Enyalida2011-11-20 23:23:34
I've got a pretty heft wishlist/comment list for dreamweaving. I'm trying to poke some of these through as reports when I have space, but usually other things take precedent. I'm going to say 'I promise' during this post a lot. No one tends to believe me when I say some of these things until I test it with them in person. This happens a huge amount, people will go Dreamweaver, try to sleep and run to me, suddenly shocked that things are precisely as I said they were. I can hash out general reasons why some of the things are the way they are if asked, but that will inflate this already long post.
General issues:
No triple sleep. - This means that the dreamweaver is actually less able to put a target to sleep then a wiccan or other hex user, or even an ecologist. (I promise) I'd like to note that dreamweavers also don't have a monopoly on sleep attrition (however useless that is to the majority of archertypes, I promise). This means that when we use our beast to sleep you, you still have kafe and wake up in <.1 seconds on average. I've gotten times of .07 seconds or so before.
No way past metawake. - This means that even if dreamweavers suddenly gained triple sleep, you'd still auto-wake after .5 seconds.
Lacking a coherent purpose.- We've got all this sleep attrition and not much to do with it. Being at max sleep only opens you up for eternalsleep, and the mana drain of dreamweavers (Channel) isn't supported by any other skills. For comparison, other similar single hit mana drains (for classes that also have a mana kill, particularly classes with mana kills as their primary kill method) have embedded support strategies in their skillset. Amisso has Inquisition to render you unable to cure mana. Night Lash has choke. Channel has nothing to back it up, and nothing in dreamweaving provides pressuring of potions.
This is going to sound snarky, but: It's not psionics- For mages, both dreamweaving and runes run into the problem of just being... not TK. Even TP is generally a better idea then choosing either runes or dreamweaving. TK has vessels and all sorts of other flippery (magnetize and forcefield come to mind). TP has some good afflicting potential and ego draining, but is more tempermental then TK by far.
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Some specifics:
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These skills are (virtually) useless. I am defining 'useless' as: You are always better off doing something else or using your resources in some other way. This is really only counting combat use, sorry!
Burst - Dreambody battles? BWAHAHAHA
Evaluate - Sleep level is totally unimportant. Either they are at max and falling asleep or not. Takes eq in dreambody, just use contemplate/discern, folks.
Dreamcatcher - Pointless hindrance. May change.
Pacification - Use one of the afflictions motes. This is such a fast cure that dosn't get anyone. Intended for dreambody combat, but see above.
Haunt- Two unshrouded afflictions from a short list, only dreambody. Trying to help while in dreambody? Use void.
Nightmare- In real (group) combat, when is someone asleep? Again.. use void.
Illusion- I will give this skill cool RP potential. As far as combat illusions go, they hit everyone in the room and you can't chain it with your own attacks.
Amnesia- Waste power and balances on this one... if you really feel you must. It's a single rejected command with no balance loss (any balance) associated, not worth it.
Channel/Sap- if in dreambody, again, you have better things do to. Heck, Haunt is better then these. The only use is to recoup damage from kether with sap, but you can just move and regen. Channel arguably has a use with mana draining, but it's a low level drain that no one but druids can use well, because it requires either good pressuring of potions or a lock. For druids, you want to perpetuate the lock, not waste time on this. One balance often spells a cure out of sap.
Drowse - Same comment about having beter things to do. It also takes ~25 of these bad boys to get to max tired. That's right, 25. That's 25 hits where they KNOW there is a dreamweaver in the room, and everyone else also knows! It also has a steep wp cost for what it does. Expect to blow several thousand wp to get someone to max tired. (and remember, dreamweavers can BARELY capitalize on max tired, I proooomise. Again, only as a druid.)
Mindsoothe- Only useful for dreambody combat.
Undoing- Why strip a random defense? Just to be mean? You can't strip anything that furthers your offense with any amount of accuracy, why spend all the balances trying? Or give up your embed offense for it?
Dreamdrift- It's teleport for dreambodies. Yes, they sense you starting and finishing it. No, you can't warn your allies you are trying to drift to that it is just you. No, you won't usually complete your drift.
Narcolepsy- It used to be good before the bizzard sol.4 on it. Now it's useless. If you have kafe up (Which you will) it will be stripped. If you don't (which you won't) it hits narcolepsy. This means that even IN SAP, I'm not able to hit with narcolepsy because yes, you can eat kafe faster then I can narcolepsy you, and it only looses you.. wait. Nope, I spent a balance to do that, which means you spend .5 seconds to cure something I did on a ~3 second balance, in a demesne that gives all of no herb cures. Can we roll back that change? It didn't accomplish anything, and didn't help. The only possible way to do it is blackout and try to fling twice under blackout hoping they don't eat kafe at all during that time. All it takes is one hit of that for them to just have their system auto-eat kafe half way through the long blackout (as 90% of them already do when any mote is flicked). Of course, most systems currently spam kafe under blackout anyways.....
