My Suggestions for Revising the Bureaucrat Profession

To fellow Bureaucrats,

In the past couple of months I have seen and heard enough of what Funcom is planning that I have reconsidered the status of our class. I am no longer optimistic and agree with many here that serious changes need to be done. We need unity on this issue to present a united front to Funcom to get the changes we desperately need.

I have made some suggestions below that I hope you will comment on. Please note, I don't think we have much time to quibble and split-hairs over minor issues. Here is what I think we need:

New Profession Name
I think Bureaucrat simply causes too many problems and misunderstandings both in the player base and Funcom. Since mind-control is our base attribute (through charms and calms, fears, speeches, etc.) I suggest Funcom rename our profession to the Psionic.

Psionic describes our abilities almost perfectly. Our speeches become psionic auras, charms/fears/roots/calms/snares are all aspects of mind control, The name Psionic will allow better creativity in the future development of our profession.

Bureaucrat just isn't working.

Charm Changes
It boggles my mind that Funcom states that Charms should be our main source of damage yet still make more and more mobs immune to charm. I understand they don't like us to both remove a potential enemy and increase our power at the same time. But our charming ability is practically useless in many places already. Depending on the playfield, your power from charms can be worthless (nothing to charm, i.e Tarasque, IS, Foreman's, Arena), to extraordinary (Slayers, Followers of the One, etc.) There shouldn't be this huge variation and I think I have found a solution.

The droids that we create should be charmable by us!

Yes, we should be able to charm our own droids. Create droid, stable charm it, create again and unstable charm the second, and finally create a normal pet. Therefore, a Psionic will never be without his/her 3 pets. Obviously, mobs will make much much better charms but by giving us this ability, a Psionic will never be below a certain power threshold. Failing a charm will cause us to lose control of the droid and it will attack us like any other mob. When the charm expires, the droid will deactivate just like normal charmed mob pets.

Imagine setting up your implants now! (Charm vs. Bot argh! :)) Go to the Arena finally with 3 pets. Funcom is not going to stop making many new mobs immune to charm period, so I think we need this ability in return.

Crowd Control
Funcom, we do not have the best fear, single root/snare or area root. We have the best area root and calms (not very useful in PvP in its current form) that is all.

Well, simply put to be masters of crowd control we should have the best of all of the above. That means new nanos to match or exceed the best of what Agents, Enforcers and Fixers have. Having a mediocre suite of all types does not equal masters of crowd control.

PvM
Funcom does not like having mobs mezzed anymore. They have put in some changes (immunity, mob decalming auras) or allowed some bugs to endure to reduce the power of calms. (FYI, when calmed pocket Lambs reaggro when Agent Lamb changes targets that is a BUG, not a feature!)

I think Funcom thinks these long duration calms are making it too easy. We do not like immune mobs. There should be a new line of immunity busting calms with short durations of <30s. Yep, we will be very busy but not useless anymore. Or simply give us new Fear nanos with no psychic check. IMHO Fear nanos can be better than Calms in many situations.

PvP
The deinit is a nice idea but it is not working well. Instead of having the deinit effect break on attack, make it run for 10s like the MP Mind Quake debuff. And this applies to pets/charms too.

Nuke Revisions
Our nuke nanos become blasts of psionic energy. One change to make is to add a bonus of 20% Psychology skill to the nuke Attack Rating. Our nanos are the weakest of the 3 nuking classes especially in PvP because we have no debuff or special stun ability, etc., are double skilled (PM/MC) and we have no way to self-buff it. Adding a 20% bonus from Psychology just like charm nanos do will let us land a few more nukes than before.

Also a new 75% NR def nuke needs to be added as an upgrade to Disciplinary Action.

Speeches/Auras
The psionic auras need MUCH MUCH more range period. While I can think of a whole bunch of great new ideas for auras I think the most important one is MORE MORE range. And kill the spam associated with the pulses.

Kel's is everything in Tower PvP now and it has a freaking 25m radius effect. Our motivational speeches should go to 40M radius!

