I concur.

I'm okay with it in its current form, since I just use it as a room softener every time it's up on cooldown. That said, I also picked up the Debilitation Mastery feat so my cooldown is significantly shorter than it otherwise would be.

I've also never had issues locking debilitation with Mental Blast, so I don't mind losing the more efficient training of Mind Shout. I've actually been training indoors for the last 6 months or so anyway, so the old Mind Shout wasn't even an option and I didn't even notice it's loss training-wise.

Will I be sad if it changes to something off of a cooldown like a tremor clone? Not really. Will I be sad if it stays the way it is? Same.

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I'm not at all fond of this spell anymore, the timer has killed it and has stripped away any functionality it has for me along with any training it might have done. Please reconsider the "Heavy TM" model which this utilizes and set it back to being a regular debil spell.

The only time i could see this be useful is in an invasion where it is too hard to keep track of creatures i've already MBd or there are simply way more of them in the area with me than the usual 4.

For those who have the debil mastery, what is your exact timer? I'd consider picking this up if the timer was considerably reduced.

Damian, a voice from the distant and long-forgotten past.
AIM:DamianDR

I'm willing to tinker with the Heavy Combat spell model Mind Shout is set up for right now - but what I don't want to do is just clone Thunderclap.

That's boring and it's not the right way to handle Moon Mages where AoE is the most clearly defined weakness of the guild.

So I'm open to suggestions that would make the spell more viable on a timer, or to make it more unique and off a timer, but it's not going to become a thunderclap clone.

-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

>>> So I'm open to suggestions that would make the spell more viable on a timer

I think that a shorter timer might be enough. Stun/immobilize type spells can either be used as a damage amplifier (stun them smack them with a weapon a few times) or to provide crowd control. For the former use it actually doesn't matter how often it is available, but for the latter one needs to be able to stun them frequently enough to reduce incoming damage. As the damage amplifier function only requires that you stun your target or that you follow up an AoE stun with an AoE attack, most AoE stun spells are really designed to be CC spells. In its' current incarnation MS fails in that role due to the long cool down. I would look at Viscous Solution and Halo as spells that effectively have a CD and yet are still useful for that purpose. For Halo, the time between pulses is enough that creatures can advance and make a few attacks before being knocked back again.

Alternately, having some mechanism to cast it several times in a row and then have a longer lockout might work as well. A dragon breath like model where MS spell is self-cast and capable of being invoked 1-5 times (based on mana used) before being consumed (perhaps with a limit of once every 10 seconds or so). After the first invoke (or even the last) a 2 minute timer could prevent recasting the spell. It could then still be used to provide crowd control while you recover balance, regain vitality or finish off your target.

A third option would be to lock out all psychic projection spells for a short time (10-20 seconds) after casting MS.

>>> or to make it more unique and off a timer,

I assume the goal is to create an AoE stun but add a significant disadvantage over similar spells? If you add the requirement that it doesn't interfere too much with too much with the utility of MS I can see how finding the right balance is a challenge. Here are a few ideas:

1a) Targets gain temporary immunity to psychic projection spells for a short time, perhaps 20 seconds, after being hit. This is similar to VS, but the post-cast effect is more restrictive.
1b) Targets gain a stacking bonus to mind vs willpower or just vs willpower contests with each cast. Each cast would refresh its duration, which might be 1-2 minutes. This would allow a few quick casts but eventually make the spell ineffective and, to make things worse, one could not just switch to mental blast at that point.
2) The caster loses fatigue, vitality or spirit with each cast to simulate the mental strain of casting the spell. I would favour spirit from an aesthetic perspective (it seems to best represent mental fatigue) but fatigue if we want to gibe the penalty more bite. Vitality would be the most punishing, but that makes the spell seem necromantic to me. One advantage to spirit loss is that it would provide a hard limit to prevent spamming and moon mages have no way to speed spirit recovery (bob improves fatigue recovery). Furthermore, one could MS themselves to death and every moon mage spells need a way to kill hapless moon mages, after all. Concentration could also be used, and might be the most thematically appropriate, but any concentration loss of significance may as well be a hard cool down on all spell casting, in which case the current model would be better.

>>>> I also think people are forgetting the nerve damage or downplaying its existence. E.g. it wasn't even mentioned once in the last post. The spell has changed focus from being an AoE crowd control stun to an AoE debuff with the secondary effect of a stun. Treating it as the former still is of course going to make it seem like it completely sucks.

That is an interesting thought. I wasn't so much attempting to downplay or overlook so much as not mentioning it because I think that part of the spell is fine; an AoE nerve damage spell on a two minute CD is a model that works. However, I am not sure I would really spend three spell slots on such a spell when I already have mental blast that has half of that utility (the defensive debuff on the foe I am facing).

Ultimately I agree with you that the most palatable solution, to me, is reducing the cool down. I think the problem, for me, is that when I am playing an MMO and use a long CD ability, it generally feels powerful. MS really feels more or less the same as any number of thunderclap-type spells that other guilds have, except that it happens to be on a long CD. I seem to recall people trying out heavy TM spells on test had very similar comments. If the CD was 20-30 seconds I wouldn't expect so much out of the spell, I think.

