Alternate mage/druid specialisations (Aquachemantics, Wildewood, etc)

edited March 2013 in Ideas
So. So far we have Wildewood, Aquachemantics and Aerochemantics. We can probably expect Geochemantics and Pyrochemantics later, along with Wyrdwood.

These new skills and roleplay devices are still new and malleable, especially the ones which don't exist yet. My idea is for Earth to get a train.

Celest gets a ship on Water, Hallifax gets a zeppelin on Air, Magnagora should get a train. Easily place trcks all over the Mountains, or catacombs, and have it move about like that. Trains, especially steam locomotives, are inherently Magnagoran (Hallifax would come up with something like the bullet trains: runs on electricity and magnets), not the least because Magnagora is steampunk incarnate. It wouldn't be hard to make a train 'tainted' or 'Magnagoran'. Just put a few spikes on it, some carvings of the Demon Lords/Earth Lords and whatnot.

Trains are awesome.

I don't know what could appear on Fire. Maybe some sort of lava/fire submarine?
A masked taurian exclaims, "Sugoi! Gorlois-kun is kawaii, uguu~!"
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Comments

  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    And now I got the song Yellow Submarine stuck in my head.

    It might be that Gaudi gets a dragon or something similar, though, you never know.
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    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • Keeping in thee it should be a transport vessel of sort. So if the dragon has like, a saddle, could work, although I don't see it being so...
    A masked taurian exclaims, "Sugoi! Gorlois-kun is kawaii, uguu~!"
  • CyndarinCyndarin used Flamethrower! It was super effective.
    I suspect the admin had it fleshed out long before the actual events.
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  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    Yep. And it has to be something with rooms inside! So, a train would work, a dragon would only work if it were hollow.
  • ShaddusShaddus , the Leper Messiah Outside your window.
    edited March 2013
    I have this very odd feeling that the Necromentate will figure excessively in the Geochemantics opening.


    Maybe the Pyrochemantics will be a giant powderkeg.
    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.
  • ShaddusShaddus , the Leper Messiah Outside your window.
    image
    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.
  • KarlachKarlach God of Kittens.
    Who said you can't have rooms inside a living creature, have you not seen the Ebonguard Guildhall?

    The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."

    You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!


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  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    Morkarion said:
    Who said you can't have rooms inside a living creature, have you not seen the Ebonguard Guildhall?
    Gah, scary concept. Someone went a bit overkill with that one... especially the alimentary canal... still gives me the creeps.
    image

    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • KarlachKarlach God of Kittens.
    Please don't remind me, I never thought "enter sphincter" would be an actual command in this game.

    The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."

    You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!


    image
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    You can, it's just not likely to happen again, heh.
  • edited March 2013
    Aerochemantics special report is gearing up.

    Is the league of evil undead drunks about to get their first chemantis spec? It's soo exciting!

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  • Shaddus said:
    image
    KA SUPLEX GEOMANCER GUILD ADDITION
  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    Yeah, been waiting on whatever-wood for what seems like ages now. Then again, I'd rather see a well thought out spec over something that needs 20 hotfixes, so willing to wait a bit longer for quality.
    image

    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • I imagine the two chems will be dust motes and censers.

    Anyway, what I would love to see is some of the meld-only secondary and tertiary skills have a -chemantics form. Dreamweaving can be used in single combat, so that's fine, but some of phantasms cool stuff requires a meld.

    At the same time, though, I can appreciate that the starkly necessary nature of -chemantics from the future where melding was lost would make it so that there's some lack of cohesion between it and the things those future mages already knew. Still, though, I'd expect the present-day users to develop some clever new uses for their familiar skills to mesh with their new one after having used it for a while.
  • NeosNeos The Subtle Griefer
    Skye said:
    I imagine the two chems will be dust motes and censers.

    Anyway, what I would love to see is some of the meld-only secondary and tertiary skills have a -chemantics form. Dreamweaving can be used in single combat, so that's fine, but some of phantasms cool stuff requires a meld.

