Sanguis ideas

Nalor

Ezalor said:

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

Its nothing to do with that personally.. Its to do with when the statpacks was redone vamp went from 3.22 wise (eq enhancement) to 3.48 .. thats a big drop in aff rate. (thats without eq crown)

Also most prae people use the same affs as you would as Bloodborn/Ritous where it is completely different affs you should really be using.

Ashmer

It has a lot to do with the paralysis > paresis change. Before, you could potentially cure asthma before paralysis, but your offense had to potentially stop for a round to do it. Now, you can almost always, except for a very small (like less than a second) window, cure asthma before paresis without any penalty. Without any way to stack kelp, Praenomen have no viable way to lock someone except against someone who ALWAYS cures paresis before asthma - leaving damage the only route open to them.

Compound onto this that the class' damage is subject to weapon stats and strength very heavily, because it relies on Weaponry, and you have this solid start and overpowered finish with artifacts that makes it very, very hard to balance. Praenomen do have Swordplay now, but there's no viable kill route to be had with a one-handed weapon above mid-low tier: sustained damage is your go-to pressure route. (I say mid-low tier because this is very subject to curing orders. If you have a vulnerable curing order, you're going to die to a savvy Praenomen. If you have the correct curing order, you'll never die except to the sustained damage - which is very high, especially with artifacts.)

For @Ezalor's idea: this is awesome as a start. I really don't like the effects the different afflictions have, because it just boosts damage route capability, and the flavor is kind of meh, but I love the instakill.

What if one "blood seal" (let's call the stacked affs) made it so you COULD Feed with fangbarrier on the target, or periodically stripped fangbarrier a la Soulchill stripping insulation.

Other ideas for "seal" effects AFTER being 'embraced' or 'triggered' or 'anointed' or whatever the ability is:
Occasionally (like every 15s) afflict the person with an anxiety, making the other seals easier to land.
Give the person a delayed movement effect getting away from the vampire.
Give the person bloodlust after the seal's been stuck for 30s or more.
Make the person more susceptible to blunt damage.
Make paresis on the person tick more quickly to paralysis (2s instead of 4).

Etc etc, but only three or four seals - also, one idea would be to have the seals have a very minor effect on their own, and then have the trigger ability make the seals more permanent and increase the effect.

Like, what if when you initially put the seal on the target, it was curable (but stackable) by an herb, but then once you've done Anoint or Seal or Embrace, it makes the seal permanent. It would give the vampire the choice between hitting one seal and then sticking it to the person, or trying to build multiple seals and sticking them all at once - hopefully that makes sense. I'll write a pastebin proposal about it tonight.

Also, the flavor could be like "blood seals" that are putting the living person through the same process the vampire would put a corpse through to create a minion, breaking their body down. When they were ready, they could Feed for an insta-kill, draining the target of all their blood.

Ezalor

Speed has nothing to do with it. You could put Prae back at 2.96s slash/dwhisper and they still wouldn't be able to lock anyone curing properly.

Moirean

Obyn said:

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.

You misread what I wrote. I was saying we should be able to feed [on people] regardless of what class we are in, like we [already] can with corpses. Sorry that wasn't super clear.

I then said that if feed changed into a cleave-like finisher, I could see a RP-ish skill being given to all vamps to let us nibble on people, just for flavor (ha pun).

Malok

You know, the more I think about it the more I wish that if you're going to move Embrace from Sanguis to Corpus, you should probably condense all the Sanguis stuff regarding interacting with progeny into something to put into Corpus, let people with Hematurgy have it too, then just completely redo Sanguis, to be honest.

That would probably require more work than anyone is willing to give it though, I would imagine. I guess we will have to start small.

Erzsebet

Eh. I think Sanguis should have all the things, including embrace. Think they should've just altered the hematurgy ritual to not require the shard.

Aldric

I kinda disagree there, personally @Erzsebet. If I'm not getting this mixed up (it tends to happen okay) the abilities in Sanguis that pertain to your childer (vision, will, beckon, etc.) are done via the blood. Your childer have your blood in them, and as a vamp you have better(?) control over your blood. It doesn't make much sense that when you switch into Rituos path, for example, (hi, blood mages that are pros with all things blood) you suddenly lose the ability to manipulate that kind of thing.

Sanguis as a skill that's all about reconfiguring corpses into things like wraiths, skeletons, etc. makes sense from a broad standpoint since hey, that Xoran you just turned into a wraith a few seconds ago wasn't even close to being one then! But losing the abilities that allow you to interact with your childer in a unique way doesn't really make much sense from a thematic standpoint, or an RP one when you switch paths.

Personally, I think those abilities that have to do with interaction between sire and childe should be moved over to corpus (since Sire and Embrace were too), and Sanguis could receive a few more abilities to replace them that generally play along the same theme of manipulating corpses and whatnot just so that it isn't sitting as an empty skillset.

