can defiler please see when seeds wear away even when people run away? we can with entropy I don't see the point in not doing it for seeds.
also fucking delete raksha band or I literally will quit playing. It allows too much grief with no repercussions. And let me clarify, if I quit, I'll be quitting all IRE, I'm tired of spending money on a game/games where RL money trumps all and its okay for people with money to be griefy with no consequences. continue to milk your whales until they quit spending money because they don't have people to money stomp anymore
also **** delete raksha band or I literally will quit playing. It allows too much grief with no repercussions. And let me clarify, if I quit, I'll be quitting all IRE, I'm tired of spending money on a game/games where RL money trumps all and its okay for people with money to be griefy with no consequences. continue to milk your whales until they quit spending money because they don't have people to money stomp anymore
This is the kind of post that makes it worth spending $1000 on an artifact.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
On an entirely unrelated note, I haven't played actively since 2012 and there's an extremely limited pool of active combatants. I'm given to understand that most of the heavy hitters have emigrated across to Achaea.
What are the key changes to the dynamics that I have possibly missed out on?
I am aware that there are promotional items that have been released called earrings which offer tangible speed improvements to the different curing balances. Can these be stacked, or are you restricted to one set at a time?
Paralysis has shifted to a two-part cure. Any other significant curing changes that I have missed?
Can autocuring be made to report on why it isn't attempting to cure certain afflictions? The biggest issue I have found with autocuring is that I can't see why it isn't doing what I expect it to do, whereas of old it was easier to identify a failing because you'd be able to visibly identify where your system had been thwarted. (e.g. IMTS).
It is apparently not a bug that RG & Shaman can use their fetish/totem whilst performing channeled activities like monolith capturing or removing bones from the boneyard, which provides a significant advantage for the defending player. Not quite sure I am able to understand why it works, because any command I attempt in performing the same actions disrupts the activity.
A lot of rust to shake off, so would be grateful for the input. Current meta seems to revolve around heavy affliction classes like Shaman with bountiful disruptions to impact on autocuring such as herb failure against a huge table of herb cure afflictions and confound which slows your herb balance for a significant time frame. I've also found the changes to RG quite difficult to overcome, as they also seem to be able to perform significant disruptions to healing and tattoos. Are their tricks to these changes that I have missed in my absence? I worked out that marks can be scrubbed off after many a painful duel - so I am sure that there are other things that I have missed.
On an entirely unrelated note, I haven't played actively since 2012 and there's an extremely limited pool of active combatants. I'm given to understand that most of the heavy hitters have emigrated across to Achaea.
What are the key changes to the dynamics that I have possibly missed out on?
Get a costume. Get some promo items. Combat is what you make of it these days. There's not a lot of 1v1 (there should be) and the team combat is pretty few and far between for now. You've seen the dynamic lately.
I am aware that there are promotional items that have been released called earrings which offer tangible speed improvements to the different curing balances. Can these be stacked, or are you restricted to one set at a time?
As Galt said, it's two earrings. Mix and match as you please. They modify a lot of things they really shouldn't, but that's why they're good. HELP EARRINGS.
Paralysis has shifted to a two-part cure. Any other significant curing changes that I have missed?
uhh, this one is tough to me because I'm honestly unsure myself. My understanding is no, numbness is the only radically changed aff. Stupidity got changed a little, it doesn't make you do dumb things anymore, just eats your commands.
Can autocuring be made to report on why it isn't attempting to cure certain afflictions? The biggest issue I have found with autocuring is that I can't see why it isn't doing what I expect it to do, whereas of old it was easier to identify a failing because you'd be able to visibly identify where your system had been thwarted. (e.g. IMTS).
Root word/command AUTOCURING should show you a list of commands you can use with this system. There's plenty of reporting options that will help you get this info overall reading a log. I have my affs received and affs cured on, for instance.
It is apparently not a bug that RG & Shaman can use their fetish/totem whilst performing channeled activities like monolith capturing or removing bones from the boneyard, which provides a significant advantage for the defending player. Not quite sure I am able to understand why it works, because any command I attempt in performing the same actions disrupts the activity.
We changed it one classlead season apparently and it just stuck. It's pretty cancerous and should be changed but it is a classlead change in the first place, which sets proper expectations for when and where we should be fixing it. Basically, we stopped making fetish and totem a channel itself, which means it can't be interrupted by normal means. Things like ranged entangles will take the shaman off fetish though.
