Khizan's Classlead Repository

Khizan

I'm making this thread because I always run out of ideas during classlead submission and end up wasting a few reports on filler classleads, only to think up a ton of things to classlead after it's too late. So I'm making this thread to store/discuss future classlead ideas in the hope that I'll remember it exists at the start of the next round.

Taming: Track

Right now, Track is a huge factor in team combats, especially the outdoor skirmishing combats of shardfalls. The team with the auction pet can go from the center of the city directly to the enemy, bypassing all sigils, all warnings, all movement hindering mechanisms. The mobility advantage this pet provides is huge. Killed the enemy team?  Hope you didn't split up, cause they can land half a dozen people on somebody without warning. It would be far too good as it is now if everybody had it, much less as an artifact who's accessibility is so limited.

Track should display a warning message to the people in the room a few seconds before it hits(and it should hit the room they were in, not to their present location no matter how they move). The skill would continue to grant  a large mobility advantage, but it would no longer be the unstoppable and unpredictable team delivery vector that it currently is.

Bathan

Meh, I'd want a refund to be completely honest with you. I bought it because it was a huge, terrifying teamfight thing. I don't want to get it and then have it turn into a trip into a totem every single time.

Cadeyrn

Falcons/Kestrels/Hounds being fully trained in their basic strength/speed/stamina after only one session, or just removing those three stats as something that needs to be trained entirely by the taming system.

Draekor

I actually like the element of surprise the track pets add. There's no one forcing you to split the group so they can get picked off by a dozen people. 

Khizan

Bathan said:

Meh, I'd want a refund to be completely honest with you. I bought it because it was a huge, terrifying teamfight thing. I don't want to get it and then have it turn into a trip into a totem every single time.

It would still be a massive teamfight thing, unless you think that trying to get a team through a barrage of ranged attacks while dealing with pathfinding and walls and all the other hindering methods is entirely trivial(it's not).

And, honestly? Look at the last shardfalls. Can you point out a time when you DIDN'T take a trip directly into a totem when you tried pet track? Outside of those few times Juran disabled my totem with telepathy before rushing, I mean. In a way, you're actually less likely to hit a totem with this change, since the fact that there's a defense against it other than "obsessively stand the totem every time we stop for more than 3.2 seconds" will eventually make me lazy.

Bathan

I hit your totem once in that whole thing.

My point is, I don't want a tracking pet that gives people a three second window to pre-embed retardation/stand a totem, wedge, begin a cleave, something. It would not make the pet worthless because it's still an effective convoy, but it would heavily nerf it. Tracking pets are a benefit right now that all circles can obtain. At present, each side has access to at least one. It's a very powerful artifact that costs a lot depending on which version you get. If it gets nerfed I would be banging on Avasyu's door asking for a refund.

Sarciossis

AB BRUTALITY OBSERVE or AB NECROMANCY SOULSENSE

These two abilities effectively come out as a replacement for Scout for DKs. I totally get why soulsense is there, and I totally dig it. Minor equilibrium loss and you get to see if someone is clearing your ogres or not.

The problem is that with soulsense, I can't determine who is hunting the area unless I memorize their pets (I see you, @Draekor). Well, if the bashing area is inside a building - which more than half are - my hound's observe doesn't do anything either.

So, either a) allow hound observe to view people inside buildings (which would make sense, what's stopping a hound from scenting out people inside a building versus outside?) and don't change soulsense, or b) allow soulsense to view players (which it's not designed to do.)

Just for reference: Soulsense takes 4.6secs of equilibrium, while Observe takes 2.95secs.

I'd vote for option a, and change observe and keep soulsense the same.

Khizan

It's an extremely expensive benefit that's only available in limited amounts at the sole discretion of the admin. It's not exactly a benefit you can just go pick up because your side needs access to something so as not to be at a severe mobility disadvantage. It also removes any ability to play defensively when you're being hunted, because the team can move from KC to you with no warning whatsoever, making any precautions you take aside from "Never leave guards" laughable.

I can see your point, but I don't think "I paid a lot for it" is an acceptable reason for you to be able to unstoppably land a team on anybody you want from anywhere you want with no warning whatsoever, in much the same way that "I paid a lot for it" wasn't an acceptable reason for Adonis to be doing 90% health truenames. An expensive imbalanced thing is still imbalanced.

Juran

Sarciossis said:

AB BRUTALITY OBSERVE or AB NECROMANCY SOULSENSE

These two abilities effectively come out as a replacement for Scout for DKs. I totally get why soulsense is there, and I totally dig it. Minor equilibrium loss and you get to see if someone is clearing your ogres or not.

The problem is that with soulsense, I can't determine who is hunting the area unless I memorize their pets (I see you, @Draekor). Well, if the bashing area is inside a building - which more than half are - my hound's observe doesn't do anything either.

So, either a) allow hound observe to view people inside buildings (which would make sense, what's stopping a hound from scenting out people inside a building versus outside?) and don't change soulsense, or b) allow soulsense to view players (which it's not designed to do.)

I understand the criticism, but I'm against the three knight classes having fullsense/presences.

