Brainstorming and Discussion upon MD/SD sleeplock

Aeldra · May 2016

Dear fellow casual and full-time combatants,

Today, I want to talk a little about Moondancers and (to a lesser extent) Shadowdancers, in particular the design of the 'sleeplock' as it's commonly known. I know am not alone in absolutely disliking this specific mechanic. It's not because it's not powerful, it certainly is. As @Synkarin has once put it, once you're in it, you're most likely screwed.

However, in my opinion, it's annoying to set up ( so many things that affect sleep and I hear there's even people who have sleep immunity ), it's heavily tertiary dependant for Moondancers ( I think SD suffer there too, but to a lesser extend because of twist ? ), it makes heavy use of aeon ( which many do dislike ) and if you're in there, you have no possible way to do anything but watch your character slowly wither away.

I've spent quite some thought on this, for I personally would love for both MD and SD move away from this mechanic eventually to something that's achieving their mana drain in a more interesting manner, and hopefully something that -only- relies on their primary and secondary skillsets. Tertiaries can sure modify or provide addtional kill methods, but I would have one path for both guilds that each of them can always use regardless the tertiary. The method for both doesn't need and maybe shouldn't be the same.

I would love if we could have a brainstorming pool for this issue, I know there are many people on this forum who have great idea's, envoys or not.

I know that we may have to adjust some things in some skillsets for this to work, it's more having a long term idea that we could possibly report.

I hope we can come up with something interesting and fun that can work as a good replacement of sleeplock.

Riluna · May 2016

If we want some offense, we have to give up the defence.

Riluna · May 2016

It's far from off-topic. It absolutely must be in the thought for the envoys to accept the slightest suggestion, if you actually want something to come of this. afaik, it's the only reason people tolerate our sleeplock in the first place.

EDIT: What do you want to see? Also ponder what you'll give up for it, and if it's worth it.

Aeldra · May 2016

Riluna said:

It's far from off-topic. It absolutely must be in the thought for the envoys to accept the slightest suggestion, if you actually want something to come of this. afaik, it's the only reason people tolerate our sleeplock in the first place.

EDIT: What do you want to see? Also ponder what you'll give up for it, and if it's worth it.

I am trying to gather idea's not go into the details of having them implemented. I want to think outside this whole 'this one specific guild' and 'you have to sacrifice this and that to get it'. I want to gather ideas and build a picture. If we ever get there, we can talk about what would be required to get there, but it's more then MD. It's also SD, for IF we want to get rid of sleeplock, it makes sense to rid both guilds of it. My talk is about the mechanic sleeplock first and foremost.

Riluna · May 2016

When is the last time an SD even tried to use sleeplock?

Genuine question here, I'm not trying to be sarcastic. This thread seems to be about one specific guild, whatever words are in the title.

EDIT: I honestly believe MD defense is the deeper issue that needs to be addressed. Sleep can likely go away when it's fixed.

Lerad · May 2016

The SDs have actually been moved away from sleeplocks a bit, because they no longer have a reliable, long aeon. The aeon provided by shadowtwist's third tighten costs 1p to squeeze (which will allow the SD to cast that spell without progressing to the next spell - tightens cannot be reversed), and can only be squeezed 4 times in a row before the shadow poofs, which means they have to spend 4 balances getting a new shadow and tightening 3 times to get to aeon again.

Choke, obviously, doesn't exist anymore.

But the actual clincher that has moved SD away from sleeplocks is more the fact that there's a better alternative, namely, final twist. Final twist is a burst drain, dealing a good chunk of mana along with aeon and stun to help the SD get balance back to toadcurse without giving the target much in the way of reaction time. It's not actually a drain that, by itself is near the threshold, though, I'm pretty sure it's around 30% max mana or so after all the modifiers etc. Which is huge for a 50% mana kill class, but they still need to work for it. It's still more viable than the current accessibility to sleeplocks for SDs, though.

Obviously, there's been resistance against just adding a shadowtwist clone to MDs. Putting aside the "novelty" argument where we don't want to clone things on principle, you can't just lift the entire core mechanic of a class and transplant it to another without considering and comparing the entire kit to each other, which is a daunting task when there are many hidden benefits and differences between the two.