A lot of rust to shake off, so would be grateful for the input. Current meta seems to revolve around heavy affliction classes like Shaman with bountiful disruptions to impact on autocuring such as herb failure against a huge table of herb cure afflictions and confound which slows your herb balance for a significant time frame. I've also found the changes to RG quite difficult to overcome, as they also seem to be able to perform significant disruptions to healing and tattoos. Are their tricks to these changes that I have missed in my absence? I worked out that marks can be scrubbed off after many a painful duel - so I am sure that there are other things that I have missed.
Marks can't be scrubbed in room with the Shaman and Shaman has a way to costlessly put them back up. As for the rest of your question, there aren't really any tricks. The classes in question are designed to have that cure hindering (nairat, failure, etc) so that they eventually make headway against the amount of curing methods an average player has. To be specific, Nairat/Loshre(?) flare does not care about method, only classification of aff, whereas Failure does not care about classification of aff, just method. In Failure's case, it is easier to just chew through those because the penalty is losing your cure balance and not curing anything. Those effects last longer than most curing balances do, meaning just turning off the method in Failure's case is an awful idea. In Nairat or Loshre's case, turning off one half of an affliction table is also asking for a lot of trouble. You would ideally want to identify Nairat being cast on you and direct all your physical aff curing through the fastest cure balance so you have the lowest net loss in curing overall - in your case, you could just MIGHT after the Nairat activates and it would eat that.. assuming it cures something. In way, you just let autocuring shove through these skills. They're setbacks that are largely on the 'white noise' side in terms of how interactive they are. The only interaction is on the offending side for those skills, as they have decisions on what tool to use. You merely suffer through those tools and try to make headway. I know that sounds kinda crappy, but the skills are designed to have impact without a vast amount of defender-side complexity.
On Confound, it adds a flat amount to your herb balance for .. give or take, 20 seconds. It's good for making the first bit of headway, but after you stick Impatience (and thus lock out a whole route of curing), Confound becomes a detriment to affs/sec. I have to utilize it against somebody like you for a few reasons, but that's all a play by ear thing.
Lot going on in this post. Answers in Bold.
<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>
Curing/misc changes (I'm going to possibly cover ones you were active for, I forget when some of these came in). No particular order:
- Burning nerves got added. Does minor fire damage when you use certain curing methods.
- Addiction is now the mvp of focus affs: makes them sip whatever is higher when attempting to drink an elixir. This essentially means you will be drinking mana when you want to drink health and health when you want to drink mana.
- Totems got made to not be a channel (yes, we classleaded that to change back, yes people only agree its an issue now that totems aren't circle locked.)
- There is a new aff I can never remember the name of that reduces agile sourced damage similar to weariness does physical.
- Avidya (ignorance) is no longer focusable and changed cures. It reduces magic damage similar to weariness does physical.
- Knights do bleeding stuff now (rg and dk are ok, just prioritise haemophilia vs templar and you're good. Brute force clot vs dk since you're artied and you should usually be fine too.)
- Wardancer became berserker, no more flick/dsb/sdrop, stacks affs into pierce now (see AB WARCHANTS PIERCE for relevant info).
- Relics exist, see help relics.
- Earrings exist, see help earrings.
- Jinx got added - this is a shaman only aff that is very dangerous. Essentially massively buffs their aff rate when its on you: you ideally need to cure this as soon as you can without opening yourself up to dying another way. Focusable.
- The rage ability got nerfed, no longer balanceless.
- Peace got nerfed, it doesn't block your attacks anymore.
- Dryblood exists, does damage if you clot when you have it. I can't remember if this is new or not but more classes have it now.
- Defilers basically hit you a bunch then randomly one shot you. It is meant to work that way, you're not doing it wrong.
- A bunch of outrider pet passives/surges got changed multiple times. Safe to assume they do not do what they used to for the most part.
- Hunters can no longer trigger some of the affs they could on release.
- Kaido immolate just blocks shielding/treeing now rather than all tattoo useage. Long live hammer tattoo.
- If memory serves, druid choke is no longer a writhe cure - its a timed one. Possible that never went in but I'm fairly sure it did.
- Check out sect rituals if you don't know what those are.
- Druids can use shields. (!)
- Malignist is completely different now.
- Ancestral stones unlock special custom races with some minor but useful bonuses. I forget the helpfile that covers them, but helpsearch ancestral will probably make it show up.
For changes in the last 11 months or so, I can't really help. But these are most of the big things that spring to mind over 2013-2016. I have likely missed a lot.
Bonus: raksha needs to be worn to be used now. Sorry.
