Please stop projecting your personal grudges as arguing for the sake of arguing? I just disagree with you, and have the experience in both quantity and length of time to justify that disagreement.
Phantasms is actually pretty solid for a secondary skill. It's designed as passive support for melds and psionics, and does so pretty well. The passives it provides in addition to meld stuff is pretty gnarly when used appropriately. The fine art of PK that isn't group damage might have allowed us to forget actual strategic combat, but in the absence of everyonemashdestruction (which the overhaul hopefully solved) phantasms is still great support. Hopefully we're seeing a resurgence of these tactics now that damagespam isn't as brutal as it once was.
Claws Actually causes more bleeds per tic than a Harbinger song, and meshes well both absolve and wrack. Can go runes for haegl or TK for additional bleeding/mana drain. Both solid supports for mana kills. Redmask for anyone who is TP or DW.
Phantasmagoria is one of those long forgotten skills that is actually pretty awesome but got forgotten for the more obvious, facesmash buttons (pollute, maelstrom, whatever the other 10p mage bombs are called). A passive constant afflicter on every target that has the ability to entangle is pretty sweet. Stacked with reality which can be placed prior to the enemy entering your demesne, a mage can provide significant hindering via afflictions to an entire group from a room away. Less awesome not because it's not awesome on its own, but because damage bombs just got out of control with the power creep and were never fixed.
Phantomwall is freaking fantastic, keeps people from insta escaping being beckoned with tumble or what not. It used to be used all the time, another under appreciated skill that was forgotten. Can backfire if you don't block appropriately, but not a huge issue.
Phantomarmour is great. Passive blackout on hit with a high proc rate? Sign me up. An unlucky blackout hit can throw off a person's kill strategy. As a bard, I can't see if you ate earwort, pretty significant.
Whisper is a fantastic group lockdown skill. It's been nerfed a little because it was out of control the way it stacked, but it's better than entangle spam for random mage to do. Multiple mages? One can entangle, one can whisper, superior lockdown than say...2 druids. Great skill.
Wounds sucks against anyone with a system that is coded around it, falsevision is useless.
Phantasms might not be the "mash this button to win," a la pollute or whatever your damage button of choice is, but neither is rituals or athletics (wtf does rituals even have that is so awesome?). It's just solid in its niche of passive stacking.
The reason phantasms is the way it is (and generally why Stag and Crow are they way they are) is because how melders are set up. Mages basically use their (psionic, generally) terts as central skills. That is, it's the skill that most of their active abilities come from, and in which lies most of their 'momentum mechanics', skills that require you to use most or all of your active balances to peruse your goal. As the melding skill provides mostly passives and may or may not contain a viable, general use kill method, it falls to the tertiaries to generate solo kill opportunities. So yeah, most of phantasms is passive, and the skills aren't as powerful as psionic skills. That's because it's used to support psionics, not as a solo skill. What do you want? I'd generally rate it better than glamours for most applications, and it has stronger offense in claws, phantom, reality, and phantomspheres than Stag and Crow do (probably). Offense is king, especially when you have strong defensive options elsewhere.
But guys, ecology has utility. That makes up for everything, amirite?
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
Glamours was nice for a Cacophony, you don't get much in the way of aeon-blocking affs as a Tarotist, but you can easily overwhelm someone with afflictions as a Cacophony.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Celina (wtf does rituals even have that is so awesome?).
It's not anyone one thing, except acquisitio, it's mostly it has a bunchof usefulish little things, and has some utility things for younger persons, So getting some def/enchant isn't as important/needed.
Off the top of my head:
~Acquisitio
~Amissio-others have mentioned this mana drain, used by a small group of celestines/nihilists and you are scewed(absolved/wracked).
~Rubeus will prevent pacifism, love potion, and fear
~It has some healing funtions(LAETITIA for ego, PUELLA for health, PUER for deep wounds, ) though I am not sure how good that is compared to other skills healing.
~I know some people use/like Via to get around?
~I know Populus used to buff ones CHA back when we had CHA, not sure how useful it is now(I think it's just another ego buff, not sure how useful it would be in terms of bal/eq/-cost/bennifit)
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
Rituals, which leads into the delicious skills of Necromancy/Sacraments/Aeonics/Paradigmatics, however the Guardian class was built around heavily relying on their secondary skill, which admittedly representing their 'study' or 'faith', so I suppose I cant really compare it to Mage.
However, considering Totems, both Stag and Crow are muuuuch more diverse and interesting skills than Phantasms. For starters, they arent heavily reliant on having a meld or not, which is great, since half of phantasms is meld-related. Additionally, Stag and Crow have a lot more utility to them (although even i'll admit Stag needs some updating). Phantasms has 2 active abilities, 2 passive abilities and a low rate RNG for backlash. Truth be told people take Phantomarmor more the idea of gaining more resist, rather than that small blackout proc.
As for it being designed with the idea that Mage will be relying on Psionics...that just isnt true. These skills were out before Psionics was even introduced, meaning old mages had to rely on Runes and then Dreamweaving...I shudder to think of those days.
