Shapeshifter Skills Discussion

Seir

From my time as a Lycanthrope and from reviewing their changes from the albeit brief time I've been back, I can say safely that while they've changed a fair deal, their weaknesses are still very pronounced. A Lycanthrope struggles from two things inherently:

1.) They have the audit of a wet paper bag, even with an amulet. Survivability artifacts are an absolute must against any class with the capability of doing a competitive level of damage.

2.) Shield spam will ruin jawlock attempts.

Groinrip is really the easiest of the rips to obtain and maintaining it is often critical so that a Syssin isn't consistently dodging every single claw attack towards the arms and head.

Spleenrip is difficult to get, but I found it easy to get when I used Paralysis/Prone/Disrupt howls. You can interchange the paralysis, but the main point of those were to prone my opponent so I didn't have to waste a round of balance chasing after their legs while they healed up the arms. If you can time your howls properly in conjunction with you going after the arms, you can destroy the arms and go after the jawlock for the spleenrip.

Throatrip was the absolute hardest. Unlikek the other two rips, you're focusing on the head, which only has one viable target versus the arms and legs. However, Skullwhack is powerful and breaking the head with a skullwhack (at least used to) cause your opponent to go uncon and drop as a result. If your howls proc'd, free jawlock into throatrip and you can devour at that point.

That's assuming a devour is the route you're looking for. I never really bothered with facemaul or Flurry, even though Flurry had its situational uses. I'm also not sure how fast Lycans are these days, but speed was absolutely essential for a Lycanthrope to capitalize on a bite into a jawlock.

However, breaking an arm or a leg and capitalizing is really difficult when your opponent is fighting entirely passive with shield spam and a Lycanthrope really has no way to counter. I don't agree with claws going through parry, as that just seems downright excessive. If a Lycanthrope had an easier raze with their claws to deal with shield, it'd probably be a lot better honestly. Their damage would also be a lot more competitive as a result as well.

As for how paper thin they are, I'm not really sure how to effectively balance that given that they can disable a lot of offenses by repeatedly going after the arms.

(Edit: This also may still be the case, but I'm fairly sure you can still spleenrip off a broken chest too. Might need testing to verify, but I remember doing so a few times when people focused entirely on keeping their arms protected against me.)

Malok

The class has had a lot of changes in recent times. For example, Facemaul has nothing to do with pipes. Blurry vision is what they have to have and its cured by salves. So is facemaul. It is still awesome...but my point is still correct about Throatrip.

The classes weakness are their weak audit like you said, and shield spam isnt as bad as parrying. If someone has decent parry, you literally can't win. Its the only limb class too that has no way to ignore parry or move it. Dont tell me bodypunch and paresis, because in reality that does almost nothing.

Reux

I'd rather claim the threat of double rend and constant jugulars violates parry adequately, along with no double parry and throatrip working off broken torso, but meh.

AKA, we're not monks. Feint is BAD 1v1. Monks are the only limb class that has the ability to outright move parry, and it's only kinda good in team situations.

Edit:

My concerns for the liaisons this round are:

1. The worst physical audit in the game, even after spending extra on artifacts to support it. Amending this to fixing Scales only. Never looked at other types' protection abilities. If Bracing and Cornering don't work in PvE, I advise a bear and wolf to report for 'em.
2. Snarling not hiding new shrieks or interchange.
3. Horsemanship + Shapeshifting interaction.

We may want to coordinate these reports to make sure all concerns are addressed.

Kelliara

Hi! Kelliara here again, with some more observations and bits of (hopefully) helpful info:

1) Regarding the weak audit: It's absolutely a weakness, but I expect that the purpose behind Cornering/Bracing/Scales/Vibrance was to offset the unimpressive audit somewhat.

2) Decent parry is a problem, but it's not unbeatable, exactly. With clever use of regular claw attacks, flurry and a few other bits and pieces it can be overcome, but not without some degree of difficulty. Which is okay I think, because people with decent parrying should be rewarded by being less killable for limb classes in the same way that people with decent curing should be less killable for affliction classes.

