Board Ideas.old [context]
Sender SirLance
Date Fri Feb 9 11:43:43 2018
To all
Subject QOL buffs and race diversity
I think we can make some small adjustments that could help early leveling for some classes out greatly. Right now I think Assassins have it worst compared to other classes for leveling speed and momentum. This is mainly because they are poor at rooming. Now, they are kind of designed to fight 1 target rather well, but that is not the name of the game once your char is strong enough with a few remorts under your belt and/or qeq. Post ascension, rooming vs single targeting is completely night and day. You just need to find a way to room. Right now, there only ability for this is bombing at lvl 50. I've gotten two Demolitionists from r0 to r10 and I like where bombs are at currently. They're quite powerful. They do take a lot of upkeep, management, and supplimentary skills however. You can't be squishy on hps or durability. Hps meaning qeq and/or keeping up with high level gear is a must, particularly for a newer char building up power. More important than that is the durability though. You still need a way to tank rooms. Thieves, the worst bombers, actually do this best thanks to shadowwalk. Gunnies can add a splash of tankiness with showdown, and they have semi/fullauto as backup for if bombs run dry mid-fight. I can still tell you that the boosted demo (with specialty added) was harder to level on gunny than thief due to how much tankier thief was. Thief also gets wands and UMD to access Fireball very early on which is the main problem with bombs especially when not playing as a demo. They come at lvl 50 for Assassin. More than half your leveling phase is without any aoe dmg, and then it's still risky business. Assassins have no tankiness. So, a few suggestions and ideas. A really quick solution that I feel would be great is an adding a low level Earthquake spell a r0 or r1 race. I'd say Spell % between 40-70%, and gained around level 15-25. Early enough to be useful to get the ball rolling, and nothing too powerful. Earthquake in particular over say fireball since it has a counter (flying mobs) and you'll encounter a lot less vuln/magic bash than vuln fire throughout the leveling phase. Also no way for Warlocks to come along and boost its damage heh. I'd suggest putting the racial spell on one of the least utilized r0 or r1 races. For obvious reasons, mostly balance related. Something like dwarf/goblin/golem/ogre for r0, or orc for r1. Centaur? Stampede quakes? There are likely more fitting, more magical options, but I think those races are the top picks already and/or have great racials to bring to the table as is (for their tier). Your call, but it definitely should be r1 or r0 I think. R2 is a significant way away from a new char or ascended char, and after that you've got R3 Draconian bringing Fireball to the table. This is also going to be real important for Necros, who also have no rooming damage until 55 and that's alignment based and high mana cost. Most the struggling classes will benefit a bit from this option, and none of the classes with strong rooming abilities as is will be better off for it. I also think it'd be great to add Wands to an early race or two. This isn't as blunt as handing out an aoe spell--players still have to explore, shop, and manage what wand spells they can find. I think they add a lovely level of depth to the game and gaps in leveling that would otherwise be a sad affair without them for struggling classes: Thieves, Bards, Necros, possibly even Monks but they typically need both hands free. Less so if a buddy is tanking. But ya, these probably need to go on a more magical race. Maybe one at r1-r2 and/or r3-r5. Be nice to see it on a race in the r6-10 realm perhaps. This third idea is more optional imo because I'm not sure how best it should work and be balanced, but Smoke Bomb for assassins. I'm thinking this can form as a form of psuedo-tankiness against lower level rooms for a sin, and just the sin. So rather than do damage, give throw them a bone to help last long enough fighting a group. I'm thinking it has a chance to blind enemies, or make them miss, but only against an assassin's secondary targets. The primary target should have an easy time spotting the sin focusing him/her. This should be maybe an active 12 lag skill, and the effects only last one round. This should keep it from being a buff to high level assassins who would need to play to their strength--doing heavy single target damage with circle, rupture, slash, bloodbath, ambush flee + backstab, etc. If it needs more conditions to keep it from being too useful a buff to high level assassins, I'm all for em. Probably silly to make it so it's never useful again once higher, but yeah. I also like the idea of it being more effective in rooms with fewer or only 1 exit. Maybe also darker rooms. This way the assassin can explore a bit more to milk certain pockets of mobs. Plenty of leveling zones will have 2-3+ exits so it feels fair that to get some real use out of tankiness that the sin tries to fight in a dark, narrow alley for example. Away from garnering extra attention. Ideas, yeah!