I do have a question about Evileye though. Will the four afflictions have to all be given via Evileye skills or will toxins from daegger hunt count as well? In the later case, there are certainly enough kelp afflictions to go around so (for example) it should be doable to stack up kelp cures while weighing down healing priorities through use of paralysis and stupidity. But I'm sure we'll see how it all plays out.. either way it's a great start for making the class more viable.
I wasn't meaning to ignore the usage of toxins on top of Evileye, but it's difficult to factor in Hunt, due to the randomness of the toxin delivery itself, as well as it being so simple to stop. It obviously won't -hurt- to use, but it's not simple to balance around random either.
This does, however, make me think of something else. Would Weaken go through the Shield defense, same as Evileye, or will it be stopped by it?
Some of the things, specifically the health elixir and curing delays, are going to need target specific cooldowns similar to the stun DR, so that multiple attackers can't just lock you out of your health vials for 3 balances out of 4. The affliction and damage ones should be fine without it, though.
"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."
Just give it the cooldown counter dopplegangers have that roots supposedly didn't get. It really shouldn't be that hard. Things like this should be standard nowadays.
Of course, that would be the idea behind the skill. Something about intelligent use of skills given the circumstances?
Suggest an alternative.
Mana drain is lame. Willpower drain is lame. Mana regen is a minor utility buff. Room wide mana use reduction would be cool, but would be cool, but not necessary. I guess you could argue room wide small int-damage bonus?
I guess another idea is no rune circle for int rune.
Wytch doesn't have a way to leverage mana drain, so it would only be particularly useful when teaming with Malignists. It's also extremely hard against Monks, a class balanced around everything they do costing exceedingly large amounts of mana.
The Druid one is bad too, but it's deliberately tied in to their instakill.
Oppression shouldn't effect the passives any class use, that's just silly. I'm pretty ok with increased mana drain on active skills.
The 1v1 benefit for wytchen is no focus at zero. Unlikely, but doable. The team benefit is catharsis bait.
From a circle with half the classes possessing an active mana drain skill, it's just not an idea I can get behind.
You could ask for demonic to get an int-based replacement for Jera, and then give each of them an affinity penalty. Diavlous can get +2 strength from undeath, so the only class that would really miss it is Defiler.
But you're ok with one class having a 50% mana skill and active mana drains from clerics?
Leech requires prone and it's a toss up which is more useful in combat, affliction/damage or mana pressure. Daeggers/knights could impale. Knights could capitalize on the loss of evasion.. Etc. Either way, you're either committing to 100% affliction/amage or 100% mana damage. Summoner is actually in the same boat. I'd rather have the noctu throwing cards, warping, and true naming because enervate is really underwhelming. Manaleech is a minuscule tick that adds up over time, which won't really be an issue in blitz team combat. I'm completely ok with a circle having to commit to a 0 damage strategy in favor of 100% mana focus. Luckily, both strategies are both countered by the same preexisting mechanisms! Not everyone can be Anti-Magick and go balls deep with a burst damage strategy while keeping absolve as a solid back up plan.
That being said, there have to be more interesting mechanisms than monks-say-bawwwww! I just don't think it's as world ending as you do. If Garry wanted, he could roll it into some sort of team mana support skill. There's no need for affinity hits and I'm sure the wytchen are cool with the rune being wytch only (to avoid stacking with transmog).
You have trouble keeping people prone in teams of noctu, malignists, and deathknights? Your suggestion would be a utility skill that would only be useful in teams - that would be the only reason it would ever be used. Wytchen by themselves do not do enough health damage to leverage zero mana as a way to stop focusing.
You're looking for a team skill to make Cath kills easier to do in groups that aren't actively trying to kill with Cath. Stop it.
Doing that something that was going to occur naturally and taking credit for it? That's just sad. Sun came up today. ALL ME BABY./Khizan agrees.
