Sanguis ideas

Malok

Yeah, @Vorlus, I was hoping that would have been sorted out in the past 2 years that this thread has existed. I'm at the point anymore where I can see it's obvious that the Admin want Sanguis to be the 'pve' side of Praenomen combat and the 'pvp' skillset is Hematurgy. I'm fine with this idea..but if it's the case, can we at least talk about making it better/more interesting for that side of things? I mean, as it stands, Affinity, even just as the one skill in the entire skillset that is useful in PVE is way more useful for PVE than anything in the rest of the skillset is for PVP.

Oleis

Malok said:

I'm at the point anymore where I can see it's obvious that the Admin want Sanguis to be the 'pve' side of Praenomen combat and the 'pvp' skillset is Hematurgy.

I don't really agree with that at all. While I've been around, we've made a few big strides in boosting Praenomen power and utility, but we only respond to the reports we get. I wouldn't ascribe a lack of compelling ideas on the part of the fighting playerbase to an administrative whim. It's just not something anyone has really focused on.

Jensen

@malok until recently prae was very beastly for pvp and sanguis was part of that. Not the meat like mentis is, but definitely part of pvp.

Malok

Oleis said:

I don't really agree with that at all. While I've been around, we've made a few big strides in boosting Praenomen power and utility, but we only respond to the reports we get. I wouldn't ascribe a lack of compelling ideas on the part of the fighting playerbase to an administrative whim. It's just not something anyone has really focused on.

Well, let us see if we can get some people to focus on it this time around, then. I know @Zsadist is trying it out himself now, and @Draiman has used it a lot in the past. General consensus is that it's just vastly inferior to Hematurgy for many reasons(which either weren't actually liason'ed in the past, or were and ignored). That's why I've necro'd this thread. I have quite a few ideas of how to improve it, and I will surely be jotting them down in preparation for Monday.

Jensen said:

@malok until recently prae was very beastly for pvp and sanguis was part of that. Not the meat like mentis is, but definitely part of pvp.

I find this really hard to believe given the vast advantages that Hematurgy has over Sanguis in PVP. Which is only natural, considering the skillset is only what, 3-4 years old and not 10? And has had way more liaison reports done to it and implemented.

Jensen

Until the paralysis change I was stomping on people with Praenomen. Really they just need a little work to have something other than a damage route to land kills and they'd be golden again. I'd imagine its tricky to fix though because of how many artis give them buffs... You either end up with underpowered vamps or the incredible hulk

Oleis

My post was meant to be encouragement, for what it's worth! I didn't want you to get discouraged by a perceived administrative bias one way or the other. We're interested in keeping Praenomen fun and useful.

For reference, though, Hematurgy was released in 2004. (Announce 187)

Vorlus

Sanguis used to be very good for pvp. It's only relatively recently since I've come back to playing Aetolia that I've noticed the minions aren't hitting as hard as they used to likely due to the increased level/power creep of the playerbase. They've always had pretty bad health however.

For PVP Sanguis has Swordplay, devastate, poison, curse, and the minion + associated skills.
Most of the other skills are RP skills between Vampires, defenses, and utility skills.

I don't think it would take much to make Sanguis more worthwhile for pvp.

1. Minions die incredibly easily and raising a new one mid combat is impractical. Increase HP or make minion unkillable.
2. Minions with random special attacks could be made more reliable. (Wraith, ghast, wight) Guaranteed to fire within a certain amount of time? Having to rely on RNG for that paresis tick/mana drain is frustrating.
3. Add specialised skills/commands for minions with various different effects and utility. BITE target, INTERCEPT target, SHRIEK target, for example.

The ghast was a mainstay for the Praenomen Vampire for a long time, and the paralysis/paresis nerf really reduced the hitting/hindering power of the class.

Malok

Oleis said:

My post was meant to be encouragement, for what it's worth! I didn't want you to get discouraged by a perceived administrative bias one way or the other. We're interested in keeping Praenomen fun and useful.

For reference, though, Hematurgy was released in 2004. (Announce 187)

Fair enough. I know your post was ment to be encouraging. You always do a good job at that, @Oleis. What needs to happen is to actually encourage the other players to look at it. There just needs to be an actual consensus as to what Sanguis is supposed to be trying to achieve to make it feasible yet different from Hematurgy. If it's a damage kill, the pets damage needs to go way up to compensate for how low it is vs how easy the minion is to kill. If it's a toxin lock, maybe we could have a skill for Sanguis at or near Transcendent that makes your whispers better to facilitate that(similar but not identical to the different tongues in Hematurgy). I still also think a lot of the fluff stuff for Embrace/Monitor/Will/Beckon etc could all be condensed into one skill to add more generally useful things to the skillset too.

I propose anyone interested in this topic post in this thread, so we can condense our ideas before this liaison ends.

