Report 297

Report #297
Skillset: Rituals Skill: Rubeus
 Org: Nihilists Status: Completed Jan 2010
Furies' Decision:
Wolf totem has a 20% chance now not to work.
Problem: A few months back I submitted wolf totem as skill that was perhaps too
strong given its effect on combat. using it, one can nullify the use of fear
which stops timed instakills by forcing movement, passively splits up a group
(which is useful in group combat and supermob raids where numbers are
important), and provides a passive defense for communal ascendants to keep the
odds in their favor. The suggestion was to wait for the ascendancy report and
many comments from both commune and city envoys alike was to 'buff rubeus
instead'. Following that, I will post that rubeus is a skill that blocks several
afflicts. However it is flawed with many problems, 1. It is random and cannot be
accounted for in combat situations. 2. Lust which is triggered by love potion
means that any person in the vicinity of you (ally or enemy) will slowly degrade
your rubeus or override it entirely. 3. Fear-based attacks (passive and active)
are common (mitrans/virgins/fearaura/cosmic/dreamweaver) are common and as
stated before have a debalitating effect on combat balance in both a literal
sense of numbers as well as sense of an unfair advantage for communes. 4. Love
potion in conjuction with fearaura destroys the effectiveness of rubeus in
seconds. Passively removing the aff without any use for it. It is also due to
note that 3/5 commune guilds have access to fear immunity while only 2/5 city
guilds have rubeus, thus giving further benefit. The balance, as suggested by
commune envoys in the wolf totem report, can be met by buffing rubeus to put it
more in line with the utility of totems as a whole.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Fear immunity, the other afflictions remain capable
 of decaying rubeus but fear will not trigger rubeus
 to decay. Ability to chant rubeus off as well.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: Power cost on rubeus use with a timer. Example is a
 day long timer or half day timer. Power cost is
 negotiable.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #3: No power cost on rubeus with shorter timer in which
 it needs to be reactivated. 5 or 10 mins.
Player Comments:
---[Nienla on 1/26 @ 17:46 writes]:
I don't really like any of these solutions. One of the easiest would simply be
to make it so that Rubeus is not stripped as easily by certain affs (such as
Fear/Lust), or just in general. I'd be fine with just making it like Athletics
Immunity where it is stripped after a certain amount of times. Or making the
chances of it getting stripped lower if this is already the case.
---[Ceren on 1/29 @ 23:26 writes]:
It does already work like that, and due to that it's far and away worse than
wolf totem. I still don't really agree with fear immunity skills, but if the
idea here is to make it compare to wolf, the easiest way is to make it so the
standard fear affliction can't make rubeus decay and also make love potion no
longer check rubeus (love potion checking rubeus actually makes the skill worse,
for the reason Romero described). By the way, what ever happened to that
ascendance report?