With Tuesday's Tidings being a thing, I thought I'd throw a couple of ideas out there that might be qualify as quick enough to get done.
1) Fire Rain Metaspell. WM's currently lack an AoE Cyclic TM spell that can hit at missile and move with you, which is something that Necromancers, Bards, and MM's have. Fire Rain can hit at missile, but it has a long windup time, can't move with you, and only one can be present in the room. This seems a bit odd for the masters of TM. I know some people like it the way it is, and it's certainly nostalgic, but perhaps there could be a metaspell to make it more like Pyre, where it could move with you and not be limited to one mage?
2) Single use Aethereal Pathways. The current system of turn it on and it constantly draining is unhelpful, and seems dated with the way things are designed now. It could allow more thoughtful use of the ability. Instead of the current mode of, "Turn on pathway, do a bunch of stuff, forget to turn it off and end up being completely unaware of if it even helped it all because I have no idea when it even ran out." I propose the symbiosis code could be utilized for it, and it could operate basically like them. You turn it on for one spell, and it does its job. This greatly reduces wastage of the charge and makes the abilities more user-friendly. For the oddball, Defense, it could work for the next TM spell thrown against you and preclude the use of other Pathways.
3) I think it would be very nice if Ignite could be turned into "Enhance Weapon" and you got to choose your element based on Summoning skill. Given that TM foci are pretty much the right answer, it could throw a bone to WM's who want to still mix weapons and spells, while also giving some nice RP potential for those who aren't fire-focused.
Does anyone else have any good ideas for small stuff that might make a big impact?
- Saragos
SARAGOS
SARAGOS
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/05/2020 02:34 AM CDT
Correction - I spaced on the MM aspect. Obviously they don't have an AoE cyclic, even if SLS can hit at range.
- Saragos
- Saragos
ASHBOMB
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/06/2020 07:05 AM CDT
>>3) I think it would be very nice if Ignite could be turned into "Enhance Weapon" and you got to choose your element based on Summoning skill. Given that TM foci are pretty much the right answer, it could throw a bone to WM's who want to still mix weapons and spells, while also giving some nice RP potential for those who aren't fire-focused.
> summon weapon icy
Your knowledge of weaponsmithing improves the pattern you are attempting to summon.
Closing your eyes, you grunt briefly in effort as you sense a small aqueous ethereal fissure open in front of you. Thrusting your hand through, you draw out an icy scimitar. As you open your eyes, the fissure closes.
> prep ignite 20
You trace a curving sigil in the air, shaping the pattern of the Ignite spell.
> cast icy scim
Tendrils of flame dart along your hand toward an icy scimitar, which suddenly bursts into flames!
> app icy scim
An icy scimitar is a medium edged melee-ranged weapon.
An icy scimitar trains the small edged skill.
You are certain that it could do:
low (3/27) puncture damage
no (0/27) slice damage
somewhat fair (4/27) impact damage
low (3/27) fire damage with affinity for random attacks
heavy (9/27) cold damage with affinity for slice attacks
no (0/27) electric damage
"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh
> summon weapon icy
Your knowledge of weaponsmithing improves the pattern you are attempting to summon.
Closing your eyes, you grunt briefly in effort as you sense a small aqueous ethereal fissure open in front of you. Thrusting your hand through, you draw out an icy scimitar. As you open your eyes, the fissure closes.
> prep ignite 20
You trace a curving sigil in the air, shaping the pattern of the Ignite spell.
> cast icy scim
Tendrils of flame dart along your hand toward an icy scimitar, which suddenly bursts into flames!
> app icy scim
An icy scimitar is a medium edged melee-ranged weapon.
An icy scimitar trains the small edged skill.
You are certain that it could do:
low (3/27) puncture damage
no (0/27) slice damage
somewhat fair (4/27) impact damage
low (3/27) fire damage with affinity for random attacks
heavy (9/27) cold damage with affinity for slice attacks
no (0/27) electric damage
"Game balance is sobbing over in the corner as it considers the ramifications of AoE Blufmor Garaen. Your spell slots send their condolences." - GM Raesh
SARAGOS
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/14/2020 11:43 PM CDT
Except that you're taking a significant hit to your effectiveness just by using elemental weapons. The best you can do with summoned weapons is kertig level or around T5, if you have all the spell slots spent and everything. This meant that before the MT items, Tyrium was still superior, though there was an argument to be made that the elemental damage kind of made up for the lower damage stats due to enemy armors potentially having less protection from elemental damage.
