbearing on anyone without fitness rather than the availability of fitness and lack thereof.
Priest gets access to fitness through bliss as well, so we can compromise at five, if you want to merge Ranger/Amazon.
Siphon is great - it's like a healing rite that only affects the user. If only healing rite could hit allies too...
I believe Fitness skill should be accessible for everyone in Survival skills.
With the right restrictions, I could definitely get behind this, especially as AM is uniquely positioned in terms of access to Fitness. Some classes that are already very heavy on curing options would need some downtuning for this (Priest comes to mind, obviously).
Well, Demonic has afflictions and AM (even though not every classes) has curing. I believe it's just quite fair and it suits to RP well. Besides Priests have fitness with Bliss and they use it and they don't need the skill. It was just suggestion for all users on the game. Not just for AM. However if you want Fitness for just Demonic, (it's what I understand from your restrictions idea), good luck with that.
I was referring to the fact that AM has access to six classes with fitness, while demonic has one. I would love to see Fitness become a Survival skill with a cooldown or other restrictions attached, since the effectiveness of affliction classes fluctuates massively depending on whether or not the target has access to Fitness. It would make balancing those numbers a bit easier when you can consider it a component of every defense.
Ranger/Amazon (I consider those one class, really) Outrider Templar Monk
Realistically, four. Not six. Predator has shrugging, Priest has Seraph Care, Wardancer has Spurn dance, etc.
While Demonic does not have Fitness, they do have abilities that passively cure such as Demon Siphon or passively transfer affs to an opponent like with Defiler. Truthfully, giving everyone Fitness doesn't really sound like a great solution. For one, you have to balance affliction classes around the premise that full locks are likely no longer possible. In addition, that kind of homogenization is outright boring and probably bad for the game in the long run. I'm personally of the opinion that if fitness is viewed as necessary on classes because of how potent affliction offenses are, that's indicative of something wrong with affliction offenses being too overbearing on anyone without fitness rather than the availability of fitness and lack thereof.
Priest gets access to fitness through bliss as well, so we can compromise at five, if you want to merge Ranger/Amazon.
Siphon is great - it's like a healing rite that only affects the user. If only healing rite could hit allies too...
It's not really an on-demand fitness with Bliss. As @Khizan said though, affliction classes are straight outpacing out of the gate. I disagree with him still on the homogenization argument, as I'm still a firm believer that not everyone needs to have the same exact mechanics for a level playing field (but agree to disagree). In any event, despite having Bliss, their own variant of Siphon, and Rite of Healing, Priest has one of the absolute worst times against Assassins. Again, this seems indicative of the affliction classes being too powerful straight out of the gates rather than the lack of fitness being an issue.
I doubt Fitness in Survival will do much for you if you're having problem as a priest...
I rather we adjust the affliction rate than give out Fitness to everyone if we were to do any radical changes. But I don't think we need any change to that since you can defend pretty well vs afflictions with either active cures/healing, shielding, rebounding, hinders or the classic run tactic. Just like you do versus damage. If you're not stopping your target, you'll just play chicken race and the fastest person wins. Active is the keyword here.
I doubt Fitness in Survival will do much for you if you're having problem as a priest...
I rather we adjust the affliction rate than give out Fitness to everyone if we were to do any radical changes. But I don't think we need any change to that since you can defend pretty well vs afflictions with either active cures/healing, shielding, rebounding, hinders or the classic run tactic. Just like you do versus damage. If you're not stopping your target, you'll just play chicken race and the fastest person wins. Active is the keyword here.
I don't use Priest. Mainly, I'm speaking from fights I've observed with Ultrix/Ifreann with someone like Mathiaus. The RNG behind your passives isn't going to do much good when you have 10+ afflictions and it cures something like shyness rather than something critical like asthma or anorexia.
The irony that Priest is struggling against an affliction offense isn't lost on me though, given how annoying Healing was. However, you and I do agree that not every class needs Fitness. However, if Garryn comes out and says that he feels that affliction classes are legitimately okay, then I'd say that I don't mind giving a variant of Fitness to classes that currently lack a passive affliction heal in Demonic, such as Wytch.
