Announce post #3096: Classleads April 2020 - part 3 (end)

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5/14/2020 at 7:21
Keroc, the Starborn
Everyone
Classleads April 2020 - part 3 (end)

Assassination
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- [2754] New skill: Stagger.
- [2754] Fangs skill placing has been swapped with Dash.

Apothecary
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- [2795] See Changelog post #2795.

Bladefire
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- [2778] Blade release powers can no longer be directed at anyone except the last person you hit.
* Blastwave is an exception due to it being an AoE skill.
- [2778] Striking a new target will also clear your blade charge.

Farming
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- [2768] Cows can now be milked, see the Rancher ability for details.
- [2768] Skinning has been moved into the Slaughter skill within Farming.

Sciomancy
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- [2765] Forgive cooldown lowered to 20 minutes, down from 4 hours.

Tekura
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- [2746] Removed the stun from Guarding.
* The message has been edited to reflect this, make sure you update your system.

Terramancy
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- [2810] New skill: Tomb.
- [2809] Steady can now remove magically flooded water.
- [2814] Earthenpass is now continent wide, but you must be underground.
* See the AB file for further details.

Toxicology
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- [2754] Sumac and Camus now only cost one venom sac to create, down from two.

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 21st of Haernos, in the year 487 MA.

Phoenecia

Yay! Cows have a use beyond just leather now. Just need to start adding stuff like eggs, wool, and milk to market orders and people might keep their livestock around.

Also, uh... Unless I've been using the command wrong or there's special tools needed, the FIELD MILK command doesn't seem to be working. 

Keroc

Phoenecia said:

Yay! Cows have a use beyond just leather now. Just need to start adding stuff like eggs, wool, and milk to market orders and people might keep their livestock around.

Also, uh... Unless I've been using the command wrong or there's special tools needed, the FIELD MILK command doesn't seem to be working. 

Whoops! Should be fixed now.

Iazamat

I'm really confused why Tomb was implemented, as it has no practical or utility use and will likely never see any play in any situation, niche or otherwise. Based on the AB, I'm assuming it gives cracked_ribs, which makes its use group-oriented rather than 1v1 (Tera have no way of capitalizing on cracked_ribs, outside of it being yet another salve aff). We cannot force someone to burrow, burrowing is not how people escape from pressure, and we can now cure while burrowed - it is quite literally a pointless skill. Help me understand why it was implemented and what situation you envisioned it being used in?

Aros

@Iazamat I envision a golem bonking someone on the head, burying them below ground and then TOMB.

Macavity

I do not understand this change: - [2814] Earthenpass is now continent wide, but you must be underground.

the AB states:

Syntax: EARTH MERGE
EARTH PASS
BURROW ABOVE

While buried within the earth, you may travel to your target anywhere on the continent after a short
delay. Should there be a monolith or should either of you stand in a non-earthen location, then the
delay will become somewhat longer.

Earthen environments include:
Mountains, hills, desert, natural underground, constructed underground, mines, lifeless sand,
caverns, craters, and canyons.


so if I am reading this correctly then you should be able to use earth merge then earth pass (target) in the environments? I sent a bug in about that as I was unable to and the bug response was:

Bug #14975 has been resolved with the following message:
It only works on places you can dig or bury yourself. If you could bury yourself in a cavern room
somewhere then you'd get the bonus speed.



maybe I new to environments but I am not aware of any location that you can burrow unless it is soft dirt. all the others I am not aware of being able to burrow.

I can see that if the teradrim was able to burrow underground then they would be able to use this skill continent wide, but if not, then area only.


can someone help me to understand this one? am I really way off here? thanks all

Benedicto

Iazamat said:

I'm really confused why Tomb was implemented, as it has no practical or utility use and will likely never see any play in any situation, niche or otherwise. Based on the AB, I'm assuming it gives cracked_ribs, which makes its use group-oriented rather than 1v1 (Tera have no way of capitalizing on cracked_ribs, outside of it being yet another salve aff). We cannot force someone to burrow, burrowing is not how people escape from pressure, and we can now cure while burrowed - it is quite literally a pointless skill. Help me understand why it was implemented and what situation you envisioned it being used in?

It's funny you should mention that. Just yesterday at a lesser, me and Xavin were both using burrow to escape an indoor room during a lesser. I appreciate that it's fairly niche use, but I suppose it does have some viability still?

Borminchia

Benedicto said:

It's funny you should mention that. Just yesterday at a lesser, me and Xavin were both using burrow to escape an indoor room during a lesser. I appreciate that it's fairly niche use, but I suppose it does have some viability still?

Eh, you're much better off digging someone who burrows out over using earth tomb. Wasting your balance on a tomb when they can just "burrow n" and effectively escape seems the worse option compared to digging them out so the rest of your team can hit them too. You can hope someone else digs them out instead, but things like that in team fights can be.. unreliable.

Tomb's damage comes in at somewhere around 2200/3.72s, which isn't bad, but is also pretty easy to keep up with through sip/anabiotic/regen (which can be done burrowed now). I suppose if there are multiple Teradrim there then it adds up, but again, dig them out so your whole team can hit seems to make more sense.

If this is supposed to punish people for burrowing in front of a Teradrim, then that's cool I guess. But it would have to do way more than what it currently does for me to not prefer digging someone out instead.

Benedicto

Borminchia said:

Benedicto said:

It's funny you should mention that. Just yesterday at a lesser, me and Xavin were both using burrow to escape an indoor room during a lesser. I appreciate that it's fairly niche use, but I suppose it does have some viability still?