Phantomspheres are an extremely -extremely- situational ability, that unless an opponent has for some reason either lag or no way of simply leaving the meld/area, then they deserve to die.
Worse part is? Chemists are basically gimped from Phantasms. Half of the abilities in their secondary skillset...they cant even use or have no use for. It is just a sad design concept there.
Oh and I suppose I should throw the random arrogant comment as well to fit in with the fad:
ahem, TIL that YOU LEARNED what it really means to be a Mage. You are welcome.
It's always the right thread for proving Arcanis wrong.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Hey, it's TIL. Technically todayI/we learned that Soandso's assumption was wrong after all!
Viravain, Lady of the Thorns shouts, "And You would seize Me? Fool! I am the Glomdoring! I am the Wyrd, and beneath the cloak of Night, the shadows of the Silent stir!"
You just aren't using Phantasms right if you think it's a bad skillset. You should watch Viynain sometime and take notes, or something. Consider other mages' success with Runes over Psionics and check yourself, Arcanis. Seriously. I know you like to shit blabber all over the forums with your misconceptions, but please keep it to yourself.
Or don't, and teach the newest generation of Geomancers your philosophy. That is fine by me too.
I wouldn't say phantomarmour has a low RNG rate for hitting, either, especially since it can hit off of passives. The amount of times I would duel Farlaris and miss a killing hit because CarillonKnell procc'ed the blackout is higher than I care to admit.
Rituals, which leads into the delicious skills of Necromancy/Sacraments/Aeonics/Paradigmatics, however the Guardian class was built around heavily relying on their secondary skill, which admittedly representing their 'study' or 'faith', so I suppose I cant really compare it to Mage.
However, considering Totems, both Stag and Crow are muuuuch more diverse and interesting skills than Phantasms. For starters, they arent heavily reliant on having a meld or not, which is great, since half of phantasms is meld-related. Additionally, Stag and Crow have a lot more utility to them (although even i'll admit Stag needs some updating). Phantasms has 2 active abilities, 2 passive abilities and a low rate RNG for backlash. Truth be told people take Phantomarmor more the idea of gaining more resist, rather than that small blackout proc.
As for it being designed with the idea that Mage will be relying on Psionics...that just isnt true. These skills were out before Psionics was even introduced, meaning old mages had to rely on Runes and then Dreamweaving...I shudder to think of those days.
Phantomspheres are an extremely -extremely- situational ability, that unless an opponent has for some reason either lag or no way of simply leaving the meld/area, then they deserve to die.
Worse part is? Chemists are basically gimped from Phantasms. Half of the abilities in their secondary skillset...they cant even use or have no use for. It is just a sad design concept there.
Oh and I suppose I should throw the random arrogant comment as well to fit in with the fad:
ahem, TIL that YOU LEARNED what it really means to be a Mage. You are welcome.
Haha. So I know this predates you, but the reason I know these things about phantasms and mages is that I spent most of my early years as the geomancer champion, learning to fight alongside Vathael, Thoros, Revan, Malarious, Ceren, Esano (Akyaevin) etc.
The first person to exploit the TK illithoid forcefield was literally me, I was the Geo champ when illithoids were released as a playable race. We raided Celestia and Thoros was trying to figure out how I wasn't dying to the super PKers like Geb back in the day when warriors did 2k a combo. Fun fact: illithoids used to lose all their extra ego on logout, and had to redrain when they logged back in. I was the person to report that and it was changed to last through logout.
There are logs of early pollute bombs from me, and people not knowing what they were, on the old forums on Celestia. Fillin and others come after and did so more successfully, but I'm literally so old that some of the most common place things in the geos in modern Lusternia came from me. I will say Nydekion exploited in on the Celest side before me, but it was hit and miss. Geos had better typing and damage buffs, it became a consistent thing on the Mag side then.
Barrier chasm? I won't say this one actually originated from me, but there are very early logs of me catching Shuyin and Viynain (or Sojiro and Xiel) off guard with in on the Shallach river pre demigod.
Burrow barrier meld traps.
Etc etc etc
I say that to say this (and because I enjoy languishing in the days of yore), if you are actually interested in becoming better, you should stop believing you know it all and take the advice and insight of others. Universal truth of life, no matter how much you think you know, there's always going to be someone who knows more. Phantasms is actually pretty good at what it does.
edit: Most skills were designed before Lusternia was released. Psionics, monks, gaudi/halli, etc were all created long before they were actually released to the public. One of the cool things about Lusternia that maybe isn't as well known is just how much foresight and work came from Esty during the creation of Lusternia. One of the reasons Pyros came out so broken is because they were designed at the same time aquas could turn half your vials into water (that got deleted) and melds had no room limit. These skills were designed with eachother in mind from the start, we usually just don't see them until later.
edit2: Disclaimer-not EVERYTHING, I should say. Things like Shamanism and what not were created by volunteer admin down the line
TIL (well, actually over the last week) I really love the whole letter system. Fly seagull Fly :-) (Well actually learned how it works, how to use the in game editor and how to send letters around that are not messages and am all yay for it )
Wounds sucks against anyone with a system that is coded around it, falsevision is useless.
