One of the elephants

[McKnuckleSamwich]

How many people would like to see some minor adjustments to symb prof locks?


Juuuust gunna throw it out there:

MP's: have 1HB perkline.... but don't have a single point of 1HB on their symbs?
Enforcers are the only true "control" prof, yet don't have access to control symbs?
Traders - as the drain masters couldn't we promote broader utility to infantry as well?

maybe people won't like this idea, but I think it would be cooler to have no prof locks on any symb at all. While this might not fly, please have a look at some of these and you see that it might make sense:



MP: open Artillery/infantry - I think it's obvious why but basically creation weaps are all infantry, and bow is artillery

Soldier: Extermination - soldiers are killers

Agent: Open Extermination and Support

Traders: Open infantry - so many melee traders.. but no love. SAD PANDA.

MA's: Artillery (bow)

Doctors: artillery (pistols), Infantry (MA/1HB)... clearly these will have drawbacks so I don't really see the problem.

Enforcers: Control (yes yes, whatever about pets, argue me this: are enforcers not truly the masters of CONTROLLING mob aggro?)

Advy: No change

Engi: ARTILLERY ffs so obvious

Crat: artillery - less obvious than engi, but really crats have so few options for weaponry besides pistols, it would be nice to see them a bit better supported.

Keeper: No change

Shade: Spirits

Fixer: No change



/goes to get fire extinguisher

[Bohemothman]

I in all honesty think this is a great idea. Not only because I am all about a 2HB MP or an MA trader, but it would also make the game more open and interesting for older players to enjoy again. To me the odd things you see are the best. That is what makes this game so great in the first place.

[Saetos]

The point of symbs wasn't to give support to every single weaponskill that any class could ever do - by that logic you SHOULD unlock all symbiants for all classes (which I wouldn't 100% disagree with, but there are a few symbs, especially in Control, that just blow everything else away, and would cause their price to skyrocket).

Infantry was for melee focus; Artillery for ranged focus; Control for pet focus; Support for heal focused; Extermination for nano damage focus. By that reasoning, giving Soldiers Extermination symbiants makes absolutely no sense, as they would gain almost nothing from having access to symbiants that're basically just nerfed Control symbs that NTs are forced to wear.

Engineers should probably start gaining Artillery symbiants, but everyone else is fine, imo. Perhaps also add 1hb to Support. That's it.

[Xootch]

the general idea was that support profs dont have the ar of artillery/infantry classes. and imo they shouldnt. this got weakened with specialized weapons offering higher damage with lower skill to those profs and even more so with perklines and more and more buff items. if you go down this road, the only difference on a weapon skill will be the ip template and self buffs. oh, and that pet profs have pets, too while non-pet profs are stuck with a tat higher ar on the same weapons. if thats what you want: yay, lets do this!

[McKnuckleSamwich]

No xootch, you're right.

Well, you're mostly right.

I was thinking this as well. But the actual differences are:

1. IP template - this *should* be the biggest difference, but I have a feeling that it isn't. In vanilla AO it was but there's been so much raw stat increases that it no longer serves it's original purpose

2. Research - Assuming FC did it's homework, they will have offered only marginal increases for peripheral skills for support/pet classes, while primary skills got full increase (i.e. on level 10 research MA's got 60 MA skill and 30 BM, doctors, on the other hand should have only got 30 MA skill, but 60 BM)

3. Buffs (as you mentioned) which is certainly a viable way to maintain class AR advantages, but gets diluted with traders and non self buffs - which is a can of worms on it's own)

4. Peripheral perklines - Advy has those two do it all professional perklines lines with agi/AAD/evades/1he skill/SA skill/pistol skill/AS skill etc, which is certainly a peripheral skill. Soldiers have FA skill in pwer in numbers. MA has brawl/evades in Xuyun, Fixer has SMG/Burst I think in their AI line.. All the professional perks AND the supplemental group perks should, generally speaking, augment or boost primary OR secondary functions.

5. Prof specific armour - self explanatory

So, in general you're absolutely correct - and I admit fully it's a dangerous road to go down...

BUT, on the other hand I see this as well as an interesting crossroads - it IS a viable way to boost some profs AR which has been completely gimped for who knows how long (looking at doc/MP's here!), which, if paired with some reasonable secondary skill/peripheral skill balancing could lead to fundamentally different skill sets.

Imagine, for a moment an assault doctor: OK healing, decent AR (3kish) but really is more mitigation/DPS than a healing expert.

So what would be needed for that? easy: doc equips artillery symbs, a perkline is added that offers some solid pistol/special skill (eg), as well as a perk that when active on target makes dot damage triple (eg), simulataneously reduces heal eff by 50% at 10 perks, and has a couple of direct damage perks as well.

It's not so hard to believe, really, that a separate "spec" could exist for one prof: Agent has had it for years, Shade sort of has it, Advy has it but it's far less pronounced, enforcers are kind of getting it with 18.7 with the rage/challenger changes, tradeskillers have it by default, and MA is obviously getting it with Zazen.

