Report 700

Report #700
Skillset: Harmonics Skill: Spire
 Org: Institute Status: Rejected Oct 2011
Furies' Decision:
We are putting this on hold. While we are not adverse to the general idea, we
have issues with some of the proposed solutions and would like time to review
and adjust. We also note the huge glut on gems/flesh justifies a much, much
higher cost.
Problem: Currently spires are more of a burden to the caster than they are a
resource. They will only ressurect the caster if they die in Continuum, and it
costs 25% power in order to use there and it happens automatically regardless of
if you want it to happen. It generates very small amount of power per month
based on the amount of power you have in it (about 2% at 50% power). It will
temporarily buff your vitals to double within a one room range, but the health
generated from this disappears immediately upon leaving the range. Meaning that
if you happen to walk through the range of your spire(which is required to do
one of our power quests) any sipping, sparkleberry, or scroll uses are simply
wasted as your health drops back down when you leave now. Spires are a burden
that I -never- advise anyone in my guild to learn under any circumstances.
Comparatively, the skills the other guardian guilds have in this position are
quire a lot better. This would be trueheal, archlich, and fleshmound. I do not
think spire needs to be put at the level of trueheal or archlich, but even
fleshmound generates flesh (it doesn't require you to drain massive amounts of
your personal power into the spire), and it allows the owner to ressurrect
someone from anywhere for 50 flesh, so it has use outside of the small area.
Given Iytha's complaints about just how much flesh they have, this is a very
cheap ability.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Change spire to be created using 10 of a single type
 of charged crystal and the type of crystal grants a
 specific benefit as outlined below. Touching the
 spire will cost 10 power, and the defense will last
 until death/logout. Amethyst: +1 constitution, +1
 intelligence weighted Beryl: Flight, level 1
 regeneration outdoors Bloodstone: +10% damage
 Diamond: +1 constitution, +1 dexterity weighted
 Emerald: +1 sip balance Garnet: +2 charisma weighted
 Jade:+2 intelligence weighted Onyx: +1 intelligence,
 +1 dexterity weighted Opal: +1 influencing all types
 Ruby: A chance to deliver a small amount of timewarp
 upon taking damage Sapphire: +1 intelligence, +1
 charisma weighted Turquoise: 10% DMP
Player Comments:
---[Morbo on 10/14 @ 23:32 writes]:
I am willing to discuss the effects of the gems if anyone feels anything is
particularly overpowered, If any of the stats don't have weighted listed after
them that is an oversight, all the stat increases should be weighted. I spent a
lot of time fleshing out these effects with the envoys around at the time though
so I think they are pretty fair in general.
---[Enyalida on 10/18 @ 05:09 writes]:
I don't necessarily agree with the suggested abilities, but spire is very
underwhelming. Using power makes it inherently worse off then fleshmounds, and
it has less use. I would suggest that the Illum envoy or someone else addresses
fleshmounds in a separate report to bring them up to the level of spire as
proposed in this report.
---[Shuyin on 10/18 @ 10:51 writes]:
How much power does the spire regenerate at 75% power? Because when I leave the
fleshmound at 75 flesh, it will regenerate back up to full once the month
passes, I believe the spire will do the same, so that part isn't such a bad
deal, IMO. I don't agree that completely changing spire is needed, but I think
many of its aspects can be buffed, including the doubled hp/mp/ego thing.
Perhaps that can be extended to the entirety of continuum (through a command
which costs power) for x minutes doable only once every IC day, and then if you
want to see it gets some use outside of continuum, allow this to happen on
adjacent planes (elemental/astral) for half the time of x for the same amount of
power. I'd also look into buffing heartstone as well, personally/
---[Iytha on 10/19 @ 05:48 writes]:
I'm not sure why you'd ever want to make an Oynx/Diamond spire given that you
could have an Amethyst spire instead. Is dex really worth as much as Int or Con
for a researcher? Likewise, I don't see the point of Garnet, given that Opal
would give a much better influencing bonus and outside of that Cha isn't worth
much for guardians. The general idea is interesting, I suppose, but it could use
some polish. || Spire currently seems to produce 0.04 power per stored power per
month, which is a bit lacklustre. By comparison, fleshmounds produce 0.3333
flesh per stored flesh per month. Power is much more useful than flesh/gems, of
course, but I wouldn't say that it's 8 times as useful. Gaudi gets 1 power per
10 flesh or thereabouts, so I'd recomend bumping spire up to 0.1 power per
stored power per month as Solution 2. That means that if you keep 90 power in
the spire, you get 10 per month. But even 10p per month is pretty meh.
---[Morbo on 10/19 @ 15:53 writes]:
I put the dexterity option in because it's something people might not think
about but is actually quite useful to a defensive class, I don't understand
saying Garnet is useful, as the plus charisma would help with debating as well,
and max ego against telepaths. I'd much rather have charisma than a bonus to
influencing as it does more and is more useful in more situations. To address
the other concerns, Spire generates very little power (at about 90 power it
seems to generate around 4 a month, it seems to increase linearly and the fact
that dying within the range of the spire costs 25 power (at least 6 months of
passive spire regeneration) it's just not worth it to keep power in it since one
death will negate a lot of power, and it's cheaper just to let it get destroyed
and put it back up. I considered ways to change the existing spire but the H/M/E
bonuses are too powerful considering the defensive nature of the class. The
class fairly intentionally has very low DMP and is weak to damage or stat kills,
and extending the spire to additional ranges would just push them beyond
reasonable levels of defense capabilities. I believe the solutions proposed are
a more moderate solution that wouldn't disbalance the class, would allow for a
bit better specialization for the class (which doesn't really exist in the
institute beyond weapon choice), and would bring their power costs upon defing
up more in line with other guilds. I believe that with these proposed solutions
you will see a lot of people using very different buffs (which I think is the
goal in any choice skill, making the choice difficult and not one of them being
obviously better). However, I would still consider changes and if this report is
goign to get rejected just because of a few solutions I'd really like the
opportunity to discuss it with someone first
---[Xenthos on 10/23 @ 16:06 writes]:
How easy is it to change the spire from one type to another? The solutions
don't seem too bad on the whole, unless it's really easy to convert it at which
point you can mix and match at will for little cost (10 gems).
---[Iytha on 10/23 @ 20:40 writes]:
If it works like fleshmound, you can't make a new one until the old one decays,
which takes a minimum of 1 IC year.
---[Morbo on 10/24 @ 17:03 writes]:
My suggestion would be that creating a new spire cost 10 power, and then an
addition 10 power to get the buff, and creating a new spire gets rid of your old
buff