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New Templar Skill Ideas
For context before I post these, during a previous round of classleads, a comment was put in which Keroc, I presume, said that Templars have less skills all around than what they would like. I followed up with him directly some time later, which up to this point I only discussed as well with Benedicto and Stine. I thought, okay, he thinks we need more skills instead of just continuing to buff/nerf the ones we have. He also exchanged messages with me and said he would consider any ideas I had, or at least accept them. So, I had a group DM with Benedicto and Stine for awhile, since at the time we were basically the three people with any regularity of using Templar in PVP. Benedicto seemed to like these ideas, Stine seemed a little skeptical, I believe due to some of them making us more predictable. In any case, I'm just going to paste them here now, because they apparently didn't make the cut, because I never got any kind of response whatsoever after emailing them to Keroc. Which is 100% fine, but I just thought it'd be interesting to see what you all think, because I think the main idea, Unit Command, that I had for Battlefury could even just be made like, a normal skillset for everyone, and maybe have the two Knight guilds get bonuses to it.
Or maybe you all will just troll me or whatever, who knows. In either case, I hope someone finds them as interesting as I did in my own head. Ideas like this are obviously malleable, and I never thought they were necessarily complete, or written in stone, but were just kinda the general thing of what I thought would be cool, flavorwise, and even mechanically, to add to the class. Lastly, this is verbatim from the notepad file I had, including notes.
Or maybe you all will just troll me or whatever, who knows. In either case, I hope someone finds them as interesting as I did in my own head. Ideas like this are obviously malleable, and I never thought they were necessarily complete, or written in stone, but were just kinda the general thing of what I thought would be cool, flavorwise, and even mechanically, to add to the class. Lastly, this is verbatim from the notepad file I had, including notes.
Battlefury Additions
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You can perform the following abilities pertaining to unit command:
Command Take command of a unit.
Formations Instruct your unit to take a specific formation.
Coherency Rally your unit to stick together.
Inspire Show them what a born leader looks like.
Command (Battlefury)
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Syntax: COMMAND CREATE UNIT (Initially create a unit with the given name)
COMMAND DISSOLVE UNIT (Deletes unit)
COMMAND INVITE
COMMAND ASSIGN TO (Commander, Sergeant, Soldier)
Your experience in battle tactics allows you to create your own unit, and become the Commander. Units must have a minimum of three members, and a maximum of five. Units may be commanded as one, or individually to do various actions, as described below.
COMMAND UNIT TO SHOOT (Commands the unit to shoot arrows as one, provided they are capable of doing so)
COMMAND UNIT TO STRIKE (Commands the unit to strike as one, dealing damage to a target based on their average damage)
COMMAND UNIT TO DEFEND (channeled ability to drastically increase all resistances for entire unit)
COMMAND UNIT TO BLOCK (whole unit only able to block a direction as if they were one person)
COMMAND UNIT TO BARGE (Allows unit to use Barge, requires them all to have it in Battlefury)
COMMAND UNIT TO CHARGE (Whole unit charges in the direction, striking a person at random in the room based on the number of people in the unit, and continuing on in the chosen direction if it exists, similar to barge, but without moving the target. Only usable by Cavalry Formation.)
Additionally, units have a coherency value, that when it reaches zero, they will disperse and have a short time before they may be rallied to become a unit once more. This coherency value can be attacked by using the fear affliction on any unit member, or upon anyone in the unit dying.
Note: Only Commander can use Formations, Coherency, or Inspire. Sergent can use Command abilities when Commander dies, but nothing else. If Commander and Sergeant both die, the unit dissolves automatically.
Formations (Battlefury)
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Syntax: COMMAND FORMATION
Your further experience in battle tactics allows you to command your unit to take a formation. Formations give various tactical advantages, and disadvantages. Choose wisely, Commander.
General thought/idea: Phalanx Beats Archer
Archer Beats Cavalry
Calvary Beats Phalanx
Phalanx: Entire unit shares the Commander's cutting and blunt audit, while also increasing it by a scaling percentage based on number of unit members. Requires whole unit to be wielding a shield. Additional resistance against arrows.
