Could use some real re-balancing in PvP. When a WM cant touch me with their (higher ranked and substratum buffed) TM but can shred my nerves, along with 6 other monsters in the room I'm hunting, in just a few quick pulses, something needs to be looked at. Nerve damage as a whole is far too powerful, impacting strong penalties on multiple areas, for it to be THIS easy.

A friend, playing around, and has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Let's stay focused.

The nerve of you!

Sorry, carry on...

>EE doesn't CC you the way Halt or Mental Blast or something else would, and the nerve damage from EE takes awhile to build up even if he's getting a 100% success every pulse. So I guess I'd put it to you that you have lots of options to avoid getting your nerves shredded by EE. Anything from killing the heck out of the caster to putting up the right wards or just walking out of the room will work. If you're standing there and just taking it that's kind of on you and IMO not a reason to change the spell.

FWIW, as an outsider, I agree with this. I mean, if you outclass someone to the extent that eddy's his only tool against you, just kill him and take some nerve herbs... nerbs.

>>I can do some more exact timing, but a few pulses (less than 6) put me into stages of paralysis.

To cast the spell takes over 10 seconds, the first tick is at around 5, and every tick after that is 15. If the person needs you to be near paralyzed to even begin hurting you, then yes, the fact you have time to put a serious hurting on them prior to that has everything to do with the balance of the ability. So yes, how long it takes them to weaken you enough for them to hurt you, does in fact matter.

EE being damage over time instead of front loaded is a pretty big deal, balance wise.



Mazrian

>And yes, being able to respond by shooting the person and driving them off has -NOTHING- to do with the balance of this specific ability.

I disagree. You have to look at more than just a single ability effect to ascertain balance. At the very least, you need to look at its effects and countermeasures, but you'll probably wanna compare it against other abilities/spells, too. I just don't recall seeing a lot of people using EE effectively in PvP over other cyclics, so its OPness is debatable. Plus, if I'm honest, a barbarian complaining about a magical SvS spell doesn't strengthen the case in my mind.

There's also the slippery slope. If it's all about the fact that nerve damage is too punitive on combats, then what about pulsing balance debuffs? Man, those are super OP because if someone casts a spell on me that gets me on my butt, I can't hit them at all even when I overpower them and they can hit me so much more easily. See what I mean?

My concerns are the potency of which it hits, when cast. I thought I was clear about that. Personally I feel like it is out of template for debil with it's damage being (essentially) permanent once landed, but I like the step out of cookie cutter for guild abilities, and think it is a good start where I hope future development follows, in breaking away from 'same spell, different skin'.


That being said, I do feel that there is something legitimately broken with the way it is being applied, and specifically in it's interaction with wards. Take turtle for instance. With the contests as even as they are, a pulse of a zero maintenance spell (because lets be serious, cyclic is set and forget, like Ronco), breaks through turtle with enough potency to not only win the stat contest still but apply it's damage at a pretty impressive rate.

>>That being said, I do feel that there is something legitimately broken with the way it is being applied, and specifically in it's interaction with wards.

Might be a problem with how cyclics function in general. I know a few different cyclics get past wards that meant to stop their "type", but because the spell is cyclic, it gets through.

Something you may agree with: I don't think cyclics should pulse while you're incapacitated unless their job is related to incapacitation (e.g. cyclical dispel).

If the spell does damage, shouldn't it contest TM?

While not EE's fault (or MB's fault), nerve damage appearing to have a rather large impact to general combat (and other) abilities does kinda/sorta gets around the "no double-dipping" of skill boosts/penalties that is supposed to be enacted.

The fact that it often comes off as more beneficial/helpful than "true" SvS debilitation attacks just kinda twists the knife a tad!

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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.

>>It's double dipping in the same way that tanking something's balance would be double dipping.

Eh, balance, along with being stunned/immobilized/webbed, are pretty short term compared to nerve damage.

My personal experience is that there are certain things that cause a notably stronger advantage, and nerve damage is the highest on my list. That said, I also find "I have a slight internal head wound and now I can't use cambrinth or hide" and "broke my hand so I can't stow my weapon that's on the ground" equally effects that haven't been reassessed since the start of the game.

>>EE's a good spell that complements, but doesn't replace, traditional debilitation spells.

I think nerve damage influences too much stuff. It's less a critique of EE (or MB or any other things that cause nerve damage) as much as a critique of nerve damage itself.

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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.

I would agree it's probably a problem with the way cyclics function. Stuff like Soul Attrition not really being reflected by Aether Cloak and the spirit damage pulses anyways even if you block the initial hit is a problem IMO, it's a big way to bypass both defenses and barriers depending on the functionality of the spell. EE is one such example and one I would consider a lesser offender but yes, still an offender.

> My concerns are the potency of which it hits, when cast. I thought I was clear about that. Personally I feel like it is out of template for debil with it's damage being (essentially) permanent once landed, but I like the step out of cookie cutter for guild abilities, and think it is a good start where I hope future development follows, in breaking away from 'same spell, different skin'.
> That being said, I do feel that there is something legitimately broken with the way it is being applied, and specifically in it's interaction with wards. Take turtle for instance. With the contests as even as they are, a pulse of a zero maintenance spell (because lets be serious, cyclic is set and forget, like Ronco), breaks through turtle with enough potency to not only win the stat contest still but apply it's damage at a pretty impressive rate.

