Report 1574

Report #1574
Skillset: Skill: Protection/Dissolve
 Org: Minstrels Status: Completed Jan 2017
Furies' Decision:
Solutions 1, 2, and 3.
Problem: Two issues: 1) A recent (good) change has been that melds dissolve upon
the death of the melder. While this is overall a positive change, it makes it
more likely that a melder will sit out of a fight, standing a room away, to help
prevent the loss of the meld. Melds in general are necessary components to any
large group fight. 2) Dissolve/Protection are odd mechanics. Some meld effects
are stopped by protection being up, but there is no opportunity cost to the
melder to dissolve protection due to the fact that dissolve does not require
equilibrium to use. It only requires balance, so a melder can use an eq-based
skill and follow up with a dissolve. There is also no cost to attempting to
dissolve someone without protection. This allows melders to send 'dissolve
<target>' on every enemy and they will never waste that balance. Protection on
the other hand does have an opportunity cost in that it costs equilbrium to put
up. This means you can stop your offense to put up protection, just to have it
stripped immediately again at no cost to the melder. It's not really worthwhile
to put protection back up in the middle of combat. The following are some
changes to protection/dissolve mechanics that will have little effect on 1v1,
make 'playing it safe' strategies less effective and encourage the melder to be
more involved in the fight. It changes the dissolve/protection mechanics
encourage the use of protection and the more heads up use of dissolve.
[A:10 R: 0] Solution #1: Change dissolve to take balance if a mage attempts to
 dissolve someone without protection up. This should
 be the same balance it takes when it's successful.
 Additionally Change Protection scroll from requiring
 and consuming equilbrium to require and consume
 scroll balance.
[A:10 R: 0] Solution #2: Give melders a 5p ability that will strip protection
 and cause a loss of scroll balance for 5s. This will
 give a large window for the melder to ensure that the
 entire meld hit has a chance to hit the entire group.
[A:11 R: 0] Solution #3: Have unleash staff do reduced damage (25-33% less) to
 targets with protection up.
Player Comments:
---[Wobou on 12/4 @ 05:13 writes]:
I'm okay with all of these, although I think in the case of solution 1 that just
moving protection scroll to scroll balance is a significant enough nerf without
also making the mage track who has reapplied the scroll. I think that change
will just mean that systems will be created to track who has read the protection
scroll anyway so in the long term I don't think it will change combat much
rather the burden will be shifted to individual systems.
---[Synkarin on 12/4 @ 13:54 writes]:
@Wobou - I'm okay with that. The idea is it takes effort (whether through
systems and tracking, or individual effort) to keep protection off people and
you can't just send 'dissolve <target> on every enemy in the room. It's about 5
seconds from reading a protection scroll to protection actually being put up
that a melder paying attention could ideally keep two people dissolved if they
are paying attention.
---[Falmiis on 12/4 @ 21:12 writes]:
I still prefer an alternative solution where we get rid of protection and
introduce a way for melders to focus effects on one person, so they receive the
full brunt of the meld effects while everyone else gets affected less. Melds are
too powerful in groups, and arguably not powerful enough in 1v1 (at least for
some melds). This would give us a means towards achieving a fairer balance
between the two.
---[Raeri on 12/5 @ 11:07 writes]:
I would opt to delete protection completely.
---[Shedrin on 12/5 @ 15:41 writes]:
This would encourage melders to put themselves at more risk, though it would
also weaken melder aoe power, as they couldn't keep protection off of multiple
people nearly as well. That's not necessarily bad, but should be stated.
---[Silvanus on 12/7 @ 02:52 writes]:
Counter solution: remove Dissolve, have Protection be a Highmagic/Lowmagic skill
that costs power to put up and lasts for a temporary time. I was thinking 3
power for 2 minutes.
---[Enyalida on 12/14 @ 15:54 writes]:
Solution 1 will have an impact on 1v1 with changing protection scroll to healing
scroll balance. Protection scroll is the artifact of a time when melds were
huge, effects struck across the entire demesne, and it took more work to knock
down the demesne. It prevents melders from doing too much at range. Now that the
melder being in the room comes at even more of a risk - as they can lose the
entire demesne on dying - making it even harder for the effects to hit group
targets is not the way to go. It's just going to end up extending feast-or-
famine balancing that is already the driving force and dominant issue with
melders. No support for Solution 1, I agree with Falmiis that what's needed is
removing (or reworking) this outdated patch on melds (instead of dramatically
buffing it without addressing issues with it and with the mechanic it patches)
and reworking things from there. Solution 3 is good. Solution 2 should cost 3p
at most and be assigned to the WHIRL STAFF syntax, which otherwise does nothing
worth keeping.
---[Kaimanahi on 12/20 @ 21:58 writes]:
I support the premise of this report; melds have always had too high of an
impact on group combat. I think these changes bring meld effects more in line
with bard songs, which are still quite impactful but do have acceptable
limitations and counters. I believe that any general nerfs to melds will make
group combat more enjoyable for melders, who will not necessarily have to be the
default first target because of their undeniable significance to the outcome of
group battles. I would just recommend that Solution 3 also include a caveat to
lower the mana cost of unleash, given that melders are being more encouraged to
fight in the group as opposed to standing a room away. I'd also probably
advocate for dissolve costing balance and eq.
---[Wobou on 12/21 @ 15:24 writes]:
@Synkarin: I wouldn't call the system tracking it any kind of effort. It would
just punish people who don't have a system to take care of it for them which
from my understanding is the opposite of the direction that we are supposed to
be going in the overhaul. @Falmiis: I like the idea of stealing the focus
command from chems and applying it to 'regular' mages/druids. You could
implement the muted effects on others that you're talking about by making the
effects treat everyone who is not your focus as if they have protection up,
whether they do or not. Then you could possibly add some buffs/nerfs (but
probably mostly buffs) to effects if you are focusing someone to tweak 1v1
performance.
---[Shuyin on 1/16 @ 07:12 writes]:
Sounds great, helps balance melds more
---[Aeldra on 1/23 @ 14:10 writes]:
I feel that solution 2 combined with solution 1 would mean that this new ability
could be used to strip healing scroll balance right before meld hit. Not much of
a deal, but I thought I'd point it out.
---[Enyalida on 1/24 @ 18:42 writes]:
5p is too expensive on solution 2. Reduce the power cost to 3. I hope we'll see
some reports to shift the focus of mages and druids at least a little bit away
from melding or towards survivability with the repeated heavy and dramatic nerfs
to melding.