Enyalida2011-12-01 00:11:06
Oh god dammit.
I accidentally overwrote my original post. Isn't that just great. I guess I'll rewrite it.
I don't play with Ecology as much as I do Dreamweaving, so this will probably be less extensive then my Dreamweaving list. I'm writing this a second time and I know I'm forgetting things.
Ecology is split into 5 main parts: Charm, Fetish, Bane, Smudge, and Bond.
Charm
The charm is a-ok. The only possible thing would be an expansion of types. It all goes downhill from there
Fetish
The fetish is mostly okay. The cost to make it is a whopping 50p, but it's only once every 50 days. However, poisons really aren't that fantastic, even with reduced shrugging. You can't use crotamine, ibululu, or senso with the fetish. No idea why crotamine is blocked, it's not particularly dangerous. Ibululu is presumably blocked so that bards can't use it to deathsong people, senso presumably so that druids can't keep your limbs broken (which doesn't stop RUB CLEANSE anyways). The poisons that hinder properly for a druid on their own are mantakaya, mactans (after it decides to tick when frozen), and morphite.
Bane
You can't tell when a bane lifts on someone. This is a minor problem, solved in 1v1 situations by a timer. There is a bane that is 100% useless to druids, not just functionally inferior, it literally has no use for a druid. Batbane: Increases damage from sound based sources. Snake bane is a requirement for using the fetish in any serious way. Herb bane is good, but I question it in combination with an affliction potential that includes very few herb cures. The only required herb cures for poisons are senso (which we can't give), Mellitin (weakness), and Haemotox (haemophilia). Most of the banes are okay.
Smudge
Smudges take 2-4 herbs to craft on a ~1second eq time. They then are burned on a ~3 second eq time. The most used effects are probably desert (bleeding and blind), Mountain (prone and 1-3 limb breaks), and forest (damage, medium stun, ablaze).
-They take anywhere from 4-11 seconds to fire, which can be extended or escaped by gusting the room, lusting (love potion, fun) the user, or shielding.
-Mountain prones, but often only breaks an arm, which means that the prone aspect was wasted and means that for the druid, the target will still be able to RUB CLEANSE, and you wasted 4 seconds of balance trying that, which often spells the end of the sap 'lock'.
-Valley smudge flings people into the sky. If they lack flight and levitation, they receive a concussion upon falling. Druids have no way of stripping levitation, making the affliction (and therefore combat for druid) part of this skill unused.
-Ablaze wakes people from sleep fairly often, which majorly cuts on one of the few good poison combinations. That, combined with bleeding waking, demesne waking, and metawake can be a problem (arguably a minor one).
-In opportune love potion timing often causes the target of the smudge to be exempt from its effect based on pure luck
Bond
It's.... not useful. The abilities you get from the familiar are Familiarsting, FamiliarBerserk, FamiliarShield, FamiliarSmudge, and Transmigrate.
-Familiarsting requires that you give up your active Ecology afflicting, as you have to clasp your fetish around your bond (~3 seconds). It then costs 3p to command it to sting someone who is in the room with you, taking a ~3 second eq time. It will then proceed to sting them 10 times, 5 seconds apart. That's a total of 10 poisons in 50 seconds. By contrast, a similar skill (animatedagger), delivers 12(.5) poisons in that time and can continue indefinitely, tracking the target.
-Berserk requires all the same things as sting, but 6p for twice the rate of poison hitting. This is much better, but is still pricey and a short amount.
-FamiliarSmudge is okay. It's not all that useful, for enemies at range will simply shield to avoid the smudge, but whatever.
-Transmigrate. The abilities you get from deepbond are nice. Transmigrate is a huge pain. If you get caught in enemy territory, you stand to die twice as a demigod, losing 4 million essence in the process. This means that in any fight that's non-defensive, you are putting yourself at a big risk to have deepbond up at all. Unfortunately you can't drop this once you have it up.
All in all, it feels like Ecology was supposed to be the commune's answer to psionics, and it just doesn't live up to it. It lacks the surefire offense associated, and even with the nice charm, it lacks the defensive value! Room attacking is rather devalued by love potion/reject mechanics, and the effects there aren't overwhelmingly strong (compare to Snafu, Carcer and Carcer clones for the movement hinder skills, Bale stone, Illusions Reality).
I accidentally overwrote my original post. Isn't that just great. I guess I'll rewrite it.
I don't play with Ecology as much as I do Dreamweaving, so this will probably be less extensive then my Dreamweaving list. I'm writing this a second time and I know I'm forgetting things.
