>I would. I'd presume it meant that people felt it was a requirement for function. Admittedly, MUs have slots to spare, so to some extent it might simply be a matter of 'picking stuff to make things better', but I wager than any class that use cyclics (which is... just about all MUs) also picks up Raw Channeling, and would infer from that that Cyclics are basically non-functional without it. If everyone is picking it up, I'd consider eliminating it as a Feat, making it the default way everyone operates.

I'd go further to the conclusion that you're basically non-functional without a cyclic up.

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Re: Life mana Spell preps

You raise your hands in the air. You wave them like you just don't care. Somebody says, "Hey!" Somebody says, "Ho!" Somebody screams.

>>I'm 99% sure the question was simply if the GMs are able to survey which feats players have chosen similar to how they can pull up stats on race and guild. E.g. 50% of all players know Deep Attunement, 2% of all players know Warding Mastery, etc.

As far as I know we don't currently have a utility for that... and I can kind of understand why. Given how we'd have to pull the data I could see it potentially causing a lag spike when we execute it. Of course, it could also be that we just haven't bothered to write the utility to do that yet.

>>Yes, the intent being if 100% of people have Raw Channeling, it's not really a feat that is a 'choice', but rather a requirement.

I don't need this tool to know that Raw Channeling is far too mandatory and overpowered. But that gets into a lot of the messy things about cyclics in general. (Hint: I'm not a fan of how cyclics work if you've all missed the numerous hints I've dropped over the years.)

>>I would hang up my bard right now if it was removed.

Well, yeah, Bards would be crippled without it. I'll also go on record saying that a big part of the problem of the Bard guild is how many cyclics they have - we made it their "thing" but it's a terrible thing to focus on because the more cyclis you have the less value each individual one has and quite a few of the cyclics for Bards are cyclic for the sake of... being cyclics? They aren't doing anything that particularly wants to be a cyclic spell.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>>I'd go further to the conclusion that you're basically non-functional without a cyclic up.

I'd say that varies more by guild. I rarely notice mine being up or not, and only use Holy Warrior because the random kick back stun amuses rather then any need for it.

Samsaren

2.1 Enchantes =/= 3.x Cyclics in any meaningful mechanical sense.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>>If bards could have even more abilities up, I worry that they would be further watered down.

That's not how 3.0 magic works and explicitly why making Bards the "cyclic" guild is a bit of a problem for them. Giving them additional cyclics, while follow the same rules and regulations as all other cyclics, means the other cyclics just have one more competitor, as opposed to everyone else with direct-casting spells being able to layer on one after another.

In other words, cyclics as a concept work best when there are very few options for Guild X to use.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Maybe TM and Debil cyclics should eventually peter out and no longer 'do their thing' unless you INFUSE them? It seems a shame only Clerics can INFUSE stuff, and this would make cyclics more interactive.

>>Maybe TM and Debil cyclics should eventually peter out and no longer 'do their thing' unless you INFUSE them?

I'm not sure how this is different than how cyclic magic works as a whole, especially when you don't factor in the raw channeling feat.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>What I'm suggesting is eventually the pattern 'loses its energy' and requires you invest some mana into it, somewhat like how OM operates. The idea being that while maintenance of the spell pattern requires mana, so too does the spell patterns energy reserves.

I'm still not seeing how this is different than cyclics doing what they do. They die off unless you put mana into it. All you're asking for is to make people put more mana into them. At that point just increase the min prep.

If you're asking for it to literally work like infusions, I don't think "every so often type INFUSE 10" is going to do much than add a genie trigger.

Infuse/OM is atypical because of more than just the infuse part itself, with OM resembling drawing from charged camb and/or raw channeling itself, and infuse being the way to keep it going.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Make Raw Channeling take only a percentage of the mana from your attunement (like 70%). This makes cyclics less start and forget because you still need to harness/charge cambrinth to keep them up, but the cost is greatly reduced. It would also make TM/Debil cyclics take more effort to keep going in combat so they aren't just a free stream of damage. It would also have the added benefit of making large capacity cambrinth, and Arcana ranks (quicker charging), more valuable.