Possess- They need to be asleep. This never happens. Then what you get is a long stun. You can't really command them to do much useful, and there is a delay on essentially all commands. No movement is allowed, no dropping things, no real moving things in and out of containers. I don't think you can read newsboards anymore, and so on. It's one of those trans skills that sees no use.
Some fixes will follow shortly.
General issues:
No triple sleep. - This means that the dreamweaver is actually less able to put a target to sleep then a wiccan or other hex user, or even an ecologist. (I promise) I'd like to note that dreamweavers also don't have a monopoly on sleep attrition (however useless that is to the majority of archertypes, I promise). This means that when we use our beast to sleep you, you still have kafe and wake up in <.1 seconds on average. I've gotten times of .07 seconds or so before.
No way past metawake. - This means that even if dreamweavers suddenly gained triple sleep, you'd still auto-wake after .5 seconds.
Lacking a coherent purpose.- We've got all this sleep attrition and not much to do with it. Being at max sleep only opens you up for eternalsleep, and the mana drain of dreamweavers (Channel) isn't supported by any other skills. For comparison, other similar single hit mana drains (for classes that also have a mana kill, particularly classes with mana kills as their primary kill method) have embedded support strategies in their skillset. Amisso has Inquisition to render you unable to cure mana. Night Lash has choke. Channel has nothing to back it up, and nothing in dreamweaving provides pressuring of potions.
This is going to sound snarky, but: It's not psionics- For mages, both dreamweaving and runes run into the problem of just being... not TK. Even TP is generally a better idea then choosing either runes or dreamweaving. TK has vessels and all sorts of other flippery (magnetize and forcefield come to mind). TP has some good afflicting potential and ego draining, but is more tempermental then TK by far.
--------
Some specifics:
---------
These skills are (virtually) useless. I am defining 'useless' as: You are always better off doing something else or using your resources in some other way. This is really only counting combat use, sorry!
Burst - Dreambody battles? BWAHAHAHA
Evaluate - Sleep level is totally unimportant. Either they are at max and falling asleep or not. Takes eq in dreambody, just use contemplate/discern, folks.
Dreamcatcher - Pointless hindrance. May change.
Pacification - Use one of the afflictions motes. This is such a fast cure that dosn't get anyone. Intended for dreambody combat, but see above.
Haunt- Two unshrouded afflictions from a short list, only dreambody. Trying to help while in dreambody? Use void.
Nightmare- In real (group) combat, when is someone asleep? Again.. use void.
Illusion- I will give this skill cool RP potential. As far as combat illusions go, they hit everyone in the room and you can't chain it with your own attacks.
Amnesia- Waste power and balances on this one... if you really feel you must. It's a single rejected command with no balance loss (any balance) associated, not worth it.
Channel/Sap- if in dreambody, again, you have better things do to. Heck, Haunt is better then these. The only use is to recoup damage from kether with sap, but you can just move and regen. Channel arguably has a use with mana draining, but it's a low level drain that no one but druids can use well, because it requires either good pressuring of potions or a lock. For druids, you want to perpetuate the lock, not waste time on this. One balance often spells a cure out of sap.
Drowse - Same comment about having beter things to do. It also takes ~25 of these bad boys to get to max tired. That's right, 25. That's 25 hits where they KNOW there is a dreamweaver in the room, and everyone else also knows! It also has a steep wp cost for what it does. Expect to blow several thousand wp to get someone to max tired. (and remember, dreamweavers can BARELY capitalize on max tired, I proooomise. Again, only as a druid.)
Mindsoothe- Only useful for dreambody combat.
Undoing- Why strip a random defense? Just to be mean? You can't strip anything that furthers your offense with any amount of accuracy, why spend all the balances trying? Or give up your embed offense for it?
Dreamdrift- It's teleport for dreambodies. Yes, they sense you starting and finishing it. No, you can't warn your allies you are trying to drift to that it is just you. No, you won't usually complete your drift.
