I think universal skills capping at 4-5, guild skills capping at 7/8 and maybe shrine/cult/demipowers capping at 10 is ideal. This is generally speaking, skills can be tweaked up and down (ie: Attune) to fit their general theme better.
I confirmed that the firelies was a mistake. My specifications document listed that it should have been a 2/5 magical damage resistance. I've corrected the code and edited Estarra's OP to reflect this.
I've swapped it on my personal chart, but haven't updated the link yet.
I agree with what Sidd suggested for commons (capping at 5, with Attune being the exception)-- note that's what I already have in the linked spreadsheet. I think guild skills should cap to 9, with the super-niche ones (like numen and putre) going to 10. Then divine favour allows that to get to ten.
Per Sidd's comment: I really don't want a lot of common things that get to ten, which is why at this moment I only have TF. I could weaken TF by making it 1/10, and then make DevoutShield 1/10, but then that's really telling people they need to get into a cult of an active God to appropriately min-max.
Perhaps for consensus or whatever, could we maybe have each guild or even skillset (here I mean three skills such as druidry, stag, and ecology) outlined as "defensive" or perhaps other tags that would inform the level of buff they can reach?
EDIT: I suppose at the least, one thing would be if there is considered to be a difference between the primary specs for mage/druid guilds
Crud, I accidentally deleted the wrong post of mine responding to the fireflies question. So for the record, I posted that fireflies weren't supposed to change (as noted above when I confirmed). I also noted something about how fireflies always provided a def, and we're moving all buffs and resists to the new system. Right now we have a mix where some stuff is in DMP and some isn't, which is confusing besides inconsistent. Also makes thing less visible. For example, the fact watery rooms affects cold damage is now more visible (you will see it on BODYSCAN).
I'm definitely liking the new numbers better in the latest version. However, I am concerned about the seeming insistence that order-related buffs be allowed to take you from the skill soft cap of ~5 to the pre-artifact cap of 10 all on their own. I mean, Divine Favour, 2/10? Shrine armour, 2/7? Those two make for 10% universal damage reduction that you can only get if you're active in an order and are in good with a God who gives out favours. 15% when bashing if you also layer on shrine protection. Worse yet, it's seemingly exclusive to orders. Nothing else lets you go there without artifacts, and if you DO get artifacts, are they going to be filling in your 8-10 levels if you don't have a favour to supply that? If so, that would be very disappointing.
Please consider limiting order-related resistance buffs to 8 and allowing and including non-order methods for getting a similar level of resistance. Maybe adjust some of the quests that give low level h/m/e buffs to give 1/8 or 2/8 resistance instead? Or change the Chaos and Death karma blessings to each give 2/8. Or heck, just make it possible from stacking together every other non-order bonus, if someone's bound and determined to make a secular character.
Put it back? Half of the squirrels attack and half of the final spore attack are magic, and Wildecall already has a (better) damage defense skill in badger. Changing it to be a defense against just magic type, and at such weak levels will put it pretty far in the crapper, imo (even if it's a fairly tough buff, no one but us really does that type :C).
I'm definitely liking the new numbers better in the latest version. However, I am concerned about the seeming insistence that order-related buffs be allowed to take you from the skill soft cap of ~5 to the pre-artifact cap of 10 all on their own. I mean, Divine Favour, 2/10? Shrine armour, 2/7? Those two make for 10% universal damage reduction that you can only get if you're active in an order and are in good with a God who gives out favours. 15% when bashing if you also layer on shrine protection. Worse yet, it's seemingly exclusive to orders. Nothing else lets you go there without artifacts, and if you DO get artifacts, are they going to be filling in your 8-10 levels if you don't have a favour to supply that? If so, that would be very disappointing.
Please consider limiting order-related resistance buffs to 8 and allowing and including non-order methods for getting a similar level of resistance. Maybe adjust some of the quests that give low level h/m/e buffs to give 1/8 or 2/8 resistance instead? Or change the Chaos and Death karma blessings to each give 2/8. Or heck, just make it possible from stacking together every other non-order bonus, if someone's bound and determined to make a secular character.
Shrine armour only works within the area(IIRC), so that could be rather limited. As for favours, you could always offer to active gods in your org, I would be willing to bet they would favour you if you offer X amount. And you could always get favours from the Wheel if you happen to have coins I suppose.