I agree that MS is a little lackluster for a 3-slot Debilitation spell that has a ~2 minute cooldown. If it were a heavy TM and dealing heavy damage, I might feel differently.

Right now there are two main problems:

1) I want to have better options for training Debilitation. Having played a guild with a cyclic Debilitation, and heard about AOE Debilitation training, single-cast seems like a chore. Right now I spam Dazzle and get to 2/34 after about ~8 casts, and I'm limited by moons/sun while I'm at it. It sucks. Maybe I should try Mental Blast, but even still. I'd like to feel like I'm in the Debilitation guild. Tweaking the learning somehow would be a big help.

2) An area stun/debuff is not useless but it's a little on the less useful side. I could see using the area nerve damage against invasion mages, or the stun for either a) getting out of dodge or b) taking a quick moment to get the upper hand. I like it, but I'm not sure I 3-slots like it.

Thematically, I think MS could go in a lot of directions. I like the spell-forgetting one. Or, since it's heavy Debilitation, make the enemies seem extra debilitated. But my primary concern is that I can train Debilitation, and secondary is that the effects I'm getting feel like they're worth the slots.


- Navesi

AoE isn't a moon mage thing, so it's our weakness so to speak. This has been reiterated by the GMs so many times over the years that I would consider it set in stone by this point.

That said, since we're now on the topic of other guild abilities, I've played with Electrostatic Eddy on my warrior mage, and to be honest the current Mind Shout is pretty comparable in terms of the end effect amd overall result. The main differences are that Mind Shout outputs its large nerve damage up front and the cooldown period is explicit. EE outputs it's damge gradually over time and it's cooldown is effectively the time it takes to build up the nerve damage to the levels of Mind Shout on a creature. They both end up giving complete paralysis in around the same time frame, with Mind Shout giving an earlier larger debuff and EE being a more consistently applied debuff of varying size.

I too was of the original opinion that the new Mind Shout wouldnt be that useful since we already have a single target that does the same and more. You can even find my original post about it here somewhere. Having played around with it, however, my opinion has mostly changed. I really do feel we have our own version of EE with this spell now, and that effect is much easier and more convenient to apply as an AoE on cooldown than it is with a single target spell.

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Having gone back and tested my learning with Dazzle, I've concluded that it's actually okay. With dedicated casting I could probably lock in under 10 minutes, which is just fine. It mainly just seems tedious because it requires so many casts. The moon limitation is still slightly annoying, but mainly because I haven't figured out a good alternative yet in that situation.

If the board mod will permit me the tangent, I'm curious how others train with MB. It didn't seem like I was learning if I recast it on the same critter. Do you "face next" a lot?


- Navesi

Debilitation learning is something I need to dig into. I've heard a lot of complaints about it and I think it's a product of how the system determined if a creature is a challenge.

-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

Every time I see posts about being ubable to train debilitation with only single target spells or as a moon mage I get confused. Particularly when the whole 'I have high stats' reason gets used. (I could have sworn this was only a thief thing because of the way their khri operate and was fixed, and that it applying to magic users is a modern dr myth.) I didn't have any issues at all training debilitation from 300 ranks to 470 ranks on germish and warklins using only mental blast since they're indoors. It always locks easily, and my debilitation and TM are literally a couple ranks apart. My mental are 'really high' as well, particularly intelligence which is mental blast's main stat.

I just know what it is that I'm doing different that I don't see this issue.

Not at my computer but you can see what my skills and stats pretty much are on the wiki since I updated it a few weeks ago. They're only maybe a few ranks higher now since I'm mostly barding it right now. E.g. I'm pretty sure intelligence is now 89 amd TM/debilitation are low 470s.

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Xyngleburt#Stats_and_Skills

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<<By that I mean I literally get no experience from casting MB on a single target even if I cast two or three in a row on different targets. Recently I have been able to step up a bit and both TM and debil train well for the moment

Which creatures for both the before and after?

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Young forest gryphons before. I tried to step up to dragon priests and mountain giants, but the giants would turn me to a bloody pulp before teaching too much. Given the frequency of hits the sentinels fire arrow ability and the zealots dagger ability caused too much damage to accumulate to make hunting long term viable. In spite of all that I don't ever recall a giant or dragon priest resisting a mental blast or mind shout. I could lock stealth, weapons, TM and defences in Gryphons and then move to giants or DPs for and debilitation.

I have now moved on to DPs and their hit rate with special abilities is low enough that it works (those daggers can still be murder though), so I have no problem with debilitation anymore. Have also tried Retan Dolomar (for chain, brigandine and weapons) followed by Warklins, which tended to hit too hard to stick around long enough to lock the six weapons I train until recently. Strangely enough, Retan Dolomar are supposed to be easier then Gryphons but I can still lock debilitation as easily as TM.

Anyway, I am sure you can at least see why I suspected a stat disparity was the problem consider my low 300s weapons were training nicely and yet my low 300s debil was not, even though TM was trainable.