Over the past few days, I have been looking through all of my skills, in search of some hidden potential that wasnt obvious at first glance. So far I have found one such ability, but I have also found several skills that have no use or depend entirely on people being newbies, who are unable to counter anything. Since they are different categories, I'm going to split them up and analyze each of them here. I was also only be concentrating mainly on skills within the Warrior archetype and/or Ur'guard class that require power to use as well as being relatively high in their skillsets. There will be a few exceptions though.

Worthless skills:

Puissance
Power: 5 (Any)
Your next physical attack will do puissant damage. This is an exhaustive state to maintain so you must make your attack quickly.

- The problem with this skill is not only that in the time it takes you to get equilibrium back after you using it, you could have comboed twice and for more damage plus afflictions but also that you could have done it without the power cost.

Haymaker
Power: 10 (Any)
You will need both blade-wielding arms in balance to execute the infamous haymaker maneuver. In a spurt of preternatural speed, you will twirl your swords in a blaze, attempting to strike your opponent four times. This counts as a swing.

- This skill suffers from the same problem as puissance but to a greater extent. The one bonus that it has over Puissance though is that it can be performed instantly, even though it takes you a extremely long time to recover from using it.

Engage
Power: None
There is nothing more despicable and dishonourable than a coward, and this ability will allow you to punish cowards, as is their due. Once you have engaged a player, if he or she tries to leave the room, you will get in an extra strike at them, regardless of whether you have equilibrium and balance or not.

- I tested this a bit, it suffers from a similar problem as Haymaker and Puissance, its not worth the time lost to perform for the most part. But unlike both those skills, it can be countered with a nice little skill in Combat called Disengage. I would personally like to see this skill and its counter require balance and equilibrium but not use them. And get a significant damage boost.

Lunge
Power: 3 (Any)
This precision strike will avoid most of your opponent's combat defenses such as shields and stances. This counts as a jab.

- The main problem with this skill is the power cost, which is slightly too high, for a skill that only bypasses stances(which most people dont use, because they are unnecessary to deal with warriors) and shields. I even attempted to use it in conjuction with Puissance to see if the combination of those two skills would show me their true potential. The results were disappointing to say the least.

Raisedead
Power: 10
Allows you to raise the dead body of a player to act as a uncontrollable zombie or ghoul who will attack your enemies

- I'm actually trying to reserve judgement on this skill, by itself though it is pretty much useless. Not only because you need the corpse of a player to use it but the ghoul/zombie doesnt even stand still after you do create it. It just wanders aimlessly til someone kills it(which is easy since they are weak). But I have some thoughts on making it slightly more usable if I ever mastered Influence.

Skills with extremely limited use:

LegTendon
Power: None
Severing the tendon of the leg just above the ankle is a vicious maneuver that will prevent your opponent from standing up if he or she is prone.

- The problem with this skill is simple, it is the one herb cure for a critical wound state affliction

Crucify
Power: 8

- Not going to explain it but suffice it to say, its a lovely skill with a few big drawbacks.

1. It costs eight power to perform
2. Its extremely easy to get out of

Sacrifice
Power: 3

- It is pretty much our version of Vivisect, only harder to perform. It has the added benefit though of boosting your health and mana temporarily if you can ever pull it off. But its so easy to counter, that anyone who ever dies to it deserves to be teased for the rest of their character's life.

Skills with unforeseen problems:

PinLeg
Power: none
Running your blade through the foot of an opponent will literally pin him or her to the floor, making it impossible to flee. The sword that you use for this pinning maneuver will not be able to be swung during this time.

- There is no way to remove your blade from a person once you have pinned them, so unless they writhe you will be stuck. Leaving you prey to any allies they may have. Also even if you only pin them with one blade, and continue to attack with the other, they can put up rebounding, and you will be unable to raze since you need full balance for that.

Impale
Power: none
This maneuver will drive a blade completely through your opponent's gut and impale him or her into the ground.

- Same problem as PinLeg

Personally, I'd like to see Raisedead as an equivalent to Imperian's Animate skill in Necromancy. Animating a player would make them undead like the Lichdom, but with different pros and cons which could or could not be very useful. Animating an npc would make the mobile immediately aggressive to everyone. Not to mention it would be nice to rez allies or make your enemies Undead to annoy them. That would be worth 10 power points. Creating a useless ghoul is something I can't bring myself to use.

Aquamancy's Bubble is almost completely useless. And it costs 8 power.

What does it do, and how would you like to see it changed?

or maybe it could work like the zombies and ghouls from aetolia in the sanguis skill. that owuld be real nice.

The majority of stag.

Well, to stay in the theme of the Ideas forum. I'm going to go into detail about how I would like to see each skill that I mentioned in my earlier post altered to improve their worth.