You're misunderstanding (deliberately) what I'm trying to say. Don't suggest things that kill me! I get it. The problem isn't keeping prone. (This is where you get lost). The problem is that both "omg mana drain" skills that you teared up about require the target to be prone before they work. If you want to get the bawww-mana drain, you have to not: Do damage or give afflictions. If you are not giving afflictions, like omg-shadowstrike or omg hangedman, then the person is going to do this really epic maneuver...he is going to stand up, thus nullifying any further attempts to omg-manadrain. Now that one or two people have leeched, the person is around 60% mana, 80% health with fewer afflictions than when they were prone. There goes weaken, there goes catharsis and the entire time, some druid with no clue what's going on is mashing QUARTERSTAFF JAB. You're dead, thanks for playing. Yes, the idea here is to make catharsis more viable in team combat, without having to have an entire team dedicated to mana-draining. I guess you understood that point. Have a gold star.
We'll compare this to your circle. Monks, Justis, Clerics, Outriders, Wardancers, Wardens (I remembered this time) are doing solid damage. If by some miracle (or bad target priority) you survive, the not-so-nerfed enfeeble has you around 60% mana, which a mana drain, clot, and maybe a smite will drop you below the threshold. You now have to choose to drink health or drink mana. The only right answer here is to try an turtle (it might work, AM never razes) or run (sup, RNG). AKA: You are capable of putting heavy pressure on health and a noticeable (we'll call it medium) pressure on mana.
Demonic cannot effectively split push health and mana. Anti-magick can. Magick can.
I think your AM classes are different than mine. Sap and mind drain are 15% mana, and sap is only comboable with Alacrity which I feel we'll both agree isn't a group-combat skill. Yellow ink replaces some physical with mana damage, but even with myrrh to enhance it you're not doing an appreciatable amount. That leaves enfeeble, which I'll agree is good pressure in situations that it's useful - though it includes with it absolve immunity these days. Two AM clases out of seven can apply mana pressure.
Magic has zero classes that can actively mana drain. Oppression exists primarily as a counter to sap/drain teams, but has a nice 25% instakill that they can leverage situationally with the new clotting mechanic. Unlike what you're proposing for wytchen, it's not a direct synergy with existing tactics. The magick version also affects everyone, letting demonic use their own affliction pressure to force mana use against them which makes for interesting encounters.
On the other hand three Demonic classes have leech, which is considerably better than sap if the target is prone. Unless the numbers have changed, two leeches are worth three saps - and a good group will have a CC person on the primary anyway that's adding both prone for reduced evasion and in your case significantly increased mana drain. I refuse to accept that the circle is in such a spot that they need a 4th class that contributes to the mana war.
We'll have to agree to disagree. Enfeeble, mind drain and yellow ink are not just appreciable, they're badass. I rolled solid *announce voice* TIER ON PERSONALITIES *off* with just yellow ink/myrrh and smiting. You just don't see it the effect anymore because of your burst damage burns people down so fast. Back in the day, clerics-who-didnt-unintentionally-intentionally-absolved-off-enfeeble because of the mana pressure you don't have. But, when you're winning, it's not good to reference the good ol' days when you had to 'make do.'
Magick: I like how you say 'active', because they can sure as hell passively drain mana. Pretty sure they can actively drain mana. Maybe Ruga was secretly a cleric with a quarterstaff?
Basing an entire argument on, "Hey they can afflict and then move on into mana damage" is an excellent indicator of why your demonic career was unremarkable. In a vacuum, this is a perfectly viable strategy. What you're forgetting (on purpose, again) is that while Noctusari1, DK1, Malignist1, Saboteur1 are all afflicting to set up the kill in round 2 or 3, the burst damage from magick or anti-magick has killed one player from demonic. Your theory-crafting falls apart when you're losing an important cog in the machine of "I must overwhelm with afflictions before I kill." How to avoid this problem? Target the malignist first. Kbye. Work your way down the list.
As I've stated (and you've ignored) countless times, Demonic does not have the burst damage potential the other two circle has. Many of their waaaaaaaambulance abilities that you bring up require prerequisites, intermediate steps and worse: precise timing and execution. Never mind the fact, that our 'plans' require a class diversity that is often not available to us(This was definitely a complaint of yours and Khizan's). Demonic is forced to follow the Goldberg machine method of team combat, while the other two circles are like Gallagher at a farmer's market. It's cooler when we win, but we often lose to Druid1, Druid2, Druid3 spamming qstaf jab. <-- This is hard.