Eh, you're much better off digging someone who burrows out over using earth tomb. Wasting your balance on a tomb when they can just "burrow n" and effectively escape seems the worse option compared to digging them out so the rest of your team can hit them too. You can hope someone else digs them out instead, but things like that in team fights can be.. unreliable.

Tomb's damage comes in at somewhere around 2200/3.72s, which isn't bad, but is also pretty easy to keep up with through sip/anabiotic/regen (which can be done burrowed now). I suppose if there are multiple Teradrim there then it adds up, but again, dig them out so your whole team can hit seems to make more sense.

If this is supposed to punish people for burrowing in front of a Teradrim, then that's cool I guess. But it would have to do way more than what it currently does for me to not prefer digging someone out instead.

Yeah that makes sense. I think that's what it feels like, in a similar way to how Zealot have that Psionics skill that knocks people out of the air if they fly in front of them, it's maybe something you make a decision on. If they're below x health then tomb, else dig type of thing?

Borminchia

Benedicto said:

Yeah that makes sense. I think that's what it feels like, in a similar way to how Zealot have that Psionics skill that knocks people out of the air if they fly in front of them, it's maybe something you make a decision on. If they're below x health then tomb, else dig type of thing?

If you're talking about Vacuum (I have nfc what zealot does), then the two abilities don't really compare. Vacuum looks like a tentacle tattoo with the benefit of breaking legs. Using Vacuum is a no brainer: If flying then vacuum.

You can't see someone's health when they burrow. And even if you have really good health tracking, they may be able to get above the 2k health threshold to make your tomb worthless. Digging them out causes them to lose balance and brings them back into the room. I value bringing someone into my room and knocking them off bal more than 2k damage, even if that 2k might kill them, since I assume my team should be able to do just as good a job if they really only have 2k health.

Also realistically if anyone is at <2k health they likely are too afflicted to burrow anyway.

Benedicto

Borminchia said:

Benedicto said:

Yeah that makes sense. I think that's what it feels like, in a similar way to how Zealot have that Psionics skill that knocks people out of the air if they fly in front of them, it's maybe something you make a decision on. If they're below x health then tomb, else dig type of thing?

If you're talking about Vacuum (I have nfc what zealot does), then the two abilities don't really compare. Vacuum looks like a tentacle tattoo with the benefit of breaking legs. Using Vacuum is a no brainer: If flying then vacuum.

You can't see someone's health when they burrow. And even if you have really good health tracking, they may be able to get above the 2k health threshold to make your tomb worthless. Digging them out causes them to lose balance and brings them back into the room. I value bringing someone into my room and knocking them off bal more than 2k damage, even if that 2k might kill them, since I assume my team should be able to do just as good a job if they really only have 2k health.

Also realistically if anyone is at <2k health they likely are too afflicted to burrow anyway.</p>

Oh I wasn't saying that they were the same. I just meant that they're supposed to be used in consideration of alternate skills such as just digging them up. It was probably a bad example, it was the first class specific skill that was to do with punishing someone for trying to escape.

In relating to their health, I was thinking you'd have a rough idea prior to them burrowing and if you had multiple Tera then it's a bit more feasible. What's the damage type on it, out of curiosity? Blunt, brute?

I can very much see your point however.

Borminchia

It's asphyxiation, magical. So it's based on Int, which most Teradrim ignore as a stat. Granted this means Teradrim with high Int can do more than the 2200ish that I've seen, which I guess would be neat if every Teradrim in the world didn't focus Strength. Keroc has been memeing Teradrim by making all of our damage Int based recently, which is starting to get a little annoying. Maybe if Earthenform was +1 to all stats (like it used to be...) to reinforce that Int is an important stat I'd be ok with it. But that's an entirely different discussion.

For me it comes down to this: "If burrowed then dig" is very straight forward. You bring them back into your room and knock them off balance.

For Tomb to really be worthwhile to use as a replacement to dig, it would have to be better than bringing them back into your room and knocking them off balance. Straight 2k damage, imo, is not better than bringing them into your room and knocking them off bal. There is one scenario where Tomb is better, which is when Tomb kills them because their health is low.

But then it becomes something like "if burrowed and you -think- they have <2k health but you can't actually check oh but maybe check for if you have like 3 Teradrim in the room so all of you can use earth tomb then tomb, else dig".

At which point I would say f that, I'm just going to dig, because my team should be able to finish them off anyway. It's not really worth the time to go off into all these fantastical scenarios and try to code them into a system when there's a simple, straightforward scenario that is just as viable, if not moreso.

Frankly this convo is pretty much the limit of how much I'll be thinking about Tomb. I won't be coding it in anywhere or using it manually, because dig > tomb. No idea why it exists, but it wouldn't be the first time (or 100th) that K has done something that leaves me scratching my head.

Don't get me wrong I love K and happily acknowledge all the work he's done for Aet. But there are definitely some bonkers decisions made every classlead round that make you wonder if he could use some alternative input from people who know Aet combat well.

Xavin

As for scaling on off-stats, there are several classes that have abilities that scale based on a tertiary stat.

Church

Borminchia said:

. Maybe if Earthenform was +1 to all stats (like it used to be...) to reinforce that Int is an important stat I'd be ok with it. But that's an entirely different discussion.

I can't think of a single other class in the game that can give themselves, through class skills, more than a total of +2 to stats at any given time - though +1 seems to be more standard. So, that seems to be the balancing point - I think it might be fair to ask that Teradrim be able to add optional arguments to their Earthen transformation to specify whether to boost strength or intelligence, though. Alternatively, the skill could just automatically boost int by default if the minor gold runemark is active or add one point each to the Teradrim's two highest stats (erf maek stronkr). Heyo, three solutions, file it right next to the request for aoe bury.