As an addendum to the above, I do agree wholeheartedly that some aspects parrying vs Shapeshifters needs to be looked at, and perhaps altered a bit.

3) For @Seir: Facemaul is slightly more useful and possible now, particularly against ent-loving classes like Sentinels or Cabalists/Indorani. It still causes the Resto-cured disfigurement, but works off of blurry_vision. Which is super convenient because Shapeshifters have two ways of afflicting it. One of which takes entirely no effort at all.

And yes, you can Spleenrip off a broken chest. Which, depending on how you go about going after limbs/rips can make a Spleenrip surprisingly easy for you, and horribly sudden for your victim. I won't say much more about that, because it'd ruin the surprise

Well, I found it surprising, at least. ...where was I?

Also, Skullwhack still causes unconciousness if it's the attack that puts them over the threshold for level 1 head damage, or hits them while they're there or above.

I probably forgot to say something. I'll add it in an edit if I remember.

Serrice

Uh... I haven't really commented on this thread but throatrip is by far one of the easiest rips to get, and if the target focuses on defending against it, you'll have instead a trivial time getting one or the other rip.

Reux

Kelliara said:

Hi! Kelliara here again, with some more observations and bits of (hopefully) helpful info:
1) Regarding the weak audit: It's absolutely a weakness, but I expect that the purpose behind Cornering/Bracing/Scales/Vibrance was to offset the unimpressive audit somewhat.

Scales is the only one that needs attention then, because it's not physical. The others affect physical punishment in some way.

Lighters should also argue that scales are worthless, as darkies don't have classes that push Fire/Electric reliably. Darkies like this bonus, but as a werecroc, I'd still rather have a different kind of def that would help with a pathetic physical audit.

For example, have it also grant an extra flat chance to divert?

Make scales work like a damage shield that absorbs the next X damage? Recovers every Y seconds?

Kelliara

Reux said:

Kelliara said:

Hi! Kelliara here again, with some more observations and bits of (hopefully) helpful info:
1) Regarding the weak audit: It's absolutely a weakness, but I expect that the purpose behind Cornering/Bracing/Scales/Vibrance was to offset the unimpressive audit somewhat.

Scales is the only one that needs attention then, because it's not physical. The others affect physical punishment in some way.

Lighters should also argue that scales are worthless, as darkies don't have classes that push Fire/Electric reliably. Darkies like this bonus, but as a werecroc, I'd still rather have a different kind of def that would help with a pathetic physical audit.

That makes sense @Reux.

I actually didn't realise that scales only effected Fire/Electric, I thought it affected all the magical elemental type damages.

I should also point out that no one's ever said that's why those abilities exist, but looking at what they do, it seems like a reasonable guess to me.

Serrice

I'd argue that lycans don't need more physical audits either. I can achieve 39/39 without artifacts, higher if I had an amulet of protection or I was a bear. Howls provide exceptional hindering every 12 seconds, and the lycan offense is designed to produce very long breaks in enemy offensive pressure (almost to the point of reset) if you're playing correctly and taking into account that you can't just brute to your kill condition and need to consider hindering as well. The classes that output large sums of physical damage either can't hinder you back properly and/or can be defended passively against (Monk, Zealot), or are vulnerable to your hindering (vampire).

Carnifex and Teradrim both stand out as exceptions - Carnifex are uniquely situated to deal with lycans because of their high damage output + affs + resistance to limb breaks, and Teradrim because they can simply output an obscene amount of damage with little to no recourse on part of the defender. The latter is arguably a balance issue.

Reux

Serrice said:

I'd argue that lycans don't need more physical audits either. I can achieve 39/39 without artifacts, higher if I had an amulet of protection or I was a bear.

I've amended my statement, and I'm addressing Scales alone. The other three types have ways to deal with any incoming pvp assault, though bear is particular to physical.

I don't agree that crocs need to be specifically vulnerable to physical at max investment; they're not any better at stopping a physical assault than the other types. Their unique shriek is magic_impairment which, coupled with scales, kinda makes them too good against Ascendrii once snarling gets fixed.