Narcolepsy- It used to be good before the bizzard sol.4 on it. Now it's useless. If you have kafe up (Which you will) it will be stripped. If you don't (which you won't) it hits narcolepsy. This means that even IN SAP, I'm not able to hit with narcolepsy because yes, you can eat kafe faster then I can narcolepsy you, and it only looses you.. wait. Nope, I spent a balance to do that, which means you spend .5 seconds to cure something I did on a ~3 second balance, in a demesne that gives all of no herb cures. Can we roll back that change? It didn't accomplish anything, and didn't help. The only possible way to do it is blackout and try to fling twice under blackout hoping they don't eat kafe at all during that time. All it takes is one hit of that for them to just have their system auto-eat kafe half way through the long blackout (as 90% of them already do when any mote is flicked). Of course, most systems currently spam kafe under blackout anyways.....
Possess- They need to be asleep. This never happens. Then what you get is a long stun. You can't really command them to do much useful, and there is a delay on essentially all commands. No movement is allowed, no dropping things, no real moving things in and out of containers. I don't think you can read newsboards anymore, and so on. It's one of those trans skills that sees no use.
Some fixes will follow shortly.
Enyalida2011-11-20 23:32:12
Solutions:
Give dreamweavers some form of triple sleep. Report 605. Rejected on the grounds that we cannot get past insomnia. This is untrue for non-beast using dreamweavers, and isn't the problem. The issue isn't getting past insomnia, it's getting past kafe. At the same time as the Narcolepsy change below.
Give dreamweavers a command skill. Preferably one that takes eq and power to set up, then allows a command that requires but does not consume eq and balance. This is to give a way past metawake. Report 649, accepted, but not implimented. Report 730 is an identical copy of the solution of 649 with a differently phrased problem, hopefully that means we'll get it!
Change message giving in dreambody- Remove all of the third person messages from dreambody attacks. Remove the second person messages from haunt, drowse, and dreamdrift. Alternately, make dreamdrift not give a message to sleeping people, though that's really only younglings.
Add lacking utility stuff to dreambody- Notably, a way to follow and lose other dreambodies, a way to contact other dreambodies or dreamweavers in general, a way to scry from dreambody. Utility would rock. I posted many months ago a bunch of utility ideas in that thread.
Specific skill changes:
Burst - Perhaps make it stun the dreambody? Dreambody combat is silly because there is no movement hindering. Additionally, make it useable from corporeal. Introduce a skill that lets dreamweavers sense dreambodies in their room without having to leave their body. Make it indigo that also hits adjacent rooms. Makes sense as a sleepsense add-on.
Evaluate - Make it require and not take eq/bal.
Dreamcatcher - This doesn't hurt the dreamweaver, it just goes unused. Some flavor change to how you make motes.
Pacification - Make pacification stop ents/passives. That makes it useful to druids, at least >_>. No idea past that.
Haunt-Shroud it.
Nightmare- No clue. The problem here is that attacking sleeping people in dreambody doesn't happen in combat. I guess leave it.
Illusion-Make it RP only. Give it a long balance and call it a day.
Amnesia- Change what this mote is, I just don't see it being useful as amnesia ever. Will think about it.
Channel/Sap- If in dreambody, make these passive once started, stopped on some condition. That can be moving around enough or something, dunno. Sounds like a fun and thematic change, will think about how to balance that in a minute
Drowse - Shroud this. Increase how much it does. Reduce wp drain.
Mindsoothe: Make this not a mote ability. Have it be useable on self or others, and have it be imbue-able into the room as a standalone free effect. Or possibly an aura that has a mana/lowwp drain associated but only cures allies, not you. As a mote, to use it you have to puncture your allies, which is stupid. Embedding it cuts out your mote offense by at least half, and is terribly spammy.
Undoing- Make it targeted to a defense. Perhaps another aura type thing? Dreamweaver auras have been talked about on forums, perhaps some changing could be to introduce them and move some of the cruddier motes to auras? Even amnesia would be okay as a fairly quickly reocurring passive thing.
Dreamdrift- Shroud.
Narcolepsy- Roll back, please.
Possess- I offered my suggestions on this one and was turned down. If the sleep problem is fixed, this will become a little less of an issue, I guess. I wanted to put the command skill as either an addendum to this mechanic, or in replacement of it, but was shot down for (what I feel are) shaky RP reasons. I see no reason we need to be as strong as Ladantine, to completly possess people.
Directions for dreamweaving that would be cool involve removing the sleep attrition part of it and having some other stacking mechanish (like accuring dreamparasites on the enemy) and having sleepmist simply be a terrain-esque requirement/booster for skills.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that as is, memoryloss also requires you to declare your target.
Give dreamweavers some form of triple sleep. Report 605. Rejected on the grounds that we cannot get past insomnia. This is untrue for non-beast using dreamweavers, and isn't the problem. The issue isn't getting past insomnia, it's getting past kafe. At the same time as the Narcolepsy change below.