There was an issue recently that went the way I suspected it would, but didn't KNOW for sure that it would. No less than 3 veteran players were speculating on the likely result, and I definitely viewed it as an important test case. I am a little bit smarter after this case, and more sure I am thinking about things mostly correctly. But it's taken me over a decade to start to understand something every newbie should have zero questions about.
With that in mind, I can't stress enough. All players should know exactly how the PK rules really work in practice in any IRE they're playing - beyond the very clear cases of OOC harassment/racial slurs. When I consider an action, there should be no question in my mind about the potential consequences in game, and/or with admin. I realize the PK rules are "guidelines" but there are absolutely underlying procedures that I think build a lot of predictability into the system - but only if you truly understand the system. And the help files are almost a hindrance for the average player when it comes to truly grasping the rules.
There is a way to improve bounties I think. Allow the bountying org to specify by name(s) who can collect. This pretty much ends the problems with metagaming, and basically guarantees that the people most likely to be able to kill you against your will, will be the people trying to collect.
I imagine there won't be classleads anymore, but I figure it can't hurt to post these. These are basically thoughts regarding the last lot of major changes over the last couple of years. Some of these are just thoughts that might spark further discussion, some are my very opinionated point of view.
I said it at the time and my opinion is only stronger now that I've seen it in live play: the channel for all class-based escapes was a bad idea. I'm actually more ok with these on artefacts. As it stands untanky people without acrobatic boots or warp just get annihilated because the number of standard-movement hinders in imperian was always very high. Almost all of the class escapes had very reasonable counters, but it was more things to account for so there was a good chance you would have an option at least some of the time. This is true in one v one and teams both. It also removed a major shard sink, because now you honestly never need a disruptor assuming people know how to keep defences up (other than against demonic in ranged battles, and that's a stretch too). I could go on about this for a long time, but this paragraph is already getting too big.
Celerity changes actually look pretty good to me. I definitely don't just path track everywhere anymore when time is of the essence.
Hook should have a cooldown and be timed rather than stock writhe (or the writhe should cost no bal when writhing hook). Its currently overpowered for the same reason druid choke used to be, and is more spammable than the class version. Putting a predator on hook duty in am for instance is 100% worth it.
Starburst aggression is fine, but my one major complaint is it seems to drop on untargeted aggressive actions? This means doing something like putting up rites (a standard defence preparation) locks you out of burst. I'm sure other classes suffer similar problems.
Noctu flash may have been overnerfed. My recommendation would be make the relapse damage halved if epilepsy isn't present rather than no damage at all. It was crazy before, but its very lackluster now.
Reflection ritual is still nonsense. This ritual is better than every tier 4 ritual (with a situational exception for sanctuary) and most of the tier 5 ones. Its tier 2 (with a tier 2 cost). There is one impractical counter to this and it is gated behind a very small subset of classes or an auction artefact. That counter is also countered by a stock defence.
Devotion dazzle should give one aff per cast (give dizzy, if dizzy present, give confusion). Currently it gives both at once which is excessive. You could flip the order too, confusion-> dizzy would be fine as well.
I'd personally like to see a balance cost on dropping (and maybe picking up) elephant carving. I just put it in my attack/move aliases which is basically balanceless canopy everywhere, which is a bit silly.
I don't know if anyone's using it yet, but after completing one a couple of days ago I'm pretty sure poison whip should fade on move. I will defer to those with actual experience in a live setting on that one though.
I still think boltthrowers are awful, but I've posted enough on those before so will refrain. Will tag in @Kabaal instead.
I'd like to see Champion keep some of the channel on class escapes, because the problem was before that people would hold champion and then instaleave back to guards/anti-prism/whatever with champion and the champion challenge system really didn't do anything to prevent that. Otherwise agree that it's currently too punishing
Reflection Ritual is stupid, we've all got great stories using it, but when my pre-retirement self could stand in a room with 4 people trying to kill me for the duration of an ethereal chain and then survive and leave, something is wrong.
I'd like siege to die altogether. Especially with the raiding changes and siege changes previously it's just no longer needed.
It's possible that given Shaman's speed Inhibit should likely also see a similar change to what Septus proposes for Dazzle.
Veil needs to just die. It was bad before, it's even worse now.
E: I'd be okay with affinity area penalties going the way of the dodo too.
Re champion: my view with that is basically if someone wants to sit in their city for their entire time logged in to avoid participating in an opt in system, there is only one person really missing out in that scenario. If someone would rather opt out of the vast majority of the activities for multiple hours to avoid death, I don't really see an issue with that. Sans no prism rooms, nowhere is 100% safe anyhow.