Secondly, there's also the argument that shadowtwist is just another variation of a run-or-die mechanic. That's not neccesarily true, of course, since there's nothing guarantee'd about the final twist's lethality, especially if you're watching out for how the SD is trying to manipulate your sipping priorities and adjust accordingly. Easier said than done in the middle of a fight, of course, which is why there is such a perception that "oh, I'm doomed once they get to the final twist." Regardless, it's a fact that the target cannot actually do anything to lower the number of twists the SD holds on their shadow - once they progress the twist, even the SD cannot reverse it. Which is, though slightly more nuanced than inquisition or monk momentum, still a frustrating mechanic to face. Anyway, that was a digression.

My personal thought is that shadowtwist's direction is probably the best way forward for wiccans, and possibly the guardian class as a whole, though the other guardian classes have their own comfortable (?) niche at the moment, and it's probably better for them to continue to keep their own castles. For MDs in particular, transitioning from a sustained mana drain class to a burst mana drain class is probably the best idea - especially if they want to move away from aeon at the same time. Case in point, the SD aeon is too far away from the final twist (3rd versus 7th) to actually be considered as a central way to build up to the final twist... unless you actually managed to aeon lock the target on the third twist and keep them locked until the final, of course. Which is probably possible, but a different story and separate problem of its own. SDs actually have been able to toad without doing so, though, so obviously the burst model works even without aeonlocking.

How the MD transitions into a burst drain class is the actual problem. There are many ways to do so that doesn't involve a direct lifting of shadowtwist's mechanics - one of which I personally prefer is an affliction gate, gating the burst behind afflictions. The MDs have to build afflictions, and then once they hit a threshold, they can perform the burst that puts the target into toad range. Easy to imagine, harder to explain in detail. From the last couple of reports, I've personally learned that MDs put out quite a number of mental afflictions, so I was thinking that could be one way to go.

I'm not a wiccan, have never been, so I'm not familiar with all the ins-and-outs of MD's afflicting, though. So no idea if that's actually viable.

Rivius · May 2016

The problem with Moondancers is that they really only worked reliably with hexes. They had the classic hexen sleeplock which required the following components:

1) You have a beast with sleepcloud

2) You have a pixie timed

3) You double sleep and hope for a long wake timer

4) You stuck aeon on the target

5) You stick affs to block aeon curing

The dependence on the wake timer made it a sort of flakey combo to begin with, but if you kept trying it over and over it would work. Once sleep strips kafe and dropped your endurance, it also extended how long you'd stay asleep for.

It's hard to feel out exactly how big of an impact the removal of endurance had or not, it doesn't seem to be as crazy of a timer as it used to be. On top of that, having love potion up can really screw with an MD since sleepcloud is enemy-list dependent.

One of the challenges MD had to get around was sticking aeon. Sondayga and Tredian used to blackout people with vapors and try to stick a waning under there to strip speed so that their next planned waning would definitely hit with aeon. Systems have gotten a lot better though, and so that trick worked on fewer and fewer people. The overhaul switched out vapors with some other affliction that wasn't blackout, so blackout isn't even in the MD repertoire anymore. So even if someone had a system susceptible to that, the MD no longer has the option to exploit that.

Waning just has too long of an EQ to really stick it 1v1 on someone with good curing. You basically need to rely on stupid cheap nonsense like a sleeplock which is really a big hit or miss. Moondancers are just very outdated and their designs just need reworking in general.

In my opinion, it's probably for the best long term to 1) Move away from aeon dependence 2) Move away from sleep locking and phase it out of the game 3) Find a mechanic that is self-contained enough to be adequately supported by all tertiaries.

Of course, I also think fixing the issues Moondancers have, in a way that comes out balanced and fixes all the problems is unlikely to work with single, monthly reports that are almost always just tweaks to abilities here and there. I think it'd be better at this point to sketch out a new flow and mechanism of play entirely and just implement it all together. Piecemeal reporting has too many chances to fail at the individual report level, and you get into an awkward phase where you have half-implemented ideas before the next few reports start linking things together. In other words, in the ideal world, I'd give Moondancers a special report. But that's something the admin would have to approve and we already have so many things on backlog for it to be realistic

Maybe it's just my personality, but I'm not really interested in band-aid fixes to things. I think if you're going to do something, you need to do it right and go all the way.

----

I was briefly brainstorming a few mechanics that I never really put on paper but here's a set of random crazy ideas I never pitched to anyone and are probably full of terrible design holes. This is mostly for fun, but maybe it'll inspire better ideas.