Summary
Funcom needs to commit to these changes now, not later, not after this or that. Let's work together to get something back to Funcom, time is not on our side or theirs. If you like these ideas, change your sigs, get support from fellows, etc.

i'm with this.

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psionics doesn't sound sci-fi enough, imo; maybe mentalists? :p

Quote:

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Originally posted by Thyrra
psionics doesn't sound sci-fi enough, imo; maybe mentalists? :p

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Oooh, how about mentats?

Great post Autocrat, I am with you 100%.

Not sure about the name change but I can't argue with any of the ideas. They have thoguht behind them. I agree that FC continues to downgrade crowd control at every turn. I myself would love to see this changed and for FC to finally live up to this promise of "masters of crowd control" idea they continue to taunt us with.
[

Two thumbs up :)

New Profession Name
But I liked what the name Bureaucrat implied. It had such potential for a sense of belonging in this game universe. Still you are right at this point we are far from what I would think a "Bureaucrat" should be. There are no paperwork tradeskills, no diplomacy, and just because we have the nano "Cut Red Tape" doesn't make us any more distinquishable from the Psionic you describe.

Charm Changes
I don't think FC would go with this just because the current droid x 3 would be on average more powerful then most charms we could get. I still would like to see us able to always have 3 pets to command and would still propse that we be given Pocket Companions like Lamb though lower level of course and potentially very short lived. If you know the Theurgist class from DAoC you know the kind of pet I am talking about. Something fast castable, not requiring a shell to activate, but short lived

PvM
I could go along with this or even just having our current calms resist less but have a chance of breaking much much sooner. This is the way things work in IS for some mobs. Sure we will be busier but as we've seen some fights can be pretty boring... dyna camps.

PvP
I agree with this suggestion completely.

Nuke Revisions
Again right on the mark.

Speeches/Auras
Not only should speech range be increased but the buff effect should last longer then 20secs. Also if the range is increased the speeches must be made faction/team side only! No more buffing opposing faction players or mobs even.

Nice to see you posting Auto.

The name ( Bureaucrat ) might be ok with some more work when it comes to supplies and support I think. ;-P

Instead of summoning identical droids, what about getting a choice between a small selection of humanoid bodyguards.

Choose between a few professions ( Reasonable damage dealers is the key here, unless they enable NPC's to buff you some day. Keep it simple to avoid non-functionality. Enforcers, soldiers. ) , they all lasts for the charm duration. Nano formula could be called "Petition regarding reinforcements", hehehe...

Result: Same droid as before, and 2 "summonable" humanoid bodyguards, from a selection suited to the situation, with the duration of the stable and unstable charm.

It's not that I don't love the multiple droid scenario, it's just too easy to get away with. ( Not enough flavor, imagine a summoned Omni guard in full uniform at your side. ;-P )

It could be there is better mobs to charm in the place you are at, then do that, and don't call for "help". This way full coverage no matter where you are.

For the rest, agreed. 101%. Hmm, make that 102%...

Sernon.

Hiya all. Nice comments and good responses.

Funny, I actually wanted to suggest Mentat too lol. Too bad the Dune Mentats actually had no psionic powers, the Bene Gesserit witches did.

I thought of Telepath, Psi-Mech but finally thought Psionic matches the other profession names, straight-forward. I remember Babylon-5 had Psy-Corps, etc. Psionic I think is more fun than Bureaucrat but name changing really is minor compared to what else we need done.

I would love different summoned charms but I think we really really need to keep it simple with Funcom (I still want a ranged pet).

Crats have always been able to outdamage ANY other class in PvM until mobs with sky-high evades were created. IMHO, 3 Droids is not unbalancing. I think we need to stress that point to FC and our fellow players. And it eats alotta nanopool to cast Droid Shell, trim, and buff the Droid and finally charm it. (I'd probably use up 100% of my pool to do it.)

Yes, I was getting depressed too. Had to do something about it. Let's discuss this at the July 12th meeting but keep the comments coming.

Behinde every idea 110%

:D

Good post!
Good ideas (except the namechange :) )

^Bump^


Hypofisica.