Archer: Entire unit gains the ability to shoot arrows area wide using longbows only, if they have the ability available to them in Weaponry. Unable to be BARGED or CHARGED.
Cavalry: Entire unit may be commanded to BARGE someone at once, bypassing density defense, and causing anyone following them to be pushed as well. Requires whole unit to be mounted, and have the Barge ability. When BARGING a Phalanx unit, causes Command Unit to Defend to go on a cooldown for Phalanx unit. Also allows use of COMMAND UNIT TO CHARGE.
Coherency (Battlefury)
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This ability is passive.
Your life long experiences as a leader have given you the ability to convince your troops to fight on when they would be demoralized. Your presence as Commander of a Unit allows the Unit to resist being dispersed due to the fear affliction. (Sets coherency value to minimum, if it would break due to damage to fear affliction, or perhaps has a chance to).
Inspire (Battlefury)
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This ability is passive.
You are an inspiration, and a born leader. If you are the Commander of a Unit and gain the killing blow on an enemy, your troops will gain the inspirited defence. The inspirited defence lasts for ten seconds and gives the unit a regenerative effect, scaling with the amount of people that have struck the unit recently.
Additionally, any Aura you use from Righteousness will be shared by your unit.
Notes and ideas:
Could have this be in both Savagery and Battlefury so that each militaristic guild has it
Could have this be its own skillset that anyone can learn, but have Templars and Carnifex gain bonuses or unique abilities geared towards it
Open to changing the specifics, and adding more formations, or what have you.
For Templars specifically, perhaps Inspire can also allow you to share your Aura with the entire Unit.
This system would be similar to Packs. Up to including UNITWHO(or UW), UNITTALK(or UT), etc.
Righteousness Additions
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Emanate Emanate one of your blessings to cleanse the wicked.
Twisting Twist an aura of ylem to enact harm to your enemies.
Emanate (Righteousness)
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Syntax: AURA EMANATE
This ability will consume one of your blessings at random to afflict your target or deal damage to them.
Accuracy: clumsiness
Protection: sensitivity
Healing: exhausted
Purity: moderate magic damage
Justice: justice
Pestilence: loki
Spellbane: mental_fatigue
Cleansing: addiction
Meditation: lethargy
Redemption: moderate spirit damage
Note: Would be usable off balance like Absorb in Righteousness.
Additional Notes: This is how me and Benedicto would like to see this skill go, but Stine has concerns that it will raise the predictability of Templars and cause people to be more likely to restart the fights, below is his idea:
"As for the aura portion, what if we had a way to alter the affs given through pestilence via which auras we had up?"
Twisting (Righteousness)
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SYNTAX: AURA TWIST
Twist the aura of your foe, dealing spiritual damage to their very soul. Can be used from adjacent room. Can only target someone with an aura of ylem.
Note: Deals spirit type damage.
Bladefire Additions
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Malice Turn their aggression against their allies.
Searing Sear the flesh, cleanse the soul.
Malice (Bladefire)
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Syntax: BLADE RELEASE [] MALICE
Be releasing charged energy, you create a pulsing malice that harms your target and anyone you don't consider an ally with various afflictions. This scales duration with amount of blade charge spent.
One-handed weapons pulse twice as fast as two handed weapons.
Afflictions include: TBD
Note: Sort of like a limited version of Vocalizing, but with duration scaling to blade charge consumed, and tick speed that depends on one handed or two handed.
Searing (Bladefire)
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Empower effect.
A weapon empowered with searing will cause a small amount of fire damage and afflict the target with blisters if they do not have it.
Note: Allows Templar to synergize with Zealots but also push the bleeding route that they currently possess.
Childhood's over the moment you know you're gonna die.
1
Comments
So you want some sort of PVE function for a War system that doesn't exist? Because that's the only capacity in which this would be remotely acceptable. Especially considering the fact that you want to give a -scaling- regen ability ON TOP OF your already plenty amount of regen abilities. Unless it's ONLY for PVE, then no. This would be a bad implementation.