Puissance:

In my opinion, this skill should be completely changed. Because no matter what is done with it, it will always be either too strong or too weak. And since it only increases the damage of one attack with the blade or bludgeon, I'm inclined to think it will always be too weak. So I suggest that it be completely scrapped and replaced with a skill that remains true to the same idea, but instead of increasing your offense for a one hit. It would increases your balance recovery by one point, for about one to five minutes, and only be usable once a Lusternian day or have a significant endurance cost to prohibit continous use.

Haymaker:

This skill suffers again from the same problem as Puissance, it can be either too strong or too weak, there is no real middle ground for it in its current state. And a way to fix it, doesnt readily appear to me. But I have some thoughts on it, which are that it should have greater chance to afflict wounds, and deliver toxins, while doing significantly less damage than four swings by themselves would have done. I also think it should bypass stances, and the first blow should automatically raze circle/pentagram, and the second should deal with rebounding if it is up too. Also you should have normal balance recovery from it. Or you could make it similar to the instant kills and shatter in the other realms, and give it a time duration between its initiation and its execution, so that you cant do anything while preparing it. While making it a near instant kill.

Engage:

Already gave my suggestion on this skill

Lunge:

I just went back and tested this skill against circle and rebounding, as well as parry, and it is more worthless than I thought it was. So I suggest that the power cost be raised to around four, and the skill be given around a 20% damage boost, while allowing it to bypass all forms of blocking physical damage but armour. And that includes parry, circle/pentagram, rebounding, stances, any physical defenses, and the defensive style.

Raisedead:

Brona had a damn good idea for this skill

Legtendon:

Just make it harder to cure, or lower the wound state that is required, to afflict with it

Crucify:

This skill has a simple solution too, lower the power cost, or make it harder to get out of

Sacrifice:

This skill is linked completely to Crucify and by that same token, if you make Crucify harder to get out of. You would have fixed this skill as well

Pinleg and Impale:

Just need the ability to withdraw your blades if you wish

I wish someone could look at bonecrusher like that... I feel like bonecrusher is at such a disadvantage in comparison to blademaster, mainly because we have no low damage afflictions.

Valek asked me to post this because it seems that he is unable to do so for some reason.

Just a follow up on Daevos' Points.

It isn't just Legtendon that is bad for a critical wound. Also it isn't entirely that they are just easily healed. I'll give some examples.

Behead is the critical head wound, its an instant kill provided someone is dumb enough not to heal a critical head after around 25 or so odd hits to it. I've hit some people who had critical head damage up to 35+ times for it never to go through. The percentage of it is way way to low.

Disembowel is the critical gut wound, and is in the same boat as Behead. Its a rare occurance to begin with, and in the event you do get lucky and get it to start, that person has roughly 8 seconds to apply regeneration.. and thats it, its cured, Disembowel over and done with.

Just sort of disturbing that all our supposedly best skils are so easily avoided. I mean its bad enough combat is in and parry to help everyone pretty much avoid it, but add in the low chance of it happening as well as the randonmess factor of the attacks themselves, make them all kind of worthless. Suggestions to counter this, maybe change disembowel so its just an addition to impale and legtendon, so instead of withdraw blade, we can slice them up if impaled, or cut off a leg causing massive bleed. Behead, I wish the chances were better if it was happening or maybe just revert it to like Cleave, giving us some form of an instant kill thats reliable.

Just my two cents, all in all im content though. As long as people don't learn to make systems, Im golden!

Howdy,

I dont have much to say on this, those two have covered it very well, but I dont see anything in my blademastery that I can rely on happening, I cant even tell when I'll split an artery, as often as that does happen. However, like Valek said, "As long as people don't learn to make systems, Im golden!"

You take a peek at Tarot users.. they can hide three attacks they get to specify. It's like they made systems a bit fallible for use against Celestines or Nihilists. Same with Aquamancers, phantom giving random afflictions and having nice illusion capabilities, because no one can tell what you're going to get, you have to slow down to diagnose or wait for symptoms which isnt ideal. For us.. nothing is hidden, and they can expect our attacks just aswell as we can. I only kill people who can't cure worth a damn, how long will that last?

Bubble... alright. It costs 8 power and can only be used in your demesne, for starters. It encases you in an impervious bubble (you can't be attacked) for about five seconds. This isn't useful for healing, however, because you can't do anything while you're in it either. After the five seconds or so are up, it bounces out to an adjacent room, pops, and leaves you there. It does nothing else. Now, it's not useful for an escaping spell like the AB file says it is, because enemies can probably see where the bubble bounced to and chase after you (I'm not totally sure of this, I haven't actually seen the message, but it's pretty strange if it doesn't show the direction). It's also pretty stupid for getting rid of enemies, because for 8 power you get rid of them for all of 5 seconds, and after that they can stay outside the battle and heal, run back in and keep fighting, or just run away if they want. The only conceivable use for it that I can think of at the moment would be to stop friends from getting killed, but it isn't really practical to monitor your friends' health and bubble them when they get low. And 8 power is a lot.