This is all just reminding me of something I meant to do a year or two ago.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

<<REZZ for example is just a cyclic that operates exactly as I indicated. You cast it, and HARN/INFUSE until you've reached a certain point. With enough skill, you can skin the HARN step. The cool thing here is that it requires player interaction, and is NOT fire and forget.

For what it's worth, this was changed a few days ago in light of the new Regen model, and while I haven't played with the new change yet I think it automatically builds up infusion in the passive pulses now or something similar.

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Yeah, which is exactly the point I was making. It's now as close to a set and forget ability as it can be, so it's not really useful as an example in the previous poster's argument any more. The only thing it currently requires in addition to simply running it is the gesture to complete the ressurection, and possibly either a single manual infusion or manually infusing a minimum of the amount you prepped it at.

I tested it after getting home from work and was able to rezz someone by just letting a 10 mana cast just run on it's own, only manually infusing it with 5 mana twice. I wasn't patient enough to see if I could infuse enough to find the person just by letting it run without any manual infusion, or to test if it was specifically a requirement to manually infuse the amount I cast it at in some combination as a bare minimum. 5+5=10 in my case.

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<<but I personally wouldn't be arguing towards making an ability more difficult to use.

Huh? What are you even talking about?

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> Huh? What are you even talking about?

It sounded like you were complaining that ress was too easy to use. I was suggesting that make it more difficult wasn't something worth doing. If you weren't complaining about that then great, carry on.

You're obviously failing at reading comprehension, so let's go back a few posts in this very thread. You're in a thread that's been discussing making cyclics more difficult to cast. People have complained about set it and forget it abilities, and they've suggested multiple drawbacks to "fix" that problem. Then you point out that rezz was changed, and you tested it, and it was very set it and forget it. I'm responding in this thread by saying that there are more variables than what you were mentioning, and that this was not a good example of a "fire it and forget it" ability. If you were really trying to just hijack the thread then good job, I guess.

* JHALIASCLERIC: But yes, I agree that cyclics in general are kind of borked, and it's a shame that in most cases they're just used as trainers (GJ? Rezz?). Additionally, the way Debil or TM cyclics work, the training just pours on in, they're passive combat edges or damage sources, and are by in large far too 'fire and forget'.

* JHALIASCLERIC: Maybe TM and Debil cyclics should eventually peter out and no longer 'do their thing' unless you INFUSE them? It seems a shame only Clerics can INFUSE stuff, and this would make cyclics more interactive.

* TEVESHSZAT: I'm not sure how this is different than how cyclic magic works as a whole, especially when you don't factor in the raw channeling feat.

* JHALIASCLERIC: What I'm suggesting is eventually the pattern 'loses its energy' and requires you invest some mana into it, somewhat like how OM operates. The idea being that while maintenance of the spell pattern requires mana, so too does the spell patterns energy reserves. It being a cyclic means it takes an amount of mana to maintain the pattern, and that mana also dictates how powerful each pulse is, but I think it might be a neat addition if periodically the pattern needed to be interacted with to keep it 'doing things'. This interaction might be somewhat similar to what a cyclic would look like without raw channeling, sure - just spitballing.

* TEVESHSZAT: Infuse/OM is atypical because of more than just the infuse part itself, with OM resembling drawing from charged camb and/or raw channeling itself, and infuse being the way to keep it going.

* Ninevah1: Make Raw Channeling take only a percentage of the mana from your attunement (like 70%). This makes cyclics less start and forget because you still need to harness/charge cambrinth to keep them up, but the cost is greatly reduced. It would also make TM/Debil cyclics take more effort to keep going in combat so they aren't just a free stream of damage. It would also have the added benefit of making large capacity cambrinth, and Arcana ranks (quicker charging), more valuable.

* JHALIASCLERIC: Huh? No, it doesn't - REZZ for example is just a cyclic that operates exactly as I indicated. You cast it, and HARN/INFUSE until you've reached a certain point. With enough skill, you can skin the HARN step. The cool thing here is that it requires player interaction, and is NOT fire and forget. The fun thing that making more cyclics like this would accomplish is mean that A ) cyclics now have some RT/involvement with them after casting, and B ) you still have the forced choice of cyclics. I don't propose this to suggest they'd suddenly be non-automatable, but rather, another requirement on them. Yes, they would take more mana. That would be a good thing, overall.