I said it at the time and my opinion is only stronger now that I've seen it in live play: the channel for all class-based escapes was a bad idea. I'm actually more ok with these on artefacts. As it stands untanky people without acrobatic boots or warp just get annihilated because the number of standard-movement hinders in imperian was always very high. Almost all of the class escapes had very reasonable counters, but it was more things to account for so there was a good chance you would have an option at least some of the time. This is true in one v one and teams both. It also removed a major shard sink, because now you honestly never need a disruptor assuming people know how to keep defences up (other than against demonic in ranged battles, and that's a stretch too). I could go on about this for a long time, but this paragraph is already getting too big.
This was a fix for a non-problem. There were vocal people either bad at pvp or playing classes intentionally designed to not carry a great deal of catch. These bad or self-handicapping people complained that they couldn't get kills against people that didn't want to fight them.
The actual legitimate problem was that the game's high move rate was making it impossible to get solo kills before 8 people descended on you even from the furthest reaches of the game. That problem has been sort-of addressed, but could still generally use tweaking. I would like to see distant travel limited still further, such that running 150-200 rooms in a stretch would take 2-3 minutes.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
This was a fix for a non-problem. There were vocal people either bad at pvp or playing classes intentionally designed to not carry a great deal of catch. These bad or self-handicapping people complained that they couldn't get kills against people that didn't want to fight them.
To clarify, because I like to really, really understand stuff like this, the general guiding principle for how this stuff gets sorted is that if someone REALLY doesn't want to fight you, and you're going after them solo, they have some real chance of escape, provided they are somewhat proficient at... escaping (even if you ARE playing a class with "catch", in fact). So you'd often actually need at least TWO people playing classes with some decent holding (I guess they should also be good at killing people). Is this correct?
I would generally agree with this, yes. If someone is actively avoiding combat, and is willing to try escaping from the moment you walk into the room, then they should have a pretty good shot at getting away without some dedicated effort to kill them. I think weighing this advantage toward the defender's side is healthy for the game.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
There is the champion challenge option to ding them, even if it takes 3 times of getting the command off and them running.
Reflections needs to die as it exists. 1 reflection/10s for 10 reflections has long been my suggestion. Keeps the low faith cost for the tier 2, but it stops the major problem of being able to sit behind a wall of reflections taking no affs or damage forever. It kinda sucks personally since it's one of the best ways to not die as a primary target, but it needs to be done.
Tying in to most hated artis, speed artifact removal would do a lot to help. Lords above I would like to keep some serious assassin fighters without them getting turned off by the 1500c buy-in for the dstab offense. I'm sure preds would like to try out dart flinging and rangers will want to lol writhe stack on incendiary without doubloon rentals, too.
Shells: Blue shell is bugged and awful and needs to diaf.
Boltthrowers in raids are lol. I know cannons miss, but I've never seen a boltthrower do so despite their much higher impact on the fight when they land. I don't mind a little siege in general, but if anything needs a smack it's these jerks. Raid addendum: Increase raid timer, decrease time to move objective, or a mix of both. The windows are a little too tight to ever happen without one side feeling like they have a major advantage/generous for the defenders' kill stats/really want that +orgcredit tick.
Re Noctu Flash - I'd kinda like to see some touch-ups elsewhere rather than shoehorning them back into flash spam <60 for the double damage dip. Like maybe add +taint when target <50/60 to one of the other damagers for more versatility. As it stands, I wouldn't be scared of a Summoner 1v1 short of an experienced one with int3/collar3 going a hybrid route to enlighten.
Re affinity: My major issue with the system has been that it was a major indirect nerf to wormhole placement. Surges are a little bleh, but not as bad as they once were.
Re hook: It's a pretty good spam tool for nubs or when you have enough numbers to spare it. I've used it for quite a while for that reason.
Re elephant carving: Also really good, also will beckon/drop it everywhere.
Re poison whip: It's nice, but it is never enough on its own to really hold someone down in my experience. I haven't been on the receiving end as often as using it. I'd trade the promo item for unbalanced movement being a real toxin aff without hesitation.
A bit beyond the scope of a paragraph or three: DK needs to get into this decade with RG and (to a lesser degree) Templar with its shiny new aff spam and insta. No reason to play DK over Defiler or Berserker right now. Engineer needs ... ugh.
