Probably the fact I was too cheap to bother with fullplate was part of it, but it was a pretty large difference iirc. >10% mitigation? would have to check.
@Dicene You're a burst affliction class that punishes people for curing high priority afflictions. You have to roll fast statpack to succeed. Welcome to the affliction dilemma, we've got jackets. This is how Imperian chooses to balance affliction classes. GLASS CANNON...(meet druid).
Well, here's the issue. If we make it so you can trigger only off of low priority afflictions, then... Well... Why would you even cure that low priority affliction like loneliness?
I think its a fairly reasonable assumption that 99% of the game is on autocuring now, which doesn't let you hands down refuse to cure an aff (short of running out of the cure, and well). The other things where that is concerned though would be the fact if you're sitting there not curing loneliness/dementia/masochism/whatever (and in that case not focusing ever to avoid the random chance of that aff being cured and not eating herbs that share those cures), you're vastly opening yourself up to a far easier brainmelt since you're cutting the number of affs they actually have to stick down from 7 or so to 4 or whatever. (Rough values, but yeah.)
Honestly, part of the reason why I split up ciguatoxin is to open up options for 'high priority' afflictions.
The flip side of this argument is that hunters are still dumb. Don't get me wrong, I think the class has an awesome idea behind it, but it's implementation is just ugh.
Tree blocker --> cure --> impatience/reckless --> can't attack --> cure --> lethargy/sensitive --> tree blocker --> cure impatience/hallucinations (just an example)
See the problem? It's a really hard problem to address since claw picks up every toxin and supremacy tosses in the rest of the truelock bonanza. I guess a first place to start is limiting the claw toxins list? I should not be punished and take 4x the afflictions avoiding a true lock. You know?
Here's an interesting solution: Slightly reduce the list that Hunter can trigger from, but also remove the message that tells the opponent what affliction is triggered from.
For instance, I set three triggers on you. I then hit you with claustrophobia, loneliness, dementia, agoraphobia, and paranoia. None of these are particularly dangerous, or really, do anything at all, but hidden somewhere in there are the triggers that will hit you with more afflictions, bringing you closer to brainmelt. Because the message telling you what is triggered has been removed, a smart person will now be tracking what sets off which triggers so that they can avoid curing those last, and then adjust accordingly. Similarly, the Hunter now can't use only a single set of triggers-- They must adjust trigger sets if the opponent has figured out which ones can be cured and which ones can't.
@Ahkan You misunderstand my intentions. I was just showing Dias the skills behind Hunter and why they're not super-tanks. As Athletic I feel just right as far as tankiness goes, and my escape skills are phenomenal. As far as fast goes, it's not appropriate for team combat and shouldn't be without tank artifacts. Fast for 1v1, Athletic/Sturdy for team combat. I've got no problems at all with that.
Edit: I really wasn't trying to bring Hunter back into the spotlight for more balance discussion, but I guess it's best to get it out of the way before the classleads pop up.
Edit 2: @Gurn Since we can't hit with claustrophobia or agoraphobia, I guess the triggers are on loneliness, dementia, and paranoia. =P
That could be interesting. Though, you'd really just stick to high priority and gum me up and let the triggers build off of priority 20. Probably have to fiddle with timers and # of affs.
Well, here's the interesting thing about that. If my triggers are set on low priority cures, I can't continue hitting with high priority affs or you'll never get to curing the low priority ones which hold my triggers, or I'll just be self-defeating with an attack rate that can't beat your curing time.
So, a hypothetical battle(Hunter's POV only) would be like this(ignoring these don't stack well and stuff, let's pretend they do):
Open with three triggers on low priority affs(Loneliness, claustrophobia, dementia), instability, insanity.
Then hit with: Hemotoxin/loneliness
Reckless/clautrophobia
Paralysis/dementia
And so on. You'd cure your prime afflictions, then be set with a bunch of triggered or maybe not afflictions to choose from, where I can then gain momentum from.
It's an idea that definitely needs testing and work(as a problem I can see is that wyvern can't actually hit with low priority afflictions, limiting how this can work), but I think it could add an interesting dynamic to everything. Similarly, if all high priority affs were taken off the list, you could potentially also speed up the trigger time a little so that resetting triggers during a battle is a little more viable, since triggers would then not actually do much except stack a bunch of "useless" afflictions on you that put you closer towards a melt.
