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Sciomancer Changelog
Sciomancers
Written by: Keroc, the Starborn
Date: Tuesday, August 31st, 2021
Addressed to: Everyone
It's pretty clear to me at this point that Sciomancer is looking quite difficult for other classes to deal with, so I'm going to try and tweak them inline with their theming to begin with, and see how we go. I'll be reviewing logs as needed, so feel free to leave me some if you'd like to.
Sciomancy
==============================
- Hew equilibrium recovery time increased to 2.4 seconds, up from 2.
- Repay now utilizes unmodified equilibrium when recently used.
- It is no longer possible to use SHADOWPRICE while you have weariness.
- Shadow debt forgiveness via timer now consumes some health when it recovers.
- Ruin equilibrium recovery time increased to 2.2, up from 2.
Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 15th of Khepary, in the year 497 MA.
I haven't quite tested it out fully yet, but as someone who has recently been working on Sciomancer offense, both 1v1 and groups, I do feel that against someone with good curing priorities, Sciomancers still take a good while to build up momentum before they are able to kill.
With non-Shadowpriced Hew being raised up to 2.4s, up from 2s, wouldn't it be more time-worthy if we instead opt to use the Hammer tattoo? What's the point of changing it then? With eq enhancement and eq crown, an artied non-Shadowpriced Hew costs me 2.06s but Hammer tattoo used in series will set it lower from 2s, to 1.5s to 1s etc.
What's the reasoning towards adding 400+ damage to passive Shadow debt forgiveness? Is it to give people the option to kill a Sciomancer through damage? Sciomancers already pretty fragile without the protection amulet and artie shield, because we can't wear armour and our only defense comes in the form of added resists from Shadow Mantle.
PvE wise, that's also going to make small Sciomancers hurt more when they're bashing, especially if they're using gloom/fever or gloom/blast to bash. I don't know how the damage from Shadow debt forgiveness scales but I feel like 400+ damage is quite an amount for something that we're passively waiting to be forgiven every 10s. *EDIT: Forgot to add. The damage cannot be mitigated. It's unblockable.
In my opinion, I feel like there are other ways that you can probably make Sciomancers more vulnerable to death.
What does everyone else think about the changes? Just me? I need to learn more?
Comments
From said outside perspective though, weariness blocking Shadowprice -seems- like it gives a form of offensive hindrance against a Scio that wasn't previously there beyond broken arms or full paralysis.
I'll give Almol a few dozen times with a few routes I have and see what I see otherwise. I am unsure if these nerfs are going to do much to slow down Almol unless you can get weariness stuck, but we'll see. Food for thought!
- Shadow debt forgiveness via timer now consumes some health when it recovers.
These two points specifically grind Sciomancer offense to a halt. You will have to balance around should I shadowprice for the afflictions and possibly put myself into danger while hoping I don't have weariness, or do I just pick another class to work on given how easily weariness is applied?
I'm shelving Sciomancer at this point before I was able to finish working on the offense because unless you're whaled out like Mazz, you won't be tanky enough to survive dealing with shadowprice ticks and even if you prioritize healing weariness over -anything- else you open yourself up to other manners of being killed. I'd be shocked if you see any Sciomancers at this point, including in group.
The math does not add up using this class over any other option at this point.
A class is balanced around its ability to use that resource with limitations, either of time or momentum. Giving an enemy the ability to block primary resource usage is bad, in my opinion. If shadowprice was optional for speeding up Sciomancer offense, this change would be fine, but it is a requirement for the offense to go anywhere.
Punishing the class for using its primary resource, as well, feels like a kick in the gut. It does make sense thematically, sure, but mechanically there was already a penalty for getting too greedy in having an eq knock+health via REPAY. Now, just attempting to use the class with its resource as you would use the resource of any class carries a penalty.
This doesn't honestly feel like a balanced change. It feels a bit knee-jerk in response to the fact that Sciomancer routing abuses default priorities. If something NEEDED to be changed, start with a tweak to the balance times, please, not a penalty for using the class' primary resource that makes a squishy class even squishier.
I also want to say this feels bad for me, personally. Sorry to everyone who likes Sciomancer.
I like PK, I like Sect. I saw for TWO WEEKS on webs and clans variations of 'Almol is going to get Sciomancer nerfed'. Why is this how we balance the game? It /feels/ like being punished for playing the game.
A few examples:
Bladecharge
Commune Boost
Soul/what ever the warden equivilent is
Devotion
Inner Spark
Essence
Bioessence
Sand
Fury
Kai
If it's not going to be a broad spectrum thing, it's not balance, it's a nerf, and a heavy one at that.