You also can't really turtle against Diabolist. I realize that things are changing in the beta, but I feel like clarifying since @Chronus stated this. Shielding does nothing against Evileye and rebounding isn't really stopping the main venue of their offense (again, Evileye). Since there's no active hinder, it's easy enough for a Diabolist to pressure via kelp afflictions until the nightmare's passive hellsight eventually catches up to you and then starts overwhelming you on top of the already potent affliction rate with Deadeyes/Daegger Hunt. Whereas Assassin can just outright remove rebounding from the equation altogether if they use Volcano on top of specified curing denial with shadowplant. The only real way of running from a Diabolist/Assassin is frontflip, (which requires a 1500cr artifact that is also very controversial as is) unless you want to try to run through noose traps or gravehands. I haven't fought any Hunters that knew what they were doing to have an educated comment on them. Apparently, shield is their bane at the moment, but I defer to those who know more about them.
Edit: Another suggestion I'd be willing to put forward would be to try to remove a lot of the RNG (because balancing around RNG is awful) from the passive heals, perhaps with those passive heals prioritizing a heal based on a person's affliction priorities in autocuring. That'd probably be a coding nightmare to implement, but it's an idea.
Ultimately, I absolutely despise the necessity of Fitness and would like to see it downgraded in some way, but not while affliction classes like Hunter, Diabolist, and Assassin are in their current forms. Just because someone doesn't use them on a regular basis doesn't mean that they aren't powerful.
I feel that the RNG is needed though, because if it wasn't there I'd be able to have perfect tracking (more or less). And I have good tracking as it is right now with the RNG. Not to forget the Spectacles of Tomast that anyone can get. I'd rather we just remove passive heals all together and go with active only because that brings up the skillcap somewhat on players and rewards those using it for smart play. But I doubt that'll happen within a short timeframe, if at all.
Diab won't lock you unless they remove rebounding though and they have to sacrifice nightmare for fiend to do so so the affliction rate is down just from that. They do have crazy affliction rate however, just like Wytch, Assassin, Hunter and Mage. But they need that crazy speed to counter autocuring.
The biggest problem is that we've removed most of the afflictions that used to hinder people and we've kept the speed of attacks as they are. That's why we see people able to be more efficient at basically any kind of offense today.
I'm all for active skills but Fitness doesn't feel right to hand out to everyone. If someone achieved a lock on you I think they should get rewarded for it. Fitness simply nullifies it AFTER they succeeded. Like I said, I rather see less professions with it than more and adjust affliction rate and whatnot according to that. Priest for example doesn't need Fitness because they have passives curing them without having to care. Same goes for Bards and Diab. Basically all professions should have one and one only active curing ability - in my world. That or a way to hinder someone in their offense. Or both if you feel greedy. And not thinking about it too much, I think all professions out there have at least one way to hinder someone or to cure something actively. Be it disrupt, spider web, a balance knock or whatever - there should be something that delays the affliction rate (or damage) that you have in your arsenal. If someone is lacking that, add that rather than Fitness.
I doubt Fitness in Survival will do much for you if you're having problem as a priest...
I rather we adjust the affliction rate than give out Fitness to everyone if we were to do any radical changes. But I don't think we need any change to that since you can defend pretty well vs afflictions with either active cures/healing, shielding, rebounding, hinders or the classic run tactic. Just like you do versus damage. If you're not stopping your target, you'll just play chicken race and the fastest person wins. Active is the keyword here.
This doesn't work, though.
As a damage class, active hindering is effectively my choosing to sacrifice my offensive momentum to reduce YOUR offensive momentum; hindering you doesn't actually get me any closer to a win. The BEST case scenario is that I just tread water, but it's far more likely that I give up my offensive progress entirely.
As an affliction class, active hindering is the offense and it does not involve any sacrifice of momentum whatsoever; they get to put you on the defensive while still playing defensively themselves. This is the single biggest problem in Imperian combat right now and it's largely why 1v1 is dead.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
There's not that many afflictions left that stops an offense, even for the affliction professions. Today there's more slowing down affs like confusion, clumsiness and lethargy. Which is why more and more people go with pure damage and affliction professions get more damage options, because they get to do their damage but at a slower pace and that will most likely kill someone over time anyway. Slow down affliction rates and they can't reach the point where they can kill you.