1) Moondancers use their athames for certain abilities, so that these powerful abilities are locked to MDs and SGs don't get access to them. The syntaxes of these abilities could be called something like MOONCALL instead of MOONDANCE and maybe even give moondancers a special, shiny looking moon athame when they make one. Heck, it probably doesn't need to be an athame, it could be a shiny moondancer-specific item entirely that you can summon to cast these spells.

2) Maybe move from mana to ego drain? Not necessary, but I thought it'd be interesting, since the game doesn't really have many ego drains. [This point optional]

3) Go off that lunary route idea that people have thrown around. Here's where the idea might be very bad and crazy so bear with me:

[LUNACY]

MOONCALL LUNACY <target>: The target is cursed by Mother Moon. Target sees something like:

-> Curses the target with the lunacy affliction, which is a timed aff that is cancelled earlier if the casting Moondancer dies.

When afflicted with lunacy, target has recurring tick of ego drain that scales with mental afflictions. Slush increases in balance time with number of mental afflictions.

[Moondance dark]

- Def stripping removed. Room version costs 5 power, targeted version costs 3 power. Hits with one mental affliction every <x> seconds. If the target already has mental afflictions when it ticks, it gets a higher and higher chance of afflicting with additional afflictions (scaling with current mental afflictions). Tic is slightly faster during dark phase.

[Succumb]

Converted to an active ego drain.

[Waning]

No longer hits with aeon. Instead changed to an active ability that cures one affliction [or subset of afflictions?]. If in coven, other coven members get one aff cured too. Moderate eq? (5s?)

[Wicca Crone]

Does small ego drain, plus either sickening or slickness.

[Mother]

Hits with damagedorgans.

[Maiden]

Hits with egovice.

[Moonstone]

Costs some sort of power (5?). Requires moon athame. Target afflicted with damagedthroat plus stun (scaling with mental affs?).

[Pandemonium]

EQ loss on target, scaling with mental afflictions.

[Purge]

3p?

Instakill: If target is below 50% ego and has lunacy, instantly dies in a blaze of moonfire. Otherwise, does blackout. Requires moon athame.

[Full]

Same power cost. Cures no afflictions. Same prismatic. Works under paralysis.

[Waxing]

Passive timed aura. Lasts short time. Passive h/m/e heal per tic, scaling with moon phase. If in coven, other coven members have a chance to get the defense too, scaling with number of coven members.

Lerad · May 2016

You don't actually need beast sleepcloud for the MD sleep. Just a timed pixie will be good enough. The sleepcloud is more reliable, of course. Love potion is not actually a defense most people put up against wiccans - ents don't get affected by lust, and also not as reliable.

Moving away from aeon is definitely the right idea. (Note: I have a personal bias here)

Not sure why we need to move to ego when there's a 50% manakill in wiccan. Better to concentrate on looking at the afflicting rate and thinking about making it viable, or turning it into drains gated behind the afflictions.

I'm not sure if I like the way the vitals pressure "scales" off mental afflictions. It seems like most of the scaling is passive, and the only active ability is just the flat succumb ego drain. Burst classes, I think, should be balanced with the burst being an active ability, rather than just ramping up passively just by putting the stuff on the target. When both dark and lunacy are time based affs that can't be lifted, there's very little "hindering" a target can do to slow you down. It's no longer a tug of war of curing versus afflicting toward the burst threshold, but more of a ticking timebomb - kill the MD before they kill you. Having afflictions ramp up when there are pre-existing afflictions is a good idea, just not as a passive ability, I think.

Also not quite sure what the aim is with repurposing the three ents, and with the waning/waxing changes. The ents are fairly good as they are, but if you want to move away from passive curing, that's fine, I guess. Waxing/waning, though... I'm not sure moon needs even more healing. Speaking of which, if I could choose between keeping the prismatic part of Full or the aff curing part of Full, I'd rather you take away the prismatic. The prismatic is the biggest roadblock, and has always been the biggest roadblock, in extracting buffs of any kind for the MDs. Prone prismatic is even worse. Prone shielding was removed from most IRE games years ago - let's not put in prone prismatics.

Synkarin · May 2016

I think we should stick with mana kill with MD's. It thematically makes sense, and there's no real reason to change it up. It's not adding an extra mana kill to the game, it's just reworking the existing one.