Great post and great suggestion Auto :D

namechange is fine too :) tho something more sci-fiish like the psy-cops idea might work tho :)

for the rest of the suggestions: best i've seen in months, and constructive and not whining :D

2 thumbs up auto :)

Great ideas except name change.
Too bad devs dont read this boards to see them-

/me awaits customary dev saying "we read this boards"

Good post Auto

One thing, and I will say to me the name Bureaucrat means master of manipulation, I do think the name fits, tho I see the problems with less things to charm for high level crats. Keep up the good work.

/me nods in agreement.

Name changes! Yay we could even hold a community forum with the suggestions and a vote.(I am a huge Dune fan SO I am all about MENTAT. We could even get new buffs to go with our new name)

PVM we need somthing to charm.
If it is summond guards, or our own pets we should be able to keep them. Ya'll remember the days when if you died your droid went ape and killed your group? yeah bring that back except make us manage 2 pets if you release your droid with pet release and charm it back that would be cool, by the nature of it you could either Implant for a bot and have 1 great bot and 2 okay bots or, implant for charming and have 3 of the same bots, BUT THAT GIVES US A CHOICE!
And then your one perma controled droid would always go back to reclaim with you...

PVP make it so we can charm and use other people pets!

Here Is The Senario: a LVL 200 crat goes into a tower battle see's 2 nuetral ql 200 slayers and charms both of them before the engineers know what's going on a crat has came in and changed the whole dynamic of the battle!(all apologies if you are a Nuet) or You walk up and steal someones Demon and Belamorte put Belamorte on yourself and let the demon run havok


But For the Mostpart Great thread here guys and
Check this for some possible items http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...hreadid=151861


Could ONE or many DEVS/MODERATORS/FC employies POST HERE to let us know that
1.) YOU CARE
2.) YOU KNOW WHAT WE THINK
3.) YOU ARE COMMITED TO IMPROVING OUR GAMING EXPERIANCE

because if you don't care about crats give us the COMPLETE IPR FORM and a PROFFESSION REROLL FORM otherwise let us know you care!

Quote:

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Originally posted by Donzilla
PVP make it so we can charm and use other people pets!

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We can do that now in PvP. Charmed mobs will not heal you though. Nice thread on new items but I think for now we need to focus on correcting the most critical issues fro our profession. Gotta keep it simple with Funcom.

Charles, Szentasha, any comments? Seems the crat community is pretty unified on these changes.

P.S. Let's skip the name change option for now :)

First I'd like to say these are wonderful suggestions.
I dont care what they call my profession as long as I'm viable at high ends.
These simple(i assume simple) fixes would help alot.
3 pets is not as good as 2 rm's and 1 pet so thats not overpowering.
I believe the extended auras would be wonderful, after all your biggest buffs for one of your new professions in SL is going to be an aura type buff proffesion.(If I remember reading that correctly) So lets hope they dont have a 4 meter range :p .

Thanks Autocrat

Nice Nice.

What about a line of buff/debuff nanos that have to do with Psychology?

Ego Supression ->
AMS/DMS Buff

Id Instigation ->
AMS Buff

Procedural Shift ->
%decrease in Nano-attack Damage

Delusions of Persecution ->
Inability to correctly target people (their level doesn't report correctly target bars appear red).

Seems as though Psychology is a wasted skill, ability wise.

Good suggestions overall Auto. I think given the general direction the game has been going with crowd control and charm immunities it would help. Nukes I agree on. I wouldn't mind doing significantly less damage than nts and metas if I could actually land a nuke or two without mochams every time.

Actually, I think we need a bit of help on the crowd control end still seeing as this is our "specialty" I'd like to see the area snare line continue and end up similar to the Fixer area snare with maybe 5% less resist on it.

Yep, fully agree there. We need something as good as the Fixer area snare and an Enforcer fear. The change in or Calms might actually make area mezzing a little useful in PvP.

I really want to get the Charm change in, a crat should never be without 2-3 pets.

Thanks, keep the discussion going!