I have been asking questions, and trying to get answers as to the 'whys' which have not been getting answered.
Instead am being accused of not wanting my profession to change, which I have said multiple times change is fine.
I was just hoping to have a conversation on the 'whys' and do some comparing so I could -learn-.
This I can now see is an impossible thing to do here.
Here's my interpretation of the possible whys. I can't pinpoint the exact issue(s) because it's clearly more complex than that, and this is only my personal analysis of why AM classes just seem to tank so well.
- Universal access to vitality/bladesurge. This is important because it extends the de facto health pool for each player, independent of artifacts. Demonic does not have a single vitality effect, while I believe magick is limited to Druid and Hunter. Wardancer, Templar and Priest don't have access to this, but do get the option of bloodsworn (Wardancer lacks options but Wardancer lacks a lot more than that); there are other things place to compensate, such as:
- Higher average physical armour and mitigation. AM has two classes that use leather, one that uses scalemail, and five that use chainmail or higher. Most other professions in the game use scalemail; for the ones that are better off, outside of antimagick, you're only looking at knights (a popular choice), druids (a popular choice), and defilers (no comment). On top of that, on average there's a better selection in terms of shields, because:
- Every profession scales with strength. This is important at a base class level because it gives access to stronger shields. Intelligent is considered the optimal choice for non-eq-speed intelligence users, but using Intelligent means you only get access to a buckler by default. Demonic's basic statpack is generally clever, which offers no resistances, poor strength (lower overall resistance), poor constitution. Athletic is the best all-around option for most of AM's classes, which provides great constitution, resistances, great strength to assist with the aforementioned resistance as well as damage, and the only sacrifice is sip - which gets mitigated because:
- Rites are amazing. They provide regeneration and affliction healing that classes don't have access to otherwise. Demonic only has access to uruz for room regeneration, but unlike rites, it can be stopped by flooding. Rites get supplemented further by prayers, meaning priests contribute a lot to team tankiness in addition to their personal defensive options.
- Everything does damage. A lot of it. Individually this isn't an issue, nor is it a circle-specific phenomenon; however, having every attack deliver damage and afflictions means you're always able to push your kill conditions, and burn down individual targets faster. Demonic has a lot of classes that have to make choices about their pressure options - you can't simultaneously do damage, afflictions that contribute to kill conditions, and mana pressure at the same time. This means that strategies have to be tightly coordinated around the team you have present, which is a big issue for most of demonic's classes.
My personal intepretation is that AM's relative tankiness is a holdover from legacy decisions, that have evolved over the years. Antimagick (and most classes in general) couldn't keep up with the affliction output of the glass cannon classes that emphasized it, such as diabolist and assassin. Nowadays, paralysis does not stop attacks in the short term, clumsiness has a cooldown on effect, balance knocks have been removed, balance modifiers have been standardized and no longer stack - this means in general, afflictions are not as potent at mitigating an offense. What's much more effective? Actual mitigation! This means that what used to be a balancing factor for AM's class composition has turned into more of an outright advantage.
- Rites are amazing. They provide regeneration and affliction healing that classes don't have access to otherwise. Demonic doesn't have a single room-wide support ability for afflictions or damage - the closest option is demon fury, which is near purely offensive. Rites get supplemented further by prayers, meaning priests contribute a lot to team tankiness in addition to their personal defensive options.
One minor comment: Demonic has the same Uruz room regen as Magick.
- Rites are amazing. They provide regeneration and affliction healing that classes don't have access to otherwise. Demonic doesn't have a single room-wide support ability for afflictions or damage - the closest option is demon fury, which is near purely offensive. Rites get supplemented further by prayers, meaning priests contribute a lot to team tankiness in addition to their personal defensive options.
One minor comment: Demonic has the same Uruz room regen as Magick.
- Rites are amazing. They provide regeneration and affliction healing that classes don't have access to otherwise. Demonic doesn't have a single room-wide support ability for afflictions or damage - the closest option is demon fury, which is near purely offensive. Rites get supplemented further by prayers, meaning priests contribute a lot to team tankiness in addition to their personal defensive options.
One minor comment: Demonic has the same Uruz room regen as Magick.
I knew I'd forget something. Updated my post.