Give dreamweavers a command skill. Preferably one that takes eq and power to set up, then allows a command that requires but does not consume eq and balance. This is to give a way past metawake. Report 649, accepted, but not implimented. Report 730 is an identical copy of the solution of 649 with a differently phrased problem, hopefully that means we'll get it!
Change message giving in dreambody- Remove all of the third person messages from dreambody attacks. Remove the second person messages from haunt, drowse, and dreamdrift. Alternately, make dreamdrift not give a message to sleeping people, though that's really only younglings.
Add lacking utility stuff to dreambody- Notably, a way to follow and lose other dreambodies, a way to contact other dreambodies or dreamweavers in general, a way to scry from dreambody. Utility would rock. I posted many months ago a bunch of utility ideas in that thread.
Specific skill changes:
Burst - Perhaps make it stun the dreambody? Dreambody combat is silly because there is no movement hindering. Additionally, make it useable from corporeal. Introduce a skill that lets dreamweavers sense dreambodies in their room without having to leave their body. Make it indigo that also hits adjacent rooms. Makes sense as a sleepsense add-on.
Evaluate - Make it require and not take eq/bal.
Dreamcatcher - This doesn't hurt the dreamweaver, it just goes unused. Some flavor change to how you make motes.
Pacification - Make pacification stop ents/passives. That makes it useful to druids, at least >_>. No idea past that.
Haunt-Shroud it.
Nightmare- No clue. The problem here is that attacking sleeping people in dreambody doesn't happen in combat. I guess leave it.
Illusion-Make it RP only. Give it a long balance and call it a day.
Amnesia- Change what this mote is, I just don't see it being useful as amnesia ever. Will think about it.
Channel/Sap- If in dreambody, make these passive once started, stopped on some condition. That can be moving around enough or something, dunno. Sounds like a fun and thematic change, will think about how to balance that in a minute
Drowse - Shroud this. Increase how much it does. Reduce wp drain.
Mindsoothe: Make this not a mote ability. Have it be useable on self or others, and have it be imbue-able into the room as a standalone free effect. Or possibly an aura that has a mana/lowwp drain associated but only cures allies, not you. As a mote, to use it you have to puncture your allies, which is stupid. Embedding it cuts out your mote offense by at least half, and is terribly spammy.
Undoing- Make it targeted to a defense. Perhaps another aura type thing? Dreamweaver auras have been talked about on forums, perhaps some changing could be to introduce them and move some of the cruddier motes to auras? Even amnesia would be okay as a fairly quickly reocurring passive thing.
Dreamdrift- Shroud.
Narcolepsy- Roll back, please.
Possess- I offered my suggestions on this one and was turned down. If the sleep problem is fixed, this will become a little less of an issue, I guess. I wanted to put the command skill as either an addendum to this mechanic, or in replacement of it, but was shot down for (what I feel are) shaky RP reasons. I see no reason we need to be as strong as Ladantine, to completly possess people.
Directions for dreamweaving that would be cool involve removing the sleep attrition part of it and having some other stacking mechanish (like accuring dreamparasites on the enemy) and having sleepmist simply be a terrain-esque requirement/booster for skills.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that as is, memoryloss also requires you to declare your target.
Lehki2011-11-21 04:51:05
I'm all for removing the attrition aspect. It's just frustrating and dull to deal with as the target or the user.
Shryke2011-11-21 05:08:34
I really respect the amount of thought and testing (I imagine) that you've put into this report.
I also agree wholeheartedly on removing the attrition drowsiness aspect of dreamweaving. It's tedious for all involved parties.
I'm not sure if your report really addresses this issue. I hope the admins give it a thorough reading though. What are your thoughts on attrition sleep offense Enyalida?
I also agree wholeheartedly on removing the attrition drowsiness aspect of dreamweaving. It's tedious for all involved parties.
I'm not sure if your report really addresses this issue. I hope the admins give it a thorough reading though. What are your thoughts on attrition sleep offense Enyalida?
Enyalida2011-11-21 05:24:40
To be clear, this isn't any part of the special report process. This is my own laundry list.
In a perfect world (one where I spell perfect correctly the first time, instead of "perceft") the changes to dreamweaving would go beyond the specific skill suggestions I've put forward, and the entire 'direction' would be shifted a little. Change it to a different passive buildup, that comes out to the same sort of thing but has a cure, or doesn't actually do anything (or much) on its own. It has been suggested to just make kafe cure some tiredness, I don't know how keen I am on that.