Still, I'd really like a synergy between bloodpoison and brainmelt, so perhaps there's something towards that, too, though I'm too lazy to think of it right now.
EDIT: And to that effect, if that happens, give Hunters more stupid afflictions like agoraphobia and dizziness and whatever!
The problem is, again, that the high priority afflictions are high priority because they have such a stupid amount of control. I absolutely HAVE to cure those afflictions because otherwise I cannot attack, or I cannot heal other afflictions.
The ideal system would have me healing afflictions to keep from getting brainmelted, annihilated, infirmitied, cirisosised, or mega-disemboweled. Not because I literally have to heal those afflictions to attack or to be able heal at all.
"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."
To be honest, I kind of feel that triggering hemotoxin and impatience is essential to Hunters because those are afflictions you can track cured accurately and also because they slow healing rates to be manageable by Hunters.
^ They're also on herbs that are commonly stacked and have other useful affs, so it's harder to control those triggers and spam them than it is with Peace or Xeroderma.
The problem is, again, that the high priority afflictions are high priority because they have such a stupid amount of control. I absolutely HAVE to cure those afflictions because otherwise I cannot attack, or I cannot heal other afflictions.
The ideal system would have me healing afflictions to keep from getting brainmelted, annihilated, infirmitied, cirisosised, or mega-disemboweled. Not because I literally have to heal those afflictions to attack or to be able heal at all.
That's, uh, the exact point of the idea I mentioned.
If I can't trigger on high priority afflictions, then I can't take advantage of high priority afflictions really, and can't maintain a fast enough affliction rate to do anything, due to triggers restricted only to low priority cures listed.
I don't get why high priority is still an issue at this point, if I'm throwing out "high priority" afflictions slower thanany other affliction profession in the game.
You're meaning something different with the word control than what I mean. You say you have "total control" over the trigger just because those affs have to be cured, but you have no control over when they fire, how many more affs on the same herb will be cured first(for instance if you're stacking kelp but trigger hemotoxin), and no way to keep them from curing two same-cure triggered afflictions in a row(causing the second triggered aff not to fire since trigger is still on cooldown) apart from tossing a high-priority aff like metrazol out there on a different herb.
I'm not saying this to speak on Hunter's overall balance or anything, just agreeing with you that Impatience and Hemotoxin aren't crazy afflictions to be able to trigger. If they cure either one, they're still going to get a free purge/focus in before you can reapply those afflictions. All other triggers are 1 aff cured -> 2 affs added. Hemotoxin and Impatience are 2 affs cured -> 2 affs added. So you wouldn't gain any crazy momentum by spamming Hemo or Impatience triggers(unless you're spamming Hemotoxin so fast that they are curing and getting reafflicted with it more than once per Purge balance).
As far as them being on common herbs(mandrake and kelp are the cures for a handful of useful afflictions like heroism, clumsiness, and weariness, and Hemotoxin and Impatience being important things to keep up anyway, you can't really just hit with it and know for sure that it'll be cured before anything else, the way you might with Ciguatoxin/Metrazol/Peace/Xeroderma(likely part of why you can't trigger on Cigua or Metra, even if Peace and Xeroderma are still triggerable).
What? That doesn't make sense. Focus and purge have cooldowns so eventually you will outpace healing. And you can re-afflict hemotoxin and impatience fast enough (assuming fast diadem) that they have to choose between mental afflictions given by trigger or hemotoxin and impatience.
You don't have control over the exact timing of when they fire but you'll know when every time because hemotoxin has a third party and you can track impatience through focus.
The two main problems with defiler are that it's impossible to pump out enough damage on a high health target with our current mechanics, and nothing even approaching the ability to play cleverly and be rewarded for it. We need to fix these without turning defiler into something it isn't meant to be, but also without mindlessly tacking on more damage in hopes that we can just take the druid way out and hit keys until we win.
The entropy into seeds burst is cool as hell, but it is also wonky. Entropy damage is largely static with garrynbot, while the amount of damage you need to pump into entropy changes quite a bit. This is one of the main reasons we run into the 600+ health wall problem. The easy solution would be to have the seed burst happen regardless of the percent of the target's max health. Making the seed threshold a static amount would be cool too. It needs to change away from being target maxhealth dependent, I just don't know into what quite yet.