-Mana pressure has to be only mana pressure. Your malignist HAS to be alive and HAS to have equilibrium to secure the kill on the UNSHIELD target who ISN'T being afflicted. -Afflictions have to stick. People have to know what afflictions the victim already has so they don't stack. This is a huge bar of coding that most people aren't ready for. Team combat shouldn't require a team to have a perfectly synchronized hive mind (though Lionas and I are trying). Even then, our conditionals are 'meh' and our classes have a really diluted form of synergy.
-Damage is best in team combat. There's no intermediate steps involved. There's a few timing issues, but nothing major (linear triggers) and everyone is fighting for the same end result.
All of demonic's high dps output requires some sort of initiation step. Soulquench is the easiest. Summoner is going to require 30% of the fight to play out. Saboteur really prefers you to be prone, which is going to be harder since summoners are going to be our damage bots.
All this being said, I understand why you're butthurt about mana pressure. Your class burns through mana at a stupid rate. First: Monks don't really -need- to be rolling with everything on. If they are, they really deserve what they get. Second, all the passives draining mana are a pretty old/outdated system. The problem lies in the fact that the benefits of all those mana drains are pretty badass, so they're hard to balance. I have no pity for a monk who gets absolved/cath'd because he's spamming mind masked afflictions on every combination. Unfortunately, there's a lot of things that get retarded in Imperian's conflict model. Sort of like when Wardens were the perfect anti-bard, Noctusari were amazing anti-monks.
As I said earlier (and you ignored) if you don't like it, attempt to suggest something else for the int-circle. Skewed theory crafting doesn't help G-bot churn out new skills any faster. Everyone agrees that picking up a self-only intelligence rune isn't a bad idea. Garryn wanted ideas for class specific rune circles. Demonic wants a bit more synergy across classes. Get to work?
I'd be happy to work on new ideas to add some unique rune abilities to Runelore, but lack of a replacement doesn't invalidate the argument that adding a 4th mana drain class to a circle of six classes isn't going to be a positive addition.
I don't have to suggest something better to call a bad idea out on being bad. The oppression clone is bad, for the reasons Juran's already stated.
"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 your concern is burst damage, I would suggest something to try and increase your circle's ability to focus damage on a single target rather than attempting to subvert the problem with more mana drains.
Druid can actively damage mana, yeah. Their mana based instant kill is set at 25%. Frankly, I find this is something more related to one vs one... in a team I will always prefer to do what druid does best: damage.
She got bored with it. Just you watch, the moment new RG comes out she'll be RG, and then jump back to demonic to fiddle with the nuances of runes as a Wytch.
@Juran: I believe you missed the point where I was aiming for "new" things*. Wytchen already hailstorm. Someone with 1yr of pk experience figured it out on their own without any sort of guidance!
*At this point, I think it's safe to chalk this up to:
-You both want 'synergy' just not for the Demonic circle. At least Garryn is making headway in this regard.
-You both want 'new' mechanics, just not for the Demonic circle. See above.
-Making an instakill easier/unavoidable is ok, if it's on your side, but if it isn't, it's suddenly an issue that needs to be addressed.
And back to what I've been asking for, despite multiple attempts at muddling the issue in unsubstantiated (clearly outdated) theory crafting. Does anyone else have any other ideas for class specific runes? I think the ideas so far on page one, including dreidels.
Wytchen specific rune that stacks up like Shapeshifting Bloodpoison, causing curses to do increasing levels of health damage on some obscure damage type.
EDIT: Hell, if you still want a mana drain skill for Wytch, make this deal mana damage - then maybe give Wytch some kind of 'soulcrush' rune or Shamanism skill that makes the target take damage based on missing mana, contingent on certain conditions (perhaps even gaining bonuses for achieving more conditions, a la ccut or earthquake).
<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>
I only threw mana-pressure on them to give them a way to fist-bump with the maligs. Scaling damage as mana decreases could be cool. It might not see use in 1v1, but I can see it rolling in teams pretty well.