The profession that currently has too many hinders and delays while doing their offense is Diabolist. It have been way worst in the passed though. Paralysis and peace spam for example. Nowadays you can still hit people with your stuff even if you get weakened.
I don't see a problem in you as a damage class having to stop your own offense to do some defensive play though. Just like the affliction class has to stop to shield or throw out something other than a lock aff to block your incoming damage.
To be fair, clumsiness and confusion took solid hits to their efficacy this round of classleads which god willing, will be released sometime this week.
At the end of the day, fitness gives you lock immunity. Fitness is a get out of jail free card that side steps Khizan's doom scenario.
@Rahiel Cleric fares the best against Assassins. Ultrix has no idea how to actively heal or counter an assassin, but healing rites RNG of love helped her heal out of a truelock and absolve the crap out of Wysrias. This moment will be remembered forever.
You could make the argument clerics don't need: bliss, prayers, healing, revit
To be fair, clumsiness and confusion took solid hits to their efficacy this round of classleads which god willing, will be released sometime this week.
At the end of the day, fitness gives you lock immunity. Fitness is a get out of jail free card that side steps Khizan's doom scenario.
@Rahiel Cleric fares the best against Assassins. Ultrix has no idea how to actively heal or counter an assassin, but healing rites RNG of love helped her heal out of a truelock and absolve the crap out of Wysrias. This moment will be remembered forever.
You could make the argument clerics don't need: bliss, prayers, healing, revit
Perhaps this is me being a little uneducated on the subject, but I'm curious as to how you actively heal or counter an Assassin that knows what they're doing. Rebounding is out the window if they've got Volcano going and shadowplant will further an already potent offense. Once the hypnosis snap goes through, their APS (Afflictions per Second) goes out the window. Outside of pressuring them with damage, which won't work against an assassin with defensive artifacts, I'm not entirely sure as to "how you counter them". Speaking as someone who has used Serpent/Syssin and all of its various incarnations across IRE, I can safely assume that most of them would crap their pants for something that allows them to ignore rebounding, a balance-less raze in the form of flay (yes, I'm aware that it takes balance when you actually flay something, but you can just slap it at the beginning of a combo whereas every other class would be penalized for trying to raze something that isn't there). The fact alone that shadowplant allows for curing denial on a specific plant is ridiculously strong on a class that has no issues pressuring with a kelp affliction stack.
Frontflip is the only realistic counter against an Assassin because once the snap starts, you're pretty much boned otherwise. I won't even bother to fight Iluv if he's in Assassin unless I'm borrowing Septus' acrobatic boots.
1) They tank like crap 2) You don't stay in the room with them for very long. You should know this since you're a limb damage class.
3) You don't let them hypnotise you (If you don't see a shadowplant, they're using hypnosis)
Assassin is really an awkward design that we have to ask ourselves, "Why?". The best way to fight them is to not even try and if you do you need to kill them in 3-4 rounds or run. Shadowplant is the biggest offender here because it lets you build a stack effortlessly. This is supported by an equally terrible decision of instill, which forces an affliction to the back of the line (it's almost always hemotoxin). 100% rebounding stripping was a terrible idea, but is leveraged against the fact you deny yourself access to other skills.
At the end of the day, Assassins are a 1v1 gimmick championed by white knights. Luckily, 1v1 hasn't been relevant for awhile so it's not that big of a deal. Most of your assassins don't transfer their abilities well into 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 situations and past that Assassin's usefulness tapers hard if you don't adapt to team fighting with hybrid offenses and playing off other people.
Also relevant: Assassins are no less lame than limb damage offenses.
The best example of limb damage being lol retarded is I watched Mathiaus true lock Septus and Septus twisted ring back to Antioch. Homediggity then raptor tracked to Mathiaus, kai crippled him and double broke his limbs because the limb timer hadn't worn off yet. It was amazing and hilarious. Assassins aren't nearly as scary as limb damage, which AM has a monopoly on.
I'm not really bothered with assassin being the way it is.