...
I do so love when people that know nothing of a skillset (nor have any experience in it) try to give input. If you look back lerad, I split up phantasms into a very simple way of understanding what abilities can be used activily, what are demesne reliant, and what are near useless or very situational. I am not sure why you believe yourself and Celina...whom have near 0 experience in this...have the right information (with apparently 'I had early game experience with geomancer so I must know everything), which from what I have heard in game, your input (celina specifically) on anything outside communes is near inept, basically anything not SD or Harbinger.. but okay .
What I find hilarious is the sheer determination and insistance on defending a secondary skill like Phantasms, which has historically always been subpar in offensive capability and was literally developed to try and accommodate to melds and at first require melds in order to actually function. It makes me wonder if it is actually a rather pathological passion for having certain things in Lusternia understood your way (doubtful), or, once again, commentary fueled by rage-induced activities within the game that are being channeled into any other form of medium (i'll choose latter).
Weren't the meld dependent phantasm skills changed to work with chems?
You see, things like this, right here, are the very reason I find the concept of "select certain people we know are acceptable to be envoys because we are sure they have the experience" flawed. No, only 1 ability, Stalker, was made to work with chems. It is still heavily fixed for melds. The only reason a chem has to trans phantasms is to just dispell other illusions. (They cant even use the trans ability for heaven's sake).
Weren't the meld dependent phantasm skills changed to work with chems?
You see, things like this, right here, are the very reason I find the concept of "select certain people we know are acceptable to be envoys because we are sure they have the experience" flawed. No, only 1 ability, Stalker, was made to work with chems. It is still heavily fixed for melds. The only reason a chem has to trans phantasms is to just dispell other illusions. (They cant even use the trans ability for heaven's sake).
Huh, but what I am right about is that there have been reports to change these abilities to work with -chems, which was supported by envoys, but deemed too powerful or complex by the admin. So it hasn't been lack of trying that they remain the same. (This means that this problem has been known about, why don't you get your puppetbuddy @Tanin to envoy some changes)
Do you count stolensight, which was changed to a defense to chems for better illusion detection as one of those ones that was changed? (1217)
I also wonder what not remembering which report was added and which solutions were implemented has to do with 'experience.'
I have very little experience fighting as a mage with phantasms for instance (which is why you don't see me, or other similiar envoys, like @Lerad, arguing against you). What you do see is Celina making good arguments and you just dismissing them or flat out ignoring them rather than actually address them. I can vouch that she does have experience there.
I guess I would just take the word of a proven combatant who is making actual arguments against someone who has always shown themselves to be subpar and a 'complain for change because I don't want to get better' person.
Comments
However, considering Totems, both Stag and Crow are muuuuch more diverse and interesting skills than Phantasms. For starters, they arent heavily reliant on having a meld or not, which is great, since half of phantasms is meld-related. Additionally, Stag and Crow have a lot more utility to them (although even i'll admit Stag needs some updating). Phantasms has 2 active abilities, 2 passive abilities and a low rate RNG for backlash. Truth be told people take Phantomarmor more the idea of gaining more resist, rather than that small blackout proc.
As for it being designed with the idea that Mage will be relying on Psionics...that just isnt true. These skills were out before Psionics was even introduced, meaning old mages had to rely on Runes and then Dreamweaving...I shudder to think of those days.
Phantomspheres are an extremely -extremely- situational ability, that unless an opponent has for some reason either lag or no way of simply leaving the meld/area, then they deserve to die.
Worse part is? Chemists are basically gimped from Phantasms. Half of the abilities in their secondary skillset...they cant even use or have no use for. It is just a sad design concept there.
Oh and I suppose I should throw the random arrogant comment as well to fit in with the fad:
ahem, TIL that YOU LEARNED what it really means to be a Mage. You are welcome.
Or don't, and teach the newest generation of Geomancers your philosophy. That is fine by me too.
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
What I find hilarious is the sheer determination and insistance on defending a secondary skill like Phantasms, which has historically always been subpar in offensive capability and was literally developed to try and accommodate to melds and at first require melds in order to actually function. It makes me wonder if it is actually a rather pathological passion for having certain things in Lusternia understood your way (doubtful), or, once again, commentary fueled by rage-induced activities within the game that are being channeled into any other form of medium (i'll choose latter).
Ah wait, I forgot. Envoys are 'flawless'.
You see, things like this, right here, are the very reason I find the concept of "select certain people we know are acceptable to be envoys because we are sure they have the experience" flawed. No, only 1 ability, Stalker, was made to work with chems. It is still heavily fixed for melds. The only reason a chem has to trans phantasms is to just dispell other illusions. (They cant even use the trans ability for heaven's sake).
In other news: today I learned envoys are flawless. Or that someone out there claimed envoys are flawless. Why, thank you.
Huh, but what I am right about is that there have been reports to change these abilities to work with -chems, which was supported by envoys, but deemed too powerful or complex by the admin. So it hasn't been lack of trying that they remain the same. (This means that this problem has been known about, why don't you get your
puppetbuddy @Tanin to envoy some changes)Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
more like eRUDEio am i right