I disagree with Lerad that the biggest roadblock is prismatic, I view full as more of a crutch mechanic than anything else. Toad costs 8p, spamming full prevents that. I don't care if it's nerfed (though I think full should be cure afflictions, no prismatic, works under paralysis rather than the suggestion).

I think the biggest roadblock is the fact that none of the envoy reports thus far have done anything to address the fact that sleeplock is a 'eventually' mechanic. Eventually you'll get the desirable wake tic. Eventually you'll land your kill. For all talk about avoiding it, it's also easy to counter those methods (cleanse ablaze for instance). The first step to any real MD change would be to nuke sleeplock, even if it's just making it so you can't force metawake off. Sleep is powerful even with metawake (it's like a mini 1/2 sec aeon). I don't think that aeon needs to go at this juncture. But in order to make any change, you're going to have to get rid of sleeplock.

Once that's gone through, you can then make changes. Yes MD's will be at a disadvantage for a time, but they'll have the room to build themselves back up. the biggest issue is that most of the MD reports have been a little too crazy. Start small, add in things that help move you in a good direction and you'll get there. I'd probably wait until the overhaul is mostly done though because we're a bit behind on envoy reports at this time.

In response to Rivius - Lunacy should have a power cost (I don't see one listed there), especially if it drains per mental aff and extends slush balance per mental aff. I'm not sure I like the idea of having more mental affs making it harder to cure mental affs though (especially if you consider jinx). Lunacy could ideally just be an empowered succumb, that lasts a time and does drains depending on mental affs, for like an extra 2p.

Purge only costing 3p seems low when toadcurse is 8p and doesn't actually kill. Yes it requires lunacy, so maybe that's more justification for lunacy to have a power cost.

Aeldra · May 2016

Thanks for the constructive input so far!

I would daresay that most of those who have ever tried to get any kind of change in MD are more then prepared to get rid of full moon, mostly because it's a sore and old argument and almost everybody I talked to has acknowledged the need to get rid of moondance full to move forward or repurpose it / change it.

I think with ego vs. mana it's an either or. As wicca already has the toadcurse manakill, I think the easiest road would be to keep that ( though seeing targets go in a blaze of moonfire would be very atmospheric :x ).

I would personally want to see aeon dead and gone from moondancers line of afflicting ( aside of what astrology provides / hexen provides ), thus the changes to waning ( As mentioned, waning already is only partially useful, with it's 4 seconds balance vs 6 seconds to get quicksilver back up ). Being rid of aeon is in my opinion a good thing.

As for the abilities, I don't see any need to change mother or waxing. However, I am not opposed to change crone and especially maiden. Wiccan ents have been always very situational as far as I can tell that and I see no need to mess with that. So maybe, updated from what I've heard and with my own thoughts, the idea of @Rivius augmented:

[LUNACY]

MOONCALL LUNACY <target>: The target is cursed by Mother Moon. Target sees something like:

Cost: 3p ?

-> Curses the target with the lunacy affliction, which is a timed aff that is cancelled earlier if the casting Moondancer dies.

When afflicted with lunacy, target has the passive mana regeneration reduced. Cured by passage of time or death of the casting MD. Could have fancy effect to show in the room maybe?

[Moondance dark]

- Def stripping removed. Room version costs 5 power, targeted version costs 3 power. Hits with one mental affliction every <x> seconds. If the target already has mental afflictions when it ticks, it has a chance of selecting a different mental affliction. Moon phase influences the amount of possible afflictions slightly.

[Succumb]

Converted into a burst mana drain.

[Waning]

replaced by Pandemonium (see below)

[Wicca Crone]

Does small mana drain, plus either sickening or slickness.

[Maiden]

Actually unsure what to do with her. The vice maybe is too much. Maybe keep crone as is and use what's listed by crone for maiden? Unsure.

[Moonstone]

Costs some sort of power (5?). Requires moon athame. Target afflicted with damagedthroat plus stun (scaling with mental affs?).

[Pandemonium]

EQ loss on target, scaling with mental afflictions.

[Purge]

5p?

Instakill: If target is below 50% mana and has lunacy, instantly dies in a blaze of moonfire. Otherwise, does blackout. Requires moon athame. (For me kind of only an atmospheric thing, as we have toadcurse)

[Full]

removed or replaced with curing a random from a subset of afflictions.