Serrice

Re: Scales

Bear and Boar are the traditional spirit shifter types, Wolf and Croc the shadow ones (the Sibs-era Duiran wolfpack not withstanding, since they were Spirean migrants).

The defensive buffs they have are well suited for their opponents, and vice versa. (fire/lightning and more high aff-low damage dodgable classes from spirit, more raw health damage from shadow).

As @Keroc has reiterated to me many a time, some classes will fare poorer against other classes.

Trager

Just a small interjection on the howling/interchange bit:

Every class, or a fair amount of them, has some sort of extended time where it needs to put up vital abilities to reach its full potential. You have rituals with Bloodborn, auras and blessings with Templar, vibrations with Mages, entourages with Sentinel, rites and angel nonsense with Lumi-fairy, and I'm sure that I'll still miss some.

I would think that as soon as you want to defup to go fight, you put up your first howl, start the normal process, add in your second when available, then you're just waiting for your last, no?

I like that most classes have to invest time into replacing defenses. If someone is revived at a lesser, or starbursted, I want them to have to choose between giving forth a lackluster performance and not reaching their full potential to keep fighting, or dodging out to reapply those defenses.

Malok

Kelliara said:

Hi! Kelliara here again, with some more observations and bits of (hopefully) helpful info:
3) For @Seir: Facemaul is slightly more useful and possible now, particularly against ent-loving classes like Sentinels or Cabalists/Indorani. It still causes the Resto-cured disfigurement, but works off of blurry_vision. Which is super convenient because Shapeshifters have two ways of afflicting it. One of which takes entirely no effort at all.

I have incorporated Facemaul into my offense against every class, regardless of entities or not. This skill and the way it works is the reason why Throatrips are way easier to pull off for me than before I started using it. Yes, the skill is meant to hose ent using classes, but what's really interesting about it is that if you land it on them, and then start doing Jugulars/Skullwhacks/Other Head damage, and then they need to cure the head damage, if they resto/jecis on their head, it cures the Facemaul first, doesnt cure the head damage whatsoever, and still takes salve balance. Facemaul itself also does 4.99% head damage, so if the person doesn't parry, you can basically push their head damage all the way back into next year. This also is how Spinalrip works, but is way, way harder to get to work this way because they have to have paralysis and not just paresis. You can just straight up apply blurry_vision that facemaul requires by using faceslash or the blurring howl, whereas with paralysis, you have to wait and they have to get a message, which means they will 99% of the time cure it before you get to Spinalrip, thus making the tactic nearly impossible on a torso. In fact, I think the only times I've ever gotten a Spinalrip off is in lessers.

Serrice said:

I'd argue that lycans don't need more physical audits either. I can achieve 39/39 without artifacts, higher if I had an amulet of protection or I was a bear. Howls provide exceptional hindering every 12 seconds, and the lycan offense is designed to produce very long breaks in enemy offensive pressure (almost to the point of reset) if you're playing correctly and taking into account that you can't just brute to your kill condition and need to consider hindering as well. The classes that output large sums of physical damage either can't hinder you back properly and/or can be defended passively against (Monk, Zealot), or are vulnerable to your hindering (vampire).

Carnifex and Teradrim both stand out as exceptions - Carnifex are uniquely situated to deal with lycans because of their high damage output + affs + resistance to limb breaks, and Teradrim because they can simply output an obscene amount of damage with little to no recourse on part of the defender. The latter is arguably a balance issue.

The only caveat to this is that yes, while Shapeshifters are exceptional at stopping an opponent's active offense, they still get wrecked usually by passive ones, like vibes, and to a lesser extent, pets(Yes, even with Facemaul, which is not foolproof, especially against good parrying). Also, again, if someone has smart parrying, you are not hindering their offense for very long. If someone is not attacking you, they can focus on parrying because they always have the balance to do so. Particularly if you focus on the person's legs, which usually makes sense to do considering 99% of the game's penchant for running away in fights.(The mention about Mobility in another thread comes to mind here). I honestly think Destroy and Mangle shouldn't be parryable. You should have to rely on curing better in that spot than using parries.