Now, with MT, there's no comparison. I could instead just drop ignite on one of these instead of that scimitar, or one of the many other MT weapons:
https://elanthipedia.play.net/Weapon:Razor-edged_kiralan_khopesh_adorned_with_an_ocean%27s_deep_emerald
And that's leaving out the fact that it takes RT and elemental charge to make that weapon appear, where I could just pull the weapon out of my sheath otherwise. Look, I can accept being charged some mechanical rigamarole to get my cool looking elemental weapon. But asking me to take that penalty plus pretty drastically worse stats is just too much. I've suggested in the past that perhaps we could put a weapon into an extradimensional pocket so that the summoned weapons could at least equal what we already have and we'd only be taking one type of penalty for using them, but that never went anywhere.
And that leaves aside the fact that melee weapons are strictly worse than ranged weapons or TM in any kind of situation that's not dueling for fun.
So yeah, I think a little change to ignite could still be in order.
- Saragos
Now, with MT, there's no comparison. I could instead just drop ignite on one of these instead of that scimitar, or one of the many other MT weapons:
https://elanthipedia.play.net/Weapon:Razor-edged_kiralan_khopesh_adorned_with_an_ocean%27s_deep_emerald
And that's leaving out the fact that it takes RT and elemental charge to make that weapon appear, where I could just pull the weapon out of my sheath otherwise. Look, I can accept being charged some mechanical rigamarole to get my cool looking elemental weapon. But asking me to take that penalty plus pretty drastically worse stats is just too much. I've suggested in the past that perhaps we could put a weapon into an extradimensional pocket so that the summoned weapons could at least equal what we already have and we'd only be taking one type of penalty for using them, but that never went anywhere.
And that leaves aside the fact that melee weapons are strictly worse than ranged weapons or TM in any kind of situation that's not dueling for fun.
So yeah, I think a little change to ignite could still be in order.
- Saragos
JULIAN
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/15/2020 02:48 PM CDT
Ignite is going to look pretty bad on an elemental weapon. IIRC the bonus is based on the highest physical damage type, which obviously is not great if you've swapped the primary physical damage type for elemental damage first.
Mazrian
Mazrian
DIMINISHEDANGEL
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/17/2020 06:14 AM CDT
>Ignite is going to look pretty bad on an elemental weapon. IIRC the bonus is based on the highest physical damage type, which obviously is not great if you've swapped the primary physical damage type for elemental damage first.
The Bard one enhances two damage stats and the Barb one does highest damage stat and balance, so the system has some flexibility with weapons boosters. Boosting the highest stat as well as adding (or enhancing) elemental damage seems reasonable for Warrior Mages, maybe even a metaspell to make it cold or electric.
- Malkien
The Bard one enhances two damage stats and the Barb one does highest damage stat and balance, so the system has some flexibility with weapons boosters. Boosting the highest stat as well as adding (or enhancing) elemental damage seems reasonable for Warrior Mages, maybe even a metaspell to make it cold or electric.
- Malkien
JULIAN
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/17/2020 09:59 AM CDT
Don't get me wrong, I think all of that would be pretty cool.
Mazrian
Mazrian
ERNESTJ3
Re: Ideas for Quick WM Improvements
05/21/2020 01:25 PM CDT
I love elemental weapons for the flavor, and not having to carry quite so many around. That being said, I'm only hunting around 400 ranks, so damage doesn't matter so much. Is it possible to do something like canopic jars, but for elemental weapons? Like, sacrifice a tyrium scimitar, and now my summoned SE permanently has those stats?
I'd love to see racial templates for elemental weapons. I need a firey shh'oi'ata.
Re: Ignite, I use it mainly for MoA procs, extra damage no matter what it does to the weapon. Not sure if it stacks with making the weapon fire already though.
I ask this every few years, but I would love to see a wearable item that we can put a talisman in, and command the familiar without having to hold it in our hands. Not sure what the engine limitations of this are though. I wonder if it could be done where touching the item once makes the next command sent to the parser act as if the talisman inside was hand held.
