For the longest time, people didn't think Shadowdancers were all that worthwhile either, but that largely had nothing to do with the abilities. Glomdoring exists in a time warp where the potential of abilities takes quite a while to realize because Glomdoring hosts very few combatants. Daedalion, oddly enough, probably was the major catalyst for Shadowbeat showing how powerful it could be because he actually was an active combatant.

EDIT:

Point-in-case: Choke is a major source of ill regard, and it's application has shown it to be make-or-break for various situations given how devastating it can be with passives like demesnes. However, choke existed for over a real life year before this became common practice. Why? See above.

Shadowbeat was never any good until Kaervas made changes even with Daedalion as champion, relegated to the 7th circle of hell.

They got their report now time to suck it up and work with the envoys.

Do you even know what changes were made? They didn't have that much of an impact. The major mechanism that is the saving grace of Shadowbeat is Nightshade Blues (no change), MinorSixth (no change), Aurics (no change). The changes to bleeding and what not were done by Valarien (not Kaervas). Kaervas got a lot of changes for Music, Acrobatics, etc.

This post has been written partly in collaboration with Charune.



No one up here would disagree with that statement. We know things aren't as balanced as they should be; indeed Charune has told me he agrees with the substance of Narsrim's post, but no envoys have proposed workable downgrades.

The nub of the problem is this. Gods don't fight; players do. Estarra, Charune and Roark really know what they're doing, but there are limits to their ability to test skills pre-release, and inevitably given the compexity of the system, limits to their ability to anticipate all possible consequences. Fighting is what many of you -do-, in game. You know your skills, you develop tactics, you spar, and there are lots and lots of you. There are limited us, and we're already busy.

Consequently, we rely on envoys to report back to us on what is working and what isn't. And yes, Xavius, this impacts on and indeed determines long-term game balance - but can you think of a better alternative? To misquote Churchill, the envoys system is the worst possible system, but it's the least worst.

So what alternatives are there?

(1) We could rely more on the forums for information on balance.

Unfortunately, the forums are inherently unreliable. Many of the calls for nerfs or buffs have a tendency to fall into one of the following three categories:
o reactive - I've just been killed. I'm angry and going to vent
o delusional - I think I'm a much better fighter than I am: Y killed me; ergo skill Z must be broken.
o bovine - Everyone says X is OP, so I'm going to go with the flow.

The third is particularly egregious. When a particular point of view reaches a critical mass of proponents, it tends to snowball until every member of a given faction is convinced by its truth and can't work out why the stupid admin don't understand.

This is not to say that there are many occasions when a post is absolutely spot on. There are. But it is much simpler for us if the envoys themselves do their best to weed out the dross and pass on the good stuff.

(2) Test more ourselves

We are working on this, but for the reasons above it will never be wholly effective.

(3) Open the Envoy system further so more players have a say.

See point 1. It's easier to use the envoys as a conduit for player opinion than to make it a freeforall.

(4) Get rid of the whole envoy system and leave it up to the administration

Here be dragons. We don't fight: ultimately, we need you guys to tell us what works and what doesn't.

(5) Screen envoys to ensure a balanced, unbiased, competent perspective

Envoys do, on occasion, get sacked. However, bias in favour of your faction is a natural function of playing a conflict-based game. One of the reasons why it takes so long to become a god is to let your natural bias in favour of your org of origin die down. As far as competency is concerned, obviously some envoys are better combatants than others: the key from our perspective is that envoys who aren't so good know that they aren't so good.

(6) I've run out of ideas.



You seem to be suggesting that there's a causal link between the having of cool ideas and imbalance.Any sort of change can lead to imbalance. It is up to you, the players, to tell us through your envoys what is right, what is wrong, and how it may best be changed.

As for more testing ourselves - Charn will probably be making a reappearance.

The problem with the mechanic (though it is very neat) is that it's also complex enough to make it very difficult to tweak one thing without hitting something else. Halving the spirits a SS can have at a time helped in some ways, but at the same time it meant that it took half the time for a SS to get to "full effectiveness" in terms of passive effects (since the maximum effectiveness was kept the same). Plus some other issues with the power of the maximum effect. It's just something that I'm not sure how to tackle in a balanced respect, so... you don't get workable proposals. I'm pretty sure other Envoys who've thought about how to look into it are in the same boat.