My reason for this is that people who play them tend to build specifically for one v one (fast, etc), which makes them pretty much a nonfactor in teams. One v one, you have three options; nuke them very quickly, walk away, or go your circles equivalent of white knight hero (fast monk, fast hunter, etc). There are things you can do to mitigate the crazy factor, but fighting one is always going to be a case of "am I really invested enough in beating this person in this class?"
At the end of the day, assassin is dumb. Spammable curing denial is not fun to fight and I don't think anyone is going to argue it is. But every circle has something lame like this, and imo that's fine. I will lose absolutely no sleep over teaming a monk/hunter/assassin, because that fight is stacked against you from the get go. If people really feel they need to prove that they can still win, more power to them. Just don't be surprised when the fight ends with you thinking "why did I bother?"
Are people for or against homogenization then? I can't quite tell for sure here. It seems like it would make it so much easier to balance things, but a lot of players tend to hate it because it's "boring" (I know Septus has stated that he feels this way, and so do many others).
Homogenization is pretty bad. Look at AM: It's like 4-5 flavors of dsl. It's also been equipped with ridiculous training wheels (ab cleansing).
You can have an effective combat system that works really well, but there's sort of a disparity here because for the longest time physical damage classes were brawlers. They were tanky and put out decent damage. Burst damage classes were glass cannons (mage, WD). Affliction offenses could lock you out of your offense and were also glass cannons.
The problem is now that classes like Templar/Cleric have transititioned out of slow-build brawlers and are now high dps and burst skillsets that can wreck you. They're also unnecessarily tanky and resistant to affliction kills. Nevermind the fact that they have cleansing training wheels. This makes them vastly superior to WD and Ranger, so you see the population skew to the training wheels classes.
Another change with classleads is we've reduced the efficacy of affliction offenses on mitigating damage, but we did not give affliction classes something to fill that void.This is why older players will erroneously state that malignist is tanky. It's not. Septus has picked up 200 kills on Mathiaus through a veritable tsunami of peace, confusion, and clumsiness.
The classleads system has become more open and is favoring damage and 'enjoyable' play. This is a good thing. The problem is that older players (Who are lazy as balls) and new players (who don't understand affliction classes) are terrified of the affliction boogie man and will not vote for tank upgrades. IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm honestly against making hunters and assassin any tankier than they already are because they're enough of an outlier that you almost cannot beat them 1v1 before you are truelocked. If you want to lose your truelock,we'll talk about you being more potent in a team sport.
Also, there's a big disparity in circle performance and statpack choice. (See: Fast/clever/int (Demonic), Athletic (AM), Int/Strong/Athletic (Magick)) Demonic's classes rely on int for bashing damage and balance for attacking..sucks right?
We just need more classlead cycles to bangout kinks. Note: This is not upgrade everything to be as good as templar/cleric. Things need to be ratcheted down to a more modest middle ground.
Hrm, based on what Khizan said, I am thinking of homogenization as like... stock car racing or something, basically, in the sense that the idea is that everyone gets the same "tools" (which then allows you to balance around those tools because they're standard). Even then, you don't want everything to come down to some unfun, slightly ridiculous damage-affliction version of rock-paper-scissors, or, just as bad, have affliction or damage dominate (which I think is what you're trying to address), but I just mean that if demonic has the same basic underlying mechanics as AM and Magick, we don't have to argue about things from a place of "I don't want my circle/class nerfed (but yours totally needs to be nerfed)", for one, and for another, we really are just using the same tools against one another. The players don't seem to like this though, so I was surprised to see it being discussed (or at least I think that's what was being said).
AM is homogenized. It's why there's a lot of Templars. When everything is dsl, you're going to go to the class that is tanky and does the most with its dsl variant.
Hrm, based on what Khizan said, I am thinking of homogenization as like... stock car racing or something, basically, in the sense that the idea is that everyone gets the same "tools" (which then allows you to balance around those tools because they're standard). Even then, you don't want everything to come down to some unfun, slightly ridiculous damage-affliction version of rock-paper-scissors, or, just as bad, have affliction or damage dominate (which I think is what you're trying to address), but I just mean that if demonic has the same basic underlying mechanics as AM and Magick, we don't have to argue about things from a place of "I don't want my circle/class nerfed (but yours totally needs to be nerfed)", for one, and for another, we really are just using the same tools against one another. The players don't seem to like this though, so I was surprised to see it being discussed (or at least I think that's what was being said).
