>>Soul Attrition

RIP my ability to be an Empath Soul Destroyer. It was never fated to last, but we had a good run.

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You've reached the uninformative help match I haven't written yet.

http://i.imgur.com/fBq8R.jpg

I can't tell what's going on with Harm Horde. It's not hitting anything, and also seems like it's not even trying? Except, oddly, if someone else is in the room, but then it only hits mine at melee (more than once), not the ones at missile, facing my friend. If it's missing, it should at least tell me it's missing. (When someone else is in the room, I occasionally get the "is unaffected" message.)

A log (only deleting the critters' attacks) from when I was alone in the room:

> tar hh
That will disrupt less than a quarter of your current attunement.
Your eyes darken to black as a starless night as you prepare the Harm Horde spell.
You begin to weave mana lines into a targeting pattern centered around yourself that is designed to strike the avenues of attack around you.

> assess
You assess your combat situation...

You (solidly balanced) are facing a pale grey death spirit (1) at melee range.
A pale grey death spirit (1: adeptly balanced) is facing you at melee range.
A pale grey death spirit (2: adeptly balanced) is flanking you at melee range.
A pale grey death spirit (3: nimbly balanced) is behind you at melee range.
A pale grey death spirit (4: nimbly balanced) is behind you at melee range.

(You are also defending against a pale grey death spirit.)

> cast
>
You gesture.
A whirlwind of gleaming blue-white mist rises up around you.
Roundtime: 2 sec.
>
The whirlwind of gleaming blue-white mist pulses hard before expanding in size, lashing out at everything within reach!
>
The whirlwind of gleaming blue-white mist becomes more violent, expanding outward from you to pole range.
>
The whirlwind of gleaming blue-white mist becomes more violent, expanding outward from you to missile range.

The whirlwind dissipates as quickly as it formed.

Awwww. Good thing I sold my SA!!

Poor bastards.

I also could not get HH to hit anything. I well outclass the targets.

HH still has the 'undead only' stipulation, correct? Does it lose a spell slot cost because of that restriction?

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Pants.

Okay- new and improved HH is very nice- really is superior to FOU in zombie maulers- it actually kills them!

Thanks- very nice work.

Also, Flavius died last night and new MF worked like a charm- I appreciate those changes too.

I didnt' check the straight cast Malediction, as I always use it with HYH but is the duration still 30 seconds? It is not so much the power, but short duration that makes it seem useless as a defensive debuff.

>>I didnt' check the straight cast Malediction, as I always use it with HYH but is the duration still 30 seconds?

Well, it's still 15-48 seconds. The duration will remain in line with all other debuff spells, which is something we're still considering making changes to.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

>>did GHS get harder to cast with sorcery?

I might have upped the misfire chance on that one, but only to the level that it should have been all along. I recall doing some minor fixes like that in a few spells as I was looking over other things.

At 186 Sorcery I would expect some misfires for an esoteric spell.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

>>Did your changes effect difficulty at all?

HH did get a little bump in difficulty, which might explain a slight difference. Oh, and I said misfire chance earlier regarding GHS, turns out for that one I actually had the difficulty raised significantly since it was set way too low for what it was. There's probably a few others that had minor changes, and I'm sorry I don't have a list of them offhand. I did most of that work a few weeks ago and was just holding out on the exp code to be QC'ed before release.

Oh, one other fix I forgot to mention. Spells in OM that can also be cast at objects won't do weird things now. So GG if stored in an orb can be cast again for making drinks, Bless stored in OM can be used to bless water, etc. They should still just make your orb flash if you try and cast them on yourself when you already have a version stored in the orb.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

>>any chance we could get some kind of indicator for how much mana spells in the orb are draining?

There are a number of nice perks that OM offers in 3.0, I'd be reluctant to remove any of its current drawbacks.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

Thanks for the response re: Malediction duration, and also for mentioning that the issue of duration for debuffs is still being considered.

I will just state my case once more that I think that debuffs are different from stuns/immobilizers in that debuffs don't prevent any or most actions, and short duration debuffs really make them almost useless as a tool to defend better against a foe. Works okay with cyclic area affect because it keeps hitting them often enough to use that way.

>If we're forced to use our cyclic slot to reliably keep one debuff up
The only two cyclics worth putting up would be SA or GhS. You don't have to keep debuffs up, but if this is what you want to do, I feel the trade off is worthwhile. If you're intent on keeping a debuff up, and still running a cyclic, pick up a scroll spell?

Insofar as training is concerned, HYH makes Debilitation a breeze, and constantly hitting everything at melee with a potent debuff is a pretty amazing ability.

>Also, out of curiosity, is it intentional that Malediction directly impacts combat exp gain? It seems a bit strange that buff/debuff spells would effect exp gain at all.

Does it? I'm running some tests now to look at xp gain as a function of swings/kills in a normal hunting routine with various buffs, but haven't gotten to the Cleric yet.

>>Most others guilds' debilitation spells last massively longer.

I'm not sure what debilitation spells your talking about. With the exception of other cyclic style debilitation spells (like HyH), all other debilitation spells I've looked at have exactly the same duration range.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

Let me try this another way- from my perspective HyH works wonderfully- teaches well and allows Flavius to use Malediction to increase his defenses by continually reducing the offense of his attackers- this is very useful. I have done the same thing with COZ against weapon using creatures.

