Best Of

Having all of the elixirs on the same balance invalidates the very goal that Keroc set out to achieve: there is no choice between sipping levitation and sipping health in the event you're being Pitted. Group combat will always have health elixir above Levitation, as sipping health is more important than dropping into the pit. Not to mention, if you're the primary target, it benefits you to get dropped into the pit. While this achieves the goal of Pit being used to break entrenchments, this is not a good design decision as it basically means "kill the Indorani or your entire party is falling into the Pit". There's no real counterplay to this, and then Pit immediately becomes pointless when the Indorani can no longer ensorcell. Any Spirit group worth their salt is going to just target the ensorcelling Indorani almost immediately and it was like that prior to the patch, which means Pit is nice on paper but does not achieve the intended result. This is one of the reasons why Purgatory is the superior choice, which utterly dumbfounds me when Pit costs gold from the Indorani and is their transcendent skill.

With the current changes, there is never a reason as to why I'd choose an aff elixir over health unless Voyria was in later stages; however, Voyria is only a true threat from one class and that is Syssin. If a Syssin is using Voyria, then they've usually already achieved a lock and are using thinblood to put voyria into the later stages so you die. Additionally, Syssin do not pressure health whilst delivering their afflictions, so there is little threat on that front. The only two classes I can really see potentially making use of this is Vampire and Carnifex, but I'm fairly confident that these are not positive changes to either class. They just come off as really gimmicky at best.

I'm still not a fan of the hiding changes because it disproportionately hampers Syssin, whilst simultaneously favoring those with the camouflage artifact. The shroud artifact and skill has been nerfed in terms of effectiveness with no price reduction to compensate, and the same logic extends to Lifevision and the Artifact Goggles. This is kind of why people are in a hurry to see these reverted as either the administration should lower the price on these artifacts, or be prepared to issue refunds for them because they're frankly nowhere near what they're presently being sold for. I repeat that I view this as a low blow so shortly after a salvage promo as well, and it shakes my confidence as to whether to buy into future promos because of the fear of future "experimental changes" that may come shortly afterwards.

I'll voice another concern and point in favor of immediate fixes or reversion. For experimental changes, meant to gather data and determine effects changes like these can have, there's a rather large problem here: the elixir changes have broken firstaid defenses for a lot of people, not exclusively elixir defenses either. That's going to muddy the waters as to what effects these changes actually have. I'd hate to have these changes in for weeks longer only to have you guys throw your hands up in frustration when you start pouring over the data and find out it's useless.

Regarding stealth changes and backstab:

This seems to be false, and backstab is still pretty dead for those of us without chameleon skin.

I want to also make clear that this is not to knock Keroc or the efforts that he and other admins make. I know that players can be unnecessarily loud or vitriolic. Please believe me when I say that none of what I say is directed to be a personal attack on any of the administration. I get that you guys have a lot of "irons in the fire" at any given moment, and that volunteers do what they do out of a labour of love; however, please understand that these changes came out of nowhere and are really frustrating to deal with -- to the point where it is at "I don't even want to play the game and make the necessary large-scale changes to my system" levels of frustration. I don't want to discourage Keroc from coming up with ideas to mix things up, but there should absolutely be a "Hey, do you guys think this is a good idea before I implement it" sort of deal with the combatant portion of the playerbase if it is going to have large-scale, deep ramifications to systems and/or combat balance as a whole. Many of us, if the forums are any indication, would've told you that it would not have been a good idea to implement something like this.

At the end of the day, please understand that my criticism is directed at the decision and never directed at the admin itself. Keroc does good things for Aetolia and answers many of questions when I ask them about deeper mechanics. I just think the decision of how these experimental changes were handled was not done very well, and I think they should be reverted for the time being. If they're something that Keroc really feels strongly about, then maybe we should revert them for now and then have a town hall to discuss them as a whole, why Keroc feels they'd be good, and the pros and cons of each of the changes.

A simple "agree" react wasn't enough for me.

Shroud, lifevision, and salvage goggles level 9 (900 credits "perceived value" double+ that when you're buying salvage from players) have been affected in big ways. The camouflage relic (which is one of the less run relics and has a ridiculously inflated value because of that) is now EVEN MORE valuable while maintaining its rarity.

All of this ON TOP OF the skills that were changed being bugged and not working in any way (Deathlore Spiritsight does nothing right now). Firstaid won't sip defensive elixirs. Salvage goggles are still giving the heatsight defense (with no way to know if it works the old way or not)

Pit is now useless and will be unused once again.

The rest of the approved reports for this round of approvals+implementations are just sitting there.

There are still submitted reports waiting for approval or rejection.

It's just... A lot, and none of it has good feels attached.