There are a number of levels of homogenization that really need to be considered, and each have their own levels of desirability. It is too simplistic to think about homogeneity of mechanics as a whole!
My own opinion is that defensive options should be near homogenized as possible, whereas offensive strategies need to turn away from linearity and become more expansive. That said, it's easier said than done.
Thanks, that's more than I could have hoped for. I was thinking "some categories of things probably *really* need to be homogenous, but I wouldn't have any idea of how to characterize those categories". I mean, Khizan basically seemed to be saying, similarly to you, that fitness needs to be extended to everyone as a defense so that we can balance offense around it, and not screw the one offs in the process. So that would be homogenization across every player in the game for that defense.
Your charts actually help me phrase my question somewhat better. So if AM has say, a conditional mana kill, and has certain ways of applying mana pressure, do you think that Demonic's and Magick's should be mechanically the same within that category or no?
I mean, using your categorizations, I'd tend to look at the instant conditional mana kills and say "okay, cool, every circle has one of these. As long as they're mechanically the same, and the circles are all able to apply the same kind of mana pressure, this is perfect". So, not every *player* has access to that mechanic for sure, but every circle does. So, if it's just crazy in general, every circle would be bitching about it (because they're all on the receiving end as well as the dishing out end). I mean, my main thought about homogenization is that if each circle has basically the same tool box, it allows us to fight each other on more even ground, but it also allows us to discuss things without tending to defend our own mechanics and attack mechanics from other circles. And if something really is out of line, everyone is experiencing that from the same place.
EDIT: the other option is that you pick and choose from your menu, and there are certain categories that everyone gets, and some that only one or two circles get. That alone makes the synthesis between categories (and ultimately, circles) more complicated. Further, you can make the mechanics within those categories fairly different. You can split mechanics between different professions, or lump them in one (making that class possibly very powerful in both group and individual combat) - so you do still have to balance things within the circle, or everyone picks Templar (though part of that is also because it's just newb friendly). This is "cool", but definitely more complicated and harder to quantify, and probably lots of arguing about what is and isn't overpowered (or not powerful enough).
Comments
I know this may shock you, but people are stacking highfavours to pick up x2 stat bonuses and x2 damage resistance. You'll also notice that the people doing this aren't exactly what you would call 'involved' in anything. It's a pretty easy fix that shuts down an easily exploitable powergaming system.
Outrider
Templar
Monk
Realistically, four. Not six. Predator has shrugging, Priest has Seraph Care, Wardancer has Spurn dance, etc.
While Demonic does not have Fitness, they do have abilities that passively cure such as Demon Siphon or passively transfer affs to an opponent like with Defiler. Truthfully, giving everyone Fitness doesn't really sound like a great solution. For one, you have to balance affliction classes around the premise that full locks are likely no longer possible. In addition, that kind of homogenization is outright boring and probably bad for the game in the long run. I'm personally of the opinion that if fitness is viewed as necessary on classes because of how potent affliction offenses are, that's indicative of something wrong with affliction offenses being too overbearing on anyone without fitness rather than the availability of fitness and lack thereof.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Siphon is great - it's like a healing rite that only affects the user. If only healing rite could hit allies too...
The irony that Priest is struggling against an affliction offense isn't lost on me though, given how annoying Healing was. However, you and I do agree that not every class needs Fitness. However, if Garryn comes out and says that he feels that affliction classes are legitimately okay, then I'd say that I don't mind giving a variant of Fitness to classes that currently lack a passive affliction heal in Demonic, such as Wytch.
You also can't really turtle against Diabolist. I realize that things are changing in the beta, but I feel like clarifying since @Chronus stated this. Shielding does nothing against Evileye and rebounding isn't really stopping the main venue of their offense (again, Evileye). Since there's no active hinder, it's easy enough for a Diabolist to pressure via kelp afflictions until the nightmare's passive hellsight eventually catches up to you and then starts overwhelming you on top of the already potent affliction rate with Deadeyes/Daegger Hunt. Whereas Assassin can just outright remove rebounding from the equation altogether if they use Volcano on top of specified curing denial with shadowplant. The only real way of running from a Diabolist/Assassin is frontflip, (which requires a 1500cr artifact that is also very controversial as is) unless you want to try to run through noose traps or gravehands. I haven't fought any Hunters that knew what they were doing to have an educated comment on them. Apparently, shield is their bane at the moment, but I defer to those who know more about them.
