Announce 2127

Macavity

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2127
Date: 5/13/2013 at 5:48
From: Keroc
To : Everyone
Subj: Skill changes

Just a note, that following this we'll probably be making some
changes to Carnifex skills in order to make them a little more
appealing to play and fight against. Look forward to it!

Deathlore
============================
- The soul drain from Soulthirst is now modified by the penetration
stat.
* 135 penetration will equal what the drain was before, so more or
less will change that.
* I'll be keeping a close eye on this and making changes as
needed.

Kaido
============================
- Clotting in Kaido now only costs 60 mana, instead of 80. It will
take priority over the Survival version.

Mentis
============================
- Reworked Lure:
* Now works as a single target pull, alike to Beckon in
Spirituality.
- Bile damage is now of the poison type, rather than psychic.

Misceallaneous
============================
- Removed all writhe afflictions as modifiers to impale's writhe
time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can someone please explain further what the last part about impale's writhe means and how it will affect a class that uses impale??

Illikaal

It won't affect any impale class in 1v1s. 

The most likely reason behind that change was the ever notorious combo of Hangedman + Carnifex impale, or just Hangedman + Impale in general. When one writhe aff was piled on top of another, it increased the writhe timer of whichever one you decided to writhe from. In this case, if you were entangled and impaled simultaneously, and writhed from impale, it'd take you a significantly longer time to writhe out of the impale than you would normally. 

When you are writhing from impale, you have X amount of time between value A and value B to actually writhe from it. When other writhe affs, such as hangedman/web/entangle are paired with it, it significantly increases the writhe time. An example includes writhing from a Carnifex' impale at around 1-2ish seconds, whereas writhing from the same impale with hangedman took 5. 

Serrice

Previously, certain affs would increase the writhe time off of impale by one second, like resto breaks on limbs and such. This was done (I presume) for the purpose of giving Chivalry classes a means to solo DSB off of their impales.

Macavity

@serrice and @illidan  thanks for the answers!  I just wanted to make sure I understood that.

Of course since my question was answered, anyone else is free to use this post as a springboard to discuss about the other changes!

Alexina

Adding yet another variable to soul drain seems a bit unnecessary, and balancing it around penetration seems a bit weird. Wasn't Arcana supposed to be the stat for these 'supernatural' things on weapons? Anyway, hope it makes Carnifex combat more interesting!

Luna

The time it takes to writhe from an impale can be lengthened by a few things- notably, limb breaks (I don't know of anything else actually). I'm not 100% certain how the writhe timers work, but if they work like I think they do, the change won't really have a great impact. I think it's meant to affect the synergy between web/hangman and impale. Going to do some testing on it later. Edit: lol beaten

Rivas

So does this Lure change fix the "omg nerf Lure" problems that everyone's been screaming about?

Lin

The mana reduction on our clot is nice!

Moirean

I don't really think the soulthirst change is going to be a very big deal (when I tested it, the variance with high and low pen was not that big on either side), but I am very happy that this opens up the potential to more options with deathlore. I think getting those options is key to moving Carnis away from the spam aconite/curare buildup.

Illikaal

Rivas said:

So does this Lure change fix the "omg nerf Lure" problems that everyone's been screaming about?

@Rivas Completely. 

@Luna Paralysis, limb breaks, being frozen, weariness, and I think i'm missing another few affs. @Hadoryu or @Edhain would probably be the most knowledgeable two guys to ask, since I remember them talking about it, and derived that list from them. It was years ago when I last heard them talking about it, so I could be wrong.

Tza

@Illidan: Wait, all those things increased writhe time? Do they still or were -all- modifies from writhe removed (or just the other writhe affs...) ?

Illikaal

According to the announce, just the writhe affs were removed as balance modifiers. But yes. Broken limbs, paralysis, weariness, and frozen increase writhe time. They do that because old school Paladins/Templars would otherwise have their target instantly writhe anytime they impaled and tried to go for a dsb. Like it was said earlier, the change was to help deal with how incredibly (stupid) effective hangedman/impale is. Knights in solo combat still have the old route of sticking those physical affs on their target to increase writhe timers so that they can get off those guranteed dsbs/pole wrenches. 

Tza

@Illidan; Ok, thanks! I didn't know writhe time was influenced by afflictions at all. I always kind of assumed it had a somewhat random factor to it.. good to know!!

Calipso

I wonder what the next OP-remove will be.

bets up on Pit.

Daskalos

@Tza - I didn't either. It would be really nice if the AB files for skills could be gone through and all this information put into it.