I don't understand the complaint about getting to level 10 via shrine powers or TF's. Shrine powers and TF's need to be worth -something- and it only makes sense to allow them to boost to 10, powers cost essence/karma and only last a limited time, but I'm certain other guild skills and things can probably boost people to 10 as well (the more powerful ones, like nightkiss/drawdown off the top of my head) or even possibly an ecology charm is you pump it up with the same comm.
Giving them a 10 cap doesn't mean you're going to be easily getting up to 10 anyways, unless the actual buff is 3, given that most 'extraordinary' guild buffs will only bring you up to 7. You'd need to stack several 1/10 skills to do that.
I don't understand the complaint about getting to level 10 via shrine powers or TF's. Shrine powers and TF's need to be worth -something- and it only makes sense to allow them to boost to 10, powers cost essence/karma and only last a limited time, but I'm certain other guild skills and things can probably boost people to 10 as well (the more powerful ones, like nightkiss/drawdown off the top of my head) or even possibly an ecology charm is you pump it up with the same comm.
I don't have any particular problem with the limit being 10, just with the order methods and non-order methods for getting high limit damage resist buffs stacking. If they stack, then people in orders will hit the cap and people not in orders won't and that would be bad. Putting the limit for 8 keeps them from stacking, but if some other method to prevent stacking goes in that's fine too.
I disagree that it'd be bad, I don't think everyone should be able to get to 10 all the time, in order to max out, you should have to pull every trick from the book, which means you'd have to be in an Order
Gimme a mechanic to get a blessing that doesn't involve the god having to do it, and sure. It's not you'd have to be in an Order. You'd have to be in an active Order.
There are enough other mechanical benefits to being in an order, never mind the really massive boost to RP interactions and other roleplay perks you get (even with non-order mobs) from participating in active orders.
I actually firmly believe Shrine powers and TFs should be very minor, and that being in an order should not be a min-max obligation since there's very good RP reasons not to want to be in one.
I'm not sure what your issue with Shrine Armour is. It's area-only. You must be in the area with the shield shrine that has Armour activated. If you don't like someone having the def, you can defile the shrine a bit and it goes away. That is why it is listed the way it is, and I see no problem with that.
I mentioned earlier that I don't mind tweaking TF a bit, but I very firmly believe that a truefavour should always provide some benefit as far as resistance goes, so that would make it 1/10.
Note that a 1/10 skill, if the person has no access to 1/7, 1/8, or 1/9 skills, will never get them to the cap now. It simply means that it will always provide a benefit unless you are at the cap.
More shrine wars? If memory serves, war shrines were intentionally made to where they can only be raised in org-controlled territory for the particular reason that they give too big a boost otherwise. Do we want to buff shield shrines to the point they'd be the only way to get the max non-arti DMP just so we can later envoy them to work the same way as War shrines now? Let's step back and make something possible to happen without the need for a mechanic that is similar to melds but requires stockpiling a completely separate resource to raise/drop.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
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Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
I really don't think equivalating 5% damage resistance to constant passive damage tics,stacking aggro mobs, slowed movement, and inability to teleport is the best case to make.
I don't see an issue with giving a small benefit to shrines/orders so long as it's small. 1 level, even if it's at level 10, is fine by me. So long as it's not the ONLY way to get to that level, which I don't think is being proposed. Things like nightkiss/drawdown or putre or whatever.
If there's very good RP reasons to not want to be in one, then don't be in one. I don't believe that shrine powers will be the only thing that gets people to the 10lvl cap, but I think they should be a power that's always worth it to use. I think people are misunderstanding my intent.
It's my opinion that getting to the 10cap should be difficult. It should really only be possible in maybe 1 or 2 damage types, for both buffs and resists. Making universal skills cap out lower, guild skills cap out 7/8 and shrine powers/cult powers/demipower (ie havoccry) cap out at 10 is just a general structure with specific skills getting more/less weight depending on their impact now (IE: drawdown/nightkiss would be something like 3/10 instead of 1/8 like something like fireforte would be). Having shrine powers give a 1/10 or 2/10 buff doesn't mean you have to be in an Order to get up there, but it does mean you have a better chance of getting there by having shrine powers. You should have to pull every trick to reach 10, it shouldn't be a readily available thing for -anyone-.