Draiman

Could just make them not tied to either, and say that after x amount of lessons are spent in the Prae class, regardless of how, bam you have the sire/progeny skills. Could make it like the apprentice restriction and be virt in x2 skills or w/e it is.

Malok

This is actually exactly what I was suggesting, @Aldric. Although I think Draiman's idea is just as interesting and also a good solution. There's just too much chaff with the wheat in Sanguis. Give us some new, useful stuff, instead of like 8 bazillion year old skills that haven't changed since the game opened. The 'Vampire Rework on Aetolia! Big Changes!' thing on Facebook is what made me try to play again, and I read the announce post and I'm just like...wat. I type AB SANGUIS and the only thing I got reworked was Embrace taken away and some free weapon proficiency I didn't even need. Blah.

Ashmer

Malok said:

This is actually exactly what I was suggesting, @Aldric. Although I think Draiman's idea is just as interesting and also a good solution. There's just too much chaff with the wheat in Sanguis. Give us some new, useful stuff, instead of like 8 bazillion year old skills that haven't changed since the game opened. The 'Vampire Rework on Aetolia! Big Changes!' thing on Facebook is what made me try to play again, and I read the announce post and I'm just like...wat. I type AB SANGUIS and the only thing I got reworked was Embrace taken away and some free weapon proficiency I didn't even need. Blah.

But we got you anyway, and admit it: you're having fun.

Oleis

And to be fair, an entire class for free is not small fries. Especially in IRE.

Obyn

That's the thing. What the current vampire changes amount to is an entire free class. Remember, prior to this change you would have had to invest in corpus and mentis twice if you held both bloodborn and praenomen. So in effect you get two free trans skills when you transcend corpus and mentis, plus what amounts to a free class slot.

Jensen

While that's all well and good, and I understand where the value is; free or not, if its not a class you want to play then to you it holds no value. Malok wants to play Praenomen, and upselling bloodborn no matter the perks will not help him.

Malok

I do see the value in having a free class. It's a really cool idea and a really neat revamp. I do still prefer Sanguis though, because for me it's way easier to understand, and I've always considered it the purer form of being a Vampire on Aetolia. I appreciate very much the love put into the revamp, though. I will admit that it's useful to be able to switch and do the one or two things that I could find Hematurgy useful for.

My ultimate point is that I wish Sanguis was as useful as Hematurgy.

Riluo

Honestly, we got a free class slot what is there to be upset about?

In terms of sanguis it is a bit of a old school skill set. It requires a few tweaks for certain including perhaps dropping a few of the minions in favour of reworking them with a skill that you can blue print onto a single minion. For example:

ab sanguis blood puppet (dumb name I know!!)

Resurrect a creature to serve you through you blood link.

• Summon (minion)
  - return your minion to your side
  
• Perform resurrection (minion) (type) (ghoul|ghast)
  
• Augment (minion) customise its appearance
  
• Imprint (minion) (skill 1) (skill 2)
  This skill will at set periods unleash one of the following random attack on a 15 sec timer, outside of its standard attack.
  - Numb: cause paresis and weariness
  - Shred: your minion claws into its prey causing moderate bleeding and cutting damage
  - Ravage: Its hunger for life drives it to grapple a target latching on to their exposed flesh and infecting them with its diseased bite causing vomiting and haemophilia.
  - Decay: Your minions hatred of the living causes it to bellow with rage its decaying breath striping fang barrier
  

Its very rough I know but what if you could do this kind of thing to make the minion more versatile and dynamic. You could store two separate imprints and imprint after raising your minion?

Saervok

That seems like it would turn into the vampiric equivalent of animation. Which to be honest, would actually be pretty cool. Allowing each person to develop a minion towards their own personal play styles.

Erzsebet

@Aldric Sire/Embrace is what -creates- the bond that you can control. It makes perfect sense to be in Sanguis. And it makes perfect sense for the BB/Rituos to be able to do it, too, since they've always had a way to do it in the past.

Tbh, my biggest complaint here, is that embrace is the biggest reason non-PK people put lessons into the skill, and a lot of people did so over corpus because they'd rather be able to Sire/Embrace than have the utility of corpus, and now they have trans sanguis, which is completely useless for what they wanted it for, and no ability to embrace because they didn't/don't have the lessons to transcend both.

Jensen

I would call them purist rpers, because even hunters go for both.

Erzsebet

Not if they don't have the lessons. The people I'm talking about learned corpus til mend, for bashing utility, and then put everything else into sanguis for embrace.

Aishia

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Riluo

I am glad it was added to corpus, as it is the skillset we all require no matter what, so not transcending it seems odd, with skills like potence, purity and deathlink being key skills for pve and pvp, plus general utility of movement.

Now moving along.