My suggestion would be to first decrease the power cost to 3-4 or something, and rather than having the bubble take you just one room, have it bounce off through the heavens and pop in a random room in the area. Or, if that's too much, at least go through several rooms fairly quickly.

A Bonecrusher's point of view:

I am 100% in agreement with the puissance skill (I didn't even train it, knowing in advance how terrible it was). Furthermore, it is impossible under conceivable combat circumstances to expect that an Ur'guard would be able to successfully pull off a sacrifice. That makes both sacrifice and crucify worthless, and being the fabled & myth skills for necromancy, that's quite wasteful.

In terms of bonecrusher, pulp (despite costing 2p less than haymaker) is still not worth using.

I must echo Valek on one of my primary complaints, which is that even our best wounds take only one application of regeneration or some other simple thing to cure. Furthermore, the fact that it takes almost no time at all to cure yourself from critical deepwounds to no wounds for a specific bodypart is a major setback. Granted, most fighters don't remember cure deepwounds, but that is no justification for them being both so easy to cure and so critical to the success of a blademaster or bonecrusher.

Bonecrushers have an advantage over blademasters in that while our skills are equally impossible to use against a competent fighter, when they actually do go off, they are better. We have blackout capabilities, and can sap endurance very quickly through chest wounds. However, this does not make bonecrusher a good set. Take for instance Crushleg (somewhere around late fabled/mythical). It takes critical wounds to the opponent's legs to accomplish, and yet it takes one simple regeneration application to cure.

Now, I could see the simplicity in curing wounds if poisons were more reliable. As it stands, poisons cannot be really accounted for in definite combat strategy. If we could send two afflictions from venoms plus the slim chance of mutilating the legs, I could see having the legs take only one application to cure.

I have a couple ideas to make these more effective.

1) make deepwounds harder to heal
2) make a venom that give general wound damage on all bodyparts at once
3) make bonecrusher/blademaster afflictions harder to cure (especially the ones that take critical-state wounds)

World, is absoluteuy useless, for 10 power, you can use an attack on someone, if youare outside, and inside. Tarot attack, you can't use lust, I'm not even sure which tarot cards you can use.

Princess tarot, with so many escaping ways, why would we want to lose every defense we have just to be cured, when we can secape and syphon away.

Teacher tarot, if you are trans skills.. it really doesn't do anything.

Starleaper tarot, for 5 power we can move one room away.

Spawn in Nihilism, it calls up a spawn which you can't contrl, hits your enemies, and does 90 or so damage, for 8 power.

Raisedead, Crucify and Sacrifice can all be seen above, though I have sacrificed people before in combat. Raisedead is horrid, as it is so easy to kill, and for 10 power! Crucify takes 8 power, about 4 seconds to writhe out of, and has a 6 second eq recovery, but then you have to wait the 4 seconds after that to sacrifice someone, because you'll get 3 power then.

Though, all in all, I really love my skills, plus since I'm an old monk, I'm about 10x better fighter then I was on Aetolia. The main complaint i have is World and Crucify, everything else, I'm happy with being useless skills.

Dryad makes a tree to climb. I get to spend 1 power to get the chance to break both of my legs, yay.

Sylph deflects arrows. Arrows apparently don't exist in Lusternia. Worthless.

-- If you can't climb a tree, thats a good way to sneak up on people and get away.

-- yet

I believe the command is WITHDRAW to remove your sword.

thanks

I suspect people look at bubbling themselves more than others. Bubble is probably more useful on opponents than on yourself. It removes them from combat entirely for a brief time, giving you time to run away of heal if you are losing the battle, or giving your team a size advantage in team combat, especially if you use it on the opposing team's champion fighter so you can kill off some of his support before taking him on. It also lasts more than 5 seconds. It's random. It can float araound several rooms before popping sometimes.

Actually it does do something. Your skill points will be above trans. Some things get boosted by more skill points, especially spell damage. So if you get a boost in the skillset with your primary attack spell then it may do more damage. Other trans skillsets can be impacted positively as well. I believe you can toss it at other players? If so, make a business out of flinging it in exchange for money. I used to toss Wheel Tarot to gamblers for a fee in the old days of other games and made a fortune off that. Even a all trans customer could benefit: an all trans Serenguard who pays to have it flung at him and gets a boost in forging will average slightly higher decay times in what he forges, etc.

Crucify:

I went back and gave this skill a more thorough look, and discovered that it was stronger than I had thought at first glance. Since I hadnt been aware of the not insignificant damage, that it delivered, or the fact that it was like impale in that you need to have balance to writhe free from it. But the testing also confirmed my earlier opinion that it is too easy to get out of. It only took about one second for the person I tested it on to writhe free, when they had balance, and a little longer when they writhed after they recovered balance from kick. Overall though, I just think that Crucify needs a slightly slower writhe time, and should act like slickness, in that you shouldnt be able to apply salves while you are crucified.