Given the nature of Sciomancer and how the class splits between two types of kills that are ineffective to use in group, removing the classes ability to 1v1 as well has put the class into a fairly unplayable position. Also given that most systems automatically shadowprice gloom while bashing, it is going to result, due to testing, in 1700 damage that you end up doing to yourself. Plus or minus based on math behind the number.
We've seen this attitude in the past for nearly every major class nerf due to overperformance. People quit Luminary despite it still being busted when shield skills were made dodgeable. People stopped playing Templar when dsk went from 2.09 to 2.19. People stopped playing Indorani when wheel was reworked, but it's still fine. People stopped playing Prae when they lost old indiff, but it's still fine.
Please just keep playing your class and provide more logs that demonstrate the issues with these changes, or discover that it isn't as bad as you thought it was.
Stopping playing the class accomplishes nothing.
Edit: quoting Alela:
"i'm just saying... it might've taken me (and/or you) a minute to figure out how to make it all workable again, but that doesn't mean it's actually wrecked"
Same can be said for PK. I'm going to take a hit of ~400 damage just for using shadowprice whether I cast repay or not, so I can't justify attempting to sort out an offense with a class that is already inherently susceptible to damage.
If you disagree with the changes, generate more data and try to make a well thought out point?
Hew is managable, use a shield tat because it's now faster and more reliable.
- Repay now utilizes unmodified equilibrium when recently used.
Repay is manageable unless you tried to do it every balance.
- It is no longer possible to use SHADOWPRICE while you have weariness.
Shadowprice being stopped by weariness is manageable because you can change priorities.
- Shadow debt forgiveness via timer now consumes some health when it recovers.
Taking damage, no matter what you do, negates the benefit of not casting repay and actively punishes you for using shadowprice, which, without it, you no longer have the affliction speed required to consume or voidtrap anyone.
- Ruin equilibrium recovery time increased to 2.2, up from 2.
Ruin change would need math sorted better but likely manageable but slows down kills.
Aside from the shadowprice change, any single one of these is manageable and allows a Sciomancer to continue to play without being punished for using their class resource. The reason that Almol was able to kill people as fast and effectively as he was, was due to the fact he would cast repay, almost every opportunity he had so that he always had multiple afflictions ready in the next cast to make up for the balance loss.
Shadowprice -always- causing damage on repayment of the debt, whether you use the repay skill or not, is by it's very nature, punishing the class for using it's class resource. It would be likened to using Soul Poison and taking 400 damage simply for applying an affect. Or taking an equivilent amount of damage based on time for any time you used a hound ability or similacrum ability.
*Edit: This is coming from someone who has been sorting the offense for about 6 months while attempting to avoid pricing on every opportunity because I knew it would result in some sort of nerf. Even putting in a 10-15 cooldown on repay would have been a viable alternative that would have required sorting the offense to a more refined point instead of getting slapped in the face for using a skill.
Secondly, shadowpriced gloom has always been quite essential to add to the DPS of a squishy Sciomancer dependent on crits to kill things. The fact that it adds ~200 more damage per eq cost really helps PvE bashing. I think it might have been a bit too narrow-minded to make a naturally restoring resource for a class deal unmitigated damage without keeping in mind how it would affect beyond PK.
Thirdly, I'm a learning Sciomancer and I understand my routes that I have to use to kill people. I haven't refined my offense enough to be confident it'll do anything like kill people in Sect with it, but I'm currently very much focused on its group PK applications. As a result, I can't comment on the changes to Ruin, but I can comment on the rest.
@Ardent, you mean a hard cooldown on Repay not being able to cast for 10-15s? "You cannot repay your shadow debt right now." Kind of thing?
I said I felt like I was being punished for spending a lot of time in Sect and winning a decent amount.
Ardent said he felt like passive debt repayment doing damage is punishing the class for using the resource, which it is.
- Hew equilibrium recovery time increased to 2.4 seconds, up from 2.
The class whose offense was already heavily susceptible to shield spamming now becomes even more susceptible to it. You're literally better off using Hammer tattoo. It was made even easier to spam shield against Sciomancer when they lost passive disturb.
- Repay now utilizes unmodified equilibrium when recently used.
See the above on shield spamming. Now they have one free eq shield strip every 10 seconds with Shadowpriced Hew, but this forces them to sacrifice their offense for it. I don't really understand the purpose of Repay taking health and debt being restored taking health. That's almost a base amount of sip being taken away by unblockable damage.
- It is no longer possible to use SHADOWPRICE while you have weariness.