That being said, I absolutely love the idea of a moondancer specific item ( a moon athame, similar ) used to cast those items.

further thoughts / additions / critism / improvements ?

edit: slight rephrasing, did only see synkarins post afterwards and added the powercost to lunacy

CyndarinAscends · May 2016

I'm on my phone so I don't want to go in depth but full is a huge issue for me. Mechanics that allow for reckless plays without risk of consequence are a massive boon. Any moon warrior can dive into a group to save someone or split up the group knowing they have a reasonable chance to get out because they have a cheap prismatic to just mash on. It's one of the counters to the much hated fortress meta. Also the moon reports have been cray cray, like twist on crack. Most people are pretty open to changing MDs, I wrote a long add post years ago about the dated meta of wiccans (it's still on the forums somewhere) just not full crazy that had been suggested via reports.

Silvanus · May 2016

Here was my relevant comment on whatever report 1468 (the Moondancer's attempt at copying SD's twist):

Given the stated problem, my experience with similar mechanics, and in my defense of such mechanics, I will say that Sleeplock is a terrible idea because it's only viability is in solo combat. Too often other people will wake the enemy up, some passive damage will wake them up, or metawake can defeat them. Looking at the problem stated and the solutions presented, I do not think this report does enough. All classes that rely on Sleeplocking need adjusting, or none of them need adjusting and need to focus elsewhere. My preference would be for Moondancers to focus on spiritual afflictions entirely, perhaps give them a way to give Bardic auras or other spiritual afflictions to overwhelm an enemy in that regard.

Enyalida · May 2016

A lot of the previous reports were trying to cram too much into a condensed report on a single ability without a laid out gameplan of the sort folks are trying to piece together in this thread. That, and at least a few didn't really grasp the mechanics as they stand now, proposing stuff that didn't make any sense, literally - it was hard to understand what the envoy was talking about at all.

I'm kinda skeptical of anyone playing in a city complaining that it's too easy for a Moonie to dive and get saved/save themselves without risk of consequence when... tarot exists. People keep saying they're open to changes while working strenuously to shoot down even very minor and sensible changes.

I like the idea of positioning Moondancers as ego draining wiccans and going from there. Serenwilde on the whole doesn't have the integrated synergy for mana draining that Glomdoring has. That's part of the issue (IMO) with the Moondancers and with Serenwilde writ large: there certainly are some standout abilities and some effective strategies... they're all just isolated and don't work together to any salient, meta-relevant ends. There isn't much ego draining synergy outside of a dreamweaver tie in either, but it's fresher ground that has more room to be expanded than mana draining, which is deeply entangled with so much of the rest of the game already. It's probably not going to happen, but it would be nice.

The suggestions appear to be pivoting Moondancers towards being hardlockers. The general strategy looks like it would be to catch a good tick of fae with the damagethroat/stun option followed by some quick hexes for asthma and anorexia. Time brownie so that at this point they can't make use of rub cleanse to remove the slickness because they're off balance until you can hex for paralysis to stop that longer term. This could work out in a decent way if the stun is too short without spamming afflictions beforehand but scaled nicely to those afflictions.

It might also be interesting to change one of the effects (perhaps lunacy?) to a condition that penalizes the victim for focusing afflictions. The most obvious way that would shake out would be to make focusing any affliction give a chance to deal a mental affliction to the victim. Either the victim takes their chances on the randomized curing to remove a dangerous affliction (like asthma) or they focus it off and suffer the consequences of additional mental afflictions, increasing the scalar effects of the Moondancer until they can cure it off.

Rivius · May 2016

I admit I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it. It's an ugly off-the-cuff set of ideas I'm just throwing out there half for fun and half to help brainstorming.

Re: ego kill - Yeah, definitely not necessary. Although it'd be cool to have another ego kill in the game. In my mind, we'd probably leave the mana kill to SDs and make MDs the ego killers to sepate the two guilds more, but it's nbd. Part of me feels like Serenwilde doesn't have that intra-org synergy that Glomdoring has, and maybe opening up ego as a common thread for guilds might be a fun direction, but again, that's just random musings.