Reflections needs to die as it exists. 1 reflection/10s for 10 reflections has long been my suggestion. Keeps the low faith cost for the tier 2, but it stops the major problem of being able to sit behind a wall of reflections taking no affs or damage forever. It kinda sucks personally since it's one of the best ways to not die as a primary target, but it needs to be done.
Leave Reflection as-is, add a targeted syntax option to Breach that dispels it through shield.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
Tying in to most hated artis, speed artifact removal would do a lot to help. Lords above I would like to keep some serious assassin fighters without them getting turned off by the 1500c buy-in for the dstab offense. I'm sure preds would like to try out dart flinging and rangers will want to lol writhe stack on incendiary without doubloon rentals, too.
Not you specifically, but I always wonder when people post this how much they think their attack speed would have to slow down for this to happen. L3 dirks are overpowered by design, and the 'proper' dstab speed for game balance is probably closer to somewhere between L1 and L2.
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it Like a daydream.. or a fever
I don't think anyone disagrees that having L3 dirk speed baseline would be ridiculous. Probably around ~2.3-2.4 would be solid, without being overbearing.
re: Summoner I think having more options becide instant ashcloud would be nice, at least when it comes to the enlighten strat. Not insta-ing it means you're likely gonna lose aff pressure, and using it on insta means you basically don't get to use taint for anything beside that since it consumes taint per tick... For non-enlighten I dunno.
Not you specifically, but I always wonder when people post this how much they think their attack speed would have to slow down for this to happen. L3 dirks are overpowered by design, and the 'proper' dstab speed for game balance is probably closer to somewhere between L1 and L2.
I don't have a L3 dirk, since it seemed a bit of overkill and I had other stuff to get. L2 speed is where it should start, because that has been the baseline for balancing the aff rates and the timing lineup, plus that makes it a straight change to the arti investment rather than trying to throw in a nerf. I dunno about bows and dartsheaths, but L2 splits the difference there as well. Diadem is easier since it only has the one timing.
I said it at the time and my opinion is only stronger now that I've seen it in live play: the channel for all class-based escapes was a bad idea. I'm actually more ok with these on artefacts. As it stands untanky people without acrobatic boots or warp just get annihilated because the number of standard-movement hinders in imperian was always very high. Almost all of the class escapes had very reasonable counters, but it was more things to account for so there was a good chance you would have an option at least some of the time. This is true in one v one and teams both. It also removed a major shard sink, because now you honestly never need a disruptor assuming people know how to keep defences up (other than against demonic in ranged battles, and that's a stretch too). I could go on about this for a long time, but this paragraph is already getting too big.
This was a fix for a non-problem. There were vocal people either bad at pvp or playing classes intentionally designed to not carry a great deal of catch. These bad or self-handicapping people complained that they couldn't get kills against people that didn't want to fight them.
The actual legitimate problem was that the game's high move rate was making it impossible to get solo kills before 8 people descended on you even from the furthest reaches of the game. That problem has been sort-of addressed, but could still generally use tweaking. I would like to see distant travel limited still further, such that running 150-200 rooms in a stretch would take 2-3 minutes.
This is slightly playing revisionist history. Yes that was some people's motivation, but there were like half a dozen changes being considered for different reasons and they added several at once. The conversation about adding channels to cross continent skills had more to do with Champions (as a bandaid fix because at the time only champions dropped bones, has now been changed) special shards, and the fact that certain people with those just disappeared instantly to a mostly ungankable place while holding onto the bonuses. It wasn't really an opt out like Septus suggests because they could and did do this every time someone came after them. It was also as the changes to movement went live and was twinned with the overall goal of making the world feel bigger again. Ideally a better solution was to delete warning entirely, leave most of them as is, and maybe leave the channel on people holding special shards, as those have a significant enough power bonus to be worth the punishment. I'd like to probably kill foreboding as well, but I have less of a problem with that than warning. (I vaguely recall a shard skill being added to bypass warning temporarily, but can't find it, and think it's a bad solution anyways).
The biggest boost we could have to combat isn't going to come from skills, in my opinion, it would come from removing the requirements for a variety of artifacts that are more or less baseline "you need this stuff to fight". It's basically a combatant tax and now that the game is supposedly free there is no reason to retain it.
I'd love to see a full "inventory" of holding/hindering. And even before that happened, I'd like to see some sort of conscious, public decision about what sort of game Imperian is going to -try- to be in that department, in general. And if it's going to be a bit of a cagefight, it should be a bit of a cagefight for everyone (also, I don't want to play a cagefight game, putting that out there).