Zsadist

Honestly, I think if vamps were supposed to be able to lock, we'd be given the ability to hit with 2 venoms instead of 1. As it is, you'll never lock with only a single venom use every 3.5s. However, I will likely have better enhancements/critiques to non-Ritous Praenomen after I PK with it for a few weeks, learn the class like I did Rituos.

However, based off the Sanguis skill, I do believe non-Rituos praenomen need some other sort of kill method besides just raw damage where its currently based at. Because you will NEVER outdamage someone with +3 con, lvl 3 sip bonus, lvl 3 enhancement, and random god blessings + random chocolate buffs + eggnog buffs + (insert more buffs here). Basically, artifacts + buffs > Prae damage. Now with liaisons opening up, I hope I can figure something out by then to say, "Add this!" but until I run with it, I will withhold my ideas.

Malok

Zsadist said:

However, based off the Sanguis skill, I do believe non-Rituos praenomen need some other sort of kill method besides just raw damage where its currently based at. Because you will NEVER outdamage someone with +3 con, lvl 3 sip bonus, lvl 3 enhancement, and random god blessings + random chocolate buffs + eggnog buffs + (insert more buffs here). Basically, artifacts + buffs > Prae damage. Now with liaisons opening up, I hope I can figure something out by then to say, "Add this!" but until I run with it, I will withhold my ideas.

I 100% agree with this post. Part of the problem is the enormous amount of damage reduction in Aetolia now compared to how it used to be when the Sanguis skillset was designed.

Jensen

Str 3 + lvl 3 rune + minion + biles/poison + vomiting + masochism will hurt anyone no matter their buffs. (Thanks Ez it really does work) if we're comparing top vs top for arties. The pain in the ass is few people have that and it's the only kill route.

Moirean

You guys should think up a way to augment the feed route, as it's a pretty nifty thing and kinda definitively vampiric. Maybe turn feed into a channeled insta, akin to wheel. Then you only need to focus on a soft, short-term lock and hindering to ensure you have the window for the kill.

Draiman

This started off as like one simple thing but turned into a giant rant. Enjoy.


Lim's report in Sanguis (I think) pretty much summed up Prae combat. Right now it's all about the damage, and it's either there or it isn't, all right from the get go. There's no build up and there's no defense outside of artifacts, and there's no way to beat the artifacts either (unless you have some yourself but I think the defensive ones win that trade). That's literally the only feasible thing to do. You can't get a feed off of paralysis (if you do then that is a major flaw with their curing, nothing to do with how good Prae is). Writhe attacks are no longer stackable, and I'd have to test that change but I think it means feeding off of mesmerize is out of the picture now too. We do not push salve balance at all and if we attempt to attack limbs we run a huge chance of nullifying the venom and the limb damage we're attempting to do with parry. That one mess up will give them time to pre-restore and kill all the momentum we were building while putting us behind in herb affs. Anyone who says any minion other than ghast is viable in 1v1 has never used the class or they fought someone with very poor curing.

I think some of the things that scare people away from allowing improvements for Prae (or make them think the class is fine) is things like the really good aff rate we have in conjunction with "scary" afflictions like Recklessness, Impatience, the delivery of Anorexia/Indifference in one attack with another lock venom, when the truth is you can -completely- ignore some of it vs. Prae. It's possible and easy to track your mana usage 100% vs. a Prae, so just sip health and then sip mana if you ever think it's getting low. We don't press mana damage and the only thing we have -to- pressure it is reducing the sip with impatience. Literally, just track your clotting, focus is 250 mana at trans suvival, 500 if you have indifference, renew is 500 mana, moss/kidney restores 10%, so just ignore recklessness and masochism and sip health every elixir balance. There is a few other afflictions you can easily ignore completely as well and focus on the actual dangerous ones, like the venoms, confusion, curse/poison, the things that are going to slow you down and stop you from killing us while the passive damage does its job. Prae are also effected by both lethargy and confusion type skills and they hit us harder than a lot of classes due to the nature of our attacks. We have a good aff rate but at a 3.22 eq time, so confusion/lethargy delays us much more than lethargy would delay a Templar or Sentinel. It's possible for Prae to use a much faster one handed weapon in an attempt to ignore lethargy but they sacrifice a large amount of damage for it, so I'm on the fence about whether it's worth it or not. Probably pretty feasible to just switch weapons based on whether you have it or not, idk. You can and should just ignore Impatience anyways. I mean if you get a chance to cure it sure, go for it. Ezalor stated it before but I'll state it again, the chances of you ever curing it are like 0.00002% though. That might be a huge thing for Rituos but for normal Prae I think it's probably a huge thing that's limiting us in ways to improve the class as well.


