Report 1119

Report #1119
Skillset: Wicca Skill: Various
 Org: Moondancers Status: Completed Apr 2013
Furies' Decision:
We will reduce all fae timers by 2 seconds (4 feels too drastic all in one go).
Problem: The summoned ents in Wicca that run on a timer have largely weak
abilities, and those that have less weak abilities can be harder to work with.
The list of what we have is as follows (on a 12s tick unless stated otherwise):
Leprechaun steals 50gp from target's inventory and acts as a second-rate
acquisitio. Brownie knocks target off balance for 0.7-1.5s. Sylph knocks targets
out of trees/sky if it's in the same elevation. Sprite restores 100+10% of base
mana (on a 14s tick). Mother restores 100+10% of base health (on a 14s tick).
Banshee drains (unmodified) 100+10% of base health and mana. Pixie hits with the
sleep affliction. Pooka offers the chance to ORDER your target once every tick.
Crone afflicts with one of: masochism, shivering, anorexia, blindness,
slickness, confusion, loneliness, vertigo, recklessness. While some of these do
have nice (or nice-seeming) effects, being on a 12s timer makes it hard to
actually capitalise on what they do because of the infrequency of their actions.
This is part of the inherent weakness of Wicca as a skillset. Redcap does
250-300 bleeding damage per tick, and every 5? ticks his cap fills up with blood
and you can feed it to the barghest. Barghest will paralyse the target if the
target is not deaf, and if they are deaf it has a 50% chance to do a 1 second
stun to them - in addition, the barghest, when fed with the redcaps hat, will do
200 damage and 200-300 bleeding on the next tick. The Slaugh afflicts each tick
with one of: rigormortis, disfigurement, dysentry, worms, and paranoia. Note: I
didn't include Nymph in this list because of the random factor after the first
tick per mob.
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #1: Reduce the tick time for the listed ents by 4s (so
 12s fae down to 8s, 14s fae down to 10s).
[A: 0 R: 0] Solution #2: As solution 1 but 10 seconds, not 8
Player Comments:
---[Laysus on 3/27 @ 20:42 writes]:
Trying to get information on night fae to add to this.
---[Laysus on 3/27 @ 21:04 writes]:
Night Fae info: redcap does 250-300 bleeding damage per tick, and every 5? tics
his cap fills up with blood and you can feed it to the barghest, ok so the
Barghest will paralyse the target if the target is not deaf, and if they are
deaf it has a 50% chance to do a 1 second stun to them - in addition, the
barhest, when fed with the redcaps hat, will do 200 damage and 200-300 bleeding
on the next tick. the Slaugh just afflicts each tick with one of: rigormortis,
disfigurement, dysentry, worms, and paranoia
---[Laysus on 4/3 @ 16:45 writes]:
The above has been incorporated into the report now.
---[Dynami on 4/3 @ 17:58 writes]:
I agree that fae do not hit often enough but I would rather see the tick time
reduced by 2s than 4s. Angels/Demons can only hit with 2 afflictions every 8
seconds (assuming you spent 10p) while Wicca would have the following effects
available to them on an 8s timer if the 4s change went through: health+mana
drain through Banshee, off balance through Brownie, sleep affliction through
Pixie, chance to order target through Pooka, affliction from Slaugh/Crone, and
then bleeding+paralyse from Redcap/Barghest or health regen from Mother.
---[Asmodea on 4/3 @ 21:43 writes]:
While I believe that the speed of fae needs to be looked at, the problem I
forsee is those that possess a Rune of Fae Summoning could become too powerful
and their fae would strike WAY too often if working in conjunction with these
times. I would suggest just making all fae hit on the same time of 10s, and IIRC
the Rune of Fae Summoning makes them hit at 8s already so that is ok to keep it
at that.
---[Asmodea on 4/3 @ 21:43 writes]:
While I believe that the speed of fae needs to be looked at, the problem I
forsee is those that possess a Rune of Fae Summoning could become too powerful
and their fae would strike WAY too often if working in conjunction with these
times. I would suggest just making all fae hit on the same time of 10s, and IIRC
the Rune of Fae Summoning makes them hit at 8s already so that is ok to keep it
at thatsc.
---[Asmodea on 4/3 @ 21:44 writes]:
Sorry for the double comment!
---[Thoros on 4/5 @ 02:28 writes]:
Wiccan fae are fine, both moon and night. I don't like this report.
---[Asmodea on 4/5 @ 03:43 writes]:
It seems the Rune of Ethereal Summoning only effects the Fae's level, not their
attack speed. I could have sworn it sped up attacks too, but I could be wrong.
Any admin to clear that up would be helpful, please.
---[Shuyin on 4/5 @ 05:44 writes]:
I'd rather just make all fae hit at 12s only for now. Then we can re-evaluate
from there.