As for Monks, Monks are way better against Shapeshifters than Shapeshifters are against Monks. Guarding is insane against Lycans, and Lycans have nothing like that to use back against them. Vocalizing is every 12 seconds like you yourself mentioned, Telepathy and Kaido are on demand and are way, way powerful in what they can do. Yes, you get Hardening, but Hardening is random and does not always proc, whereas Guarding always does if they have good parrying tendencies(Most good combatants do).

Trager said:

Just a small interjection on the howling/interchange bit:

Every class, or a fair amount of them, has some sort of extended time where it needs to put up vital abilities to reach its full potential. You have rituals with Bloodborn, auras and blessings with Templar, vibrations with Mages, entourages with Sentinel, rites and angel nonsense with Lumi-fairy, and I'm sure that I'll still miss some.

I would think that as soon as you want to defup to go fight, you put up your first howl, start the normal process, add in your second when available, then you're just waiting for your last, no?

I like that most classes have to invest time into replacing defenses. If someone is revived at a lesser, or starbursted, I want them to have to choose between giving forth a lackluster performance and not reaching their full potential to keep fighting, or dodging out to reapply those defenses.

The problem with your point is the fact that with Shapeshifters, the entire point of Vocalizing is using the three howls. There's literally no other application for the skillset beyond bellowing, and bellowing is largely useless in most fights, except for using Forceful on occassion. This is particularly true at lessers, where the fights last like 3-8 seconds per person.

With all the other classes you mentioned, the skills in the rest of the skillset are still useable.(With the exception of Mages, which probably should have less of a wind up as well)

The report I tend to submit to Interchange as well will still make it take awhile, but being able to type "interchange paralyzing blurring baleful" and have all 3 going at once, AT THE COST OF 30 SECONDS OF HOWL BALANCE, is way more fair than having to take 60s of howl balance, and having to wait 20 seconds between each one. It's just silly. Or if its a -big- deal you could even have it take 60s of howl balance, but at least make it put them all up at once. You can't Interchange to something new either until you get howl balance back.

Lastly, I'd like to write about an idea I had that's not actually a response.

I was testing Skullcrush with Riluo the other day, and it literally doesn't do anything whatsoever other than just damage, and double Jugular actually does more damage(we tested the numbers). I think it'd be really interesting, since its hard as hell to pull off a Skullcrush anyways, if it was similar to Backbreaker, where it instantly kills them if you do it 3 times in succession. Eating someone's head would be incredibly awesome and satisfying.

Seir

Actually, I once suggested that Destroy not be parryable as well but rescinded on it as I worry about its implications in making Lycanthrope basically keeping someone permanently disabled during group fights or otherwise since you can just keep destroying the limb.

Malok

So, liaisons are coming up, and I was wondering if anyone who has participated in this thread would like to submit anything for Shapeshifter. I have decided instead of Interchange, as annoyingly bad as that skill is, I'm going to submit something for Throatrip and for Skullcrush.

Probably should get some teamwork/discussion on this, since its next Thursday when we can start submitting them. Thanks!

Irruel

Throatrip's delayed smoking effect was added in a liaison round way back, in an attempt at making facemaul viable. Since facemaul is different now, changing that particular aspect of throatrip is a fairly sure thing, if a reasonable suggestion is made.

Being unable to speak is a decent effect against some classes (or it was anyway, I can't speak for combat right now).

Throatrip is (was) in some ways easier to get since necklock only needs L1 damage, though of course it still requires prone.

Anyway, I'm not going to try and make actual suggestions, just encourage active fighters to do it. Tweak throatrip and all three rips will be useful, for the first time -ever-.

Malok

Below is a first draft of what I intend to submit for Shapeshifters when liaisons open.

Malok said:

Throatrip currently makes someone silent and halves their ability to use smoked cures. With the changes to Facemaul, Shapeshifters currently have no afflictions whatsoever that require smoked cures, thus making the skill largely useless except for when trying to go for a Devour.


1.) Make the ripped_throat affliction make someone silent, and also reduce the effectiveness of elixirs by 33%.