Atrapoema

Daskalos said:

@Tza - I didn't either. It would be really nice if the AB files for skills could be gone through and all this information put into it.

Are Liaisons still able to submit AB revisions? I know that we could ages ago, but a lot of us never bothered because we were always focused on other aspects of the job. If a standard format was made for ABs, recruiting one or two volunteers to do the updating and then compensating them with x credits per AB successfully implemented would probably be better than heaping it on the Liaisons' shoulders.

Edit: I guess the biggest problem comes down to having willing coders able to look into the raw data for each skill, though. We'd have no lack of volunteers to do the updating. The few coders we do have are busy with both real life and, naturally, coding, so having to stop to help anyone running through AB updates would probably come across as irritating. =/

Daskalos

Oh, no doubt. I'm going to go through the Luminary list then bug one of the liaisons to submit 'em.

Moirean

I can see the syntax to do an AB edit, so I'm going to tentatively say that yes, we can!

Xavin

AB edits go through an approval process. I'm not sure how often they get looked at.

EX: I have an ab edit up for the elementals ability in enchantment that has been up for quite a while.

Keroc

Just message me or one of the liaisons if you notice an inconsistantcy in an AB file, I tend to forget to update AB files rather frequently.

Ezalor

Heh, like all of the BB Combat Ritual files are completely outdated. Bloodmeld shows a completely wrong description (the skill was changed), Thirst Scythe still talks about making a scythe out of someone's blood doing more damage to that person, there are a few others.

Blood Gift in Sanguis says it has a cooldown but it doesn't. Corpus Claw is still bugged (I bugged it like 3 months ago or something) to take 1 second more balance if it gets dodged.

Atrapoema

Keroc said:

Just message me or one of the liaisons if you notice an inconsistantcy in an AB file, I tend to forget to update AB files rather frequently.

Well, it's more than ABs needing inconsistencies fixed. All ABs need updated with their exact data if they do something other than damage, such as having a percent chance to fire or something similar. For instance, Vigilance in Animation has a 12 RL day cooldown, and that wasn't added to the AB until recently. As it stands, one still can't make an informed decision on which Vigilance to use because Prop is the only description in the AB which has the exact percentage at which it fires (and only then because it's a 100% chance when Vigilanced). Everything else just says it's an "increased chance" or something similar. And with a 12 RL day cooldown it's nearly impossible to test on your own, and relying on others for the information (which could be wrong) kind of blows.

TL;DR: ABs need to show the raw data for people to understand and be better informed on skill mechanics. Hence, my earlier idea and why I'm hesitant about it getting done because it is a huge task.

Toz

That's...also something that should be changed. 12 RL days, what?

Illikaal

Things like the AB's  for Tekura need fixing too. I think each one needs to show how much accuracy, speed, kick damage, punch damage, guard block % and the like for each stance. 

Toz

While we're at it, how about a config to show how much limb damage you've done on a hit? With it varying between weapon damage, health, and rumors of all sorts of other things? It'd be nice to see a number.

Lin

Toz said:

While we're at it, how about a config to show how much limb damage you've done on a hit? With it varying between weapon damage, health, and rumors of all sorts of other things? It'd be nice to see a number.

I would kill for that functionality.

But hey kids, while we're here, have some convenient numbers!

All Tekura punches deal 3.5% limb damage. Tiger stance raises this to 6.5%.

All Tekura kicks deal 7.5% limb damage, increased to 10.5%. The exception to this is cometkick, which deals 7.5% limb damage normally, but only 9.5% in Tiger stance.

Toz

I keep getting sliiiiiiiightly different numbers when I try to test. I need to just sit down one day and figure it all out, though. Or maybe I'm just losing my mind!

Lin

You know, I actually gathered those numbers before the new limb damage display, so I could be off.

Illikaal

Tmk, Tekura attacks are the only ones that are standard across the board. Lycanthrope attacks scale on the target's maximum HP (which is dumb), and weapon attacks, at least with Templars, do across the board damage to each target, provided you're using a weapon with specific stats. 

Edit: I said that to say - the only thing that probably needs adjusting is lycanthrope attacks. The others can be easily calculated with some minor amounts of coding. 

Toz

Fun fact: Carnifex hammer damage appears to be a static 6.49%. You get 1 swing/round. Gogo hammer offense!

Tza

Toz said:

Fun fact: Carnifex hammer damage appears to be a static 6.49%. You get 1 swing/round. Gogo hammer offense!

6.49%? That's too low. It should really be raised to 6.66% damage.