Bathan

Khizan said:

It's an extremely expensive benefit that's only available in limited amounts at the sole discretion of the admin. It's not exactly a benefit you can just go pick up because your side needs access to something so as not to be at a severe mobility disadvantage. It also removes any ability to play defensively when you're being hunted, because the team can move from KC to you with no warning whatsoever, making any precautions you take aside from "Never leave guards" laughable.

I can see your point, but I don't think "I paid a lot for it" is an acceptable reason for you to be able to unstoppably land a team on anybody you want from anywhere you want with no warning whatsoever, in much the same way that "I paid a lot for it" wasn't an acceptable reason for Adonis to be doing 90% health truenames. An expensive imbalanced thing is still imbalanced.

I think we're both justifiably biased on this issue, so I'm down to agree to disagree.

Khizan

Naturebinding - BEES:

Druids are in a pretty good place right now, but they lack the ability to cover their opponents in bees. This classlead is designed to fix that.

Druids should be able to direct a swarm of bees at their enemies. These bees will fly inside of random vials in their possession and replace the contents, so that when their opponents try to use curatives or apply toxins, they will have a chance of covering themselves in bees. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEES.

Lionas

Bathan

Wow. You want to nerf tracking pets for 'the good of the game' but you'll give a class BEEEEEEEEEES? You're so full of it.

Lionas

Bathan said:

Wow. You want to nerf tracking pets for 'the good of the game' but you'll give a class BEEEEEEEEEES? You're so full of it.

Kryss

As it is, the constant threat of having the entire enemy team appear to obliterate you often forces shardfalls into a slow crawl of moving room by room with your entire force. Giving the ability a two second notice would hardly make it less useful.. I mean, grove gate for example has a clear warning and still proves great for instantly springing into action. Track ignores holy ground and the like as far as I know, which is a pretty hefty advantage anyway.

Apoloc

Leave track as it is, then just make it so people can't follow.  If people wanna dump however many oodles of credits on that ridiculous artifact, let them enjoy it, stop letting everyone in their entourage enjoy it.

Sarciossis

Reviving this, and hoping it doesn't get derailed into BEES. :P 

AB NECROMANCY POSSESSION

Right now the ability is fine, but it does have one problem - hazewards/consecrations/monoliths. I don't see how it would be a problem to allow this to bypass those abilities. It's a channeled skill that can be interrupted, and I don't see the problem of being able to travel immediately into your city (instead of possessing those dwarves outside them).

Someone is probably going to say: 'But they'll be able to possess one of my city mobs and travel in'. Well, if we're able to access one of your mobs, possess them, get out of the city, and then travel back without the guards stomping us into oblivion, then something is wrong with your defenses or you need to start locking our house doors.

AB BRUTALITY DUALITY (as well as others)

When you DSL on a mob, and you only hit once, but it still gives you the full balance loss, it can be a pain in hunting - usually because you hit for less than what you normally would plus you now have to wait twice as long. Just have the DSL balance be halved if only one hit connects.

And on that note, a new skill:

AB SURVIVAL OVERPOWER

When you score a critical on a mob, and you kill the mob with that critical, it gives you a 15 sec window to apply the remaining damage to the next mob.

Whachu think guys?

Khizan

The first isn't needed, and we don't need another unpreventable longrange travel skill.

The second isn't needed. Target generic keywords to get carryover on the second slash.

The third is ahahahaha no. Bashing is easy enough as it is now without every one of my high level crits effectively getting to oneshot two different mobs.

Sarciossis

@Khizan -

It's not unpreventable. It's got a eq cost, plus around 2 sec delay before you're moved. It's not 'Ride Home'. 

You concentrate on forming a necromantic link with the soul of a wizened old dwarven man.

Equilibrium Taken: 2.40s

And then there's a 6 sec delay from my time stamp before I arrived.

I think you missed the point on the second one, the problem isn't hitting a mob on the carryover the problem is when you hit one mob (usually the last mob in the room, or those mobs that run every hit) and you have to wait (in my case 4.6 secs) until your balance is back even though you did -half- of a doubleslash.

As far as the Overpower goes? That's an opinion. I find bashing a chore, and I think this would kill some of that grind that goes with it. Yeah, you'll one shot mobs, probably multiple times, but most aspects do that anyway so what's the difference for you? :P

Lionas

This number is skewed low, because I don't turn off the counting when I get blackout so it doesn't see those crits, but still counts hits. My actual crit rate is about 2% higher than this table shows; this is why we do not need overpower.

EDIT: Oh, and this also counts hits against noncritable mobs, so that also skews it lower.

Total Crits:   27310
Total Attacks: 55909
Overall Critical Hit Rate: 48.85%
               %of crits      %of all hits
---------------------------------
2X  (13898):  50.89%        24.86%
4X  (6815):  24.95%        12.19%
8X  (3402):  12.46%         6.08%
16X (1638):   6.00%         2.93%
32X (1557):   5.70%         2.78%
---------------------------------
Current Normalized Critical Hit Multiplier:    3.343


EDIT2:

Sarciossis said:

As far as the Overpower goes? That's an opinion. I find bashing a chore, and I think this would kill some of that grind that goes with it. Yeah, you'll one shot mobs, probably multiple times, but most aspects do that anyway so what's the difference for you? :P

Cadeyrn

I'd like to be able to "drag" rites with me while bashing. Convergence is nice.. but so slow to use while bashing a higher level area.