Ecology is split into 5 main parts: Charm, Fetish, Bane, Smudge, and Bond.
Charm
The charm is a-ok. The only possible thing would be an expansion of types. It all goes downhill from there
Fetish
The fetish is mostly okay. The cost to make it is a whopping 50p, but it's only once every 50 days. However, poisons really aren't that fantastic, even with reduced shrugging. You can't use crotamine, ibululu, or senso with the fetish. No idea why crotamine is blocked, it's not particularly dangerous. Ibululu is presumably blocked so that bards can't use it to deathsong people, senso presumably so that druids can't keep your limbs broken (which doesn't stop RUB CLEANSE anyways). The poisons that hinder properly for a druid on their own are mantakaya, mactans (after it decides to tick when frozen), and morphite.
Bane
You can't tell when a bane lifts on someone. This is a minor problem, solved in 1v1 situations by a timer. There is a bane that is 100% useless to druids, not just functionally inferior, it literally has no use for a druid. Batbane: Increases damage from sound based sources. Snake bane is a requirement for using the fetish in any serious way. Herb bane is good, but I question it in combination with an affliction potential that includes very few herb cures. The only required herb cures for poisons are senso (which we can't give), Mellitin (weakness), and Haemotox (haemophilia). Most of the banes are okay.
Smudge
Smudges take 2-4 herbs to craft on a ~1second eq time. They then are burned on a ~3 second eq time. The most used effects are probably desert (bleeding and blind), Mountain (prone and 1-3 limb breaks), and forest (damage, medium stun, ablaze).
-They take anywhere from 4-11 seconds to fire, which can be extended or escaped by gusting the room, lusting (love potion, fun) the user, or shielding.
-Mountain prones, but often only breaks an arm, which means that the prone aspect was wasted and means that for the druid, the target will still be able to RUB CLEANSE, and you wasted 4 seconds of balance trying that, which often spells the end of the sap 'lock'.
-Valley smudge flings people into the sky. If they lack flight and levitation, they receive a concussion upon falling. Druids have no way of stripping levitation, making the affliction (and therefore combat for druid) part of this skill unused.
-Ablaze wakes people from sleep fairly often, which majorly cuts on one of the few good poison combinations. That, combined with bleeding waking, demesne waking, and metawake can be a problem (arguably a minor one).
-In opportune love potion timing often causes the target of the smudge to be exempt from its effect based on pure luck
Bond
It's.... not useful. The abilities you get from the familiar are Familiarsting, FamiliarBerserk, FamiliarShield, FamiliarSmudge, and Transmigrate.
-Familiarsting requires that you give up your active Ecology afflicting, as you have to clasp your fetish around your bond (~3 seconds). It then costs 3p to command it to sting someone who is in the room with you, taking a ~3 second eq time. It will then proceed to sting them 10 times, 5 seconds apart. That's a total of 10 poisons in 50 seconds. By contrast, a similar skill (animatedagger), delivers 12(.5) poisons in that time and can continue indefinitely, tracking the target.
-Berserk requires all the same things as sting, but 6p for twice the rate of poison hitting. This is much better, but is still pricey and a short amount.
-FamiliarSmudge is okay. It's not all that useful, for enemies at range will simply shield to avoid the smudge, but whatever.
-Transmigrate. The abilities you get from deepbond are nice. Transmigrate is a huge pain. If you get caught in enemy territory, you stand to die twice as a demigod, losing 4 million essence in the process. This means that in any fight that's non-defensive, you are putting yourself at a big risk to have deepbond up at all. Unfortunately you can't drop this once you have it up.
All in all, it feels like Ecology was supposed to be the commune's answer to psionics, and it just doesn't live up to it. It lacks the surefire offense associated, and even with the nice charm, it lacks the defensive value! Room attacking is rather devalued by love potion/reject mechanics, and the effects there aren't overwhelmingly strong (compare to Snafu, Carcer and Carcer clones for the movement hinder skills, Bale stone, Illusions Reality).
Enyalida2011-12-01 03:14:52
Okay. So, I'm not quite as certain about what can be done to help out Ecology as I am with Dreamweaving, but here it is:
Charm
-Nothing needed. Possible expansion of types.
Fetish
-Speed up clasp/unclasp, or let familiarsting be used as well as normal fetish under some condition.
-Allow Senso, possibly have Ibululu allowed for druids only. Couldn't care less about Crotamine, truth be told.
Bane
-Lift message?
-New bane! There was a report suggesting that batbane either be changed to increase manadrain on truecaw and add bleeding to bellow or make a new bane with that exact ability, but the point of the third solution was missed I think. I don't really like that particular solution. I have some ideas, I'll post those in a second.