Ditching hunger attrition for something worthwhile while keeping the plague theme that can be done incrementally is a bit of a puzzle too. With my limited experience and knowledge not helping.
I've had a few ideas that i've been tossing about but creative and orriginal and thematic and effective and that syncs up with other skills and that isn't crazy overpowered is a tough combination to piecemeal together.

If anyone has ideas we are certainly open to suggestions.

Edit: I love necroscream and think it is great but needs some tweaks to be a little more viable. I don't think it necessarily impossible to do it through the envoy system either, but it does make it a little more difficult.

I'm going to be overly picky because in this instance because I think it is necessary for clarity: Celina has not suggested downgrades to Spiritsingers. I personally do not feel Spiritsingers are "too powerful" (with the exception of multiple forms of passive dodging, which Charune has said will be scrutinized and hashed out soon). For some reason beyond my understanding, this conversation always shifts into this wrong direction. I'd like to focus on what I feel are the two core issues surrounding this topic:

=====+=====

Core Issues

1) Starhymn/Necroscream (and to a lesser extent, Shadowbeat) pale in comparison to Wildarrane. Starhymn and Necroscream are not combat worthy. Wildarrane is combat worthy.

2) The administration provided direct intervention to fix sleep attrition based Wildarrane (which was much like Starhymn and Necroscream now - ineffective) and then turned around and has refused to do the same for Starhymn and Necroscream, leaving it up to Envoys to hash out ideas in special reports, which has failed. Epically.

=====+=====

Detailed comments on Starhymn/Necroscream

Starhymn and Necroscream are largely ineffective in combat because they do not synergize well with bard combat and help progress a bard towards a kill state. All bards have two main methods to kill a target: raw damage and deathsong. I feel is generally accepted that deathsong, while potent in group combat, is not very effective 1-on-1 because it can be easily stopped by eating earwort. This, therefore, leaves raw damage as the primary means to achieve a kill state.

Unlike Wildarrane, which has high end passive damage, better damage buffs, and 5-spirit attack (deals 50%+ of a target's max health in damage + stuns allowing an additional attack... almost two additional attacks), Starhymn and Necroscream don't have decent abilities to boost their damage output. They also have inferior racial options (Wilde Elfen is vastly superior to Seasinger Merian and Irontongue Viscanti). Add to this that Wildarrane also tends to heal better, buff better, and hinder better... and it's just ridiculous.

The solution is not to nerf Wildarrane. The solution is to make Necroscream and Starhymn (and to a lesser extent Shadowbeat) on par.

=====+=====

Where the administration went wrong...

Wildarrane was not subject to an Envoy driven report unlike Starhymn and Necroscream. Therefore, Envoys as a whole tend to throw out mixed ideas with different ideas of how a given skillset should be focused with no real control over how it will turn out. Necroscream, for example, got shafted in its special report because the Envoys as a whole could not reach a decent consensus.

On the flip side, Wildarrane got a new face complete with new skills that were designed to function coherently and synergize with each other. As a result, people are jealous - and they should be. The administration showed Wildarrane more tender-love-and-care than it has to other specializations, and the impact is quite evident.

We never received a Starhymn special report so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

When approaching skillsets, especially for a special report revamp, I like to make sure there is an underlying theme to the skillset. For Necroscream, we agreed that the theme should be plagues and everyone seemed happy with that. The report we received did focus on plague as we had been looking for. Some ideas weren't usable, most ideas did seem good and were implemented, and looking over the report, I jotted down a few ideas of my own (not sure they were implemented--they may have been deemed OP). Looking at the skillset, I just do not agree that the skillset sucks as much as everyone claims that can't be fixed through the normal envoy process.

For Wildarrane, the report we received just didn't cut the mustard. One of the admin comments sums it up: "I don't like the way they are going. If they are complaining about sleep and lack of synergy, this path they are taking is no better." Thus, we came up with a new theme based on some of the guild's RP (ancestral spirits) and crafted a skillset based around that.