BTW, xen, you missed out shadowdance garb for all the glom guilds. It's available from the nightwraith construct, giving dmp to magic/poison.
You also missed out acro dodging for all the monk guilds for universal dmp that is bashing only. (It has a chance to dodge pvp attacks completely, but only a chance to reduce damage for pve damage. Like a weaker version of beast bodyguard: it has a chance to proc everytime you get hit, and when it procs, you get extra dmp for that hit)
2) About the shrine and TF part:
I agree that shrine armour/TF should be 1/9 and 1/10 respectively. My personal opinion is that 10/10 universal should be unachievable via common skills alone, and that guild skills (which are usually concentrated on one or two damage types instead of universals) should be needed to push certain damage types up to higher levels of resistance. Ideally, 10/10 universal should be unachievable at all. Instead, common abilities that provide universal dmp should serve as a base for guild abilities with higher maximums to push certain damage types above others. As it is, if shrine armour and TF give 2/9 and 2/10 respectively, someone with an active order could hit 9/10 universal from common abilities alone, using none of their guild abilities (kirigami, amber, attunement for 4/6 -> veneration for 5/6 -> armour/tf for 9/10). An ascendant with affinity would then be more or less permanently be at max resistance permanently, without using a single guild ability.
Naturally, being in an order, and having worked hard enough to earn the order priv of armour should give a benefit. But should being in an order (which is more or less a requirement for veneration as well) give 3 points in resistance to universal? (if we add in TF, that'd become 5) What we want for common universals would be that everyone has access to some decent amount (kirigami, amber, attunement will fall under this, probably) while those who went the extra mile, took part in an area of the game that not everyone can achieve in easily, or which is optional, can get an additional layer of resistance to acknowledge the effort they put in that arena (and also so that min-maxers can have an additional avenue to work toward), but that additional layer of resistance shouldn't be large enough to then fully cover and block out all guild abilities. This is just my personal opinion, of course, you're free to disagree if you feel that the layer provided by taking part in orders should be able to cover and replace guild abilities entirely. (Or if you feel that the layer shouldn't exist at all).
This also means, of course, that guild abilities should mostly have high maximums (with low boosts, like 1/8s, 1/9s, 1/10s), since this "ideal" of mine is riding on the assumption that guild abilities will fill in the role of shaping the final appearance of that guild's "resistance curve" if you want to call it that. But that depends on whether the admin want to go with that, of course.
I'm not sure what your issue with Shrine Armour is. It's area-only. You must be in the area with the shield shrine that has Armour activated. If you don't like someone having the def, you can defile the shrine a bit and it goes away. That is why it is listed the way it is, and I see no problem with that.
My problem with it is that people with access to shrines will use Shrine Armour for astral bashes and people without access to it won't get to. Tearing down shrines on a "If I don't get shrine armour, nobody [on the enemy team] does" basis isn't really going to fix that, since the imbalance is intra-organizational. The disappointment comes from the fact that the person next to you at the astral bash has Shrine Armour and you don't and you're less tanky and have to run more as a result.
I'm not sure what your issue with Shrine Armour is. It's area-only. You must be in the area with the shield shrine that has Armour activated. If you don't like someone having the def, you can defile the shrine a bit and it goes away. That is why it is listed the way it is, and I see no problem with that.
My problem with it is that people with access to shrines will use Shrine Armour for astral bashes and people without access to it won't get to. Tearing down shrines on a "If I don't get shrine armour, nobody [on the enemy team] does" basis isn't really going to fix that, since the imbalance is intra-organizational. The disappointment comes from the fact that the person next to you at the astral bash has Shrine Armour and you don't and you're less tanky and have to run more as a result.
In an astral hunt, it'd be more beneficial to have a Healing shrine than a Shield shrine after putting this in... Healing shrines can do Replenish (heal health/mana/ego), and Allcure (affliction cures). As such, I really just can't see this as being a valid concern. Again, I have no objection to lowering the buff weight provided (per Lerad's comments), but nothing that you're saying is really convincing me that the maximum level these abilities go to should be adjusted downwards.
