Another thing that is absent from this conversation is that Moonies are still lore prime; Tactics brings an incredibly powerful host of abilities. I think being weapon/armor tert, but lore prime/secondary means you will be far and away more able to keep opponents off balanced, distracted, or off melee with you. This is huge people, and I really encourage anyone complaining about their combat prowess to remember maneuvers.

As for Moonies in 3.0, I haven't really messed with mine, but my sense is not a terrible amount changed beyond bringing the potency of stuff into more reasonable range. AFAIK, Moonies alone have the games best blunt-damage dealing spell with PD, which is hugely beneficial when treating your TM as a weapon and actually represents more diversity to TM than many other guilds. Training wise, yes, multishots or cyclics are preferable, but they aren't by any stretch of the mind the only way to train. Secondly, don't forget Debilitation; Moonies have a fantastic host of crowd controlling debuffs.

>>Secondly, don't forget Debilitation; Moonies have a fantastic host of crowd controlling debuffs.

No, No we don't.

We have a host of single target debuffs, that when acted upon against large groups causes you to chain debuffs from one to the next without really attacking in between.

Really only bards and clerics have a host of crowd debuffs. Not that I mind, but the old pulsing tks and sls allowed you to strike out at multiple targets while keeping your debuffs going. I do much prefer the current versions of the spells, however.

Though we do need some sort of esoteric augmentation spell, only one we have is IOTS and thats unreliable and a ritual spell to boot.
_______________________
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
-Johan Huizinga

The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.

Sorry, I meant SOD not TV. SOD is a great debuff to use prior to TMing a critter to death.

I have to admit, SLS being restricted fully 50% of the time seems a bit harsh. All other spells are restricted by moon (or sun) presence, and there's probably a moonless sky less than 10% of the time.

Also, I'm all for flavor, but I just don't see it with SLS. At least not enough to justify a 2-slot spell we can only cast half the time. Why not just have it change potency or damage type?


-- Player of Eyuve

>> Moonies more so than any other guild I'd say aside from maybe Empaths have the ability to remove opponents from a fight. In terms of combat debuffs, you have Dazzle, TV and arguably Sleep. MB is still pretty awesome.

Not true at all.

If a guild has multiple debilitations, they can become redundant. Redundancy can occur if there is multiple "debil" effects, yet one is better then the other. For example, sleep/prone beats out immobilize and stun. The other redundancy occurs if both debils occupy the same SvS contest. e.g. Mind Blast and Sleep (Mind versus Willpower.

Sleep & MB:
For example, let's compare Sleep versus MB. Both are "sleep/prone" effects. MB has an initial stun, then sleep if they are stunned. Sleep causes immediately sleep, e.g. sleep/prone effect.

Both are Mind versus Will, so the same stat contest. Sleep causes immediate sleep, whereas MB stuns first, then can sleep a stunned target. Sleep is a basic spell, allowing a snap cast of large amounts of mana, e.g. 50 mana, versus a 10 second delay for a 20 mana MB. MB may cause nerve damage, but I have yet to see it.

So basically, Sleep wins hands down versus mental blast. You can easily snap cast high mana Sleep versus a longer wait for low mana Mental Blast. Sleep also has the immediate impact of prone/sleep versus 2 casts of Mental Blast for the sleep effect.

Let's move on to Calm:
Calm SvS is Charm versus Willpower (could be Mind versus Will.) This gives its own niche against sleep because you may be able to hit people with a Charm instead of Mind. However the chance of having higher Charm stats versus Mind is effectively 0. Calm loses to sleep.

Dazzle:
Mind(could be magic) vs Reflex. Another niche because it attacks reflexes. This is great because it can allow you to target a persons weak stats if for example, Mind vs. Will fails. Instead you can target Mind vs. Reflex. Dependent on moons make this spell less reliable.

Mind Shout:
Mind v Magic. Aoe. Great spell, but requires moonbeam.

So total non-redundant Moon Debils:
Sleep or MB (whichever you think is better, one replaces the other)
Calm - Charm vs. Will(if somehow charisma is higher then int/wis
Dazzle - Mind vs. Reflex (moon dependent)
Mind Shout - Mind vs. Will AoE (moon dependent)

Teleologic Debil Spells:
I'm not addressing these because they are not considered to be part of the core moon mage experience. But chances are they are redundant anyways.

>> Moonies more so than any other guild I'd say aside from maybe Empaths have the ability to remove opponents from a fight.

Let's take a look at warrior mages. It's kind of absurd how much they outstrip moon mages and how VERSATILE they are. Also note that almost all of the restrictions were removed, e.g. land based restrictions, weather effects. (take a deep breath)

Basically warrior mages can single out your weakest stat with ease. So no, Moon Mages are not the best at debilitation.


Non-Redundant Warrior Mage Debils:
Mark of Arhat - Spirit vs. Willpower (Increases fire damage)
Vertigo - Mind vs. Will (Pulsing reduce balance, possible knock-down)

Arc Light - Magic vs. Reflex (stun)
Tingle - Magic vs. Reflex (drops held items)
Frostbite - Magic vs. Reflex (AOE) (Damages fatigue, knocks down, debuffs stamina.) Summer/winter affects spell.
Thunderclap - Magic vs. Reflex (AOE) (Stun) (Not redundant because stun > knock down, but frostbite is still useful)

Ice Patch - Magic vs. Fortitude (knock down, stun)
(redunant to IP) Anther's Call - Magic vs. Fortitude (immobilize) (land restrictions were removed)
Tremor - Magic vs. Fortitude (AOE) (Pulsing balance reduction, possible knock-down or knock-back.)

>> I like how you say that Warrior Mages are more versatile and then list a whole host of spells that have huge overlap regarding their practical uses.

Are you kidding me? Being able to debil versus reflex/mind/fortitude is huge. Have you ever tried to mental blast an at-level moon mage? Try using ice patch next time. How about a gnome? It's a HUGE advantage. There is also no "practical" overlap as they all have different uses as I listed.

>> And replaced with the guild-only skill Summoning which penalizes you for casting spells of the element opposite of your alignment.

Do you even know what you are talking about? It reduces your pathway pool which allows you to use/not use your pathways. Not really a big deal. Also, you could simply align negative Aether which has no debilitation spells (except for ward break.)

>> Moon Mage arsenal is much more versatile regarding debuffs/disablers,

Are you serious? Did you even read my post? Moon mages literally have 1 disabler worth a salt that is not bound by the moons. Sleep/Mental blast. They don't have a fortitude check, warrior mages have 3.

I'm not trying to GvG here, but seriously stop saying that moon mages are king of disables when they are clearly not.

>>And, FYI, 'Crowd Control Debuff' doesn't necessarily mean AoE. Moonies more so than any other guild I'd say aside from maybe Empaths have the ability to remove opponents from a fight. In terms of combat debuffs, you have Dazzle, TV and arguably Sleep. MB is still pretty awesome.

You didn't really read what I said, I haven't actually disagreed with anything you just said. But I'll say it again since you probably didn't get it the first time. Moon Mages are very powerful when it comes to removing one target from a fight. When you start trying to remove multiple targets from a fight you'll find you also removed yourself from it as well.

>>As someone who has extensively played both a Warrior Mage and a Moon Mage, the Moon Mage arsenal is much more versatile regarding debuffs/disablers, even if the balance of power has shifted in 3.0 regarding what may be more useful than something else.

I don't think you know what versatility means. Warrior Mage debuffs are in fact much more versatile, Moon Mage ones are just stronger.
_______________________
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
-Johan Huizinga

The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.

>> AFAI understand, Sorcery doesn't permanently affect you.

>>> You understand wrong. A single cast of a Teleologic Sorcery spell will permanently impact your ability to predict, and that will never go away. The baseline corruption may be trivial and hardly noticeable as claimed, but it is there.