BRANCH Current branch is dumb. We give up shield and give a free arm mangle to you to... have a mediocre damage arc that doesn't affect demonic players.
Change WHIRL BRANCH to be on it's own balance, of 10
seconds, maybe even 12. Make WHIRL BRANCH require balance and eq, but take neither.
Adjust damage slightly down (branch deals 60 raw cutting currently) or just get rid of it entirely. The main draw is the extra toxin.
This turns branch into a once per 10 seconds added toxin affliction and (maybe)
minor damage. It opens up a lot of doors for defilers to do neat things and gives some of the benefits of affliction pressure without turning us into an affliction pressure class. I can hear some people frothing about oxa strych bellow, but the single seed bellow that we're going to realistically get off is a much kinder thing than old "wrecking ball on tap" bellow.
Whirlpool
Whirlpool currently buffs a mechanic no longer in the
game, requires people not have mass, which defilers have no way to
strip, and requires flooding which no one in demonic circle is able to
do. That being said, the skill should be scrapped and purposed into
something useful: Proposed new skill: Brambles - Room effect hitting
those on the defiler's enemy list. When someone is knocked prone in the
room that the brambles are in, they will have to struggle for one
second between STANDing and being unprone. Give a cooldown on someone being affected by the brambles to prevent stupid abuse in teamfights. We could do anything with whirlpool, really, so long as it isn't whirlpool.
AUGURY skills
The current augury skills are useless with autocuring
being a thing. Repurpose the effects of AugurSmoke, AugurEat, and
AugurApply to instead slow the balances of the relevant cures. Delete
AugurDrink for balance. The slowing of cure balance should be a timed,
unhealable affliction. Mitebcool.
Arachnids
Remove ARACHNID WEB, and instead have the arachnids web
their target for free upon leaving. This gives defilers a little more
room to build momentum and an entangle which can be planned around for
heavy burst damage or to set up an implantation. Before people whine, you can time arachnids too and just leave the room when they're jetting, lord knows we can't stop you effectively.
Timing
I think a lot of the 30 second abilities that a defiler has could stand to be lengthened a bit. Not bloodrain or arachnids, but turning the XXsaps into 45 second long effects isn't going to affect much outside of giving us a little more wiggle room.
I honestly love defiler just as much as when it came out, but the amount of useless filler in our skillset is staggering. We have a lot that we could repurpose to fit the theme both mechanically and from a flavor standpoint.
Please tell me I'm a moron and suggest better things.
I'm all on board with separating the 'you can't touch tattoos (or at least tree)' toxin from the 'ha, why would you want to be able to stand/attack/remotely look like you are able to hit back' toxin. We have at least two toxins (actinium and soon oxycodone) that could be repurposed for that.
Penalizing someone for curing high priority toxins (because, uh, they are high priority?) is annoying, but with the above change, it could be made more tolerable.
Predators are ridiculous tanky, as we just tested a while back in the beta.
The entropy to charge seed mechanic is largely a bad idea.
1) The system automatically accommodates for it.
2) Since defiler is not an affliction class, other, better affliction classes are rolling high priority afflictions faster. This means your entropy proc isn't going to proc any time soon.
3) As a combatant, I know that you're going to be pushing for burst/seed. I'm just going to shield/rebound out of one hit and now you're mathematically boned. Your tactic is now stalled until we start again, which I will just turtle through and make sure you don't get to the highest threshold. No burst. No seed. No bellow.
4) The seeds. (I can still turtle them). In team combat...I can pressure my seed and defiler#3 can go for bellow and consume my seed and undo my progress. Shame on him.
To be honest, this class sucks mechanically and thematically. It honestly feels like it was only pushed through to quell the ranting hordeThere's no over arching theme that all the skills relate to. The core mechanics of ravage (toxin)/treant attack is bland and really makes itself sort of a outrider-lite without the cool pets or damage that matters. If it weren't for addiction, people would never see the yellow (Go Aleutia!) The way this class is built right now it has two options: It can be the Demonic druids or it can suck. Aleutia's also pretty sure that they picked up some of the skill messages from some sexual offender's fanfic website.