Smudge
- Make smudges always hit after 7 seconds.
- Make Valley also strip levitation when it hits.
- Make Mountain always break at least one leg instead of one limb.
- Make Forest not give ablaze to sapped targets, or have sap put out ablaze. The only other change that would fix that issue would be to change what wakes across the board, but that's something best left to a dreamweaving affliction or skill.
Bond
-Allow commanding sting on people in the room of the bond.
-Have bond track people it's stinging.
-Alternately or additionally, allow a command for the bond to follow people out of the room of the caster.
-Up the maximum number of poisons on the bond, so that it stings for more then just 10.
-Slightly speed up sting time on normal sting and/or drop the power cost a tad.
-Transmigrate toggle. You can turn it (the rebirth aspect only) off, to turn it back on, you have to pay the 5p again.
EXTRA THINGS
-Please oh please, a love potion change. A good one would be to give everyone a short-lived defense (stun immunity like) after rejecting to love potion. Perhaps even after getting hit by love potion. Helps to mitigate getting instalusted again because of annoying world timers. Can we also speed up rejecting by a fair amount? Double speed. And rejecting multiple people at once? Classes that seem designed to hit multiple people at once rather fail at doing so. For druids/mages you walk into the enemy group, and can only dissolve one person at a time, after every action you get a free dissolve on someone. In addition, the enemy group will be lusting, which narrows down who you are actually hitting again! Orrrrr... How about a love defense that everyone has access to?
Charm
-Nothing needed. Possible expansion of types.
Fetish
-Speed up clasp/unclasp, or let familiarsting be used as well as normal fetish under some condition.
-Allow Senso, possibly have Ibululu allowed for druids only. Couldn't care less about Crotamine, truth be told.
Bane
-Lift message?
-New bane! There was a report suggesting that batbane either be changed to increase manadrain on truecaw and add bleeding to bellow or make a new bane with that exact ability, but the point of the third solution was missed I think. I don't really like that particular solution. I have some ideas, I'll post those in a second.
Smudge
- Make smudges always hit after 7 seconds.
- Make Valley also strip levitation when it hits.
- Make Mountain always break at least one leg instead of one limb.
- Make Forest not give ablaze to sapped targets, or have sap put out ablaze. The only other change that would fix that issue would be to change what wakes across the board, but that's something best left to a dreamweaving affliction or skill.
Bond
-Allow commanding sting on people in the room of the bond.
-Have bond track people it's stinging.
-Alternately or additionally, allow a command for the bond to follow people out of the room of the caster.
-Up the maximum number of poisons on the bond, so that it stings for more then just 10.
-Slightly speed up sting time on normal sting and/or drop the power cost a tad.
-Transmigrate toggle. You can turn it (the rebirth aspect only) off, to turn it back on, you have to pay the 5p again.
EXTRA THINGS
-Please oh please, a love potion change. A good one would be to give everyone a short-lived defense (stun immunity like) after rejecting to love potion. Perhaps even after getting hit by love potion. Helps to mitigate getting instalusted again because of annoying world timers. Can we also speed up rejecting by a fair amount? Double speed. And rejecting multiple people at once? Classes that seem designed to hit multiple people at once rather fail at doing so. For druids/mages you walk into the enemy group, and can only dissolve one person at a time, after every action you get a free dissolve on someone. In addition, the enemy group will be lusting, which narrows down who you are actually hitting again! Orrrrr... How about a love defense that everyone has access to?
Janalon2011-12-01 04:13:52
Unfortunately I understand very little about ecology, and therefore cannot directly comment on this post. I did want to ask what you meant by the possible extension of types under charms though. Do you mean more damage types, or more charm types to get more DMP stacking options?
Enyalida2011-12-01 05:06:10
Well, more damage types. The only possible extension would be to add psychic, excorable and divinus types. A report has been rejected for excorable and divinus on the grounds that nothing in nature is resistant or weak to divinus and excorable and therefore it isn't in the theme of the skill to have defenses against those. As long as dmp to those types doesn't become common in other defensive skills, I'm fine with that.
Raeri2011-12-04 03:50:27
Enyalida:
Well, more damage types. The only possible extension would be to add psychic, excorable and divinus types. A report has been rejected for excorable and divinus on the grounds that nothing in nature is resistant or weak to divinus and excorable and therefore it isn't in the theme of the skill to have defenses against those. As long as dmp to those types doesn't become common in other defensive skills, I'm fine with that.
Report 364. Gems for Psychic was already implemented.