Someone on test got pretty high up in teleo corruption and his predictions were capped reallllly low, like < +50. So yeah, if you want to use Teleo you give up predictions, or at least high powered ones. (Then is a 1+ hour to fill the prediction pool worth a chance at +50? probably not.)

>> I don't think you know what versatility means. Warrior Mage debuffs are in fact much more versatile, Moon Mage ones are just stronger.

Indeed. I'm not even sure that Moon Mage are stronger anymore. They definitely shine in contesting Mind versus Willpower however. Overall, I suppose it really comes down to whether stun > (prone//sleep) since that is the only status effect that warrior mages cannot produce.

Of course if mental blast actually affected nerves, this would be a different story. But in my PVP experiences MB no longer effects nerves. Or they moved the nerve damage to high-end success (different then 2.0) which most of us probably won't see with At-level PVP.

>Moon Mages are very powerful when it comes to removing one target from a fight. When you start trying to remove multiple targets from a fight you'll find you also removed yourself from it as well.

You'll have to explain to me why a FACE NEXT or CAST SECOND [critter] is unavailable to you, or hinders you?

>You understand wrong. A single cast of a Teleologic Sorcery spell will permanently impact your ability to predict, and that will never go away. The baseline corruption may be trivial and hardly noticeable as claimed, but it is there.

It was my understanding that it decays over time, and at the lower levels, it's effect is entirely cosmetic. Meaning a single cast is not 'permanently impacting your abilities'. Raesh is the one who described it as cosmetic, in fact.

Now, if you have a character/RP objection to 'tainting' yourself, then fine, again, that's your problem, not a Moonie problem.

>> It was my understanding that it decays over time, and at the lower levels, it's effect is entirely cosmetic. Meaning a single cast is not 'permanently impacting your abilities'. Raesh is the one who described it as cosmetic, in fact.

I'm not sure that's right. It sounds like the affect is very slight (at least the portion that doesn't go away), and the part that does tick down does so slowly. The more you have the more it lowers your ability to predict and learn astrology via prediction. You will always be hindered (although I'm not sure anyone knows to the limit, or even if it's perceivable) for using a teleo spell. Always.

http://elanthipedia.org/w/index.php/Post:Teleologic_Corruption_-_12/12/2012_-_10:46

>> I understood from the initial release that the corruption would subside to a base of 'there but not effecting you'

>> It was my understanding that it decays over time, and at the lower levels, it's effect is entirely cosmetic. Meaning a single cast is not 'permanently impacting your abilities'. Raesh is the one who described it as cosmetic, in fact.

I have never heard the lowest level of corruption being described as cosmetic. I believe the terminology Raesh used was something along the lines of "so low you'd probably never notice." That's not cosmetic. I'm not saying it's the end of the world or anything, but it is a data point.

>> Now, if you have a character/RP objection to 'tainting' yourself, then fine, again, that's your problem, not a Moonie problem

I just want to clarify my main issue with Teleogic Sorcery. These spells were not a pure addition to our spell books. They replaced our previously existing scroll spells. Seal of Deflection, gone. Shadow Web, gone (yea it might come back, we'll see). TV, converted. If they had been purely additions, and TV left alone and it's new incarnation added as a new spell, I wouldn't really have an issue. I would just choose to not use them and move on with my life, since we wouldn't really have lost anything in the process, just gained something which doesn't appeal to me.

---

Chatter[Sava] well I bled all night and didn't become diseased
Chatter[Tincan] That's what she said?

>>I'm not sure that's right. It sounds like the affect is very slight (at least the portion that doesn't go away), and the part that does tick down does so slowly. The more you have the more it lowers your ability to predict and learn astrology via prediction. You will always be hindered (although I'm not sure anyone knows to the limit, or even if it's perceivable) for using a teleo spell. Always.