* ABSOLON: For what it's worth, this was changed a few days ago in light of the new Regen model, and while I haven't played with the new change yet I think it automatically builds up infusion in the passive pulses now or something similar.

* DARKNSBREATHING: You're correct, this has been changed to now have the passive mana pulses from the cyclic act as an infuse for soul searching in addition to the regular infuses. This, however, was because it became such a mana intensive feat--even for myself with 1100+ attunement--so much so that younger clerics were having an extremely difficult if not impossible to resurrect. Now that the cyclic pulses generate searches there is not "lost" mana where as before when the cyclic would pulse that mana would just be wasted and lost without any additional benefit to the process.

* ABSOLON: Yeah, which is exactly the point I was making. It's now as close to a set and forget ability as it can be, so it's not really useful as an example in the previous poster's argument any more. The only thing it currently requires in addition to simply running it is the gesture to complete the ressurection, and possibly either a single manual infusion or manually infusing a minimum of the amount you prepped it at. // I tested it after getting home from work and was able to rezz someone by just letting a 10 mana cast just run on it's own, only manually infusing it with 5 mana twice. I wasn't patient enough to see if I could infuse enough to find the person just by letting it run without any manual infusion, or to test if it was specifically a requirement to manually infuse the amount I cast it at in some combination as a bare minimum. 5+5=10 in my case.

* DERIUM: I think there are a lot of variables involved here, but I personally wouldn't be arguing towards making an ability more difficult to use. The cleric already has to stop what they're doing, find the corpse, rejuve the corpse, bond the corpse, and then res the corpse. If they're really nice, they'll throw in a vigil and auspice in there. The entire process should be looked at cohesively rather than just the difficulty of the last step.

Anyway -

>It might be worth investigating which cyclics cause trouble with the fire-and-forget model, and seeing how to address those in particular. Personally, my feeling is that the issue is more combat (TM and Debilitation) cyclic magic than anything else. Does people really mind Holy Warrior and Steps of Vaun, as opposed to Universal Solution and Electrostatic Eddy?

In the line of data mining, I wonder if there's a way to determine what cyclics people are using in PvE most. Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with a given cyclic for a given guild being the sort of 'keystone feature', but I think if 100% of Empaths in 100% of combat are using GS instead of AD, maybe there's a lesson to be learned. Similarly, I think you're probably right that the 'offensive combat cyclics' are the one's that are potentially problematic, insofar as being too fire-and-forget whilst also resulting in skill gain.

Indeed, perhaps the number of people running cyclic aoe TMs in stompers is a good indication of how this is something that potentially needs a bit of scrutiny.

>>People run cyclic AOE TM spells in Stompers because they're under hunting to farm loot and want to kill things as fast as possible. It's the scenario for which those spells are best used, so people who have them are using them.

Really Mazrian is being too kind. What he means to say is a very specific and well known gold farmer runs Cyclic AOE TM spells in stompers on his bajillion accounts with impunity. This is not a great indicator of the general public's use of cyclic tm.

Want to make an effort post about cyclics but work is being really, really annoying. Will have to wait for tonight. =(

Mazrian

IDK, I think it's complicated.

Any harmful effect you can apply to someone else (damage, debil, whatever) without having to apply your attention is going to be really, really good in DR. Having an RT (unless it's a long one, which would push things into "too annoying, not worth it") isn't as important as having to devote bandwidth to doing the thing.

It's not only cyclics that are good in this way. The Cleric spell, Sanyu Lyba, is so incredibly hax because it HULPs a caster who casts at the Cleric and the duration of the HULP can be longer than the cooldown of the spell.

But it's complicated and worthy of a long post I can´t make right now. AIIIII

Mazrian

I love cyclics. The idea was cool to me when GMs presented it pre-3.0, and the realization of that idea lived up to the hype. I love that they add a strategy dynamic through a passive super power of which you can choose to run only one at any given time..

Generally speaking, MUs and NMUs both have access to cyclics, so there's balance there. HOWEVER, the specific class of damaging cyclics is not available to everyone. By their passive nature, that tilts the balance scales a good bit. The only way to balance it IMO is to give everyone access to damaging cyclics or limit their concurrency functionality.