2.) Make the ripped_throat affliction make someone silent, and also delay the recovery time of elixirs by 50%.

3.) Both of the above options. 1 and 3 are the preferred solutions.



Skullcrush currently requires the target to be concussed or unconscious, and upon using it, just does a large sum of damage and nothing else. In the same scenario, two Jugular attacks do far, far more damage and bleeding and are only .15s slower, thus making Skullcrush largely uninteresting and not viable.


1.) Increase Skullcrush's damage by 50% at both concussed and unconscious states.

2.) Keep Skullcrush's damage the same but add a counter similar to Backbreaker that permits an instant kill after three successive uses. This is the preferred solution.

3.) Keep Skullcrush's damage the same, but add hidden, random mental afflictions, allowing a symbolance of synergy with Vocalizing's mental afflictions, and the head damage route's passive stupidity.

Reux

I made my two reports. For whatever reason, I thought we got three. #2071 and 1820

I'll save Scales for after I get info on the other three abilities. I don't agree with Serrice's view.

I'll save mounts and combat for when I can figure out how to just say, 'Remember how shapeshifters used to not be able to mount stuff at all, and were given things like RETURN and ENDURANCE to make up for it? Can we just return to that, and somehow grant us Horsemanship Fording, instead of trying to somehow explain why large creatures are trying to ride mules and spiders, clawing at stuff as they pass?'

Kelliara

Reux said:

I made my two reports. For whatever reason, I thought we got three. #2071 and 1820

I'll save Scales for after I get info on the other three abilities. I don't agree with Serrice's view.

I'll save mounts and combat for when I can figure out how to just say, 'Remember how shapeshifters used to not be able to mount stuff at all, and were given things like RETURN and ENDURANCE to make up for it? Can we just return to that, and somehow grant us Horsemanship Fording, instead of trying to somehow explain why large creatures are trying to ride mules and spiders, clawing at stuff as they pass?'

We still have RETURN and ENDURANCE. And if you want to move swiftly over water, you can just get a waterwalking enchant. Which will let you dash like normal over water.

Malok

@Reux I really like the Snarling report, good job! I hope they fix it, it is really dumb how it shows them what you switch to. Though I would note in the report that I think they're only showed what it changes to if they're using Combat Messages, so I think this is really something that needs to be fixed within Vocalizing and Combat Messages.

As for myself, I did up and submitted two reports, 2069 and 2070 for Throatrip and Skullcrush. As @Oleis said in the announce post, this is for tweaks, and while I really wish Skullcrush was like a head-based BBT for Shapeshifters, I think solution 2 for it is small enough of a thing that it might be viable for them to put in, same with Throatrip.

Reux

Kelliara said:

We still have RETURN and ENDURANCE. And if you want to move swiftly over water, you can just get a waterwalking enchant. Which will let you dash like normal over water.

Waterwalking and mounted fording restrict different things though. I think waterwalking prevents dashing while you're on open water, or tumbling/leaping, or... w/e. Something is disabled. Being mounted and using the mounted version of these abilities doesn't have these restrictions. I have to retest for it.

Rashar

If I'm not mistaken, that is also the only difference between the paltry gold enchantment and the 250 credit artifact.

Xenia

Reux said:

Kelliara said:

We still have RETURN and ENDURANCE. And if you want to move swiftly over water, you can just get a waterwalking enchant. Which will let you dash like normal over water.

Waterwalking and mounted fording restrict different things though. I think waterwalking prevents dashing while you're on open water, or tumbling/leaping, or... w/e. Something is disabled. Being mounted and using the mounted version of these abilities doesn't have these restrictions. I have to retest for it.

In general I prefer to remain on my feet than use mounts, and as such, rely heavily on the waterwalking enchantments purchased with gold. I've yet to have an issue leaping out of combat while on water, assuming the other conditions are met (being outdoors, etc). I think that you get the same benefits mounted or with the waterwalking enchantment! However, this may be that such restrictions are removed in lessers and I do not fight enough over water in normal circumstances?