The way the corruption was explained on test, I believe it was Renzar btw who did it so credit to him if thats where it goes, is that a single observation prediction isn't affected much, if it all. The more corruption you get the less and less useful having multiple observations become to the point where a full pool has the same effect as a single observation.

_______________________
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
-Johan Huizinga

The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.

Shadow web and scry are definitely important additions to our arsenal imo. While we're on a debilitation tangent, how about a MM spell that dispels cyclics? Now that would be awesome. If that's too much, maybe one that increased the mana "need" for a cyclic? Like if the attacker was using a 20 mana cyclic, it jumped to 40 on a max success. Maybe that's too PvP niche.

>>For Warding, we have 4 spells, one of which requires moons.
Two require moons. Unless something changed and I wasn't aware of it.

>>For Debilitation, we have 9 spells, Mind Shout which is an AoE.
Two require moons, dazzle can substitute for sun.

Just for clarification.


_______________________
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
-Johan Huizinga

The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.

>> There are plenty of ways to train all the magic skills for a Moonie.

I'm not sure how long you expect those introduction and basic spells to last.

Of the esoteric spells,

1 warding - removes the abilities to cast spells while active, so it's a cast then release spell.
3 debilitations - 2 of which are teleos
3 utility - 1 requires seer's sense, one requires a target and repeated summons/breaks,
1 Augmentation/utility - IOTS, planet requirements and ritual.
1 TM - castable only at night.

A better showing among the advanced spells, but..

1 warding - requires a moon
2 debilitation - both teleos
1 Augementation - Seer's sense. Repeated self-casts to train Augmentation / utility.
5 utility - The remaining utility spells 2 requires a moon, 1 can only be cast a night, 1 is teleo, 1 stuns if self cast.
1 TM - requires moonblade (and a moon) to control what's thrown.

>> So Debilitation. I started off with MB. I initially used high prep, thinking it used the same new training formula as the rest of the magics, more mana = more exp, but even after learning it didn't and dropping down to low prep, fast cast, still really didn't move it. Mind Shout however, being our only AoE, did. And that has a moon requirement. On this point I will say maybe they need to reevaluate the exp gain of AoE vs non-AoE spells. In my experience anything AoE will train vastly better then a non-AoE. Even though they are weaker, you're getting multiple checks in per action.

Pretty much this. I've been hunting gryphons lately, and since they're indoors, I can't drop a moonbeam there, so I have to rely on all the single cast debilitation spells. After trying lots of different combinations to learn, I found that nothing really worked well, so I have just settled on casting rend on them (which does nothing) because while it may train slowly, it trains utility, too.

>> When MS is unavailable, I snap cast MBs through the horde by prep, cast, face second [crittter], repeat with face third, face fourth, etc

This is one thing I've wondered, if debils have any kind of cooldown per critter. I haven't noticed it with MS, but it may be that the cooldown is short enough, and the exp gain is high enough on success that it's being masked.

---

Chatter[Sava] well I bled all night and didn't become diseased
Chatter[Tincan] That's what she said?

It's not really fair to blame Teleologic Sorceries for the missing spells.

When 3.0 was being planned Tezirah's Veil was flagged as a spell that's description didn't match the effect. Bursaal was given the choice of if the description or the effect would change, and it was decided the effect would change (Had it not it still would have been nerfed, the way TV use to work was extremely imbalanced).

The current incarnation of Tezirah's Veil was entirely my idea based on fitting the theme literally blinding someone with prophecy, but it ended up being thematically very similar to an old planned spell of Armifer's, so I sort of merged the lore behind the two spells.

This lead to Soverign Destiny, which was also inspired by one of Armifer's planned spells, as the flipside of that Tezirah's Veil's precursor. At this point SOD had already been removed from the 3.0 spellbooks and the fact that the two spells share an abbreviation is purely coincidental and likely something I would have not done if I'd realized the confusion it would lead to (SD and SOV were both already taken and I wasn't a fan of SOVE or SODE).

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

I was not involved in the removal of Seal of Deflection, so I can't really speak to it.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose