Friday with(out) Means - Oct. 30th, 2009: Ramble v2.0

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

This is correct. The special will heal 20% of a target's maximum HP when used.

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Give us a rez ;)

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Originally Posted by Aethyrguard

Give us a rez ;)

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Unfortunately this isn't doable with current game state/mechanics, and definitely not in the way you outline a potential implementation. :\ It's something that would be very awesome, I agree, but just not workable at this time due to the basic way our game handles characters, death and so on. But hey, still not a bad idea, and if we ever get the time it may be something we can look into down the road. =)

means i love you! thanks for Trance perk line for MP's!

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

[*]For Bureaucrats, we will be merging the "Directorship" and "Insurance Agent" perk lines into a single, ten-point line. Replacing this will be an additional eight-point line named "Autocracy", designed to focus on nano-based damage.

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This is nice but Crats are lacking in defense, not offense. We are asking for help defensively. Over and over and over we have been asking for it, since you removed stun procs.

I don't think this new perkline is useful as we would have to unperk one of our existing SL perklines and no pistol Crat can afford that. There are very very very few Crats that don't perk the exact same SL perks (out of necessity) and more nano damage is extremely unlikely to change that. This only helps the three Remod Crats and the one weird Crat still using a Shotgun.

Your focus for Crats should be on ways to boost our survivability. This is where we are lacking. This is what we have been asking for and what is needed to rebalance Crats.

Defense.

Defense!

DEFENSE!!!!

My first thoughts on the SL professional perklines is "Er, dunno if this is what we asked for".

I like the idea of Channel Rage having a perk action at endgame, if the taunt works then it'll even be useful and MP can enjoy not being hit like the other pet profs, maybe. Although our healpet still hasn't got a hope in hell of healing Rihwen's 55k anytime in any real sort of combat before it drops dead.

Trance...I'm not so sure about. The DoT included in perk 5 stinks, flat out, and having that as a req to run Migraine is iffy. Only buffing PM/MC/nanodamage means this is mostly for the Nukes, but as Klod said, where are we gonna get the perks to use it? CR and SS are pretty much 'must haves' and Starfall, now with faster execution, is usually our main source of perk damage, which leaves the 10 last perks for stuff like Theoretical Research 3, Genius 2, and whatever else floats the MPs boat.

On top of that, there'd been requests for some sort of perk-based defense and there's zip of that here, not even in the buffs. Hope our nano revamp looks mighty damn good.

EDIT: More thoughts, the 1hb perks look good, I like getting both Ranger and Blunt mastery full access to MPs, and the split perk action for Bring the Pain looks really sweet and useful, actually. AOE Detaunt with self damage buff that's nice and big...I can't argue with it.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes from here, but I think Trance needs a fair lot of polishing.

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

Unfortunately this isn't doable with current game state/mechanics, and definitely not in the way you outline a potential implementation. :\ It's something that would be very awesome, I agree, but just not workable at this time due to the basic way our game handles characters, death and so on. But hey, still not a bad idea, and if we ever get the time it may be something we can look into down the road. =)

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I bet with a few modifications to the way a death is handled could make it work.

Let's call it, Local Sector Insurance Reclaim or LSIR for short, to file under Reclaim System Game Enhancements.

Local Sector Insurance Reclaiming (LSIR)
How to make it work: If you take the way it is now, once a death occurs it immediately warps you to your last reclaim spot, into a system that instead leaves you as a corpse for a time till you press a "Reclaim Insurance" button. Until you press that button you can be rezzed with say a count down timer till auto Reclaim of like 30s or 1 minute or something.

Balancing factors: I would suggest for a balancing factor to make it where if you are rezzed your lost xp goes to your reclaim bonus but if you are not rezzed then you don't get the lost XP back (kinda throw back to old school concepts here but with a safety feature of sorts). Being LSIRd you would return with all of your buffs at the time of death eg, no loss of NCU situation including perk effects.

LSIR Professions:

Doctors: This profession would be a natural fit for giving a new nanoline that can be cast to remove rez sickness off a person immediately and rez them or as two separate nanos and an AOE Perk LSIR action.

Adventurers: Make this a perk action that will only work when running the Tree morph nano (hint hint you are looking at Nanos, etc anyway make this action from a perk line that is only available while in tree form.)

Keeper: Making the Keeper rez only from AOR line for one and the other from Blessing, making Keepers have more of a secondary healer option with both passive and active healing proficiencies and rezes. I'd think making the one from AOR only work in the Shadowlands as a Totem that you can save at like the Engineer Nano but the SL version and the single target rez work anywhere but with a lockout and even maybe reduce their HP to 1 in the process. (See Engineer for details regarding SL Totem.)

Martial Artist: Has a short term buff that restores the person to full HP if they die with the buff running in their NCU's make it target only other (not selfable). Something like a scaling nano for lock out 5min (lvl 25)..4m(lvl 85)..3m(lvl 125)..2m(165)...1m(201). Duration, 5s..6s..7s..8s..9s..10s.. on the buff for levels respectively. This is designed as a short term alpha spike prevention nano.

Engineer: Make this a nano that will only work on RK as the Keepers would have the SL equivalent as a perk action. Reclaiming from the Engineer's terminal has a scaling lock out based on nano level version 5min (lvl 25)..4m(lvl 85)..3m(lvl 125)..2m(165)...1m(201)..). Reclaiming from this terminal will restore you with all buffs still running at the time of death same for the Keeper's SL equivalent for scaling/times and functionality. The durations of the terminal could be scaling as well with levels ranging from short to long. I know it would be annoying to an Engineer to constantly be expected to go refresh a staging area so can be something like 30m..60m...120m..340m...680m.. which is more akin to the average duration of tower wars for those levels respectively in the extremes.

LSIR Disrupting Professions:

Fixers: I'd even think about giving Fixers an ability to hack someones reclaim pattern within a few seconds before they die (a very short debuff that requires timing) to force them to the last "normal" reclaim spot like SL garden/RK City terminal and prevent rezzing/engi terminal rezzing if the target already has the crat debuff running on them then it discharges them to the fixers location after lockdown.

Bureaucrat: Make this a nano line to force reclaim to a particular location like a (privately instanced) Jail Cell for that death if debuffed with a particular short term new perk linked nano. Insurance Hack (I know there is something like this name already.. reshuffling names isn't such a big deal right? :p) will put the target in jail cell for a short duration (30s..60s..120s..180s) depending on Perks spent in a line to augment the nanos usability from basic to enhanced version which can make it level locked and scaling) when they die if the NCU is running on their target.

Engineer: Give a local insurance reclaim inhibitor drone nano that can be placed to AOE prevent LSIRs. Duration and lockout and % chance to inhibit (nano resist check), scaling with level.

There is a plethora of reasons why and how this could benefit AO. Most notably the grind of having to rebuff and retravel to a spot being a major negative time sink which could be turned into a pvp stylized weapon and general pve & pvp enhancement. Anyway, nice to hear you at least are considering it.

Just figured since you all are working on so much I'd just toss these out there. ;)

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Originally Posted by Alternity

How long are you going to blatently ignore the agent profession?


Yes we did recive some addtional fp nanos a while ago, aimed to be a PvP asset if I am correct, but they did turn out to be a major joke.

Yes agent may or may not get 2 types of AS..

What about the situation for current agent static defence, with an impending heal nerf incomming, the majority of agents will loose their main defence, a defence that's already been thrown in the gutter more than 4 times.

What do you intend to do with agents, I'm sick of reading about NTs and their new improvments (sorry but you guys must have impregnated a dev) I see you obviously pulled your head out of the black hole regarding MAs, what about -agents- ?




Viz

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Easy on the emo there guy. Perk rework isn't going to be the beginning and end of changes and you know it. "We've still got Research, Nanos, Weaponry, Items... "

You're usually a little brighter than this.

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Originally Posted by zartosht

If my engineer is ever forced (or heavily incentivized, it's the same) to go grenade, I quit. :mad:

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:rolleyes:

No it isn't the same. One of goals here is to provide difficult choices on setup, you're just too programmed to think in the way of the cookie cutter. You'll get over it.

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Originally Posted by Racatti

Quite the contrary.

2he gets 200 free AR, 1he gets 100.

The 2 big-hitter perk from 1he line is moved to 90% check, while PM is back to 100%.

I guess ppl will go back to their old ways of whining about melee advs instead ranged :D

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Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking for a bit there. Mind you, Deadeye goes to 90% but it's gonna be just a single hit now, it seems - such a shame.

What's funny is for advys, 1he gets the same +200 for edged mastery and has the option of perking Outdoorsman for 20 more - which strangely still gives multi melee and ranged, but no pistol. :p

Btw, the time to sell CC and buy back CC is now, it seems. :D

Why keepers are ignored so much , Hope you Balance game and fix this

Auno.org > They are talkin about one of keeper's buffs

Batsernoud @ 2009-05-13 01:23
why isnt this nano in the list of keeper nanos in the small box to the left with proffession nanos?

teppox @ 2009-08-08 16:59
Cause noone plays keeper anymore ;)

Even Auno , forgot our buffs. please Keepers love , not saying this cause im playing with akeeper , but fixing keepers will be #1 of getting game balanced . they are the only prof who cant duel these days. i trust you , you can fix this.


Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Cornfl3x

Why keepers are ignored so much , Hope you Balance game and fix this

Auno.org > They are talkin about one of keeper's buffs

Batsernoud @ 2009-05-13 01:23
why isnt this nano in the list of keeper nanos in the small box to the left with proffession nanos?

teppox @ 2009-08-08 16:59
Cause noone plays keeper anymore ;)

Even Auno , forgot our buffs. please Keepers love , not saying this cause im playing with akeeper , but fixing keepers will be #1 of getting game balanced . they are the only prof who cant duel these days. i trust you , you can fix this.


Thanks.

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Bump...Only profession that cant win anything in duel. Not only that ppl dont pvp with them, its a rare to see them in game at all. Even forgoten shades start geting atention...dont understand why so much keeper hate.

There is a discrepancy on the perk change notes and something that is currently ingame that is not red:

Trader perk of sacrifice. Currently the recharge is around 5 minutes. The perk documentation shows it to be 100s. Is this reuse getting dropped from is current 5'ish minutes to 100s in the over all incoming perk change plans?

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Originally Posted by Dancingrage

My first thoughts on the SL professional perklines is "Er, dunno if this is what we asked for"....


Trance...I'm not so sure about. The DoT included in perk 5 stinks, flat out, and having that as a req to run Migraine is iffy. Only buffing PM/MC/nanodamage means this is mostly for the Nukes, but as Klod said, where are we gonna get the perks to use it? CR and SS are pretty much 'must haves' and Starfall, now with faster execution, is usually our main source of perk damage, which leaves the 10 last perks for stuff like Theoretical Research 3, Genius 2, and whatever else floats the MPs boat.

On top of that, there'd been requests for some sort of perk-based defense and there's zip of that here, not even in the buffs. Hope our nano revamp looks mighty damn good.


It'll be interesting to see where this goes from here, but I think Trance needs a fair lot of polishing.

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One thing to note: Trance only goes up to 8, so we can still perk SS 10, CR 10, Starfall 10 and Genius 2 along with Trance 8. We'd only be giving up Theoretical Research 3 and Nano Doctorate 5, basically. Personally I think that's a reasonable tradeoff, though that is a theoretical view as I'm not TL7.

One thing the lack of perk defense does do is pretty much mandate SoZ as the only way an MP can survive in PvP or solo PvM situations I'd think, but if you are a SoZ fan, it looks pretty nice.

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

...[*]Shades will see a large portion of changes taking place in the rebalancing of their itemization. In line with our desire to see Shades as a faster-paced class...

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So does this mean you are going to change Shades to where roots and snares no longer slow us down to the point of boredom? PvP isn't fast paced when you're standing still spamming FM's....


Nerfing our PvM ability to tank by shortening SP for a 10s downtime...idk what you guys are thinking. Are Shades going to actually get the dmg increase we want? A tool to make up for our no longer unique ability to output dmg? 10 more perk point to resolve our problems with roots/snares and allow us to perk ST in PvM for more dmg?

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

[*]Adventurers in particular will see large adjustments to their morph nano lines, attempting to seperate the lines and give them unique functionality which makes them more appealing within certain situations. This will also be reflected through their perk lines as our nano-change documentation becomes more finalized.

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Wait let me get this straight. Adventurers are becoming even more OP than they are now? If you guys want to rebalance the professions, you must nerf the top few, leave the middle ones and boost the bottom ones. What you do is boost the top ones and don't care at all for the rest. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by JustinSane4

One thing to note: Trance only goes up to 8, so we can still perk SS 10, CR 10, Starfall 10 and Genius 2 along with Trance 8. We'd only be giving up Theoretical Research 3 and Nano Doctorate 5, basically. Personally I think that's a reasonable tradeoff, though that is a theoretical view as I'm not TL7.

One thing the lack of perk defense does do is pretty much mandate SoZ as the only way an MP can survive in PvP or solo PvM situations I'd think, but if you are a SoZ fan, it looks pretty nice.

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With the changes coming to Ancient Knowledge, perking Genius 2 at 220 will become obsolete, since the nano heal with Ka Mon will be more nano over time than Genius 2's nano over time will manage, plus the heal and nano actions from Soothing Spirits will be reduced from 40s to 20s. Any need to perk Genius 2 will be gone when the perk actions as they sit now hit live.

The problem is that MPs were hoping for some sort of added defense. As it sits now, most MPs sit on the perkable end of the scale unless you're a shield MP, where you're closer to unperkable to most. While more damage is nice, the Ancient Knowledge DoT uses AR still as of this last check and MPs suck at weaponskills other than TS, and checks against evade close 50%/Dodge range 50%, so this will never land in pvp, though probably pvm quite a bit.

I think that's the problem we're looking at is our survivability is only improved by heals at this stage of the rebalancing, and while our perk heals are improving a fair bit, our healpet isn't covered by perks per se (technically a nano) so we won't see how that or any nano-based defenses (like evade buffs or creation shields) will be effected until FC gets to THAT point.

Right now it looks like we're going to be baby shades with tons of perk damage to dump on a poor mob from dots, direct damage, and pet buffs (heck, even the pet gets a perk action we use on it now). Nice for Shield MPs or creation MPs in general, but not so hot for pistol/bow/normal weapon users.

That said, on the whole I like the group changes, some of the weaponlines opening up (power up opening up to a lot of profs is a nice sign, for instance) in the groups tab is a good sign for things to come.

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Originally Posted by Aethyrguard

Going to give a good read to this and comment later. Nice to see some perk lines combined. Any chance of doing combinations/perkline number reductions and usability extensions/multipurpose concept to Keepers who are sadly at the bottom of the pile still to this day.

Edit 1:

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Keeper
Aura of Revival
Levels when perks are gained: 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, 110, 130, 150, 200, 206
Available for: Keepers: 1 -10
Aura of Revival -> Player level: 10+ -> (1)
Range: Passive Team
Aura
Aura of Revival 1: Health 35 .. 35, every 9 seconds
Aura of Revival 2: Health 86 .. 86, every 9 seconds
Aura of Revival 3: Health 124 .. 124, every 9 seconds
Aura of Revival 4: Health 168 .. 168, every 9 seconds
Aura of Revival 5: Health 192 .. 192, every 8 seconds
Aura of Revival 6: Health 223 .. 223, every 8 seconds
Aura of Revival 7: Health 239 .. 239, every 8 seconds
Aura of Revival 8: Health 266 .. 266, every 7 seconds
Aura of Revival 9: Health 335 .. 335, every 7 seconds
Aura of Revival 10: Health 404 .. 404, every 6 seconds
Revive-> Player level: 206+ -> (10)
Range: 8m (Target) Aura of Revival 10: Health +20% Attack:
1 second
Recharge:
Always: 120s

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Any word on the bold prints meaning?

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Who cares, line is still use less at tl7, doubt anyone will be using it unless we get perks condensed. ffs this is the best they can come up with. reroll.

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

• Ranges for melee perk specials will be increased across the board - With perhaps only a few very special exceptions, ALL perks should have a minimum range of 5 meters as their distance.

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This is just so wrong.

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Originally Posted by -XeI20-

...Are Shades going to actually get the dmg increase we want? .... more dmg?

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Lol?

Spirit Phylactery has gone from terrible.....

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Capture Vigor Target:
Offense modifier: -52, Defense modifier: -54
15 seconds pvp / 60 seconds pvm

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TO WORSE.

Listen to Shades, FunCom; they've been asking for IMPROVEMENTS to Spirit Phylactery, not nerfs. Keep the 15 second PVP change if you have to but PLEASE reduce the EvadeClose Defense check on all of them.

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Originally Posted by wormx

[/LIST]
This is just so wrong.

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Spoken by someone who have never played a melee toon at end game....
Am I right?

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

...snip...
I think it's really important to let you guys know that nothing here is finalized or written in stone. We're trying to keep ourselves from being locked into only making minor changes, or just slightly tweaking what's already there - Where there are major changes that need to be made, we're trying to keep ourselves open to the idea of actually making said changes. In addition, we will devotedly change and alter these perklines based on feedback - This includes alterations after the perk changes have hit live. None of us here want to lock ourselves into a situation where we feel that we can't/shouldn't be open to the idea of making additional changes down the road (which is, to an extent, what placed us in this situation in the first place). So nothing here is final, everything is malleable, and nothing - nothing - is considered untouchable. We wanna do this and do it right - Hopefully, with the help of everyone else out there, we can make some great improvements to our gameplay and systems while maintaining the exact same feeling for all the Professions.
..snip...

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<3 this...
It's both needed and long overdue, just as well as very welcomed...


PS.
Why are neutrals being discontinued btw?