In a perfect world (one where I spell perfect correctly the first time, instead of "perceft") the changes to dreamweaving would go beyond the specific skill suggestions I've put forward, and the entire 'direction' would be shifted a little. Change it to a different passive buildup, that comes out to the same sort of thing but has a cure, or doesn't actually do anything (or much) on its own. It has been suggested to just make kafe cure some tiredness, I don't know how keen I am on that.
Janalon2011-11-21 11:19:40
Hey Enyalida, how many reports do you think it would take to Envoy Dreamweaves into a more useable skill set?
Enyalida2011-11-21 20:48:02
Well, it depends on how complex the reports can go. The main core issues could be split up as follows:
Give dreamweavers some form of triple sleep/Narcolepsy- The narcolepsy change was an attempt to give dreamweavers a way past kafe, but is generally an inferior tactic. Roll back the change and add a method to do an extra hit of sleep with an attack. I suggest putting this on slumber for 1p. DREAMWEAVE SLUMBER EMPOWERED, costs 1p, does two hits of sleep. Requires sleepmist or a certain tiredness level.
Give dreamweavers a command skill/Possess - Before the last change, it actually hurt the dreamweaver to possess someone, it left you something like three times more vulnerable. Now it's not inherently hurtful to use possess, but it's still extremly hard for what you get. Still feels very useless to me. The real core thing here is creating a new skill to give a command skill to dreamweavers to get past metawake so that with a triple sleep solution, we can (every so often) put you into real sleep. Limits can be put on this. I've got a report up on this, report 730.
Change dreambody/Drowse/Nightmare/Channel/Sap/Dreamdrift/Haunt- Make the dreambody things shrouded, so that their minor use in attacking single targets does not give away the presence of the dreamweaver. Channel and Sap are iffy on that, but that's okay.
Closer to special report/coordinated reporting:
Introduce some dream aura to replace some of the motes.
Change the attrition concept.
Give dreamweavers some form of triple sleep/Narcolepsy- The narcolepsy change was an attempt to give dreamweavers a way past kafe, but is generally an inferior tactic. Roll back the change and add a method to do an extra hit of sleep with an attack. I suggest putting this on slumber for 1p. DREAMWEAVE SLUMBER EMPOWERED, costs 1p, does two hits of sleep. Requires sleepmist or a certain tiredness level.
Give dreamweavers a command skill/Possess - Before the last change, it actually hurt the dreamweaver to possess someone, it left you something like three times more vulnerable. Now it's not inherently hurtful to use possess, but it's still extremly hard for what you get. Still feels very useless to me. The real core thing here is creating a new skill to give a command skill to dreamweavers to get past metawake so that with a triple sleep solution, we can (every so often) put you into real sleep. Limits can be put on this. I've got a report up on this, report 730.
Change dreambody/Drowse/Nightmare/Channel/Sap/Dreamdrift/Haunt- Make the dreambody things shrouded, so that their minor use in attacking single targets does not give away the presence of the dreamweaver. Channel and Sap are iffy on that, but that's okay.
Closer to special report/coordinated reporting:
Introduce some dream aura to replace some of the motes.
Change the attrition concept.
Enyalida2011-12-05 23:42:41
Report #730 Skillset: Dreamweaving Skill: New
Guild: Hartstone Status: Unsubmitted
Problem: Dreamweavers still lack (and are likely to always lack) any method of activly sleeping someone for any duration of time. In the event the target of a dreamweaver is gotten asleep and kafe is stripped, the metawake defense wakes the target in .5 seconds. For comparision, wiccans have pooka to command off metawake and access to hex sleep. This gives them a total of three stacked active sleep attacks (beast spit or sleepcloud, doublewhammy sleep hex) at their disposal, 4 with the short timed pixie fae. Dreamweavers have at maximum 2 active sleep attacks (beast+slumber/deepsleep) and no method of metawake removal. This leaves dreamweavers less able to put people to sleep then wiccans. This report will try to address the metawake portion of this problem.
Solution #1: Create a new skill that cost 1-2 power, useable in either corporeal or dreambody states. When used, the dreamweaver extends their psyche into the mind of the victim, who notices this. The dreamweaver then has a short (10 seconds or so) period where they get ONE (1) order, pooka style. Require some level of tiredness for this effect to be possible, falure loses no power.
Solution #2: Provide a solution here.
Solution #3: Provide a solution here.
Any other solutions? I'd like to keep it to a command skill, really.
Remember that report 649 already approved of this EXACT solution.
Raeri2011-12-06 00:07:32
Enyalida:
Any other solutions? I'd like to keep it to a command skill, really.
Remember that report 649 already approved of this EXACT solution.
Better comparison with the silvery eyes in Transmology, rather than pooka.
Enyalida2011-12-06 00:10:24
True