Uh... just no. All of those afflictions are top rated afflictions that people use to get ahead. Templars can already utilize Pestilence and Mirror on top of their 2.2 DSK speeds. Giving them passive clumsi/sensi/exhausted/addiction/lethargy would set them far over the top in a class that is already really powerful. So just no.
You can have this when Shadow side can also get an ability to cause damage from an adjacent room. Maybe through Praenomen.... but I don't ever see that happening. So no... especially not when we have this teacup firelash meta going on.
This is a straight up, hell no. That would just mean you can burst your blade energy and start doing AOE wipes about as effectively as an Ascendril or Sciomancer can when they use Prism+ Fireball or when they drop their Calamity/Singularity. You don't need more passive AOE damage.
Again, no. Zealots don't need help synergizing because they are a limb class that covers limb breaks with fire abilities. Additionally, blisters only means you do even -more- damage because everyone has to use bal/eq to use any skill. So not only do you hit them, the Zealot hits them, the target also hurts themselves because they have to fight back or just die.
Ultimately, none of these changes would be balanced -at all- and would only cause an already powerful class to be even more absurdly powerful. I read the same report you did in where Benedicto claimed that the skills are lackluster. However, I think you have a very skewed perception of lackluster. Especially when there are skillsets out there that have even less usage than any skillset in Templar. Sanguis, comes to mind.
c'mon, don't try and call out an item being used by one side of the game occasionally as something only that side has when there is 0 reason that the other side of the game couldn't be using it.
Sentinel's also have broader access to archery and are tether specific, while Syssin are not. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if Powershot is basically the same as Hammer Throw. A better comparison for Syssin is Syssin vs Monk, since the classes are neutral but the guilds are tether based. And I think most people appreciate Telepathy over Syssin bows.
I won't list out responses like Rhyot but will make a more general consideration. I assume the report being referenced in the beginning of the thread is report 2778, where the decision mentions "filling up their pitifully small skillsets" when referring to the Templar class. It's not too hard to do 'ab battlefury', 'ab bladefire', and 'ab righteousness' and see the the total number of abilities are pretty low. 30 abilities seems pretty normal, although some skillsets get into the 40s. Battlefury at 29 isn't doing too bad, but add in Bladefire at 26 and Righteousness at 24 and you have three skillsets with a low number of abilities.
Now, whether you think Templar are OP or UP, I would bet K would say they are somewhere around relatively balanced. With that being said, adding in new abilities will automatically make the class better (assuming they aren't just flavor skills). Even small things like adding a new 10% resist will still 'make the class better'.
This means that tossing a bunch of new abilities at the class will likely end up tipping it into OP territory, even if it is considered slightly underpowered currently. And considering the decisions of reports like 2934 and 2840, it might be hard to get anything group fight oriented put in, like the twisting and malice suggestions.
My suggestion would be to do things like reducing the value of ability x and adding some of that value into new ability z. Or simply spreading out some of the value of a singular good ability by splitting it up into two new abilities.
One example might be doing something like not allowing emanate to be used if you have the pestilence aura up, essentially requiring you to decide between eating auras for specific affs or having constant passive affs running. You gain value with emanate but lose the value of pestilence.
I would also probably refrain from creating big totally new mechanics like the unit stuff in the beginning, keeping new abilities/mechanics as basic as possible since you're probably unlikely to get massive changes/new stuff worked on any time soon.
As a side note, it took real life years to get breeding to actually allow Carni to access all the traits/abilities the hounds have somewhat easily, and that was after the class had gone through a couple fairly large revamps (once being hilariously underpowered and the other hilariously overpowered). Major changes were requested but in the end there were a few basic tweaks made to some skills/the breeding mechanic as a whole, and it also came with a pretty big nerf/redesign of what hounds can do (wHich i GuESS maDe tHE ClASs NOt bE aN aFF claSS AnymOre).
In other words.. idk good luck. Templar seem to have some decent things they can do, so I would bet there would need to be some give and take when it comes to making new abilities vs just tossing new stuff into the class.
Because of singularity and there being no spirit equivalent of it at the moment, shadow has a bit of an advantage in the ranged game because ALL ranged attacks you throw at us are going to get through while only some of ours can. All that aside, I'm not sure templar SHOULD have much in the way of ranged anyway. It's not the direction I'd want the class to go in personally.
So, coming back after not playing for several years and seeing my beautiful Templar nerfed significantly (Rupture, woe..how I loved thee), I get why, and it does feel crippled comparatively, considering the flavor/theme of the class was 'weaponmaster' and these days feels a bit lackluster in that regard.
That being said - I appreciate the work you put into coming up with these ideas, I even commented on the Bene's report this round with my take on it coming from what I saw of OG templar, etc, and comparing to these days. I'm no SECT player right now, but I love theory crafting attack stuff, so seeing new ideas is great! So if I'm off base with current things, bear with me, it's been literal YEARS since I was heavy PK in templar, but I know what it used to do, and looking at tables now I can see where the lackluster feel is.
But - Please no NPC/War mechanic stuff, that..no. Old War System was bad, this feels like that, and just, please no.
I think what may be more needed is some synergizing of bladefire abilities a bit more, especially the far less used/silly ones (flare? How often are we using this, really? Especially with..hide change..hah) to manipulate cure orders, or something along the lines of improving weapon charge..etc. Templar gets the advantage at a reduction to damage to afflict as one of the fastest (but boy do I miss 1.89s days) classes out there. I know hemorrhage bleed is a thing, just speaking overall with 178+ blades. The problem is we can be stalled out if the opponent is paying attention enough and momentum can be knocked readily, especially if you get to the point to vorpal - blow your weapon charge, only for it to be stalled out and start all over again. Even before the nerf wave, I found this somewhat annoying and preferred the limbs route myself. Granted there SHOULD be a give and take, we shouldn't be able to just be 'Approx in 30 seconds you ded Rhyot, haha'. I would much prefer more options in the killing route, we used to have..a lot.
In fact, the synergy that Carnifex have with Hammer > Polearm I love that, and if there was something akin to that with Templar, go blunt, switch to blades, to get somewhere I think that'd be really interesting, or maybe a particular route that focuses on a dual-wield scenario (left-hand blade, right-hand mace) or something. Again spitballing a little. With an emphasis on the power abilities working a bit more together to get a kill path. Empowerment: Dumbing: 'This empowerment is enabled when the aconite venom is applied, can only be dealt by a blunt weapon' Gives: idiocy (I've been Lycan lately, bear with me. *pun*). Dualstrike Xavin with Aconite/Dumbing combo, aconite hitting first, thus allowing dumbing to 'empower'. Using these affs as placeholders as an example.
So this would force some sacrifice on the Templar's end as far as Mastery bonuses because you can only have one, so wielding a blunt and a blade means you have to make a choice of course, then utilizing them in such a way to push a particular cure order stack for either a standard lock to achieve cleave/voyria/or hide Retri affs in, depending on your target's class and curing abilities.
With this in mind, Battlefury could use some love:
Ability: Templar Zealotry: At the cost of significant damage output and increase in damage received, your trauma empowerments will deal slightly more limb damage - this affects Rupture damage output as well. (i.e. sort of a Berserk to wail, but it's risky bisky). Drains WP. (Because Templar just LOVE WP drain.)
Ability : Weaponmastry: (Trans) - You have trained enough with various weapon types you feel comfortable with the following that you have gained proficiency with them passively:
Mace, Longsword, Flail, Battleaxe, (adjust as needed, but this would go in hand with the dual-wielding bit for those not having to invest in proficiency lessons or have the iron coin artifact) - Or maybe just gain a 2nd mastery slot for the purpose of proficiency ONLY (not a mastery bonus stack)
It would also be nice to have more viable options with 2-handers, but without just copy/pasta of Carnifex, since that has definitely become their flavor theme, so maybe just focusing more on the one-handers instead.
Righteousness:
- I've had reports on changes to auras years ago, Bene has too from what I gather, so not certain how much would be worth investing here. It would be nice, admittedly if we could lock pestilence to a specific aff (i.e. like howls - again, I go bark bark lately), but instead of at absorb cost as mentioned, perhaps it just floats on the same tick timer as pestilence currently is. Or alternatively (or in addition to) maybe look into changing the pool of affs pestilence gives instead, with a sort of 'order of operation' if target has X already, pestilence gives Y, etc. This would let it be less 'boom boom now' and more, work around that timer to your advantage to get ahead of curing.
I could stream of consciousness more on this, but I imagine my blabbering has made anyone reading this roll their eyes and run screaming. So, take my take with a grain of salt as someone relatively newly back, but I was pretty heavy into Templar Attack routines and theories before I stopped playing, and did many many reports/liaisons back in the day - the key being not to just buff the heck out of something because X feels bad. I'm also super tired, so if I stumbled incoherently or incorrect on something above, feel free to let me know.
to wit, i've plugged my carnifex tricks into my templar routes and found that they work -better- for y'all than they do for fex. the class is unbelievably linear and thus extremely hard to tweak without destroying it or making it unbearably strong. you need a revamp, maybe a soft revamp, with a healthy helping of jank like fex so you can be flavorful AND be tweaked.
Because of singularity and there being no spirit equivalent of it at the moment, shadow has a bit of an advantage in the ranged game because ALL ranged attacks you throw at us are going to get through while only some of ours can. All that aside, I'm not sure templar SHOULD have much in the way of ranged anyway. It's not the direction I'd want the class to go in personally.
Uh... None of our ranged attacks work through singularity. Hammer throw, bonedagger, tarot meteors, sniping. None of those, not a single one.
What I mean is something akin to to get 'Insta kill StabbySmash': You have to hit with blunt things and venom things, or even just have Retri be a bit more flexible along the same lines (without making it super easy, of course. I.e. Requires aff1, aff2, aff3, aff4, aff5, but affs 3 and 4 could be bluntaff1 bluntaff2) - Just to mix it up a little (again, spitballing.)
Imagine DSK/Vorpal/Emanate. Four afflictions all at once. Even if it consumes an active Blessing, that's way too much. You could hold onto your Accuracy Aura/Blessing until you stuck asthma, then do the above combo to give Clumsiness/Stupidity/slickness/anorexia all at once.
Then on the next hit you Emanate Spellbane to give mental fatigue. Fight's over. You can force people to blow their active cure easily enough in a fight, so doing this combo as a follow up is just too easy.
I'd argue it's even easier than Carnifex pre revamp, when you could optimize Growl Stupidity and then asthma/slickness/implant anorexia for the re lock.
EDIT: Even better, once the target has asthma, dsk slickness/anorexia and vorpal stupidity and Emanate mental fatigue. Non fitness classes are dead, especially with how fast dsk is all on its own. Spirit side gets Fireball, Firelash, Discharge, Psi Lance, and probably something else I'm forgetting. Singularity doesn't eat any of those.
From grappling and wrestling to jousting and falconry. These thematic staples of the classes past iterations were always cool to me and I think they could be expanded upon in some way as an RP badge of honor the two guilds can squabble over.
Could be as simple as tandem riding on mounts and providing small celerity bonuses to 1 other person or doing things like 'dirty fighting' vs 'fencing techniques' or whatever that Fex and Templars can do to one another for small bonuses:
Mjoll challenges Rijetta to a wrestling match. Do a mini-game and winner gets +50 HP for the next 5 minutes. If against a 'rival class' up the reward to +100 HP prideful bonus to the winner.
Benedicto challenges Mjoll to a joust. Give Fex some dirty tricks with hounds or something while Templars get some RP flavor horse riding thing.
Bring back the falconry scouting mechanics and expand that into a minigame for the two classes. Introduce horse/mount breeding into the game and give the Fex and Templar something around that maybe. Flesh out horsemanship skills more so it's RP orientated with Templars and or Fex. Things like that could beef out the Templar skillset without actually affecting their PvP stuff too much if at all.
Okay, hear me out...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ufhLWo5qHeI7Xh6tJTOYhLBgH6kjoJ6DEIGI7h4tlVM/
(WIP)