I had a thought about Nymph, given the recent nerf. I imagine the reason the admin changed it is because it was possible to time attacks so you were never, ever hit while bashing.

To address this and at the same time improve the fae entourage slightly, what if the time between pacification was normally randomized between 12 and 45 seconds, but that each pacification lasted a defined time before wearing off, say 8 seconds. During that time the NPC would not be able to attack you at all, even if you attack it back.

This would allow aggressive creatures to be affected by nymph, but ensure that it was still impossible to exploit by strategic timing. Each pacification would essentially be deflecting 2-3 attacks completely (depending on how fast the denizen hits), which could remain worthwhile at all levels. That is not true of the current setup of nymph since it fails against all aggressive, high-level creatures. I also think it might be nicer than having an extremely long delay, which makes it very unhelpful in bashing particularly.

This change would also improve its PK applications since ordering an entity to reattack does not consume any balance, and there would be a defined time in which the pacified enemy loyal does not attack you, regardless of what the target does.

Thoughts?

It would be a massive upgrade, because nymph never pacified aggressive creatures (it would pacify, but then they'd just immediately aggro again instead of sleeping) as far as I know...

Aye, I'm aware. However, as the nymph would no longer permanently pacify any creature, it would not seem to be imbalanced.

I like that, since I don't see why it was nerfed when wicca already isn't incredible, but I'm not sure that it needs to apply to guardian ents too. That might get a bit much. (It affects wiccans much less than guardians because when fighting each other we tend to have the mother, sprite, nymph etc. all on each other anyway.)

Dear lord no. Nymph is already the bane of my existence. I don't need an 8-second timer before the angel attacks again tacked on along with that.

Nymph was easy to get around before, I tested it with Eiru ages ago and it barely hindered him -at all.-

What would happen if you ordered a mount to attack before your angel?

That's... actually a really good idea. I'll have to try that out.

However, it does require either having a collar (which I do not have) or buying disposable mounts, which would get annoying and expensive. How much does the cheapest mount cost, hmm...

It'd have a random chance of pacifying either when the 12th second ticked, making it even less effective.

Wicca is one of those skillsets that has a couple pretty ok skills (nymph, maiden, toadcurse now I guess,) but when set with a lot of fairly useless skills (brownie, leprechaun, dryad, etc) I find it hard to see a justification in nerfage.

I'd rather see the current nymph nerf stay and the whole skillset brought up to par a bit. But, as far as I know, most of the envoy suggestions to improve it have been rejected (or were never tabled and I've been given false info). It makes me sad, sad like a clown with no face paint.

The only reason I can think of that they nerfed nymph (to the point where it can't be used to hunting.. which was just about the only thing it was used for anyway... ) was that if you were some sort of mud-wiz you could time and attack -just- before it hit to pacify. Now remember this only works on normally passive unaligned creatures, like gorgogs and moors creatures and mostly mid or lowbie-areas.

Since that is the only perceived problem to nymph and the reason I am assuming it was changed, rather then assuming Estarra is out to get me or something silly, this is what I propose.

Nymph be returned to how it used to be with one exception, a random variable of (+/-) 4 seconds be added, instead of pacifying once every 12 seconds it would pacify anywhere from 8 seconds to 16 seconds, no one (not like many did before anyway) would then be able to time it to abuse it.

I'm not sure why it was nerfed because it wasn't mentioned by any envoys in any of the minireports.

I heard it was used to kill a manifestation with quite a bit of ease. I'd say that might be the reason.

Not sure of this, especially after the changes to it, but doesn't reflecting allow you to do the same?

Two reflectors, one fighting the other reflecting, yes, you'll never get hit, and it works with aggro creatures as well, nymph doesn't.

Cities have that though, you're not allowed to compare. Communes are obviously much stronger and need nerfed.

I think they nerfed reflecting others too, such that it's a 6 (?) second balance.

That doesn't really compare to the nymph nerfing though...

Reflecting others was MASSIVELY nerfed, yes.

Reflecting yourself wasn't changed, and its a better form of shielding when attacking nullifying mobs. I'm personally fine with reflecting though, and it should be a sort of benchmark for what nymph should be, instead of the other way round. In other words, I don't want to nerf reflections.

Alright, so ideas. The entire point of nymphs are either to help bashing, or to hinder loyals. In mythology, nymphs are female nature spirits, usually of trees or water. Dryads are basically tree nymphs, and kelpies would take the role of water nymphs, so real life mythology doesn't help. Ah well.

So the other meaning of nymph is a young female. That helps. Hrm, maybe it does. So a nymph would be the object of lust for almost anything. One direction this can go would be to have it afflict love and maybe some other related afflictions, although this would make it have a totally different usage, but its an idea but one that I don't particularly like.

Another idea for nymph would be for it to timeslip you on a random timer, reasoning can be that she causes the mob/person to hesitate hitting you, giving you time to avoid the blow. The pros for this idea would be that it helps bashing, cons would be that it will very likely be overpowered. Mostly because it means you are invulnerable at random intervals, and nothing stops it, so perhaps to balance it out a little, have it be a buff which has a timer and lasts only a short while. I kinda like this idea, but it doesn't seem quite worked out to me yet, so I'd stop here and let it stew in my head, cause I'm stumped for now.

I was able to kill Marani Veloske without being hit using nymph. Thus, I would argue this is more of a "balance" to nymph than a "downgrade" and thus requires no upgrade compensation.