PS: Even pre-change, I used healing shrines more than shield shrines for helping with hunting. I always found it to be far more useful.
I'm not sure what your issue with Shrine Armour is. It's area-only. You must be in the area with the shield shrine that has Armour activated. If you don't like someone having the def, you can defile the shrine a bit and it goes away. That is why it is listed the way it is, and I see no problem with that.
My problem with it is that people with access to shrines will use Shrine Armour for astral bashes and people without access to it won't get to. Tearing down shrines on a "If I don't get shrine armour, nobody [on the enemy team] does" basis isn't really going to fix that, since the imbalance is intra-organizational. The disappointment comes from the fact that the person next to you at the astral bash has Shrine Armour and you don't and you're less tanky and have to run more as a result.
In an astral hunt, it'd be more beneficial to have a Healing shrine than a Shield shrine after putting this in... Healing shrines can do Replenish (heal health/mana/ego), and Allcure (affliction cures). As such, I really just can't see this as being a valid concern. Again, I have no objection to lowering the buff weight provided (per Lerad's comments), but nothing that you're saying is really convincing me that the maximum level these abilities go to should be adjusted downwards.
PS: Even pre-change, I used healing shrines more than shield shrines for helping with hunting. I always found it to be far more useful.
Mag astral bashes used to always make use of a healing shrine. Replenish is fab.
Put it back? Half of the squirrels attack and half of the final spore attack are magic, and Wildecall already has a (better) damage defense skill in badger. Changing it to be a defense against just magic type, and at such weak levels will put it pretty far in the crapper, imo (even if it's a fairly tough buff, no one but us really does that type :C).
What if we expand the damage types it defends against? If we take that route, what types would you suggest? I'd rather find a way to make it work as a def before changing it to a buff. Any other suggestions to make it work as a def?
In an astral hunt, it'd be more beneficial to have a Healing shrine than a Shield shrine after putting this in... Healing shrines can do Replenish (heal health/mana/ego), and Allcure (affliction cures). As such, I really just can't see this as being a valid concern. Again, I have no objection to lowering the buff weight provided (per Lerad's comments), but nothing that you're saying is really convincing me that the maximum level these abilities go to should be adjusted downwards.
PS: Even pre-change, I used healing shrines more than shield shrines for helping with hunting. I always found it to be far more useful.
Argument One: As Lerad points out, we want guild resistance skills to matter. In order for that to happen, the caps for guild exclusive defenses have to exceed the caps for general defenses. Otherwise, people will hit the cap using just general defenses and guild will stop mattering. The highest cap Estarra wants for non-artifacts is 10. That means the guild defenses cap should be 10 and so the order defenses cap should not be 10.
Argument Two: We do not want order membership to be mandatory in order to get the best numbers. That leads to bad RP. For that to happen, we need non-order defenses which do not stack with order defenses. The method the overhaul uses to keep things from stacking is caps. If something has a cap of 10, it stacks with everything. We do not want order defenses to stack with everything, so the order defenses cap should not be 10.
As far as actual suggestions go, I think Shrine Armour and Shrine Protection should both be 2/7, Divine Favour should be 2/8 and that 2/8 defenses should be available through questing and/or karma blessings.
In an astral hunt, it'd be more beneficial to have a Healing shrine than a Shield shrine after putting this in... Healing shrines can do Replenish (heal health/mana/ego), and Allcure (affliction cures). As such, I really just can't see this as being a valid concern. Again, I have no objection to lowering the buff weight provided (per Lerad's comments), but nothing that you're saying is really convincing me that the maximum level these abilities go to should be adjusted downwards.
PS: Even pre-change, I used healing shrines more than shield shrines for helping with hunting. I always found it to be far more useful.
Argument One: As Lerad points out, we want guild resistance skills to matter. In order for that to happen, the caps for guild exclusive defenses have to exceed the caps for general defenses. Otherwise, people will hit the cap using just general defenses and guild will stop mattering. The highest cap Estarra wants for non-artifacts is 10. That means the guild defenses cap should be 10 and so the order defenses cap should not be 10.