Entropy: It had it's shot. It's time to retire him. This mechanic needs to go. Mechanically speaking, it's too hard to balance. Thematically speaking, Demonic nature isn't about chaos. That's Eris and we don't do LSD. The Demonic nature role is about building stronger, more unnatural things to reign over the mediocrity that is nature. The very act of making Olanre, monsters and binding spirits is actually reducing entropy, putting all the power in one vessel. Think of Jet Li from the One, but with bigger boobs and a heinous appetite. Olanre is an awesome design theme to stick to when you're aiming at defiling.
Based on what it has now, Defiler should be sustained dps (NOT BURST) with a side of utility juggernaut. To accomplish that, you're going to have to hop into a redesign and tweak a few mechanics here and there to make it viable and interesting. I don't think it's going to be fixed in classleads. This is largely due to the fact you have to classlead
-entropy is broken. remove it.
-replace entropy with this
-support this with that
That's three classleads that can get nerfed by the horde of bad voters who don't understand combat|defiler combat and can get :effort: vetoed.
Honestly, I'm going to regret this, but here is a link to the Khandava idea farm working on ideas/redesign for Defiler.
Short term suggestion, and one I always mention offhand when people ask who gets the harvesting bonus in Demonic: why DON'T Wytch and Defiler get a sip bonus?
I think a large amount of Torment is poorly designed, for sure - it has a lot of these chaff skills that actually don't do anything for the winning image of the class (which is to get a dude to zero health). I feel like we could have probably condensed those (Paranoia, Hemophilia, etc) in to some kind of Druid-esque Empower system (likely as one modifier with all of them on the affliction table?), and also done more with the 'summon temporary twisted nature-themed demons to make windows of opportunity where you get advantages' ideas.
I dunno though. I think Defiler is a class that doesn't need a whole class remake, but could stand to be taken on to the beta and let us screw around with it and spitball ideas until at least Torment isn't so god awful. That's all we'd have to do - put it on beta and give us like 2-3 weeks.
EDIT: Desecration as an unleash mechanic could have been neat - just suddenly ripping out angry earth spirits and stuff. EDIT2: The other idea of half human/half plant sounds a lot like Lusternia's Transmology.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Based on what it has now, Defiler should be sustained dps (NOT BURST) with a side of utility juggernaut. To accomplish that, you're going to have to hop into a redesign and tweak a few mechanics here and there to make it viable and interesting.
The things you'd have to tweak would include basically the whole game for a sustained/attrition DPS to have any kind of 1v1/small group viability. A sustained DPS can't go toe to toe with a burst class, affliction classes put them straight into hinder hell, and timebomb classes just stall them out when they need to.
"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."
Quickjab does too much damage, too many afflictions, and too much limb damage. Individually, any one of those things would be okay. Taken altogether, though, it's a bit too strong.
EDIT: Mostly, I'd like the health damage toned down a bit, so qjabs aren't basically 80-90 damage sabre DSLs.
Faster than sabre DSLs, and yet at about 500 health, that never is enough.
I don't know how to put it into regular terms, but Rangers never seem to manage a constant DPS. Either too much hinders them, or they're squishy enough that they have to go on the defensive before everyone else does.
If you really wanted to rework qjabs, I'd say rework powersoul, but goddamnit, don't make things more complicated. Old Warding was broke because it took 15 seconds out of every 40 to power it up. Too much scheduling, too much effort.
Quickjab does too much damage, too many afflictions, and too much limb damage. Individually, any one of those things would be okay. Taken altogether, though, it's a bit too strong.
EDIT: Mostly, I'd like the health damage toned down a bit, so qjabs aren't basically 80-90 damage sabre DSLs.
Faster than sabre DSLs, and yet at about 500 health, that never is enough.
I don't know how to put it into regular terms, but Rangers never seem to manage a constant DPS. Either too much hinders them, or they're squishy enough that they have to go on the defensive before everyone else does.
If you really wanted to rework qjabs, I'd say rework powersoul, but goddamnit, don't make things more complicated. Old Warding was broke because it took 15 seconds out of every 40 to power it up. Too much scheduling, too much effort.
Not sure what's going on here. Sustaining a qjab offense is sort of like sustaining a dsl offense. You keep typing it in and changing the next two terms.
Druid is technically a sustain class, because I can keep that level of damage up forever. In any decent world, though, it would be a burst class.