I no longer know if this has any relevance to the topic at hand, I just kind vomited a bunch of things out here. Sorry! /rant

Jensen

Feed an annihilate routes tickle my fancy

Moirean

How about this:

- Feed is shifted to a channeled insta, instead of damage
- If the target is mesmerized before you feed, there is some bonus to the feeding (eg unstoppable like reclaim or faster or whatnot)

Now there's a clear offensive route, with a mid-fight goal (mesmerizing them) that can transition into a kill. From here, balance out how to make mesmerize workable (maybe it already is, I dunno).

Jensen

While we are here, any idea why it was decided devastate would be small blades only? I know at the time of implementation most of us were using large blades. It's really only a coding thing to weapon swap for that round, but it still seems weird.

Malok

I agree with @Jensen on the small blades thing. Unless we intend to make the class more about affliction speed, it will continue to be more about damage, which means everyone will be using large blades, and it would be nice to be able to use both with Devastate. I also love the ideas that @Moirean wrote about, as one of my favorite things about Summoner in Imperian was that it had about 3 different ways to seal someone's fate(Instakill with Death Tarot, overwhelming damage from stacking meteor arrow/Star tarot shots, and permanent afflictions with Enlightenment). I think that adding a viable instakill route with Feed would be a great idea. Off to work I go! I hope to check and see more stuff in this thread throughout the night.

Jensen

@Draiman‌ I've been using a spear for speed up til my last break. It wasnt going well.

Draiman

@Jensen any one handed weapon is going to dish almost nothing for damage. For damage route you need a 2 handed weapon. I only mentioned using a 1h weapon in order to possibly ignore (or alleviate) lethargy. Sacrifice damage for to keep your aff rate the same, basically, until you can cure the lethargy.

Jensen

Aware on the damage thing, I meant I was using spear to try and not go damage. It didn't go anywhere.

Erzsebet

A lot of people use feed as an RP thing, rather than an in-combat thing. Just a note.

Still kinda grumbly that embrace got shifted to corpus--a lot of people had sanguis transed for it and neglected corpus to have it, and now they can't sire kidlets despite having been able to do so for in-game centturies.

Moirean

There really should be a people feed skill for vampires, imo, that you can use regardless of what class you are in, like you can with corpses. Either way it'd be easy enough to add in some fluff skill for RP.

Jensen

That ties into the vampire flavor abilities untied to skills thing we've been asking for

Ezalor

I don't know if I agree with that point @Oleis - I've submitted something for Praenomen in every single liaison round and they've all been either rejected or left uncommented. Part of it is some old misconceptions that Praenomen is somehow still a powerhouse great class, perhaps confusing their capabilities with Bloodborn. Even the simplest fix, still a nerf from old Prae, of making the ghast give weariness is rejected on the grounds of being "too strong" which IMO is absolutely ridiculous. I can understand if that's not exactly a compelling solution but it would have at least made the class playable for the last year while something better is thought up.

I've loved what you guys are doing but Praenomen really frustrates me since over the course of 1.5 years now I've tried every sort of report - changing up the ghast, changing up biles, suggesting new kill routes - and they either get ignored or just rejected. My latest idea is sitting in the liaison forums but has no feedback on it at all and the reports it was pasted on were also just passed over and ignored completely, no reject or accept or any comments.

For reference, if anyone wants to see the idea: http://pastebin.com/2aPfeSXL

I hope someone can come up with something that would get attention this round. For the record, to save your reports, don't bother with anything regarding making the minion viable, making yellowbile viable, or some sort of tweaks system like I pasted above since they have all been rejected multiple times already.

Sorry if I sound overly frustrated with this but I really am and I don't think it's at all fair to say people haven't tried to think up solutions when they actually are submitted and rejected/ignored every single round.

Oleis

You're right. I was only speaking from my direct experience, and that discounts a lot of things that I either wasn't involved in or wasn't yet informed enough to truly participate in. I wanted to dispel the notion that we were consciously making Sanguis Praenomen a PvE-focused class, and I did so in a way that was reductive to your efforts. My apologies.

Ezalor

Thanks for the reply. As I mentioned, I really couldn't be happier with 99% of the things you guys are doing up there in the Pools.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a terribly creative person and that's reflected in my ideas. It'd be nice to have some feedback and direction for where the Pools would like to see the class go so we have something to build on though.

Some of the frustration is that I feel partially responsible for the state of the class as well as I was one of the ones really in favour of the paralysis -> paresis change.

Draiman

Yeah I totally blame you 100%. I've been saying that since you told me about the paresis report. >.>

Malok

I don't really think its fair to lay the blame on just the player liaison. The admin can look at it and say no.

Jensen

I went Sentinel, Syssin, Prae. In that order. @Ezalor knocked them all down a peg in that order

Obyn

Moirean said:

There really should be a people feed skill for vampires, imo, that you can use regardless of what class you are in, like you can with corpses. Either way it'd be easy enough to add in some fluff skill for RP.

FYI vampires who are non in class -should- have access to feeding on corpses. If they do not, that's a bug. I personally do not see any circumstance where non-classed vampires will get anything similar to the actual feed skill.