So the first decision would be "how well should people be able to escape the room, and possibly the area, in various sorts of fights"? You have to be able to hold people "well enough" to kill them (or make them want to run long enough to matter), but if you're able to really shut down escapes/breathers, it does edge into that cagefight territory. In big, big teams, you're probably just not getting out at all if the enemy is at all prepared, and that's to be expected - one of the many reasons really big teams (which thankfully don't dominate Imperian, but do have their place) are mainly "fun" for (some) team captains and actual newbies.
It would take something like... a few of the top guys taking full inventory of -all- holding/hindering in the game, and probably arguing with each other a lot. Which circles have what? Does it hit target only, enemies only, or does it hit everyone? What can it stack with? What does it just complement the hell out of? How strong and popular are the classes that have these abilities overall? How might those classes fit in overall into a decent team comp for that circle, given certain team sizes (one of the first questions is probably something like "can this class also block"?). How do they interact with other things the circle has access to? Crazy promo items? How likely is it that someone will get pulled back into the room, and will there be a totem (especially one that is perma propped) there when they do? All of that sort of stuff.
EDIT: You'd inevitably end up looking at everyone's available escapes, and the conditions where those escapes can work, which would be good, too.
Comments
2. RNG fail takes nearly double the balance?
also fucking delete raksha band or I literally will quit playing. It allows too much grief with no repercussions. And let me clarify, if I quit, I'll be quitting all IRE, I'm tired of spending money on a game/games where RL money trumps all and its okay for people with money to be griefy with no consequences. continue to milk your whales until they quit spending money because they don't have people to money stomp anymore
Like a daydream.. or a fever
What are the key changes to the dynamics that I have possibly missed out on?
I am aware that there are promotional items that have been released called earrings which offer tangible speed improvements to the different curing balances. Can these be stacked, or are you restricted to one set at a time?
Paralysis has shifted to a two-part cure. Any other significant curing changes that I have missed?
Can autocuring be made to report on why it isn't attempting to cure certain afflictions? The biggest issue I have found with autocuring is that I can't see why it isn't doing what I expect it to do, whereas of old it was easier to identify a failing because you'd be able to visibly identify where your system had been thwarted. (e.g. IMTS).
It is apparently not a bug that RG & Shaman can use their fetish/totem whilst performing channeled activities like monolith capturing or removing bones from the boneyard, which provides a significant advantage for the defending player. Not quite sure I am able to understand why it works, because any command I attempt in performing the same actions disrupts the activity.
A lot of rust to shake off, so would be grateful for the input. Current meta seems to revolve around heavy affliction classes like Shaman with bountiful disruptions to impact on autocuring such as herb failure against a huge table of herb cure afflictions and confound which slows your herb balance for a significant time frame. I've also found the changes to RG quite difficult to overcome, as they also seem to be able to perform significant disruptions to healing and tattoos. Are their tricks to these changes that I have missed in my absence? I worked out that marks can be scrubbed off after many a painful duel - so I am sure that there are other things that I have missed.
You can only have two earrings active at once, plus the bonuses from any you've linked to someone for. Changing which are active costs balance.
Curing/misc changes (I'm going to possibly cover ones you were active for, I forget when some of these came in). No particular order:
- Burning nerves got added. Does minor fire damage when you use certain curing methods.
- Addiction is now the mvp of focus affs: makes them sip whatever is higher when attempting to drink an elixir. This essentially means you will be drinking mana when you want to drink health and health when you want to drink mana.
- Totems got made to not be a channel (yes, we classleaded that to change back, yes people only agree its an issue now that totems aren't circle locked.)
- There is a new aff I can never remember the name of that reduces agile sourced damage similar to weariness does physical.
- Avidya (ignorance) is no longer focusable and changed cures. It reduces magic damage similar to weariness does physical.
- Knights do bleeding stuff now (rg and dk are ok, just prioritise haemophilia vs templar and you're good. Brute force clot vs dk since you're artied and you should usually be fine too.)
- Wardancer became berserker, no more flick/dsb/sdrop, stacks affs into pierce now (see AB WARCHANTS PIERCE for relevant info).
- Relics exist, see help relics.
- Earrings exist, see help earrings.
- Jinx got added - this is a shaman only aff that is very dangerous. Essentially massively buffs their aff rate when its on you: you ideally need to cure this as soon as you can without opening yourself up to dying another way. Focusable.
- The rage ability got nerfed, no longer balanceless.
- Peace got nerfed, it doesn't block your attacks anymore.
- Dryblood exists, does damage if you clot when you have it. I can't remember if this is new or not but more classes have it now.
