Report 631

Report #631
Skillset: Starhymn Skill: New
 Org: Cantors Status: Completed Jun 2011
Furies' Decision:
We will make have JustChorale? give masked afflictions. As a side note, we
suggest future Starhymn reports focus on tweaking the new Angel skills to make
them more useful rather than suggesting we add even more skills.
Problem: Starhymn is lacking in imbuable powers compared to the other bard
guilds. The special report gave us three new abilities, but given their costs
and short durations they can't be used frequently enough to make up for our song
itself lacking in effectiveness.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Create a new mid stanza imbuable power that passively
 afflicts with one unmasked freeze level.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: Create a new high stanza imbuable power that
 passively strips defenses from a list similar to
 AlterAura in Psionics (waterbreathing, waterwalking,
 quicksilver, fire, frost, kafe, insomnia, levitation,
 constitution, galvanism, sixthsense). The defense
 stripped is masked to the bard and the person hit.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #3: Both solution 1 and 2, or some other new ability or
 abilities.
Player Comments:
---[Senna on 6/14 @ 06:39 writes]:
From the Starhymn special report: Starhymn has less Mid and High stanza
abilities than the three other bard guilds, and you literally find yourself
imbuing bad abilities because there's -literally- nothing else you can imbue.
Specifically, here are the statistics: all four bard guilds have 5 low stanza
abilities, Cantors and Harbingers have 4 mid stanza while the other two have 5,
and Cantors have 5 high stanza effects while all three others have 6, (including
the instakill and the other active ability). This means Cantors only have 3
passives to imbue in their high stanzas while the other three have 4 and have
some choice in their more powerful abilities - for instance, to unimbue the
terrain-specific one when they're not in that type of terrain. In addition,
unless you're on raid defense, AngelSong and its equivalents are abilities with
literally no effect, meaning Cantors only have 3 usable mid stanza effects,
while again, Cacophony and Spiritsingers have 4. CelestOde is also near useless
in 1v1 combat, as Cantors generally don't kill through damage (and in the case
that they do, it doesn't effect manabarbs/egovice damage), meaning quite often
there are literally only two mid stanza abilities that will have any effect
whatsoever.
---[Asmodea on 6/14 @ 14:00 writes]:
While I think Starhymn could indeed use an addition to its skillset you help it
along the way, I think you're looking in the wrong direction. A single freeze
every ten seconds isn't going to help your cause, since you don't have any real
solid way to stick it, and I think passive defense stripping is a little too
much. I would perhaps suggest for now until something more solid is thought up,
tweaking what you have, such as JustChorale, which would gain a huge benefit if
the strike message was turned into a generic one, rather than cycling through
the different Supernals giving you a masked affliction strike. Could even make
it so the Cantor themselves still see the different Supernals, but the target
would see something like, "The light of Holy Celestia burns into you as the
blessed Supernals judge you unworthy." Anyways, something to think about.
---[Senna on 6/15 @ 00:56 writes]:
Tried that with the special report, but that change wasn't made for whatever
reason, and at any rate, we'd like to have imbuable abilities on par with the
rest of the music specs - at least one if not two.
---[Asmodea on 6/15 @ 11:53 writes]:
Ah, ok. And I completely understand wanting the imbuable power, but I don't
think a single freeze is going to help your situation and would really only be a
waste of this report unless you can prove otherwise.
---[Senna on 6/16 @ 00:37 writes]:
I see its main use being when we have multiple Cantors and/or Aquamancers in a
group combat situation. We already have decent afflictions for smaller
situations and both these ideas are aimed towards synergy and offering support
in a group fight. That said, it doesn't have to be exactly the skills I've
suggested here; any new ability or abilities that work towards that would be
completely welcome.
---[Nydekion on 6/21 @ 01:39 writes]:
I still feel that changing JustChorale to have a generic affliction message
would be a better way to go. It wasn't specifically rejected in the special
report, so it's worthwhile to give that a shot since a singular unmasked
affliction really doesn't do too much right now. Alternatively, it could give
two afflictions if it must stay unmasked.
---[Iytha on 6/24 @ 20:30 writes]:
I'm with Asmodea in that I don't see a single hit of freeze doing anything
useful, but if you think it would help I don't see any real objection to this
report.
---[Nydekion on 6/27 @ 18:46 writes]:
Alternatively, cantors could get a passive-damage song that boosts in damage
when the target is aflame and chill levels increase to be considered in
combination with solution 1. A kind of a fire and ice theme that is so common in
"visions" of hell (I'm looking at you, Robert Frost).