IMO, the Cleric is not an attrition class; it's a burst class. You build your fanatism up then hope you can burn them down while it lasts. Also, that's burning down mana to 50%, it's not burning down health to 0%.
"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."
Druid is technically a sustain class by bad design. One one hand, you balance high affliction classes with glass cannons, but druid is ok being tanky as crap and burst dpsing. We can't compare anything to it.
The only reason ranger isn't damaging people out is because noone is playing it as a damage/aff class. Most rangers just qjab semi random toxins while prepping for incin (which works, so).
Faster than sabre DSLs, and yet at about 500 health, that never is enough.
I don't know how to put it into regular terms, but Rangers never seem to manage a constant DPS. Either too much hinders them, or they're squishy enough that they have to go on the defensive before everyone else does.
If you really wanted to rework qjabs, I'd say rework powersoul, but goddamnit, don't make things more complicated. Old Warding was broke because it took 15 seconds out of every 40 to power it up. Too much scheduling, too much effort.
The DPS is irrelevant. Ranger's #1 objective is always the limb damage, which takes 60 seconds to clear. There is no enough hinders to stop you from hitting a limb once every 58 seconds. I also don't understand why apparently using a toxin not oxalis/sensitivity is too hard.
Powersoul + qjab currently is a bit too powerful. The speed of powersouled qjabs was in theory balanced out with the need to refresh it every while (and it took about 3-4 seconds unless you really let the timer go on for too long) You could probably shave a bit of qjabs' time and it would still serve its purpose (limb braking) That and maybe some 10-15% damage reduction would largely solve the problem.
Comments
The flip side of this argument is that hunters are still dumb. Don't get me wrong, I think the class has an awesome idea behind it, but it's implementation is just ugh.
Tree blocker --> cure --> impatience/reckless --> can't attack --> cure --> lethargy/sensitive --> tree blocker --> cure impatience/hallucinations (just an example)
For instance, I set three triggers on you. I then hit you with claustrophobia, loneliness, dementia, agoraphobia, and paranoia. None of these are particularly dangerous, or really, do anything at all, but hidden somewhere in there are the triggers that will hit you with more afflictions, bringing you closer to brainmelt. Because the message telling you what is triggered has been removed, a smart person will now be tracking what sets off which triggers so that they can avoid curing those last, and then adjust accordingly. Similarly, the Hunter now can't use only a single set of triggers-- They must adjust trigger sets if the opponent has figured out which ones can be cured and which ones can't.
So, a hypothetical battle(Hunter's POV only) would be like this(ignoring these don't stack well and stuff, let's pretend they do):
Open with three triggers on low priority affs(Loneliness, claustrophobia, dementia), instability, insanity.
Then hit with:
Hemotoxin/loneliness
It's an idea that definitely needs testing and work(as a problem I can see is that wyvern can't actually hit with low priority afflictions, limiting how this can work), but I think it could add an interesting dynamic to everything. Similarly, if all high priority affs were taken off the list, you could potentially also speed up the trigger time a little so that resetting triggers during a battle is a little more viable, since triggers would then not actually do much except stack a bunch of "useless" afflictions on you that put you closer towards a melt.
Still, I'd really like a synergy between bloodpoison and brainmelt, so perhaps there's something towards that, too, though I'm too lazy to think of it right now.
EDIT: And to that effect, if that happens, give Hunters more stupid afflictions like agoraphobia and dizziness and whatever!
The problem is, again, that the high priority afflictions are high priority because they have such a stupid amount of control. I absolutely HAVE to cure those afflictions because otherwise I cannot attack, or I cannot heal other afflictions.
The ideal system would have me healing afflictions to keep from getting brainmelted, annihilated, infirmitied, cirisosised, or mega-disemboweled. Not because I literally have to heal those afflictions to attack or to be able heal at all.
"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."
If I can't trigger on high priority afflictions, then I can't take advantage of high priority afflictions really, and can't maintain a fast enough affliction rate to do anything, due to triggers restricted only to low priority cures listed.
I don't get why high priority is still an issue at this point, if I'm throwing out "high priority" afflictions slower than any other affliction profession in the game.
The two main problems with defiler are that it's impossible to pump out enough damage on a high health target with our current mechanics, and nothing even approaching the ability to play cleverly and be rewarded for it. We need to fix these without turning defiler into something it isn't meant to be, but also without mindlessly tacking on more damage in hopes that we can just take the druid way out and hit keys until we win.