Well, it also requires you to have a wytch in a team fight so that's understandable.
edit: Also, on top of flood limitation, you're limited to 2 per room, so you have to sacrifice some other utility (canopy, rubble effect, offense) and it gets very expensive using multiple inks every room you fight in if you try to maintain them.
I'm just amused at all these Summoners coming here to complain about other classes being too tanky.
"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'm just amused at all these Summoners coming here to complain about other classes being too tanky.
I'm in summoner because all of my other options aren't tanky enough to justify using; alas, I'm discussing the Demonic circle, not the Summoner circle. Thank you for your valuable contributions to this thread, though!
(Isn't it weird that summoners are too tanky now that Khizan isn't one anymore?) @Cassius
@Khizan The actual argument is really why is this entire part of the game more tanky than the rest? (see: all those not summoners). When you were demonic you were both "Devotion is too tanky" and "Redemption is bad." Then you picked up devotion and now it's k and summoner is bad.
Summoner is also the most updated class in demonic right now. Of course it's awesome. Most of the mechanics have conditional modifiers and there's built in risk/reward choices instead of "this is the best choice." It's also more updated since it combines good resists with regen. Now add in a credit heavy investment with stacking con bonuses, sip bonuses, regeneration, and damage resistance. That's pay to win for you, similar to the way @Khizan plays Templar! :P
Most summoner abilities have built in costs and trade off mechanics. You don't see this in devotion. You can just keep piling on the resistances the moment you learn trans devotion, sacrificing nothing except 120s (most of which is spent in Dis).
It's almost too bad that the "factions" in all of the IRE games don't have exactly the same classes/professions (mechanically). It's probably too late to do that here even if they wanted to, because I'm sure they also try to look at the synergy of classes within each circle, and just lumping them all in the way they are now would probably be a train wreck in terms of balance, while ripping whole classes out would be equally disastrous.
And of course some people wouldn't like it no matter what because each circle wouldn't be "different" enough. But it would solve the age old IRE game problem of "your faction's classes are OP" (and maybe they are). Things could still be OP, of course, but it would tend to be everyone's problem. I've been poking around Lusternia, and I'm too new to really know, but it almost looks like this is what they've done.
@Wysrias Only demonic class that can pull off, damage, mana drain, and afflictions all at the same time is Diabolist with a daemonite. Only problem with this is the damage, drain, and affliction rate are comparable to me snapping rubberbands with toxins on them at the masters of do-everything-in-one-combo. You know what they are.
Fast summoners should be able to deal some kind of damage, pressure mana and deal afflictions all at the same time also. But I find diabolists better doing that. Fast summoners tend to be a bit less tanky than diabolists, but that's only my experience.
Edit. Fool tarot deals mana leech and can be infused with some noctu spells. And there you can also use unleashes when they're available.
There's a difference between being able to do something and being able to do something well. Sure, you CAN fool infuse or do convoluted daemonite strats, but you take the tradeoff of being essentially worthless.
A tradeoff certain other classes do not need to take.
Tarot summoner can be really helpful at team combat. Pair it with diabolist so diabolist can use mana condition kill. If we're talking about single combat, and there's tarot summoner and monk facing each other, tarot summoner can pressure the mana also there while monk needs to use mana to convert himself some health.
Also, since there has been artifacts involved in this thread, well equipped tarot summoner can deal damage while afflicting, making three affliction enlighten kill possible.
Tarot summoner can be really helpful at team combat. Pair it with diabolist so diabolist can use mana condition kill. If we're talking about single combat, and there's tarot summoner and monk facing each other, tarot summoner can pressure the mana also there while monk needs to use mana to convert himself some health.
Mana leech in and of itself isn't going to drain someone in a significant manner - it's a pipe cure and it's not masked. There are much more useful things a summoner (even a tarot summoner) can be doing in a fight than hoping manaleech ticks before someone can smoke a pipe (and if this happens, you should be pushing enlightenment, not mana drain). For instance, unleashing scrag is ~36 bleeding damage, which will clot away a very significant amount of mana if someone does not have robes.
Tarot summoner definitely does not do enough damage to reach that condition quickly, even with artifacts.
Fair enough. You're right that tarot summoner is way better with straight affliction route. I just stated my experience and possibilities what one can do.