Cool, so now Sciomancer is locked out of the major part of its offense entirely by an easily available affliction that is a standard part of venom-based offenses trying to bury asthma. They lost their ability to shrug venoms. Why is this necessary on top of it?
- Shadow debt forgiveness via timer now consumes some health when it recovers.
This one isn't a tremendous deal to me, but it merely makes the gulf between those who are heavily artifacted Sciomancers and those who aren't at all even wider, plus it has large ramifications for Sciomancer PvE, which is where that gulf is easily known and seen.
- Ruin equilibrium recovery time increased to 2.2, up from 2.
This is probably the worst change. Ruin is one affliction unless priced and the literal bread and butter for Sciomancer to default on. Prices are already going to be limited as a result of the Repay change and any active form of hindrance already slows a Sciomancer down.
All and all, anyone who leaves Sciomancer at this point is justified. The class feels like a janky, half-complete mess that was riddled with bugs the last time I played it. They are fragile as hell without an artifact shield and protection amulet, and now you likely need a sip artifact to make their bashing tolerable. Again, I thought the first round of changes they got before I quit were completely justified and reasonable. These gut the class's offense entirely. I would be moving on to another class like Teradrim or Indorani if I played Nisavi still. I disagree with the notion that people have to stick around in a class that has been gutted to validate if changes are justified or not. People play the game to have fun, not to be test cases to see if something sticks.
Basically, if I was going to defeat a Sciomancer, I'd literally just sit there and spam shield and they have zero recourse against me. A single shield alone is a significant set back to their momentum. Before someone counters with Scourge, hidden Scourge is entirely testable through symptom checks and if you don't catch the symptoms for the other afflictions through checks, your system can assume Confusion and heal it. All of Scourge's affs are guessable.
And @Bulrok has exactly the other problem I'm having right now. Not even looking at this on a personal level, this will affect all of the bashing of every Scio, which includes novices. If they kill themselves trying to bash they are going to not be inclined to continue playing/playing the class. If they attempt to hunt without shadowprice it slows it down enough that you can still die to the damage of what you are bashing.
Sciomancer manages to actually maintain its momentum by locking down an opponent, but an opponent can now lock them out of a substantial part of their offense and, by extension, their own defense in the pursuit of their own standard offense if they're a venom-based class (read: a not-so-small amount of Aetolia). Someone repeatedly using Weariness and Paresis over and over on a Sciomancer is absolutely going to destroy them and a Sciomancer can do jack all about it.
Edit: In essence, it's too easy for an opponent to ever be in a situation where they're confronted with Sciomancer's forked offense of pushing for a Voidtrapped or a state where the opponent can be Consumed. The latter already has very difficult requirements out of the two and shielding on the first Erupt when you see it is already enough to counter that route. The standard response to a Sciomancer if they actually manage to Shaderot you up to Level 3 now is just going to be shield spam until it's manageable. Sciomancer's abilities by themselves are not threatening until Shaderot is given the chance to build up. It's only once an opponent allows Shaderot to build up or, actively cures Shaderot and thus ignores Voidtrapped affs, does Sciomancer actually reach a state where they can fork their kill condition. It was already difficult for them to achieve Consume kills if an opponent was smart about prioritizing Voidtrapped affs. Even with the Hammer change, a few rounds of shield spam is all someone needs to recover against a Sciomancer and then leave.
I'm also not understanding what you mean by "a few rounds of shield spam" when hammer deals with it frighteningly well. Getting down to .5 seconds to break your shield is really nothing to scoff at. 3 rounds of shielding vs a hammer is the shielder offbal for 12s and you're offbal from shield a total of 3s. Admittedly I don't know Sciomancer intimately, but even for a slow class like Shamans its a lot of time to put work in.
Sciomancer is difficult to deal with, in part, because of how the class builds. You have to be actively aware of your curing and what you have on board, not just when your system screams at you that you have a lot of affs. It also has two ways to punish around blind (gloom if you stay blind, transfixed and non priced voidgaze if you are not). Many of the logs I have seen typically include someone not recognizing that gloom requires you to be unblind to cure and spamming epidermal/amaurosis.
It also requires a reset like most momentum classes if you get too far behind. I would also there are other classes with just as fast momentum and more hinder who just are not used as often, which brings us back to the point.
Why should victory and hard work seemingly nerf a class because people are struggling? If it is legitimately unbalanced by all means, but the wording and and the mid cycle choice brings with it false sincerity. There are other classes people struggle with just as much if not more at their highest ends, but because they are not being used consistently every day in sect they are left alone.