    At the same time, though, I can appreciate that the starkly necessary nature of -chemantics from the future where melding was lost would make it so that there's some lack of cohesion between it and the things those future mages already knew. Still, though, I'd expect the present-day users to develop some clever new uses for their familiar skills to mesh with their new one after having used it for a while.
    I do want to do this, but I have a number of other things to deal with first, unfortunately.
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    Celina said:
    You can't really same the same, can you?
    Zvoltz said:
    "The Panthron"
  • I already threw this towards GM for consideration for the special report, but I'll put it here to allow the ravages of the full force of people who actually understand combat:

    Make a -chemantics ability that can be activated only when all four fields/mists/whatever are raised. When activated, it makes the room the mage is in behave like a single-room demesne, one which moves around as (s)he does.Or perhaps it doesn't move, and will fall whenever the mage leaves the room or one of the mists/fields/etc. falls.

    Completely unreasonable? I honestly have no clue. It sounds like fun, though.
  • edited March 2013
    I also secretly want that -chemantics people can take tinkering instead of spellcraft, or even that they can't take spellcraft (to prevent ultra-enchanters that can flex between both...although they could just flex to aeromancy and take it. >.>). There are no better tinkers in the game, methinks.
  • Skye said:
    I already threw this towards GM for consideration for the special report, but I'll put it here to allow the ravages of the full force of people who actually understand combat:

    Make a -chemantics ability that can be activated only when all four fields/mists/whatever are raised. When activated, it makes the room the mage is in behave like a single-room demesne, one which moves around as (s)he does.Or perhaps it doesn't move, and will fall whenever the mage leaves the room or one of the mists/fields/etc. falls.

    Completely unreasonable? I honestly have no clue. It sounds like fun, though.
    It's important to remember that chemantics are intended to be more 1v1 oriented than -mancers.
  • ShaddusShaddus , the Leper Messiah Outside your window.
    I'd like to see Phantasms skills like Phantomsphere become useable by Chemantics users.
    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.
  • Their intended 1v1 orientation does not necessarily mean excluding the use of "demesne" abilities in tertiaries though.

    I would love to see a Wildewood be able to carry their own weather system around themselves (room only and actual demesne manipulation would nullify the effect. I.e you enter a shamans demesne the shaman has control, no questions), dreamweavers could conjure up mini-aspects/elementals using motes that only attack whoever that druid/mage has focused on (i.e a defense based on the mote type used Flickering water elementals, pulsating earth elementals, twinkling fire elementals, etc, etc), runists might work similarly (omg you could have wildewood inscribing a rune on themselves).

    Though I suppose that all requires like someone to actually go through, work out just how much is lost by having a melder secondary/tert without melding.
  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    You can always fling runes and motes at people. Granted, shamanism weather control won't work, but giving single room weather control to a tree is wrong in my opinion. Overwrite by a shamanism melder is okay, until you consider the other thing... what about a runist melder... and then you have infused runes AND weather control at the same time? Not likely to happen.
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    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • Saran said:
    Their intended 1v1 orientation does not necessarily mean excluding the use of "demesne" abilities in tertiaries though.

    Actually, that's exactly what it means.

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  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    We're looking at where we can integrate terts better with the new skills, outside of psionics which doesn't generally require any sort of integration. I do find it a bit odd that the new druid skills don't mesh at all with the brand-spankin new druid-only tert at all.

    As a side-note, the new skills don't offer any increased 1v1 viability over their melder counterparts, except for psioniscists who don't normally bother with melds at all! Druids who want to 1v1 should use a meld!
  • Elanorwen said:
    You can always fling runes and motes at people. Granted, shamanism weather control won't work, but giving single room weather control to a tree is wrong in my opinion. Overwrite by a shamanism melder is okay, until you consider the other thing... what about a runist melder... and then you have infused runes AND weather control at the same time? Not likely to happen.

    I feel that the discussions on each individual skill need to actually occur, the pro's and the con's for the abilities that are now unusable, whether they can be transferred across directly to functionality with the new skills, if they can be modified in some fashion to be acceptable, or if they may need replacing.

     

    The prime example being shamanism, with about 13-14 (I forget the requirements for pressure) abilities being usable without a demesne 6 of which are trances, 6 weather manipulators outside a demesne (therefore restricted to natural weather patterns), 6 demesne specific abilities, 8-9 abilties that require weather manipulation (so most likely unreliable for use outside a demesne), and then forecast which may or may not be useful but to me seems more on the demesne-user side for usability.

    Llandros said:
    Saran said:
    Their intended 1v1 orientation does not necessarily mean excluding the use of "demesne" abilities in tertiaries though.

    Actually, that's exactly what it means.

