Report 1479

Report #1479
Skillset: Aerochemantics Skill: Cloudkill/Quantum/Aurora/Vacuum
 Org: Aeromancers Status: Completed May 2016
Furies' Decision:
Solution 1.
Problem: Cloudkill, Quantum, Aurora and Vacuum, more commonly known as
chembombs, are effects that aerochems (or any chemwood) can create that explode
in the room after 10 seconds. The first three of each of these specs cost 5
power and either 2 or 3 passives to deal some damage and give either one or two
secondary effects (such as affs, or ego/mana drain). The fourth costs 10 power
and all 4 passives to deal damage and potentially stun, with both scaling based
on how many afflictions each enemy has on a set list of 4 (woods) and 5 (chems)
afflictions. The largest deterrent to using any of these bombs, whether it is in
1v1 or in a group battle is that they consume a significant portion of a
chemwood's passive offence. To put these passives back up require either 4
seconds of equilibrium each (so 8-16 seconds), or around 3.2 seconds of
equilibrium and 3 power to put them all up. These passives tick 11 seconds after
they are put up and every 11 seconds after that. This creates a very unwieldy
situation where using these bombs in any scenario means that the chemwood must
spend a long period of time (and maybe power) in the middle of battle just to
get their already pitiful offence back into a working state.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Change Cloudkill/Quantum/Aurora/Vacuum (and all
 equivalent bombs in the other chemwood specs) to not
 consume the passives. Instead, have the relevant
 passives "reset" their ticks to occur 11 seconds
 after the bomb is first cast (so 1 second after the
 bomb explodes) and every 11 seconds after that.
Player Comments:
---[Cyndarin on 5/10 @ 01:19 writes]:
Omg supported.
---[Raeri on 5/10 @ 02:01 writes]:
Supported. Does it even need to reset the ticks? This might actually be a way to
land the 10p aff scaling if you time it well.
---[Lerad on 5/10 @ 02:52 writes]:
The chemwood passives/bombs in general are all so lacklustre compared to their
mancy/druidry counterparts (less affs, less hindering, less aoe, less passive
damage, less damage upon bomb explosion) that this general buff is probably
justified. However, it should be important to note that not all chemwoods are
created equal, and some of those passives are more hindering, and stack with
each other, better than others. It creates the scenario where the same amount of
investment (10p) can result in lopsided and unbalanced hindering effects leading
to incongruent difficulty of hitting the affliction boost thresholds across the
different guilds (the reset will help prevent this from happening, though). This
is also before considering synergy within the guild's org, too. It should also
be noted that this also pushes the chemwoods more and more towards being aoe
based classes (centered around their bombs more than they already are) which
erodes the original intent of the archetype to be an alternative to the the
mancy/druidry route. All that said, I support solution 1 in the absence of
better alternatives.
---[Falmiis on 5/10 @ 04:29 writes]:
@Raeri: I actually think that it would become -too- easy to set up the 10 power
bombs with enough affs to guarantee a kill, particularly for some specs as Lerad
is suggesting.
---[Cyndarin on 5/14 @ 22:44 writes]:
Lerad is correct but that's pretty far out of scope for 1 report and should be
handled by each envoy. Fix the foundation first, which is that the mechanics
around chemwoods suck, and the guilds with the crappy aff combinations can
address those
---[Wobou on 5/22 @ 17:14 writes]:
I support solution 1. I share Lerad's concerns but I also agree with Cyndarin
that fixing the foundational issue is more important for the time being.
---[Enyalida on 5/26 @ 16:39 writes]:
It makes more sense to just suppress the next tick of the relevant passives
instead of screwing around with changing the timers or desynching effects. One
thing to note is that this will dramatically increase the rubble effect's
practical impact on things, making it harder to run away from bombs once they've
started as well as lowering their opportunity cost. I don't think this will
really mean anything meaningful in practice.