About upcoming changes to weapons. I'm not sure about all of the weapons, but many of them are going to be nerfed, what I've seen. Also, the post about the changes stated that those are rough numbers only and they are going to change during beta and so on. There's still this summoner class that doesn't use any weapons to attack, and attacks are not hindered by rebounding.
What you people think if summoner is going to be modified again or are you all just waiting for beta to open?
Yes, there's classes that doesn't use weapons. But overall if you look at the rough numbers of new weapons. Speed is something that determines a lot in combat, mostly in one versus one situations. If you want to speed up your weapon by 10 points, it reduces the damage in half, sounds tough deal with certain weapons, for an example: spear.
The spear in particular will, in theory, become more effective post-change, if the proposed effects go through as written. Slightly reduced damage and speed in return for increased armor penetration and bleeding? Sold.
Either way, the beta hasn't even been opened yet, so you probably have at least another month or two in which outrider will be exactly as ridiculous as it is now.
Sometimes you just can't win with quote boxes... Anyway, I've actually asked about flooding a couple of times in my circle, and I've sort of got some answers as to why from people who are very knowledgeable, but AM basically NEVER floods, and judicious use of flooding almost feels like a huge blind spot in our tactics (but I can't really know that for sure, because I really am just one of the Templar bots). Part of the reason is flipboots (I asked if that was part of the reason, and was told "yeah, probably"), but I still don't quite understand why it just isn't practical for us to make people cry through judicious use of flood. It's not like we don't have amazing coders, so I guess it just doesn't work overall (but I just can't really grasp why). The bottom line though, is that AM doesn't ever seem to flood.
For awhile there, most people also rarely had pilg up for some reason (converging rites does have a long EQ, and a lot of people seem to keep their rites paused unless they're actually in the "kill" room with the enemy), but we seem to be making it more available lately - not so long ago I'd pretty much given up on ever being able to pilg to anyone if a fight went bad, or even if we were regrouping. It's another case where I don't totally understand the whys and wherefores.
Sometimes you just can't win with quote boxes... Anyway, I've actually asked about flooding a couple of times in my circle, and I've sort of got some answers as to why from people who are very knowledgeable, but AM basically NEVER floods, and judicious use of flooding almost feels like a huge blind spot in our tactics (but I can't really know that for sure, because I really am just one of the Templar bots). Part of the reason is flipboots (I asked if that was part of the reason, and was told "yeah, probably"), but I still don't quite understand why it just isn't practical for us to make people cry through judicious use of flood. It's not like we don't have amazing coders, so I guess it just doesn't work overall (but I just can't really grasp why). The bottom line though, is that AM doesn't ever seem to flood.
AM doesn't flood because none of the AM classes have profession-specific skills that would enable anyone to flood. And no one feels like spending 800 credits on a flood ring (except Khizan, who, to be fair, probably had it from his magick-demonic days).
I've never seen him use it though, and actually asked Septus about that (because Khizan wasn't around to ask). For some reason our side just seems to have no desire to flood, even given the ability to do so by someone who could probably be very smart about turning it on and off. I was even considering one (flood ring), but I'd noticed that even Khizan has one and he never uses it (and I wonder if Septus might also have one, but forget if I asked him or not and his arties are suppressed), so I asked before spending the credits.
EDIT: I just realized it's Khizan and Septus, and those guys aren't going to be playing around with flood when they could be trying to stab something, no matter what. Hrm.
Flood walls were a big 'thing' with mages. Flood wall stopped tumble. Wall stopped walking. So in theory, flood stopped most of your ways to leave the room. Nowadays, it's the same but we now drop it for 'flippy' boots. For awhile, people would drop flood because they picked up the fishpeople perk of in room regen and were convinced this was a game changer. After that flood+traps meant you were in that room for something like forever. Flooding is a double edged sword a lot of the time because it stops the enemy from running, but it will likely prevent our team from running as well. Especially for ye ol' Demonic when we start looking at the disparity of block in skillsets per circle.
AM is spared a lot of the 'strategy' phase of combat because of numbers. AM also doesn't have a skill based flood. Hopefully no one writes a classlead for AM to be able to skill based flood. That'd be sad, as they already have everything. (They don't need it.) (You get stupid crap like interceptx2, super bear wall, threadtrap, all overlapping with the basics like rubble, piety, engage, block). With the double edged sword earlier, AM would likely not be a huge fan of flooding because it would inhibit the scatter reflex. Staying and dying is the risk. Possibly winning is the reward.