Secondly, the punishment for using the class. Shadowdebt is a primary resource. It is used in a form in nearly all abilities and has a limit to how often it can be used. Now, the natural regeneration of that resource brings with it a penalty in a health drain. As I said before, it fits thematically, but it fails mechanically, especially with the class is balanced around its usage both PvP and PvE. Any sciomancer will now have their natural squishiness as a mage when bashing plus the added health drain if they choose to price, or... bash more slowly losing one of the primary benefits of Scio bashing in speed.
To give an analogy, this would be putting a health drain on energy usage as a Shaman, or Bio energy, or Spark, or Kai, etc. If it was a slightly higher cost on using REPAY that would be easier to swallow, but the natural regeneration of a resource having its own price is difficult to swallow.
I will agree with @Nisavi that venom classes can now shut down a sciomancer in a few swings. The offense does not work without shadowprice. Flat. It is not fast enough and does not overwhelm enough. Voidgaze is useless without a price if the target is blind. It does not even cure blindness like transfixed. Ruin is one aff. Leech loses its special case usage, rendering it even having a special case usage moot.
This would also mean Sciomancer is the only class that is locked out of its primary resource from an affliction. And a common one at that. It is letting weariness shut down a core mechanic of how the class is built. Can it be worked around? Likely, but why should it be, when no other class has an aff that locks them out of their primary resource for their abilities? Should we bring back knife sigil passively severing channels? Or cubes now passively destroying rites? Or should stupidity turn off mind commands that typically don't require a lock?
I know this is a bit rambling, but reading the replies to just give it a chance or wait and see are undermining the upset of those who play the class and understand what these changes mean. We don't have much of a choice but wait and see if we even decide to play the class still. But, I think tweaks should be incremental, and knowing the class, this was not incremental. This was a bludgeon.
The second part, though, I am curious about. How do venom classes shut down Sciomancers with weariness? It is slightly bufferable (by clumsiness, the aff that works on its own to stop physical classes) but is also focusable. Pre-weariness, it seems like Sciomancer could keep on trucking at near 100% against most venom offenses. Maybe paralysis delays a few rounds a second or two, but that's it. Venom offenses could technically break arms, but most venom offenses are not limb offenses, so it doesn't really work. In contrast, physical classes are slowed 25% by clumsiness, and are usually just as susceptible to arm breaks. Some of them have passives, similar to Sciomancer, that would be disabled by peace as well. Just as a Syssin, I can think of many ways to slow down most classes, but I couldn't think of anything besides shield spam before. Weariness is hardly even viable unless impatience is stuck, although the focus Mark would help.
Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245
As for venom classes - weariness is focusable, yes, but focus has its own cooldown. Typically, for most classes, that means that they are continuing with their offense because weariness lessens damage received, but does not slow down affliction rate or momentum in any noticeable form. For example: An Archivist afflicted with weariness will still continue to build toward Unravel even if their Crux now do not hurt half as much.
Focus is a five second cooldown. Syssin is in a unique place because its window-type offense. Just dstabbing rarely pushes offense on its own. However, if you fit weariness into the window after hypnosis (when impatience/hypochondria/confusion/loneliness) are running, the Sciomancer has to highly prioritize weariness over those other afflictions or not have any access to their class resource.
Revenant/Templar will take a few more rounds to build up, but also don't suffer the slowdown from clumsiness others do due to accuracy. Cull/retri are fast enough to outpace the momentum of most Sciomancers so long as you remember to let gloom cure.
Carnifex bury physical affs and while they can't give impatience, again, see the 5s focus window when you're already buried in phys affs (or broken arms due to hammer).
Of the physical venom classes listed, I would say that Syssin suffers the most, but it suffers the most from clumsiness/blurry vision in general due to the accuracy of dstab.
Last thing I'll contribute, really: What this comes down to is the principal of class resources. Nearly every class has a primary resource that, without it, you cannot push a meaningful offensive against your opponent. For Sciomancer, this is shadowdebt. The class is balanced (precariously or not enough depending on who is asked) around the timer of regeneration and how often you can repay without consume eq/bal. Now, that balance is tilted in that your opponent can lock a Sciomancer out of its resource.
Balance the afflictions of Scio. Tweak around what they can give, what order they can give them, take away or push the hard physical punishers further down its tree - but I'd prefer not to set a precedent that it is okay to lock a class out of its primary resource through afflictions, and that natural regeneration (there simply using) said resource has its own penalty.
Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245
The HP drain for shadowprice is bogus. Now I can be a leaky glass squirt gun instead of a glass cannon while I try and bash.
That is all. Can't wait to save credits to get a different class.