The entropy into seeds burst is cool as hell, but it is also wonky. Entropy damage is largely static with garrynbot, while the amount of damage you need to pump into entropy changes quite a bit. This is one of the main reasons we run into the 600+ health wall problem. The easy solution would be to have the seed burst happen regardless of the percent of the target's max health. Making the seed threshold a static amount would be cool too. It needs to change away from being target maxhealth dependent, I just don't know into what quite yet.
Current branch is dumb. We give up shield and give a free arm mangle to you to... have a mediocre damage arc that doesn't affect demonic players.
I honestly love defiler just as much as when it came out, but the amount of useless filler in our skillset is staggering. We have a lot that we could repurpose to fit the theme both mechanically and from a flavor standpoint.
Please tell me I'm a moron and suggest better things.
Penalizing someone for curing high priority toxins (because, uh, they are high priority?) is annoying, but with the above change, it could be made more tolerable.
Predators are ridiculous tanky, as we just tested a while back in the beta.
This mechanic needs to go. Mechanically speaking, it's too hard to balance. Thematically speaking, Demonic nature isn't about chaos. That's Eris and we don't do LSD. The Demonic nature role is about building stronger, more unnatural things to reign over the mediocrity that is nature. The very act of making Olanre, monsters and binding spirits is actually reducing entropy, putting all the power in one vessel. Think of Jet Li from the One, but with bigger boobs and a heinous appetite. Olanre is an awesome design theme to stick to when you're aiming at defiling.
Based on what it has now, Defiler should be sustained dps (NOT BURST) with a side of utility juggernaut. To accomplish that, you're going to have to hop into a redesign and tweak a few mechanics here and there to make it viable and interesting. I don't think it's going to be fixed in classleads. This is largely due to the fact you have to classlead
That's three classleads that can get nerfed by the horde of bad voters who don't understand combat|defiler combat and can get :effort: vetoed.
Honestly, I'm going to regret this, but here is a link to the Khandava idea farm working on ideas/redesign for Defiler.
I think a large amount of Torment is poorly designed, for sure - it has a lot of these chaff skills that actually don't do anything for the winning image of the class (which is to get a dude to zero health). I feel like we could have probably condensed those (Paranoia, Hemophilia, etc) in to some kind of Druid-esque Empower system (likely as one modifier with all of them on the affliction table?), and also done more with the 'summon temporary twisted nature-themed demons to make windows of opportunity where you get advantages' ideas.
I dunno though. I think Defiler is a class that doesn't need a whole class remake, but could stand to be taken on to the beta and let us screw around with it and spitball ideas until at least Torment isn't so god awful. That's all we'd have to do - put it on beta and give us like 2-3 weeks.
EDIT: Desecration as an unleash mechanic could have been neat - just suddenly ripping out angry earth spirits and stuff.
EDIT2: The other idea of half human/half plant sounds a lot like Lusternia's Transmology.
The things you'd have to tweak would include basically the whole game for a sustained/attrition DPS to have any kind of 1v1/small group viability. A sustained DPS can't go toe to toe with a burst class, affliction classes put them straight into hinder hell, and timebomb classes just stall them out when they need to.
"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 don't know how to put it into regular terms, but Rangers never seem to manage a constant DPS. Either too much hinders them, or they're squishy enough that they have to go on the defensive before everyone else does.
If you really wanted to rework qjabs, I'd say rework powersoul, but goddamnit, don't make things more complicated. Old Warding was broke because it took 15 seconds out of every 40 to power it up. Too much scheduling, too much effort.
Druid is technically a sustain class, because I can keep that level of damage up forever. In any decent world, though, it would be a burst class.
IMO, the Cleric is not an attrition class; it's a burst class. You build your fanatism up then hope you can burn them down while it lasts. Also, that's burning down mana to 50%, it's not burning down health to 0%.
"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."
Powersoul + qjab currently is a bit too powerful. The speed of powersouled qjabs was in theory balanced out with the need to refresh it every while (and it took about 3-4 seconds unless you really let the timer go on for too long) You could probably shave a bit of qjabs' time and it would still serve its purpose (limb braking) That and maybe some 10-15% damage reduction would largely solve the problem.