I'm of course open to suggestions on this, but I really have always loved the idea of a doctor who is actually kind of a malicious, nefarious bastard to preys on those who are sick/wounded and maximizes their pain by exploiting the inherent patient/doctor trust relationship by introducing bacteria to wounds, prescribing bad drugs, influencing their patients to make their maladies worse, and slow their healing...

Doc's already have this, but it's really only a very small percentage of their toolset... So it's clearly been a thought explored in the past, it just hasn't been fully developed.

Now, as for Pet classes, I feel that it's just as feasible. In fact, I think there's very solid reasoning as to why it should be explored further for most classes:

1. A pet class should... SHOULD be able to select a build in which his pets are merely shadows of their formers selves, and all of their power is concentrated in the operator. - Just take engies for example. Engie's defences clearly, CLEARLY are focussed on the operator, with exactly ZERO influence coming from his pets. In mass PVP, an engie's pets might make up say 5% of total PVP damage. Truly? Yes. truly. In duels or whatever - yah sure obviously that's a borked number, but MMO's aren't balanced around duels.

2. Should an enforcer be able to select a DPS build? absof*ckinlutely.

3. Should a keeper be able to re-spec to support? Hell yes.

4. Should a advy be able to morph to perform a specific function? YES!

5. Agents? YES.

6. Doc's I mentioned already.

7. MA's are getting it already

8. 18.7 for Advy is bringing tanking potential

The list goes on - one big interesting potential challenge is NT... with a bit more creativity/coding power, imagine what you could do with NT!

The only thing I can possibly add here that flies in the face of everything I've just said is that symb choice is by anyone's standards a permanent feature, and, if you choose the wrong permanent feature, clearly some "spec"'s won't work as well in them. Is that OK? ya it's ok.

It's something I can live with. If I build an "assault doctor" who, in heal spec has about 2600 AR, capping specials but has much lower NR/ND/HD/AAD or something like that, I can live with it. I feel it's just the next step in getting as broad a playing field as we possibly can.

[Xootch]

i agree that is an interesting concept. but on the other hand, as of now if you want a doctor with 50% healing and more offense, you play an agent. if you want an enf with no crowd control but dps you should play a shade. etc etc. well, you are aware of my point i see and that's all i wanted to accomplish i think especially in the light of the many changes to professions your suggestions either come at the right time because they would have to be considered when redesigning nanos and perks or come at the wrongest time of all as it will complicate things even more than the current truckload of fundamental changes already is. i, quite sincerely, can't decide which one it is

[McKnuckleSamwich]

ha, I appreciate the irony.

Reminds me of Charles Dickens...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, ....

We've actually seen more changes in the last few months than we've seen in a very very very long time. Fuel for the fire? Definitely.

[Xootch]

i honestly have to admit i did not know that quote. nice one

[McKnuckleSamwich]

The first line in a Tale of Two Cities

[Litestrider]

I absolutely love this idea. I think the SL in general took a number of steps backwards for the game, in particular introducing a large number of profession locks that were probably unnecessary and which hamstrung a lot of the wild experimentation and freedom that froobs enjoy. Most of the game since then has been work to undo a lot of the restrictions put in place for the Shadowlands.

I think any balance problems honestly lie less with the specific professions (and by extension profession locks), and more with the symbiants themselves. If you look at control vs extermination symbiants for example, there's a very clear winner, you don't see many bureaucrats running around in extermination symbiants unless they're just being frugal. It really feels to me like the profession locks were simply a lazy method for covering up the fact that the symbiants simply aren't well-balanced against one another.

I'd personally like to see the profession locks mostly or entirely removed, and the less-desirable symbiants buffed in logical ways to make them worth using. For example, make the extermination symbiants an excellent choice for someone going for a high damage, low AR build, as opposed to the high AR of artillery/infantry and the defensive and nano strength of support and control. In addition, I don't see much of a reason for the attributes, treatment or comp lit to be left off of any of the symbiants at all, since they're all such universal stats and can undermine the choice of a particular symbiant in that slot.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

well goddamn son I think you really nailed with "and the less-desirable symbiants buffed in logical ways "

This to me is like the some obviously unsaid problem with SL.

SO many of the symb's are absolute crap.

I'd love to see a couple of new stats introduced on a few of the less important slots that will give CLEAR benefits.

a few spring to mind:

heal efficiency (since we're trying to have a new breed of healer?!)

heal reactivity (since we're introducing that stat, and advy?!?)

Critical chance.... um duh?

Blind resist - a significant potential that would affect lower levels

UBT/malaise line resist - pretty obvious

root/snare resist - pretty obvious

etc. There's no shortage.