- Defilers basically hit you a bunch then randomly one shot you. It is meant to work that way, you're not doing it wrong.
- A bunch of outrider pet passives/surges got changed multiple times. Safe to assume they do not do what they used to for the most part.
- Hunters can no longer trigger some of the affs they could on release.
- Kaido immolate just blocks shielding/treeing now rather than all tattoo useage. Long live hammer tattoo.
- If memory serves, druid choke is no longer a writhe cure - its a timed one. Possible that never went in but I'm fairly sure it did.
- Check out sect rituals if you don't know what those are.
- Druids can use shields. (!)
- Malignist is completely different now.
- Ancestral stones unlock special custom races with some minor but useful bonuses. I forget the helpfile that covers them, but helpsearch ancestral will probably make it show up.
For changes in the last 11 months or so, I can't really help. But these are most of the big things that spring to mind over 2013-2016. I have likely missed a lot.
Bonus: raksha needs to be worn to be used now. Sorry.
I just changed it to a sock, and no one has ever worked out that they need to activate socks.
With that in mind, I can't stress enough. All players should know exactly how the PK rules really work in practice in any IRE they're playing - beyond the very clear cases of OOC harassment/racial slurs. When I consider an action, there should be no question in my mind about the potential consequences in game, and/or with admin. I realize the PK rules are "guidelines" but there are absolutely underlying procedures that I think build a lot of predictability into the system - but only if you truly understand the system. And the help files are almost a hindrance for the average player when it comes to truly grasping the rules.
I imagine there won't be classleads anymore, but I figure it can't hurt to post these. These are basically thoughts regarding the last lot of major changes over the last couple of years. Some of these are just thoughts that might spark further discussion, some are my very opinionated point of view.
I said it at the time and my opinion is only stronger now that I've seen it in live play: the channel for all class-based escapes was a bad idea. I'm actually more ok with these on artefacts. As it stands untanky people without acrobatic boots or warp just get annihilated because the number of standard-movement hinders in imperian was always very high. Almost all of the class escapes had very reasonable counters, but it was more things to account for so there was a good chance you would have an option at least some of the time. This is true in one v one and teams both. It also removed a major shard sink, because now you honestly never need a disruptor assuming people know how to keep defences up (other than against demonic in ranged battles, and that's a stretch too). I could go on about this for a long time, but this paragraph is already getting too big.
Celerity changes actually look pretty good to me. I definitely don't just path track everywhere anymore when time is of the essence.
Hook should have a cooldown and be timed rather than stock writhe (or the writhe should cost no bal when writhing hook). Its currently overpowered for the same reason druid choke used to be, and is more spammable than the class version. Putting a predator on hook duty in am for instance is 100% worth it.
Starburst aggression is fine, but my one major complaint is it seems to drop on untargeted aggressive actions? This means doing something like putting up rites (a standard defence preparation) locks you out of burst. I'm sure other classes suffer similar problems.
Noctu flash may have been overnerfed. My recommendation would be make the relapse damage halved if epilepsy isn't present rather than no damage at all. It was crazy before, but its very lackluster now.
Reflection ritual is still nonsense. This ritual is better than every tier 4 ritual (with a situational exception for sanctuary) and most of the tier 5 ones. Its tier 2 (with a tier 2 cost). There is one impractical counter to this and it is gated behind a very small subset of classes or an auction artefact. That counter is also countered by a stock defence.
Devotion dazzle should give one aff per cast (give dizzy, if dizzy present, give confusion). Currently it gives both at once which is excessive. You could flip the order too, confusion-> dizzy would be fine as well.
I'd personally like to see a balance cost on dropping (and maybe picking up) elephant carving. I just put it in my attack/move aliases which is basically balanceless canopy everywhere, which is a bit silly.
I don't know if anyone's using it yet, but after completing one a couple of days ago I'm pretty sure poison whip should fade on move. I will defer to those with actual experience in a live setting on that one though.
I still think boltthrowers are awful, but I've posted enough on those before so will refrain. Will tag in @Kabaal instead.
I'd like to see Champion keep some of the channel on class escapes, because the problem was before that people would hold champion and then instaleave back to guards/anti-prism/whatever with champion and the champion challenge system really didn't do anything to prevent that. Otherwise agree that it's currently too punishing
Reflection Ritual is stupid, we've all got great stories using it, but when my pre-retirement self could stand in a room with 4 people trying to kill me for the duration of an ethereal chain and then survive and leave, something is wrong.
I'd like siege to die altogether. Especially with the raiding changes and siege changes previously it's just no longer needed.