---[Laysus on 4/5 @ 07:18 writes]:
That wouldn't really do much, Shuyin, as it's only the sylph and mother that run
on that 14s tick currently.
---[Shuyin on 4/5 @ 22:50 writes]:
Everything to 10 then.
---[Celina on 4/6 @ 02:44 writes]:
Support lowering it to 10. I don't think 8 would be a problem but better safe
than sorry. Keep in mind that we're going to be looking at individual fae
updates too.
---[Llandros on 4/9 @ 22:41 writes]:
Sorry, but no support for either. Happy to help out wiccans but 8 seconds is
just no. Putting them on par with bard songs that can be herbally blocked and
not arranged to hit in specific combinations is still a bit much. Keep them at
12 and find some other option.
---[Celina on 4/10 @ 03:56 writes]:
I guess I'm curious as to what fae effects people are so fearful of at 10
seconds that they aren't at 12? They're not really "on par" with bard songs.
Apples and oranges.
---[Vivet on 4/12 @ 13:23 writes]:
Everything to 10 sounds like a good start.
---[Laysus on 4/15 @ 19:15 writes]:
While 10 seconds is at least better than a kick in a teeth, I'd like to disabuse
this notion of Llandros'. They're in no way on a par with bard songs - they have
relatively little synergy with the other abilities we have, and mainly serve to
harass our targets, acting as an irritation more than an offense, and even if we
do time them to hit in a specific order, what good does that do?
---[Xenthos on 4/18 @ 01:58 writes]:
Okay, I think we need to hit the brakes here. There's a report to buff Fae so
that they can't be killed so easily, -and- a report to make them stronger at the
same time. I feel like you need to pick one to go forward with. Just slamming
a bunch of reports through for them isn't the best approach. So. I am fine
with either speeding them up to 10s and leaving them crittable, -or- making them
uncrittable. See how that goes and then take more steps from there as
appropriate. And if you speed them up, adjusting their effects is going to be
much, much more difficult to get through.
---[Laysus on 4/22 @ 18:16 writes]:
I would actually disagree with Xenthos here - these are two of the many
identifiable problems with Wicca, and we are not just "slamming them through".
These are two separate issues with the skillset - one, that it's pretty much
unusable with the fact that higher level combatants will kill fae too easily,
and two that they hit too slowly to be competetive. These are two separate
issues, and they each target individual areas of the skillset. If we had to
choose just one, make no mistake I'd go with the fact that they die too easily,
as it renders the skillset pretty much unusable, but I don't think that because
that is being rectified (i.e. the viability of the skillset as a whole is being
increased), I shouldn't be able to simultaneously address other areas of the
skillset.
---[Laysus on 4/22 @ 18:20 writes]:
Furthermore, with the absense of a special report for wicca (due to the ongoing
ones for Chemantics) and the number of issues we believe there to be with the
Wicca skillset, it is pretty much inevitable that there will be multiple
occasions where there are two reports for Wicca in a month.
---[Xenthos on 4/23 @ 23:08 writes]:
But not occasions where there are two fundamental overhauls to the entire design
of Wicca at once- and I do not feel that they should both be introduced at the
same time. As I commented on the other report I'm fine with making fae a bit
tankier, but doing that -and- this at the same time... just strikes me as too
sweeping in one go. "Lack of wicca special report" does not mean that reports
shouldn't be reviewed to see how they are going to interact and stack with one
another.
---[Celina on 4/27 @ 02:12 writes]:
Calm down with the rhetoric. These are not "fundamental overhauls to the entire
design." No changes to afflictions and effects are being proposed yet. The
propositions are increase the speed by 16% so that they are on par with guardian
ents, and make them not killable in one round, also like guardian ents. It's
important to look at wiccans and fae in context rather than "double buff OP,
slow down!" Wiccans are burst killers, they have no sustainable offense, they do
not pressure curing in any way outside of their burst to toad style kill setup.
So making fae tic slightly faster does not actually make their offense any more
potent. It increases the harassment and small hindering capabilities of fae by a
small amount. 2 second speed up doesn't make fae more dangerous, certainly not
to the extent that they need to remain one roundable. I really don't understand
what you think will happen. These two changes really aren't going to impact one
another.
---[Laysus on 4/27 @ 16:45 writes]:
Celina has put it as well as I can. They are two -separate aspects- of the
skillset. Look at it this way - if the speed of fae was increased to ten
seconds, would you find it changing your opinion of whether Fae were one-
hittable or not? If fae were not one-hit-kills, would it change your opinion on
my timing suggestion? If so, then voice -those concerns- - rather than implying
we're not taking due care and attention to the impacts of our reports.
Personally, I honestly think you're overreacting. Both are long-needed fixes,
the only difference it makes if we have one this month and one next month is
that it means the archetypes suffer for longer. Object on the grounds of flaws
in our reports, if you will, but not because you don't like that we're trying to
take on a big job here.