Something that would be nice to see is more utility with weapon types for devastate and swordplay, currently 90% of people use two-handed weapons not one handed.

Other things I like are the concept of blood curses that have delayed affects as you implant them ending in a insta-feed kill.

Erzsebet

I have one alt that it hit in this way, but I was referring to other people that aren't me, yes.

Zsadist

Erzsebet said:

Not if they don't have the lessons. The people I'm talking about learned corpus til mend, for bashing utility, and then put everything else into sanguis for embrace.

Not to be mean Erzsebet, but I think this is a highly inaccurate statement to make. Anyone who only went to mend in Corpus obviously didn't ask about the upside to Potence. As for transcending Sanguis JUST FOR Embrace means they don't understand the benefits to transcending Corpus before Sanguis or are either an RPer alt. Plain and simple. I'm glad they moved Embrace to Corpus because now (as a bloodborn prae) I can embrace people just fine without having to go through many steps for rituals and blood.

Now, to get back on track, I like your idea @Riluo, but I feel that people would likely only stick with Numb/Ravage or Numb/Shred, so we're back at the same issue we are at now. I think Ezalor's and Ashmer's secondary addition idea would actually be a very good implementation to Praenomen kill route. However, I don't think it needs to be associated into feed, but something along the lines of blood. I mean, you poisoned their blood (in essence). I'm sure we can think of something that pertains to a blood kill instead of a feed kill.

Edit: My post came off as a little salty and insulting. Wasn't trying to mean it to be insulting, but thats how it was perceived. Ah well.

Jensen

It always annoys me to see people insult other people's positions and ideas rather than inform. It takes away the validity of your own argument and makes the other person less likely to come around to your reasoning. So lets not do that...

Draiman

I can't honestly speak for the people who make vampire characters today, but it wasn't all that uncommon for vampires to trans sanguis first to get embrace when I started. So yeah, what Erz is saying isn't all as crazy as you guys are saying. You're assuming I think, she's speaking from experience. I mean hell I even trans'd sanguis first

Jensen

I did on my first vampire too. Unfortunately though when you need to make necissary and unforeseen changes it will put some people at a temporary disadvantage

Zsadist

This was brought up as both good/bad idea during a conversation in one of the clans I'm in. But what about if Black bile was brought back as a means to try to lock someone. In all honestly, Black bile is no different to Wisp Anxieties giving baldness. Sure, it pops a clumsiness aff every few seconds, but so what? Anxiety pops a baldness aff roughly every 9s (unless I'm just lucky). Not only that, but clumsiness is one of those items that people have as a top priority cure. AND, in order to maximize a kelp stack, you would need to have IMPECCABLE timing AND make sure that fitness/blind has already been stripped. So, my question is, what is so inherently terribly OP about giving Praenomen back Black Bile?

Note: This is not a kill method change, but could be a way to allow Praenomen to have a lock route instead of just damage. A primary/secondary kill route should still be very well discussed. Reason being, every other class has multiple ways to kill someone, including Rituos Praenomen.

Arbre

I agree. It's the exact same thing I did. I had trans sanguis before anything else just because I wanted embrace. Moving it to corpus seems like a good thing to me. It does suck that it screws over some people who have sanguis transed just for embrace, but I suppose you can't really offer refunds of a single skillset like that.

Erzsebet

I also think that discounting the opinion people who learn skills based more on RP than PK is unfair. Are some of the people I mentioned primarily RPers? Most definitely. But these kinds of people comprise a decently sized portion of the Aetolian playerbase.

It also isn't a derailment of the topic. I think it should be moved back, frankly, because it makes absolutely zero sense to be a part of Corpus.

Ashmer

Aishia said:

Are you talking about your 1000 alts or actual separate people?

Let's really not do this ever, please.
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Honestly, an easy solution would be to move vampire-native skills (Embrace, Feed, Blood Will, Blood Beckon, Blood Vision and Masquerade) to something like if you have a certain combined number of lessons into all of your vampire skills it ticks them 'on.' That would mean that these people with trans Sanguis would still have access to it, and would mean that we can Embrace, Blood Will, and all of that stuff regardless of class (which would be really unicornsing cool.).

That's just a thought on a middle-way solution. but as far as the Corpus-Sanguis argument goes, sometimes the game changes in unforeseen ways, and you have to adjust. Everyone's only ever $20 away from (just about? I can't remember exactly where those lessons put you) tri-trans anyway, which isn't a huge investment, so any of these people could also just drop $10 on the game and be able to Embrace again, or use the Bound Level credits if they haven't bashed through to endgame yet. (Plus y'all just got a free class.)

Also, I said I would write a pastebin proposal for the stackable affs thing Ezalor wrote a pastebin about, but then I realized Ezalor already did that and that idea's hopefully going to be back on the table. I think it would be a FANTASTIC solution to all the Praenomen problems ever.