Re: Waxing and waning - They're kind of not well thought out. I just thought that 1) the admin would probably want to keep covens relevant and 2) there's probably an RP need to keep skill names that are a moon phase. But idk, it doesn't matter and my initial thought was 'eh, can delete'. I didn't really want to give moondancers a bunch of aff pressure and still have aeon in waning.

Re: The maiden, mother and crone stuff: I dunno, I feel like maybe making the fae more contributory to the kill method would be helpful. The idea was to support aff pressure a bit. So damagedorgans to slow down curative balances a bit. Sickening to weaken bromides. The other stuff to be more for helping the ego drain.

Re: Lunacy power cost: Probably a good idea. You're right.

Re: Lunacy making mental affs harder to cure: It's probably crazy, I admit. Not sure what the best way to design a system to build mental affs but not be too crazy, and yet not suffer what current chemwoods are suffering from with affs.

Sidd's lunacy idea as an empowered succumb sounds interesting!

Re: Sleeplock - I agree it needs to die a horrible screaming death.

Re: Full - I mean whatever you guys want to do with full, we can discuss it and come to a consensus. I just think MDs do deserve to have some cool utility/escape/survival skills or something to help in groups in some way. That ability doesn't have to be full necessarily though.

Enyalida · May 2016

It'd be better to go for an escape skill than a "heal self but stay in the same room/situation" skill, I think. It's generally dramatically better to remove the source of the problem than it is to deal with the symptoms of that source when you have the choice.

Enyalida · May 2016

Silvanus said:

Here was my relevant comment on whatever report 1468 (the Moondancer's attempt at copying SD's twist):

Given the stated problem, my experience with similar mechanics, and in my defense of such mechanics, I will say that Sleeplock is a terrible idea because it's only viability is in solo combat. Too often other people will wake the enemy up, some passive damage will wake them up, or metawake can defeat them. Looking at the problem stated and the solutions presented, I do not think this report does enough. All classes that rely on Sleeplocking need adjusting, or none of them need adjusting and need to focus elsewhere. My preference would be for Moondancers to focus on spiritual afflictions entirely, perhaps give them a way to give Bardic auras or other spiritual afflictions to overwhelm an enemy in that regard.

There's really just not much real estate in spiritual afflictions outside of aeon and the auric afflictions. Aurics are also tuned and balanced based on the assumption that the person giving them can prevent you from curing them with maestoso, making it kind of hard for anyone else to make real use of them - especially now that they're basically off on their own balance that doesn't interact with the majority of the other afflictions.

CyndarinAscends · May 2016

I played in a commune far longer than I played in a city, and criticized trueheal/full/etc for the same reasons then, so I'm not sure the "anyone in a city" comment is particularly valid in this context. You can't use tarot as a get out of jail free card unless the other team allows it (aka doesn't monolith). It literally only works because one side isn't dropping sigils, which are cheap (and now artifacts!). I mean, it's awesome, but it has a literal counter that is pretty easy to access.

Given, there is also a counter for prismatic now with Axelords, but I haven't seen how that plays out just yet.

No one is "working strenuously" against MDs. They make comments on envoy reports, which is like the opposite of "work," and it's specifically against the aeon meta right now. Aeon is like sleep, it's a lockout mechanic and it sucks to play against. I don't want to see advancements towards that type of meta, regardless of what class it is.

Rivius · May 2016

Hack works pretty well as a prismatic breaker, actually. But I think (not sure) full is too short of an duration for hack to hit it unless the moondancer did it back to back.

Synkarin · May 2016

This may be selfish, but with drunkenfool being introduced, I was hoping to move Gaudiguch in general to focus around egodraining. It thematically makes sense and there really isn't much synergy outside the norm. I am waiting for the overhaul to finish before working with other envoys to help build that synergy. So full disclosure there, I may be a bit bias against Seren moving that way.

I'm not sure what Tarot has to do with being able to use Full as an escape tool. It's a random, vague refute that really isn't grounded in reality. I don't have full and can pretty reliably jump into an enemy group, save my buddy/gust an enemy out and escape. Full would make it much easier to do so, even if you had tarot.

I'm pretty deadset against anything that makes focusing harder or punishes people for using it, especially if that guild has things like aeon or sap. Random curing already makes slowcuring stuff a -lot- stronger, so punishing people even further is a bad idea.