Edit: Another suggestion I'd be willing to put forward would be to try to remove a lot of the RNG (because balancing around RNG is awful) from the passive heals, perhaps with those passive heals prioritizing a heal based on a person's affliction priorities in autocuring. That'd probably be a coding nightmare to implement, but it's an idea.
Ultimately, I absolutely despise the necessity of Fitness and would like to see it downgraded in some way, but not while affliction classes like Hunter, Diabolist, and Assassin are in their current forms. Just because someone doesn't use them on a regular basis doesn't mean that they aren't powerful.
This doesn't work, though.
As a damage class, active hindering is effectively my choosing to sacrifice my offensive momentum to reduce YOUR offensive momentum; hindering you doesn't actually get me any closer to a win. The BEST case scenario is that I just tread water, but it's far more likely that I give up my offensive progress entirely.
As an affliction class, active hindering is the offense and it does not involve any sacrifice of momentum whatsoever; they get to put you on the defensive while still playing defensively themselves. This is the single biggest problem in Imperian combat right now and it's largely why 1v1 is dead.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
@Rahiel Cleric fares the best against Assassins. Ultrix has no idea how to actively heal or counter an assassin, but healing rites RNG of love helped her heal out of a truelock and absolve the crap out of Wysrias. This moment will be remembered forever.
Frontflip is the only realistic counter against an Assassin because once the snap starts, you're pretty much boned otherwise. I won't even bother to fight Iluv if he's in Assassin unless I'm borrowing Septus' acrobatic boots.
2) You don't stay in the room with them for very long. You should know this since you're a limb damage class.
At the end of the day, Assassins are a 1v1 gimmick championed by white knights. Luckily, 1v1 hasn't been relevant for awhile so it's not that big of a deal. Most of your assassins don't transfer their abilities well into 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 situations and past that Assassin's usefulness tapers hard if you don't adapt to team fighting with hybrid offenses and playing off other people.
I'm not really bothered with assassin being the way it is.
My reason for this is that people who play them tend to build specifically for one v one (fast, etc), which makes them pretty much a nonfactor in teams. One v one, you have three options; nuke them very quickly, walk away, or go your circles equivalent of white knight hero (fast monk, fast hunter, etc). There are things you can do to mitigate the crazy factor, but fighting one is always going to be a case of "am I really invested enough in beating this person in this class?"
At the end of the day, assassin is dumb. Spammable curing denial is not fun to fight and I don't think anyone is going to argue it is. But every circle has something lame like this, and imo that's fine. I will lose absolutely no sleep over teaming a monk/hunter/assassin, because that fight is stacked against you from the get go. If people really feel they need to prove that they can still win, more power to them. Just don't be surprised when the fight ends with you thinking "why did I bother?"
The problem is now that classes like Templar/Cleric have transititioned out of slow-build brawlers and are now high dps and burst skillsets that can wreck you. They're also unnecessarily tanky and resistant to affliction kills. Nevermind the fact that they have cleansing training wheels. This makes them vastly superior to WD and Ranger, so you see the population skew to the training wheels classes.
The classleads system has become more open and is favoring damage and 'enjoyable' play. This is a good thing. The problem is that older players (Who are lazy as balls) and new players (who don't understand affliction classes) are terrified of the affliction boogie man and will not vote for tank upgrades. IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm honestly against making hunters and assassin any tankier than they already are because they're enough of an outlier that you almost cannot beat them 1v1 before you are truelocked. If you want to lose your truelock,we'll talk about you being more potent in a team sport.
Demonic's classes rely on int for bashing damage and balance for attacking..sucks right?
We just need more classlead cycles to bangout kinks. Note: This is not upgrade everything to be as good as templar/cleric. Things need to be ratcheted down to a more modest middle ground.