Argument Two: We do not want order membership to be mandatory in order to get the best numbers. That leads to bad RP. For that to happen, we need non-order defenses which do not stack with order defenses. The method the overhaul uses to keep things from stacking is caps. If something has a cap of 10, it stacks with everything. We do not want order defenses to stack with everything, so the order defenses cap should not be 10.
As far as actual suggestions go, I think Shrine Armour and Shrine Protection should both be 2/7, Divine Favour should be 2/8 and that 2/8 defenses should be available through questing and/or karma blessings.
E: forgot a word
Argument 1) A truefavour being 1/10 isn't going to make guild skills "not matter," because generals aren't going to get you to 9. That's the only way for guild skills to not matter.
Argument 2) You don't need to be in an order to get a truefavour, so it's definitely not mandatory. In addition, Truefavours are meant to be the God's gift to mortals. They should always have an impact. Gods should not feel like passing out truefavours is a waste of their time and essence. We're just going to fundamentally disagree on this one.
I am going to tweak it to 1/10 as per Lerad's suggestion, but it is going to remain /10 on my list.
Edit: As a note, I have also adjusted Shrine Armour to be 2/8 instead of 2/9. This way, using Shrine Armour and Truefavour won't get you all the way to 10 as far as generals go (if you don't have at least one 1/8, you'll only get to level 9 instead of 10). I do still think it's fair for it to have a high cap since it's an area effect that only works where the shrine is situated (and Healing is still going to be better).
I'm okay with this truefavour being /10... provided there is a way to consistently generate TFs even if a Divine is dormant. Otherwise.... screw that noise.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Comments
listed that it should have been a 2/5 magical damage resistance. I've corrected the code and edited Estarra's OP to reflect this.
I agree with what Sidd suggested for commons (capping at 5, with Attune being the exception)-- note that's what I already have in the linked spreadsheet. I think guild skills should cap to 9, with the super-niche ones (like numen and putre) going to 10. Then divine favour allows that to get to ten.
Per Sidd's comment: I really don't want a lot of common things that get to ten, which is why at this moment I only have TF. I could weaken TF by making it 1/10, and then make DevoutShield 1/10, but then that's really telling people they need to get into a cult of an active God to appropriately min-max.
Please consider limiting order-related resistance buffs to 8 and allowing and including non-order methods for getting a similar level of resistance. Maybe adjust some of the quests that give low level h/m/e buffs to give 1/8 or 2/8 resistance instead? Or change the Chaos and Death karma blessings to each give 2/8. Or heck, just make it possible from stacking together every other non-order bonus, if someone's bound and determined to make a secular character.
I mentioned earlier that I don't mind tweaking TF a bit, but I very firmly believe that a truefavour should always provide some benefit as far as resistance goes, so that would make it 1/10.
Note that a 1/10 skill, if the person has no access to 1/7, 1/8, or 1/9 skills, will never get them to the cap now. It simply means that it will always provide a benefit unless you are at the cap.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
PS: Even pre-change, I used healing shrines more than shield shrines for helping with hunting. I always found it to be far more useful.
Argument Two: We do not want order membership to be mandatory in order to get the best numbers. That leads to bad RP. For that to happen, we need non-order defenses which do not stack with order defenses. The method the overhaul uses to keep things from stacking is caps. If something has a cap of 10, it stacks with everything. We do not want order defenses to stack with everything, so the order defenses cap should not be 10.
As far as actual suggestions go, I think Shrine Armour and Shrine Protection should both be 2/7, Divine Favour should be 2/8 and that 2/8 defenses should be available through questing and/or karma blessings.
E: forgot a word
Argument 2) You don't need to be in an order to get a truefavour, so it's definitely not mandatory. In addition, Truefavours are meant to be the God's gift to mortals. They should always have an impact. Gods should not feel like passing out truefavours is a waste of their time and essence. We're just going to fundamentally disagree on this one.
I am going to tweak it to 1/10 as per Lerad's suggestion, but it is going to remain /10 on my list.
Edit: As a note, I have also adjusted Shrine Armour to be 2/8 instead of 2/9. This way, using Shrine Armour and Truefavour won't get you all the way to 10 as far as generals go (if you don't have at least one 1/8, you'll only get to level 9 instead of 10). I do still think it's fair for it to have a high cap since it's an area effect that only works where the shrine is situated (and Healing is still going to be better).
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.