As far as additional mechanics etc go, I'm going to be against anything that makes sleeplock easier (IE: the current MD report) no matter how 'minor' it is because strengthening sleeplock simply isn't sensible. Just because someone is open to change, doesn't mean they have to support every silly suggestion that gets put forward. The best way to help MD's at this point in time is to bite the bullet, remove sleeplock (which should be done across the game, and would be with one minor, sensible change) and then work from there. First report, nuke sleeplock, next report, introduce lunacy for instance. Take is with small steps, so you can build the mechanics as they go. It doesn't need to be a huge special report. MD's may struggle for a bit, but that struggling gives you justification for help.

Rivius · May 2016

Yeah. I mean, I guess you're right. We can also sketch out a long term plan and write it in a doc somewhere and reference it in each report, and then just share slots amongst Seren envoys to try to implement things too, if push comes to shove.

WRT to ego kills: Why can't we share dat? :[

Idk, I just didn't want to copy the mana thing since it's Glomdoring's shtick, and damage might be too weird to balance. But nbd.

Aeldra · May 2016

CyndarinAscends said:

I played in a commune far longer than I played in a city, and criticized trueheal/full/etc for the same reasons then, so I'm not sure the "anyone in a city" comment is particularly valid in this context. You can't use tarot as a get out of jail free card unless the other team allows it (aka doesn't monolith). It literally only works because one side isn't dropping sigils, which are cheap (and now artifacts!). I mean, it's awesome, but it has a literal counter that is pretty easy to access.

Given, there is also a counter for prismatic now with Axelords, but I haven't seen how that plays out just yet.

No one is "working strenuously" against MDs. They make comments on envoy reports, which is like the opposite of "work," and it's specifically against the aeon meta right now. Aeon is like sleep, it's a lockout mechanic and it sucks to play against. I don't want to see advancements towards that type of meta, regardless of what class it is.

I was trying to be clear in my posts that the point of me trying to have this discussion is to get rid of sleeplock and maybe aeon too, as far as MD concerned, for I really think that both mechanics are not good and not fun.

I also said, in a further comment, that as far as I am concerned, moondance full can go out of the window for all I care.

:-(

edit: rephrased.

CyndarinAscends · May 2016

I was responding to Enyalida

Lerad · May 2016

I think punishing focus might be a good idea if aeon is out of the picture - even if it's adding a mana drain to it while under lunacy or dark or if target has X amount of <insert type> affs or something like that.

Given that the mental affs a wiccan can do (and thus hexen wiccans in general) have always contributed to their kill thanks to focus mind being mana based, giving targets the same kind of choice - progress my kill strategy to possibly gain a curing advantage and remove a high priority aff, or make a gamble and possibly leave yourself curing a placeholder affliction instead of an important one - will be a good way to add dimension and choices to what opponents can choose to do.

Could make it an ego drain or whatever if you want to go the ego route - I just think it's a little disingenious when there's toadcurse in wiccan already, to make a new egokill. But hey, there are other classes with multiple instakills, some of them not viable for some guilds, so whatever lights your fire, I guess.

Can we just leave hardlockers in the realms of warriors? I don't think burst classes should be given hardlocks, which is something I'm hoping to move the Nekotai and monks away from too, if I can help it.

My image of a successful burst-orientated re-write of MDs would be something like the ents and dark giving passive mental aff pressure and maybe some flat vitals pressure to health/mana (or ego), and then active abilities centered around increasing either vitals or affs pressure based on the presence of the other. So an ability that deals health or mana damage scaling up to number of affs, and an ability that deals more affs scaling up with mana or health. So the MD has to balance, carefully, his power in using those to build up the target's affs and/or vitals pressure to a point where they can then burst down their mana. Something along those lines.

Ryboi · May 2016

Okay so I personally hate the current mechanism behind Moondancers. Due to overhaul changes that have been previously mentioned, and the advancement in curing systems we have been left with one viable kill method- Sleep lock. The entire idea behind sleep lock is crazy, it use to be when endurance was still in the game eventually if you try enough times you'll manage to get it to stick and then you've won. There's no satisfaction behind that. Now endurance has been removed it slightly harder however not impossible.

@Synkarin I agree that Sleeplock needs to be nerfed however I'm not willing to put in a report and leave the MD's without any kill method. Specially as we're looking at a minimum of 1 month until a new report can be put in- even then if it's small steps at a time we could be out of combat for 3-6 months easy. That'd hardly fair and we'd just die as a guild. I'd rather have at least one other kill method set in place before I remove our only viable kill.