It's possible that given Shaman's speed Inhibit should likely also see a similar change to what Septus proposes for Dazzle.
Veil needs to just die. It was bad before, it's even worse now.
E: I'd be okay with affinity area penalties going the way of the dodo too.
The actual legitimate problem was that the game's high move rate was making it impossible to get solo kills before 8 people descended on you even from the furthest reaches of the game. That problem has been sort-of addressed, but could still generally use tweaking. I would like to see distant travel limited still further, such that running 150-200 rooms in a stretch would take 2-3 minutes.
Like a daydream.. or a fever
To clarify, because I like to really, really understand stuff like this, the general guiding principle for how this stuff gets sorted is that if someone REALLY doesn't want to fight you, and you're going after them solo, they have some real chance of escape, provided they are somewhat proficient at... escaping (even if you ARE playing a class with "catch", in fact). So you'd often actually need at least TWO people playing classes with some decent holding (I guess they should also be good at killing people). Is this correct?
Like a daydream.. or a fever
Reflections needs to die as it exists. 1 reflection/10s for 10 reflections has long been my suggestion. Keeps the low faith cost for the tier 2, but it stops the major problem of being able to sit behind a wall of reflections taking no affs or damage forever. It kinda sucks personally since it's one of the best ways to not die as a primary target, but it needs to be done.
Tying in to most hated artis, speed artifact removal would do a lot to help. Lords above I would like to keep some serious assassin fighters without them getting turned off by the 1500c buy-in for the dstab offense. I'm sure preds would like to try out dart flinging and rangers will want to lol writhe stack on incendiary without doubloon rentals, too.
Shells: Blue shell is bugged and awful and needs to diaf.
Boltthrowers in raids are lol. I know cannons miss, but I've never seen a boltthrower do so despite their much higher impact on the fight when they land. I don't mind a little siege in general, but if anything needs a smack it's these jerks.
Raid addendum: Increase raid timer, decrease time to move objective, or a mix of both. The windows are a little too tight to ever happen without one side feeling like they have a major advantage/generous for the defenders' kill stats/really want that +orgcredit tick.
Re Noctu Flash - I'd kinda like to see some touch-ups elsewhere rather than shoehorning them back into flash spam <60 for the double damage dip. Like maybe add +taint when target <50/60 to one of the other damagers for more versatility. As it stands, I wouldn't be scared of a Summoner 1v1 short of an experienced one with int3/collar3 going a hybrid route to enlighten.
Re affinity: My major issue with the system has been that it was a major indirect nerf to wormhole placement. Surges are a little bleh, but not as bad as they once were.
Re hook: It's a pretty good spam tool for nubs or when you have enough numbers to spare it. I've used it for quite a while for that reason.
Re elephant carving: Also really good, also will beckon/drop it everywhere.
Re poison whip: It's nice, but it is never enough on its own to really hold someone down in my experience. I haven't been on the receiving end as often as using it. I'd trade the promo item for unbalanced movement being a real toxin aff without hesitation.
A bit beyond the scope of a paragraph or three:
DK needs to get into this decade with RG and (to a lesser degree) Templar with its shiny new aff spam and insta. No reason to play DK over Defiler or Berserker right now.
Engineer needs ... ugh.
Like a daydream.. or a fever
Like a daydream.. or a fever
So the first decision would be "how well should people be able to escape the room, and possibly the area, in various sorts of fights"? You have to be able to hold people "well enough" to kill them (or make them want to run long enough to matter), but if you're able to really shut down escapes/breathers, it does edge into that cagefight territory. In big, big teams, you're probably just not getting out at all if the enemy is at all prepared, and that's to be expected - one of the many reasons really big teams (which thankfully don't dominate Imperian, but do have their place) are mainly "fun" for (some) team captains and actual newbies.
It would take something like... a few of the top guys taking full inventory of -all- holding/hindering in the game, and probably arguing with each other a lot. Which circles have what? Does it hit target only, enemies only, or does it hit everyone? What can it stack with? What does it just complement the hell out of? How strong and popular are the classes that have these abilities overall? How might those classes fit in overall into a decent team comp for that circle, given certain team sizes (one of the first questions is probably something like "can this class also block"?). How do they interact with other things the circle has access to? Crazy promo items? How likely is it that someone will get pulled back into the room, and will there be a totem (especially one that is perma propped) there when they do? All of that sort of stuff.
EDIT: You'd inevitably end up looking at everyone's available escapes, and the conditions where those escapes can work, which would be good, too.