Hmm, that's really similar to...belial? (no one uses belial. I had to look it up ). I like is that it let's wytchen drop a damage finisher in 1v1 if they need to and gives them a larger dps presence in teams outside of "choke, choke, choke, choke, choke." I think the damage would have to start off pretty negligible and increase based on afflictions. Could be cool. I'd ask for no_block, because, it's just stupid. But I think magick/poison make the most sense.
The ones I can't brew up neat ideas for are the Runeguards. I should ask Pellerin.
I love adding synergy to every circle, but there are limitations. I wouldn't add more mana drain skills to AM either, because I wouldn't want to stack percentile mana drains to excess.
Comments
This does, however, make me think of something else. Would Weaken go through the Shield defense, same as Evileye, or will it be stopped by it?
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Some of the things, specifically the health elixir and curing delays, are going to need target specific cooldowns similar to the stun DR, so that multiple attackers can't just lock you out of your health vials for 3 balances out of 4. The affliction and damage ones should be fine without it, though.
"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."
Wytchen only rune: +1 int. Doesn't really effect pvp outside of mana pool, allows wytchen to increase dps while bashing.
Int-rune circle: Increases mana costs in room for enemies.
Suggest an alternative.
Mana drain is lame. Willpower drain is lame. Mana regen is a minor utility buff. Room wide mana use reduction would be cool, but would be cool, but not necessary. I guess you could argue room wide small int-damage bonus?
Leech requires prone and it's a toss up which is more useful in combat, affliction/damage or mana pressure. Daeggers/knights could impale. Knights could capitalize on the loss of evasion.. Etc. Either way, you're either committing to 100% affliction/amage or 100% mana damage. Summoner is actually in the same boat. I'd rather have the noctu throwing cards, warping, and true naming because enervate is really underwhelming. Manaleech is a minuscule tick that adds up over time, which won't really be an issue in blitz team combat. I'm completely ok with a circle having to commit to a 0 damage strategy in favor of 100% mana focus. Luckily, both strategies are both countered by the same preexisting mechanisms! Not everyone can be Anti-Magick and go balls deep with a burst damage strategy while keeping absolve as a solid back up plan.
You're misunderstanding (deliberately) what I'm trying to say. Don't suggest things that kill me! I get it. The problem isn't keeping prone. (This is where you get lost). The problem is that both "omg mana drain" skills that you teared up about require the target to be prone before they work. If you want to get the bawww-mana drain, you have to not: Do damage or give afflictions. If you are not giving afflictions, like omg-shadowstrike or omg hangedman, then the person is going to do this really epic maneuver...he is going to stand up, thus nullifying any further attempts to omg-manadrain. Now that one or two people have leeched, the person is around 60% mana, 80% health with fewer afflictions than when they were prone. There goes weaken, there goes catharsis and the entire time, some druid with no clue what's going on is mashing QUARTERSTAFF JAB. You're dead, thanks for playing. Yes, the idea here is to make catharsis more viable in team combat, without having to have an entire team dedicated to mana-draining. I guess you understood that point. Have a gold star.
We'll compare this to your circle. Monks, Justis, Clerics, Outriders, Wardancers, Wardens (I remembered this time) are doing solid damage. If by some miracle (or bad target priority) you survive, the not-so-nerfed enfeeble has you around 60% mana, which a mana drain, clot, and maybe a smite will drop you below the threshold. You now have to choose to drink health or drink mana. The only right answer here is to try an turtle (it might work, AM never razes) or run (sup, RNG). AKA: You are capable of putting heavy pressure on health and a noticeable (we'll call it medium) pressure on mana.
Demonic cannot effectively split push health and mana.
Anti-magick can.
Magick can.
I think your AM classes are different than mine. Sap and mind drain are 15% mana, and sap is only comboable with Alacrity which I feel we'll both agree isn't a group-combat skill. Yellow ink replaces some physical with mana damage, but even with myrrh to enhance it you're not doing an appreciatable amount. That leaves enfeeble, which I'll agree is good pressure in situations that it's useful - though it includes with it absolve immunity these days. Two AM clases out of seven can apply mana pressure.