I'd personally like to see a kill method which remove Aeon and Sleep from a MD's skill as there wouldn't be a need to them. It would mean that moon skills could move over to something more interesting and useable. I'd also like to see MD's able to take part in 1v1 combat, currently we're only useful in groups and again- it's not satisfying just spamming aeon or random affs. If we fight with a city we can get in a mana drain- but if it's just Seren's fighting there isn't really any point trying for a mana drain because there are very little supporting skills in other guilds. (Bar bleeding from Shofangi and manabarbs from a Spiritsinger).

It would be great to have a special report opened for the Moondancers but again I don't see that as viable with all the current priority changes. The MD's need breaking down and starting again to fix all the issues.

Synkarin · May 2016

MD's will still have a kill method, they can still aeonlock without sleep to lead to manakills, especially since you can do asthma/anorexia with hexes.

They just won't have good ol' reliable sleeplock. And that in itself is your issue. You're not willing to do what it takes to get the improvements you want, despite saying you're willing to give up sleeplock. Lots of talk, not so much walk. I acknowledged that MD's would struggle for a bit. Bite the bullet and do it and then work on your improvements.

Edit: As an aside, MD's are not the only people that wouldn't have a reliable 1v1 kill method, so my sympathy is literally zero at this argument. It's old, it's wornout and it's just an excuse.

Ryboi · May 2016

In 1v1 with a decent curing system Aeonlock wouldn't work- so it's not a viable kill method. Even with anorexia/asthma. Wanings eq recovery time is 4 seconds. By the time you hit with aeon (to remove quicksilver), anoreixa/asthma, Aeon it's easily curable. So I completely disagree with your above statement.

It also comes in that without hexes- you can't fight as an MD

Synkarin · May 2016

Simply not true, but it's whatever. You're unlikely to get a special report. You're unlikely going to make the changes you need in one report. Several other guilds struggle more 1v1. Choice is yours, Take the steps to allow room for changes, or continue to stagnate in outdated mechanics, mechanics you supposedly want to change.

Lerad · May 2016

Eh, 1v1s that rely on aeon (and sap) to get a kill are just cheese fests anyway. We have a lot of work to do in that regard, because there are a lot of guilds that remain cheese-only, and haven't seen any viability outside of that - or some that haven't been viable in 1v1 anyway, cheese or no cheese (see: Nihilists, anyone?). Besides, the envoy process is more drawn out than just 1 month - due to the demands of the overhaul and other stuff, you'll notice we're 2-3 months backed up on envoy report approvals, not to mention implementation. If you're not going to take the first step because it'll take time, then nothing's gonna change, and you might as well be stuck in the same, unsatisfactory state until even that crutch is removed.

It's not impossible to remove sleeplock and implement a new kill strategy at the same time, there's been plenty of ideas in this thread alone that can be combined into a reasonable report - not to mention that have been suggested in past reports.

Ryboi · May 2016

My objection isn't changing the skills @lerad. What I'm saying is I'd like to implement a different kill method into the Moondancers before I take out their only reliable one. If the envoy system passes some of the above skills I'd be happy to remove sleeplock in a heart beat. However with every idea being shot down and people like @Synkarin and @CyndarinAscends pretty much saying "Not willing to add anything in until sleep is taken out" it's pretty much backs us into a corner.

You're basically saying destroy the guild for 3-6 months before anything will happen. That's great but I don't think that sounds reasonable for fair.

Synkarin · May 2016

I think 'destroy' is a strong word. Removing sleeplock doesn't destroy the guild.

They'll still be better off than chemwoods and Nihilists for instance. You're being a bit dramatic and disingenous here. MD's will still be great in groups, they'll just struggle 1v1, which you won't even participate in anyway.

CyndarinAscends · May 2016

Overdramatics aren't going to get you very far with me. You wouldn't be destroyed, you'd retain full group functionality and still be very effective at it.

The fact that you don't acknowledge that is a large part of the problem. Sorry, I don't play the "overbuff and trust the envoy to follow through after the fact" game. Being overbuffed helps 1 org: yours. It hurts the rest of the game. The only reasonably approach is to do what will have the smallest impact on the larger game population.

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Brainstorming and Discussion upon MD/SD sleeplock

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