For the record, I've designed probably 90% of the skills in Lusternia and usually am the one who comes up the majority of new skill ideas. I like to think out of the box and generally my fecund creativity generates a stream of ideas. Though I believe I understand combat and combat balance more than most, I know I must rely on the input of others to temper my ideas which sometimes can get a bit out there. (For example, the original death mark ideas had to be toned down.) On the other hand, if I hear a good idea from someone that strikes my fancy, I have been known to jump on it. Anyway, there was no "tender-love-and-care" or conspiracy to advance Wildarrane, it went through the normal procedure that all the special reports went through, which included the brainstorming sessions of the admin and/or myself (which all reports benefited from).

As a reminder, the admin are human. Sarcasm, hyperbole, incriminations and veiled (or not veiled) insults may get your point across and win debate points, but it certainly doesn't inspire enthusiasm at those who it is directed at. Just saying!

Going to have to agree that SS aren't necessarily OP, the other two specs just aren't that great.

Barring the dodging thing that's getting addressed, of course.

So that we don't waste a lot of time working on something that you think is too far off base, would replacing hunger with some kind of mechanic that causes, for lack of a better phrase, levels of sickness be something you are open to?
Something that would be cured down a level with cleanse or letting time pass....

No more cleansing, please. And, waiting for time to heal all wounds is not much fun, either. Why is everyone so afraid to just let their afflictions be cured? I mean, surely you can come up with some synergy there as far as which balances you focus on to get ahead of the curve.

If the way you 'facelifted' Spiritsingers was sitting around tossing the ball about the office, so to speak, why not do the same for the other three? I know it's very time-consuming and perhaps even a major project, but it strikes me as unfair that perhaps the other three orgs do not have as strong a Bard as Serenwilde (then again, I hear so many complaints about Tahtetso, blah blah) - what if you opened up a thread on it and had players throw ideas out there on Starhymn, Shadowbeat, and Necroscream? Maybe you'd find an inspiration that you could work off of - I personally have a handful, but since most of my PK experience I'd use to discuss that topic comes from other IRE games, I figure mine may be unworkable or imbalanced either one way or another.

That would be what the special reports were. Unfortunately, the necroscream special report was subpar on the part of the players contributing to it. Starhymn also looks a bit underwhelming from the report I've seen, and harbingers aren't really hurting.

Edit: No I'm not taking a shot at the people who contributed to necroscream, just that 90% of it was "going for too much" in a very extreme sense. There was another report that had a similar feel, a contributor was quoted as having said "I knew most of it wouldn't go through due to being overpowered, just hoped that some of it would."

a ) wasn't really talking to you
b ) if it's so easy to come up with by all means i would like to hear your ideas

This has a tendency to backfire. If we see an envoy keep submitting ideas that we think are overpowered or see a report that has obviously overpowered requests (in our opinion anyway), we can only conclude (1) they don't understand balanced combat, or (2) they're trying to game the admin in overshooting in hopes that something will go through with maybe the hope that they would get something overpowered. In either case, we tend to form opinions of that person or persons and end up taking whatever they say with a grain of salt. On the other hand, someone who consistently has balanced skill ideas, is not afraid to point out overpowered aspects of their own skills, shows again and again that he or she doesn't suffer from org bias, and is reasonable and flexible when discussing said ideas tend to be listened to much more closely than others. Indeed, we have had two envoys who have shown these qualities to such a degree that we have elevated them to permanent envoy status.

So is there any intent to improve any other Bards in any visible way? I hear some people telling me Starhymn is garbage, and some people advised me not to go Bard if I really wanted to make a move in to combat - that advisement gives me the feeling that maybe something is a little fishy here and that it should maybe be tweaked or adjusted. I appreciate the fact that all envoys get one change/report, but by that rate it could take months to give a class the changes it needs to function on its feet.

I guess that's where a special report comes in.. so I guess my question is, do you have a bunch of players squirreled away somewhere pitching Starhymn ideas to find a new, cohesive concept or something?

There is a Starhymn report in progress that has not been submitted yet.

I am just going to ask on here, since some admins seem to read this. When is the momentumreport done again?

Hasn't been submitted yet.

And I also don't think that the Starhymn report is anywhere near to done... it's in some weird limbo with a direction that's not really liked.