Would be happy with a half second wait between rooms to pull my rites around.

Sarciossis

Cadeyrn enters from the west, weighed down by the burden of his holy rites. :P

Ellen

While it would make hunting easier for everyone, I think the Overpower ability that Sarciossis suggested would serve more to equalize the advantage that very fast hitting or multi-attack professions get over slow, single-hitting professions. The advantage they get with having a larger number of less damaging hits is less wasted damage, which is pretty minor until you factor in how much extra damage you waste for large critical hits.

Iluv

AB PIONEERING MIGHT

Fitness and might are two skills in the Pioneering skillset that heal afflictions. Alone these skills might be balanced but having them together makes classes with pioneering immune to affliction classes. Affliction classes usually have a higher skill ceiling required to play and it is unfortunate that they can be countered so easily by spamming might with very little thought.

1. Give might a 10-second cooldwon

2. Have might be stopped by paralysis.

3. Either of the solutions above applied to might AND fitness.

Sarrius

Hunter and Druid had fitness before, and might (as did Outrider, but they lost it in the Trailblazing split). I never heard complaints then. Why is it NOW such a big deal? If they are spamming might, they aren't spamming their offense on you.

News at 11: if people do not want to die, it is hard to kill them if all they want to do is not die.

Khizan

Ellen said:

While it would make hunting easier for everyone, I think the Overpower ability that Sarciossis suggested would serve more to equalize the advantage that very fast hitting or multi-attack professions get over slow, single-hitting professions. The advantage they get with having a larger number of less damaging hits is less wasted damage, which is pretty minor until you factor in how much extra damage you waste for large critical hits.

The "less wasted damage" myth is, well, a myth. 

Predators are the best because they've got an insane base(non-crit) DPS. If you turned their bashing attack into a single sitara strike with equivalent DPS, they'd still be the best. Their ability to one-shot three enemies in a single combo would go away, but they'd gain the ability to one-shot enemies on x4 crit.

Within reason, DPS is what matters. DPS being equal, faster attacks are always better than slower attacks. Combo classes tend to be the best not because the combo is more efficient(it is, but this isn't a big factor), but because the combo classes tend to have faster attacks.

Ellen

Khizan said:

The "less wasted damage" myth is, well, a myth.

Could you elaborate on this, please? If I do 80 damage per hit while fighting something with 120 health, it will take me two strikes to kill it. If you do 40 damage per hit but attack twice as fast, it will take you 3, and the fourth can go towards the next target. I might be missing something important, but it seems to me that critical hits will exacerbate this

Juran

If I attack once a second for 40 damage, or 3 times in a 3.0 second combo for 120 damage, I'm doing the exact same DPS and killing just as efficiently. Attacking once every 3 seconds for 120 damage is less efficient, but the amount by which it matters is far less relevant than changing DPS by even a little.

Xeron

If there is a desire to make the grind of bashing easier, the crit overflow thing is not the solution. This would allow for situations such as me sitting outside Rafe's smacking my own ents around until I get an annihilating, then walking into Rafe and (probably, not 100% sure on his health) one-shotting him. Replace Rafe with any decently difficult to kill denizen and you get the picture. Then you have other issues where this could be used in the same manner to kill guards, or ents such as this monthly necromancer which is uncrittable. Get a decent crit on one of the skeletons, now necromancer is dead immediately, and other such situations.

The answer to the grind would be, as Juran has stated, a tweak to the overall desired DPS. Making, for instance, attacks aimed at denizens faster, or giving perks (perhaps this could tie in to the new achievement bonuses zomg) such as those given by the atlas pages to do x% more damage to whatever kind of enemy. These are fixes that would not have ridiculous implications to other aspects.

Lionas

Xeron said:

If there is a desire to make the grind of bashing easier, the crit overflow thing is not the solution. This would allow for situations such as me sitting outside Rafe's smacking my own ents around until I get an annihilating, then walking into Rafe and (probably, not 100% sure on his health) one-shotting him. Replace Rafe with any decently difficult to kill denizen and you get the picture. Then you have other issues where this could be used in the same manner to kill guards, or ents such as this monthly necromancer which is uncrittable. Get a decent crit on one of the skeletons, now necromancer is dead immediately, and other such situations.

You would have to get a killing blow with the crit hit for it to carryover, killing your ent in the process. This is fine for disposable ent classes, but not so much for trained ents.

Guards (maybe just elite?) are crit immune, and I would assume that if overflow were to exist it would not apply against crit-immune mobiles.

We still shouldn't have it.

Xeron

Oh, that's why I specifically meant mine, all the Hunting ents for Outrider are crittable and re-summonable, so that's trivial for me to do. Some of them also have pretty pathetic health too, making it that much easier.