    Not really, no.

     

    You would need to actually look at those abilities and determine if they're problematic. Sleepmist from memory actually retains it's functionality in a single room for dreamweaver non-melders. 

    Without a demesne it becomes a 0p room based effect that hits your personal enemies with tiredness on all elevations.

    The question is, is that OP?

     

    Similarly, the ability to have a mote or rune passively hit your enemies every ten seconds. Is that op as something you can carry around with you? Would it be op if it were like a spore/bark that had the same effect except only on a single target?

  • If the goal is to have it be more 1 on 1 oriented then making changes to terts to add any new room wide effects that hit your personal enemies would go against that. Doing so would be inherently problematic, in every case.
    Yes really, yes.

    Also, if you want to make single target versions of some of them then they should be new skills. Recent envoy discussion seem to indicate there is little interest in making more things that work like dark where there is a 1 person version and room wide version.

    Regardless of all that though, I can't help but question the wisdom of hashing out the details for improving the terts while there are still unreleased versions of chemantics.

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  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    edited March 2013
    Never actually tried to sleepmist without demesne... will have to try it next time I'm a dreamweaver. Still, if it is not bound to demesne, it sounds rather in need of fixing as opposed to being turned into the norm. How long will it last, for instance, is a pretty curious question, eh?

    EDIT: It does work without demesne, apparently... a rather curious thing that might need fixing.
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    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    edited March 2013
    The skillsets don't actually do that much to focus on 1v1 combat (at least for Wildewoods). On their own, or in combination with a non-psionics tert, they don't really present a complete 1v1 strategy from start to finish. A more accurate description of what these skills actually do is that  they focus in on single target combat, which is not the same as 1v1 combat. However,  the only non-bashing active skills in these sets are group target and have a group target pricetag to match, which muddies the waters quite a bit. 

    The tert that concerns me is Shamanism, the brand spankin' new Druid tert. As Saran pointed out, weather changing without a demesne is extremely limited, both in scope (extent of change), and range (number of areas that have weather to bend without a demesne). The scope problems tend to lock the user into the 'moderate' range of abilities, which are a terrain limited version of basic elementalism FREEZE GROUND and an attack that does 2-3 random shruggable poisons on enemies in the room on a normal balance time. Even if the scope/range problems were fixed, without Fierceweather, the passive weather effects themselves are on the mild end of effects, especially without a sap-like skill. 


    Sleepmist has ALWAYS worked without a demesne, just like all other demesne possible effects do. It lasts just as long as it normally would, the same as all other demesne possible effects. That already IS the norm, nothing new, it's been like that for many years.
  • ElanorwenElanorwen The White Falconess
    edited March 2013
    Sounds... dodgy... if there's a meld in effect and I walk around, doubling up effects in each room of said meld... i.e. Vadi has a meld going and then I walk around and double his effects, does that mean both effects will fire... or will his meld supersede any other effects I raise on a room by room basis? All in all, it looks a bit weird to do things in that particular fashion.

    EDIT: Agh, the spores... they just won't stop! Anyways... this is starting to look more and more dodgy of a thing. Will likely need looking into... possibly a melder special report or somesuch.
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    Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  • EnyalidaEnyalida Nasty Woman, Sockpuppeteer to the Gods
    The meld always takes precedence, its timing and effects trump anything else. 

    This is literally how it's worked since I've been playing, probably since these skills first came out - the start of the game. It doesn't really ever come up, there are only a very few places it becomes relevant, and even then, it's generally preferable to use them in a demesne anyways. It's demonstrably fine, and no one is going to waste time reporting to change it, when it doesn't impact anything.
  • CyndarinCyndarin used Flamethrower! It was super effective.

    Just as a note, IMO, these new skills do nothing for 1v1 combat. There's a complete disconnect between the goal and the implementation for both druids and mages. Mages just manage because psiosnics is psionics. I would say they are less group oriented, just because of the nature of demesnes, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are more capable at 1v1.

     

    They made the bomb skills hit all enemies, for example. How is that 1v1 oriented? To me it feels like their actual niche is stacking with demesnes. They get boosts for being linked to a demesne user, they allow for multiple mages/druids to stacks passives on a single target which was not available before. If anything, they made the guilds more diverse and powerful in groups. So I guess I'm just not sure why the sales pitch is they were built for 1v1.

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