Meridian59/Meridian59 — pull request #235 by MorbusM59 (2013-09-12 20:55:38+00:00)
Title: Revised blind, dazzle and eagle eyes mechanic

Problem: An unmitigated blind lasts up to 20 seconds, which is an absolutely ridiculous amount of time to sentence a player to inactivity to. Blind is what other games consider a hard CC, it stops your ability to fight, cast and escape and does not break on damage. The longest hard CC you will see in any other successful game is WoW's 6 seconds stun, however, that can be trinketed. In short, no other games force a player to suffer anything similar.

What this change does to address this:
- Blind duration is no longer random and scales with SP from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. Reagent cost has been reduced to two entroot berries. Mana cost and vigor cost have been reduced by one third to 10 mana and 4 vigor.
- Dazzle gains 0 to 5 seconds from SP and 0 to 10 seconds from karma difference to the target. The sum of both is bound between 2.5 and 15 seconds. Reagent cost has been changed to two diamonds. Mana cost and vigor cost have been reduced to 10 mana and 4 vigor.
- Eagle Eyes is essential in the balane of the other two. It no longer grants a percentage reduction of the duration, but instead offers a flat reduction of up to 2.5 seconds. In addition, the chance to resist the spells outright, is now tripled to 15% for blind and 30% for dazzle. The cost remains the same.

Consequences and reasoning:

The maximum duration of a blind is now a no longer random 10 seconds. It used to be a random value between 10 and 20 seconds. > This is a nerf. That makes PKing a bit more challenging and gives people that get jumped a chance to get back into the fight.

In a battles against a buffed target, the maximum duration is now 7.5 seconds. It used to be 10 seconds, but averaged out at the same 7.5 seconds. > This is a buff because of increased reliability.

In battles when you are demented, the average duration is now 7.5 seconds. It used to be 6. That is a straight buff.

In battles where you are demented and the enemy is buffed, the average duration is now 5 seconds. It used to be 3 seconds. That is a straight buff.

The absolute minimum duration is now 2.5 seconds down from 3. > That is a slight nerf.

The reduced cost of blind makes for neater inventory management and makes up for the nerf in maximum power.

The tripled straight chance to resist on Eagle Eyes preserves its viability in a real PvP situation (as opposed to PKing unbuffeds) and offsets the overall buffing of blind in these situations.

Dazzle mostly follows the same concept, but has a wider range of durations. While dazzle scales the same with SP as blind, dazzle has a bonus of 0 to 10 based on your and your target's karma. Qor offers a reliable 5 second base instead. At equal SP, a dazzle with a karma difference of 100 will have the same duration as a blind. For a hypothetical spread of 200 points, dazzle pulls ahead by 5 seconds, but falls behind by 5 seconds when cast on opponents of equal or higher karma than that of the caster. Nothing has been changed about zoning or map visibility. Blind is still clearly superior. Dazzle can be reduced to nil by EE in two ways now. Firstly, there is the 30% chance for a straight resist, secondly, if EE has reduced the duration of dazzle below one second, this will also result in a straight resist, also negating the annoying pain effect that follows the dazzle. The pain effect has been reduced to 4 seconds from 8, since it does little but annoy the player.