Magic has zero classes that can actively mana drain. Oppression exists primarily as a counter to sap/drain teams, but has a nice 25% instakill that they can leverage situationally with the new clotting mechanic. Unlike what you're proposing for wytchen, it's not a direct synergy with existing tactics. The magick version also affects everyone, letting demonic use their own affliction pressure to force mana use against them which makes for interesting encounters.
On the other hand three Demonic classes have leech, which is considerably better than sap if the target is prone. Unless the numbers have changed, two leeches are worth three saps - and a good group will have a CC person on the primary anyway that's adding both prone for reduced evasion and in your case significantly increased mana drain. I refuse to accept that the circle is in such a spot that they need a 4th class that contributes to the mana war.
Basing an entire argument on, "Hey they can afflict and then move on into mana damage" is an excellent indicator of why your demonic career was unremarkable. In a vacuum, this is a perfectly viable strategy. What you're forgetting (on purpose, again) is that while Noctusari1, DK1, Malignist1, Saboteur1 are all afflicting to set up the kill in round 2 or 3, the burst damage from magick or anti-magick has killed one player from demonic. Your theory-crafting falls apart when you're losing an important cog in the machine of "I must overwhelm with afflictions before I kill." How to avoid this problem? Target the malignist first. Kbye. Work your way down the list.
As I've stated (and you've ignored) countless times, Demonic does not have the burst damage potential the other two circle has. Many of their waaaaaaaambulance abilities that you bring up require prerequisites, intermediate steps and worse: precise timing and execution. Never mind the fact, that our 'plans' require a class diversity that is often not available to us(This was definitely a complaint of yours and Khizan's). Demonic is forced to follow the Goldberg machine method of team combat, while the other two circles are like Gallagher at a farmer's market. It's cooler when we win, but we often lose to Druid1, Druid2, Druid3 spamming qstaf jab. <-- This is hard.
-Mana pressure has to be only mana pressure. Your malignist HAS to be alive and HAS to have equilibrium to secure the kill on the UNSHIELD target who ISN'T being afflicted.
-Afflictions have to stick. People have to know what afflictions the victim already has so they don't stack. This is a huge bar of coding that most people aren't ready for. Team combat shouldn't require a team to have a perfectly synchronized hive mind (though Lionas and I are trying). Even then, our conditionals are 'meh' and our classes have a really diluted form of synergy.
All of demonic's high dps output requires some sort of initiation step. Soulquench is the easiest. Summoner is going to require 30% of the fight to play out. Saboteur really prefers you to be prone, which is going to be harder since summoners are going to be our damage bots.
All this being said, I understand why you're butthurt about mana pressure. Your class burns through mana at a stupid rate. First: Monks don't really -need- to be rolling with everything on. If they are, they really deserve what they get. Second, all the passives draining mana are a pretty old/outdated system. The problem lies in the fact that the benefits of all those mana drains are pretty badass, so they're hard to balance. I have no pity for a monk who gets absolved/cath'd because he's spamming mind masked afflictions on every combination. Unfortunately, there's a lot of things that get retarded in Imperian's conflict model. Sort of like when Wardens were the perfect anti-bard, Noctusari were amazing anti-monks.
As I said earlier (and you ignored) if you don't like it, attempt to suggest something else for the int-circle. Skewed theory crafting doesn't help G-bot churn out new skills any faster. Everyone agrees that picking up a self-only intelligence rune isn't a bad idea. Garryn wanted ideas for class specific rune circles. Demonic wants a bit more synergy across classes. Get to work?
I don't have to suggest something better to call a bad idea out on being bad. The oppression clone is bad, for the reasons Juran's already stated.
"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."
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
EDIT: Hell, if you still want a mana drain skill for Wytch, make this deal mana damage - then maybe give Wytch some kind of 'soulcrush' rune or Shamanism skill that makes the target take damage based on missing mana, contingent on certain conditions (perhaps even gaining bonuses for achieving more conditions, a la ccut or earthquake).
The ones I can't brew up neat ideas for are the Runeguards. I should ask Pellerin.