You didn't really answer his question. What about this is broken? Are you making the claim that it does not follow normal SvS templates? Are you claiming it does not interact with wards in the same way that other debil spells that affect nerves do (such as Mental Blast)? Because if that's so, I could get behind that standardization as well. Is everything else fine except for the nerve damage being permanent? Or are you upset at how good it is about pulling people out of stealth? Are cyclics too hard to stop?

Please be specific, so we can have a conversation instead of everyone yelling past each other about "OP this" and "OP that". What are you actually suggesting changing? Because if the answer is "all of the above", you come off as just being salty that someone dared to hit you with a spell.

Posting yours and your friend's stats and perhaps ranks would be a good start. Some tests with other debilitation spells from the same person would be even better. This would help to answer Warb's previously asked question of, "I mean, if you outclass someone to the extent that eddy's his only tool against you, just kill him and take some nerve herbs... nerbs."


> Destroyed nerves are a capped defense debuff, debuff hiding ability, casting ability, and I think perception.

Could you please post a citation of this from a GM post, since you've referred to it multiple times now?

>If EE still pulled people out of hiding even if it couldn't bypass their wards, wouldn't it still be useful?
>Like, I'm not sure what the fear of change is about here.

It's the context. Periodically, the "stealth uber alles" crowd comes out for an argument, and what you're seeing here, IMO, are people being concerned with that happening again.

- Saragos

>You didn't really answer his question. What about this is broken? Are you making the claim that it does not follow normal SvS templates? Are you claiming it does not interact with wards in the same way that other debil spells that affect nerves do (such as Mental Blast)? Because if that's so, I could get behind that standardization as well. Is everything else fine except for the nerve damage being permanent? Or are you upset at how good it is about pulling people out of stealth? Are cyclics too hard to stop?

My personal bugaboo would be cyclical spells (particularly cyclical AOE) primarily, especially in regards to barrier interaction, and then nerve damage secondly.

I think barriers in general need to be standardized.

>>There are good abilities and there are overpowered abilities. I guess the bottom line is where we draw the line, and I can't rationalize drawing it at EE unless there's a large scale change of these sorts of debilitation spells/abilities.

Just to be clear, I don't think EE is overpowered as much as nerve damage itself is overpowered. While nerve damage over time is not technically stacking, it kinda ends up snowballing penalties in a way that typical debilitation can't, and the influence nerve damage has on a number of systems is pretty dang severe.

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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 kind of PvP situation are you getting yourself into where stacking nerve damage even has a chance to matter, idgi?

We fought, Mazrian, multiple times in Wyvern. The fight lasted well into the 5+ minute range, all in all, and closer to 10 every time. More than enough time for nerve damage to stack. Let's not detract from the point by slinging non-factual information around.

That being said, I also brought to Mazrian's attention via discord earlier today the thread in which nerve damage being a capped defense de-buff was mentioned, by GMs, and how the GMs even came to the conclusion that it needed to be looked at as it stood, and turned down/re-tuned, and they seemingly just never got around to it.

Unfortunately I search the forums using google site:tinyheroes.com and the strings, and you can't link individual posts from those forums, but it is easily searchable if any of you would like to look for yourself.

My personal feeling is that the spell is not interacting properly with wards, as most cyclics appear to do. GMs also admitted as much, re:Toad form, since EE does not pass through the damage model to deal damage. Another thing that was supposed to be addressed, and was not. Toad is not the only ward I have concerns with the interaction of, however. The way nerve damage increases the success of following pulses should also be considered, as it makes a minimal success snowball into complete paralysis well within the confines of an average fight duration.

Again, if you're curious for the source of said info, I gave you the means to view it for yourself. The specific thread a large portion of the information came from, however, can be found here:

http://www.tinyheroes.com/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Warrior%20Mages/Magic%20Talk%20-%20Current%20Warrior%20Mage%20Magic/thread/1758758

>>I don't believe that "it doesn't happen enough to matter" is a reason to let something that seems wonky (nerve damage itself, not what EE does) continue to function as it does.<<

It's a good reason to ask "why are you so invested in this particular thing, of all things."



Mazrian

>>It's a good reason to ask "why are you so invested in this particular thing, of all things."

Because it's a long thread that I noticed, so I read it, then weighed in. It's unfortunately not that deep.

>>Thread is, ironically, a lot of the same people making a lot of the same complaints.

Amusingly enough, I see the same person strongly defending it (for understandable reasons! Being able to harm a target's nervous system is an incredibly helpful system, explicitly because it's a very 2.0-vestigal type of influence on systems that I don't think would have been created if first thought up in a 3.0 mindset).

Armifer made this point in the thread, although it was more indicative of how much of the effect nerve damage can have on a number of systems (once again, the thing I feel is the real issue):

>>The accumulating nerve damage we'll need to watch and possibly adjust (see Mental Blast for an alternative approach to nerve damage), but I'm not convinced that's necessary yet.

Another interesting point by Armifer:

>>Right now I'm inclined to think EE is a bit too mana-efficient for what it does, but the damage stacking will probably stay /w the caveat that we're modifying how nerve damage across the board interacts with magic [my note: too low] and stealth [my note: too high].

Literally you talking about EE:

>>Casting penalties don't seem that bad but the stealth penalty is huge.

¯\(ツ)/¯

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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.