[Vinkera]

I recently took a Doc to 220, and before going in, I knew pistol support was going to be a problem with Support symbiants. Obviously, I knew the only "symbiant" option to add pistol was the Syndicate brain. Before I got her Alphas on, her AR was dreadful. However, I have now equipt her Alphas, and maxed out Pistol Mastery. My org decided to do a Beast run last night, and even after Soldier Buffs and some various other AAO, her first Burst missed =/

My Doc is a Doc. She's focused mostly on nanoskills, and if she gets a shot in here and there, that's considered a bonus. Because not much armor she has helps out pistol, her AR is still bad. Symbiants that added pistol along the way wouldn't have changed that hugely before her Alphas, but they would have helped a fair bit.

My point is, Profession strengths and weaknesses are pretty well defined by the IP system already. Symbiants with gaping holes in some key areas don't really seem necessary, and are such a bummer. Also, because we have profession locks on symbiants, pretty much everyone has to play cookie-cutter, or go to extreme ends of the game looking for the odd-ball items to make their non-standard build even worth trying.

I think this is a great idea overall. Set our imaginations free

[nanoforcer]

Low AR is pretty obvious for docs and mp's for pvm i'de say, to be unable to perk some mobs / bosses is ... depressing. At least docs have dots to make damage, mp's got crappy tl5 nukes
In any case, great thread, free choice of symbs would be really neat with some exceptions perhaps, nothing comes to mind at this very instant that would wreck AO though.

If we look ahead other possibilities in future expansions, if the game keeps evolving, could be empty symbiants of some sorts where you tradeskill symbiants with living clusters and that way could customize your toon to much greater extent.

But, as always, we'll see what happens.

[DarkerThanBlack]

Fixer: No change

Big surprise there. Actually since fixers have somewhat decent crowd control they should have access to control symbs. I'm guessing that's your new definition of the control symb group since you listed enforcers as "the masters" of control only because of a pvm aoe taunt.

[lufa1982]

Casting oriented symbs (support/control/exterm) pretty much became irrelevant over the years due to power creep. All those casting oriented modifiers (nano cost, nano range, interrupt modifier) can be made negligible with one NCU nowadays.

[DarkerThanBlack]

Casting oriented symbs (support/control/exterm) pretty much became irrelevant over the years due to power creep. All those casting oriented modifiers (nano cost, nano range, interrupt modifier) can be made negligible with one NCU nowadays.

Almost but not entirely. Not all nanos have capped range even with the deck range increaser and the hardcore cpu upgrade doesn't cap -%nanocost even with IOR.

[lufa1982]

No, not entirely, but when nearly entire benefit of full set of alpha casting symbs can be matched by equiping 3 NCUs, you gotta admit casting symbs start looking extremely poor.

And lets be honest here, splitting symbs by arbitrarily selected professions groups was a stupid idea from the start. After 10 years of professions often developing in different directions, the whole system just doesn't make sense anymore.

Support symbs need some actual support modifiers that aren't redundant. Exterm symbs are just a complete joke right now. The entire Control group makes no sense. Is it about pet control or crowd control? Nobody knows. If its crowd control it needs Fixers and Agents. If its pet control why does it have Traders? Engineers are so blatantly an Artillery class its mind boggling they're still locked to Control only. They have as much weapon support as Soldiers for christs sake. MPs are being pushed to use meleee weapons without having proper melee symbiant support. The list goes on.

The entire system is broken and its only going to get worse. I'd be absolutely in favour of opening it up completely, just so devs can see prices on some symbiant types multiply x10 - maybe then they'll realize just how absurdly unbalanced current system is.

[Lheann]

I will say it again as I fought for it before SL came out and then GD Gaute explained it was not an option because of the RDB space needed to support it. With the new updated RDB there is space for this idea now.

Leave symbs for what they are.
Add new type of implant (QL1 to QL300) that takes 1 shiny, 2 bright and 3 faded clusters. Assembly skills can be set at 150% of current normal implants to make them harder to build. Back story is that JAME succeeded in using XAN/Alien tech to create enhanced implants. So then players could build custom implants for spots that the symbs available are not the best choice.

Since symbs can provide up to 3 shiny/bright/faded equivalent buffs in the best ones the new implant would not equal in that sense. It would just not be profession locked. Frankly at this point in the story line it is time that implants get a story line supported buff. This would be such a buff.

[Saetos]

Leave symbs for what they are.
Add new type of implant (QL1 to QL300) that takes 1 shiny, 2 bright and 3 faded clusters. Assembly skills can be set at 150% of current normal implants to make them harder to build. Back story is that JAME succeeded in using XAN/Alien tech to create enhanced implants. So then players could build custom implants for spots that the symbs available are not the best choice.

That would require an astronomical amount of additional items to the database, as it would have to account for every single combination.

[lufa1982]

Like I've already said, the current system just makes zero sense whatsoever. Unfortunately, a lot of original 'class type' tags seem to be assigned completely at random. Eg. - why do Keepers have Support symbs but Soldiers don't? Call me crazy, but I would say that reducing 30% damage from all the sources, for entire team, definitely competes for the best support tool that exists in the entire game, and its certainly miles ahead of any support Keepers can offer.

Does anyone understand this ****?