At this point it's pointless to flood the zerg train because all of them pilg out now. Insert spam comment about "Why does pilgrimage/deliver go through holyground but empress does not?" Just classlead things.
*You shouldn't be able to reflood a room that is parted. (In b4 Aakrin).
**Conversely, you should only be able to part a room from an adjacent room.
Comments
Do you know how flares/tablets even work dude? What about cleansing?
Here's my interpretation of the possible whys. I can't pinpoint the exact issue(s) because it's clearly more complex than that, and this is only my personal analysis of why AM classes just seem to tank so well.
- Universal access to vitality/bladesurge. This is important because it extends the de facto health pool for each player, independent of artifacts. Demonic does not have a single vitality effect, while I believe magick is limited to Druid and Hunter. Wardancer, Templar and Priest don't have access to this, but do get the option of bloodsworn (Wardancer lacks options but Wardancer lacks a lot more than that); there are other things place to compensate, such as:
- Higher average physical armour and mitigation. AM has two classes that use leather, one that uses scalemail, and five that use chainmail or higher. Most other professions in the game use scalemail; for the ones that are better off, outside of antimagick, you're only looking at knights (a popular choice), druids (a popular choice), and defilers (no comment). On top of that, on average there's a better selection in terms of shields, because:
- Every profession scales with strength. This is important at a base class level because it gives access to stronger shields. Intelligent is considered the optimal choice for non-eq-speed intelligence users, but using Intelligent means you only get access to a buckler by default. Demonic's basic statpack is generally clever, which offers no resistances, poor strength (lower overall resistance), poor constitution. Athletic is the best all-around option for most of AM's classes, which provides great constitution, resistances, great strength to assist with the aforementioned resistance as well as damage, and the only sacrifice is sip - which gets mitigated because:
- Rites are amazing. They provide regeneration and affliction healing that classes don't have access to otherwise. Demonic only has access to uruz for room regeneration, but unlike rites, it can be stopped by flooding. Rites get supplemented further by prayers, meaning priests contribute a lot to team tankiness in addition to their personal defensive options.
- Everything does damage. A lot of it. Individually this isn't an issue, nor is it a circle-specific phenomenon; however, having every attack deliver damage and afflictions means you're always able to push your kill conditions, and burn down individual targets faster. Demonic has a lot of classes that have to make choices about their pressure options - you can't simultaneously do damage, afflictions that contribute to kill conditions, and mana pressure at the same time. This means that strategies have to be tightly coordinated around the team you have present, which is a big issue for most of demonic's classes.
My personal intepretation is that AM's relative tankiness is a holdover from legacy decisions, that have evolved over the years. Antimagick (and most classes in general) couldn't keep up with the affliction output of the glass cannon classes that emphasized it, such as diabolist and assassin. Nowadays, paralysis does not stop attacks in the short term, clumsiness has a cooldown on effect, balance knocks have been removed, balance modifiers have been standardized and no longer stack - this means in general, afflictions are not as potent at mitigating an offense. What's much more effective? Actual mitigation! This means that what used to be a balancing factor for AM's class composition has turned into more of an outright advantage.
I knew I'd forget something. Updated my post.
"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."
A tradeoff certain other classes do not need to take.
Mana leech in and of itself isn't going to drain someone in a significant manner - it's a pipe cure and it's not masked. There are much more useful things a summoner (even a tarot summoner) can be doing in a fight than hoping manaleech ticks before someone can smoke a pipe (and if this happens, you should be pushing enlightenment, not mana drain). For instance, unleashing scrag is ~36 bleeding damage, which will clot away a very significant amount of mana if someone does not have robes.
Tarot summoner definitely does not do enough damage to reach that condition quickly, even with artifacts.
"There's still this bard class that doesn't use weapons to attack*"
*Let's not pretend anyone thinks handaxes are worthwhile.
"There's still this monk class that doesn't use weapons to attack"
A lot of classes are going to be unaffected by the changes to weapons. The only weapon that's probably going to see a straight up nerf is claymore.
*You shouldn't be able to reflood a room that is parted. (In b4 Aakrin).