But straight casts of Malediction or COZ? I never use them. I wouldn't bother with HULP either, unless I was engaging a single magic using creature- if I needed HULP to successfully protect against a creature, I couldn't keep more than one HULP'd.

Does anyone use straight casts of Mal or COZ or HULP against creatures?

If you do, please share how you are using them.

From my perspective these are potentially useful spells, but short duration of the effect and the long prep time mean the only use I can see is for attacking a single creature to get passed their defenses.

>>The only two cyclics worth putting up would be SA or GhS. You don't have to keep debuffs up, but if this is what you want to do, I feel the trade off is worthwhile. If you're intent on keeping a debuff up, and still running a cyclic, pick up a scroll spell?

Insofar as training is concerned, HYH makes Debilitation a breeze, and constantly hitting everything at melee with a potent debuff is a pretty amazing ability.<<

Locking Debilitation easily is a nice perk, but being able to use it without it having that downside would be better. If you're a long-term hunter or use combat scripts then it's a bit easy to overlook, but I can say I'm locking my primary/secondary weapons, Tactics and TM all before any of my defenses reach 20/34. It also caused SACRIFICE to fail on occasion due to the monster being too weak (Sky Giants), but I haven't seen it happen after the spell adjustment.


>>I'm not sure what debilitation spells your talking about. With the exception of other cyclic style debilitation spells (like HyH), all other debilitation spells I've looked at have exactly the same duration range.

Lethargy, Mark of Arhat, Burden all last for several minutes. I could try to find more but this gave me the impression that outside immobilizers/stunners, Clerics were the only one with the incredibly short debuff duration. My apologies if I was mistaken.

When fighting a critter with weapons/armor, is CoZ better to use than Malediction?

I look at it this way: clerics have a continual AOE debilitation. Runs forever, very powerful. The single-target version is weaksauce in comparison. No other guild has an aoe cyclic debilitation, that I know of, so theirs last longer. It's a valid trade off, and makes you weight the benefit of each cyclic, rather than just going 'always keep A going and just spam B'.

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Pants.

>>Was it? I'm still seeing a few oddities with this spell.

Oops, forgot to send that update over. Should be working now.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

not a fan of the lowered OM infuse. Perhaps it could be adjusted to be skill based? Someone with 1000+ magics should be able to infuse more percentage-wise then someone with 200's. The res+some mems is pretty awesome. I have to agree with the other posters that the single target debuffs are pretty useless. I haven't used any of them except hulp since 3.0 came out and only then in spars, never on critters.

well then it needs a bit more adjusting...if a 100 prep om takes me (magics in the 900's) 20 sec to prep and another 20 second RT after said cast....and I can run up infuses of 50(so 25 mana) at 3 RT...I think the entire OM thing is self defeating. I can do 100 mana in 40 seconds casting OM...or 150 in 18 seconds with infuse

not sure why there was any adjustment on this at all. forcing smaller players to use OM and older players(meaning skills) to have to adjust to something that wasn't broke just seems like overkill. you are at x ranks, you can infuse y mana makes a ton more sense then, everyone can only infuse the same amount of mana. You've been in game a month and have such and such...you can infuse a lil over half. You've been in game 10 years and have skills 1000 ranks higher....you can infuse a lil over half.

should have a scale...x ranks means you can infuse 30%...y ranks means 50%...z ranks is 75%

>>I can do 100 mana in 40 seconds casting OM...or 150 in 18 seconds with infuse

First off, since you aren't even attempting your personal cap for OM, you can cast it before the 20 second prep is done. Given your skills, at 100 mana (50 prep/50 harness), 16-17 seconds was good enough, and then it's 11 seconds RT not 20 at your level. That makes it 28 seconds not 40.

So 2 chunks of 50 mana taking 28 seconds vs 4 chunks of 50 mana in 12 seconds for infuse (assuming a 50% efficiency which is also wrong). Even with the wrong efficiency that leaves casting OM taking a little more than twice as long for half the mana investment, which is exactly how it's supposed to work.

>>I think the entire OM thing is self defeating.

Then don't use it.

>>not sure why there was any adjustment on this at all.

Because infusion was a little too good compared to straight casting. This is also why the mana cap for OM was raised to 200 a month or so ago, so that even at lower skill you can use larger chunks of mana for the longer RT cost, and at higher skill when your orb is much bigger, you can get more filling power in one cast.

>>should have a scale

There is a scale.

>>You've been in game a month and have such and such...you can infuse a lil over half. You've been in game 10 years and have skills 1000 ranks higher....you can infuse a lil over half.

And the messaging for that scale has ranges. You've gone from being almost always in one range (roughly three-fourths), to being in the one under it (a bit more than half) with the occasion to be back in your original range. Even if you exaggerate this issue with the claim that someone a month in is in the same range as you are (which would require at least 500 ranks of Arcana), it doesn't diminish the fact that the verbal ranges could use a touch up. Tightening up the messaging ranges isn't a big deal, and considering that OM scales over such a large skill range, it's good to have more milestones to reach, so that's done.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate