But when you looked at necroscream with a cap of maybe 500 damage, passive afflictions, and ONLY hindering curing you didnt get this same thought that it wouldnt be enough?

We asked for 1p shackles to synergize with our skills, we are told its too much, and then you give it to spiritsingers for no power and 1 spirit.


Problems with Wildaranne
* Passive eq loss with passive lethargy/confusion: This often results in extremely long bouts of balance loss, add in hypnoticpattern and you can DESTROY offense. The song should either be balance loss or not check the afflictions (or just be changed all together). Removing confusion would also do it most likely.

* They are the only bards with an active spec skill with Cairnlargo, all other bards are restricted to fighting with music or their tertiary. An equivalent skill should be developed for each other guild, and the current form reduced in damage and effect. Half your health and 5s of stun is excessive, while the 3 spirit form is also extremely powerful it isnt AS bad.

* Increased damage and more dodging are both their own issues but fall under 'spirits' for their degrees. Dodging is being changed I hear but the increased damage is a problem, people dont usually know why SS can hurt so much. 10 dmp more damage from Ancestralfealty, 10% more from Celebrate, 10 more DMP from taking badger as your familiar. Then throw on war, batbane, vendetta and such and you can see where the problem is. They ignore 20 dmp from their damage. Reduce dmp to 5 for both the song and for badgers and people might resist it. you cant even really stack enough dmp to have much left over after this ( A celestine with draconis is say 26 dmp? thats 6 with bard against them).

* Most songs have two uses, heavy passive damage ALSO acts like carcer for instance.

* They have a superior cloning. Stone mist slows down ingestion of eaten and smoked herbs. Harbingers (the original bards) already have a song to slow herbs. Please change this song or let Harbingers adjust accordingly. Though honestly I am not too sure if the Admin looked at the other bards songs before making these since they gave them the best of most people.

Problems with Starhymn
* Lack of Synergy mainly. They can hinder curing but this usually just amounts to missing a sip briefly or perhaps failing to cure an auric affliciton for a moment.


* If you strip bards down they are a music offence with passives, starhymns passives are almost all to give curing a chance to fail.

But they have a report so I will move on I suppose, Narsrim can post the rest of it if he wants.

Problems with Necroscream
* Still focused on attrition, its one of like 4 things that is more potent than what I can do in some ways.

* Plague is such a joke, it ended up doing so very little. Now you might do like 500 damage if the person doesnt cure at all, compared to SS which can do say 1000 and doesnt need affs (and you dont use spirits if you want the passives).

* Their songs are almost all about survival, vileblood, undeadblues, necroballad. Their racial spec is also for survival (high resistances). Their offense suffers in part I believe because they have survival. then SS came around with regens + dodging + etc etc.

* Theres no good way to remove hunger to focus on plague without a report. If we strip hunger we are crippled, if we try to buff something else we might get alot of 'no thats too much' because hunger would still be taken into account. Another report would be good, prepare a fully written document on changes and would that be enough to warrant even say 4 slots worth of envoying?

* i was thinkin a Nil type theme, but they want plague so let them work with that! They just need the slots

* WrathfulCanticle doesnt synergize, isnt afflictions that we can make use of, and fires rarely (sometimes it has fired without giving an affliction).

Problems with Harbingers
Now before I get into this, I like Harbingers. I find them relatively balanced and rather nicely synergized. There are a few MINOR things that we are looking for but nothing all that awe inspiring. Naturally we would adore a skill like CairnLargo, but all the bards would love something they could actually use actively.

* Nightfade is actually pseudo useful at best. It doesnt work in villages that are peaced, while ego REGEN does. I think we want to look at a regen effect in here so we have something that helps out allies.

* BarghestBlues was cloned+ in SS. Either make it more noticable or give us the same thing they got? I would rather it be more noticable but theres limits to that.

* I frankly wished WidowsMercy did something to benefit us. The 25% more bleeding if venom drops is up is cute but overall widowsmercy doesnt fire all that much.

* I do love my nightshadeblues.

* Overall the damage aspect remains, they can just use manabarbs as a damage source ( mind you mana depletion still kills it dead in the water so this isnt as useful without a SD as you might think ). Our damage is in the form of bleeding so we can make use of double mana loss. Outside of that we dont have any real special options, I would love to see an active skill. Like maybe something somewhat like Torture wher eit does a fair damage and high bleeding.




Tidbits
Spiritsingers got cure hindering like Starhymn, damage that exceeeds harbingers + starhymn, potential beyond all of them, and the best passives of the bunch (yes even better than starving because at least you can cure starving without losing offense for long periods).


Hopefully this was useful to people, maybe even admin for consideration

I have a problem with a couple things that have been said.

First, the stance that "Admin are not combatants" so you choose to leave things such as combat balance to the players. This is a fine stance, and one I can understand. However, it's not actually the stance that the Admin have practiced. Certainly not with Wilderrane, as it has been noted several times that what the players came up with and what the Admin gave Wilderrane are two very different animals. To me, this is very frustrating because we want the Admin to address the issues with Starhymn/Necroscream, but we get the "consult your envoy" or "we're not combatants" response that, for whatever reason, didn't apply to Wilderrane.

My second issue is with the "special reports." Really, the Necroscream report got a special report in the same sense that Dreamweaving got a special report. Spiritsingers essentially got a massive double buff with the Ecology (which was changed in a lot of ways to synergize with bards)) and Wilderrane reports. I mean massive, they are not anything like the guild they used to be. Starhymn didn't even get a report, and the Necroscream report got...Blackdeath? Tarot has been untouched other than the World Tarot change since I've been playing. It can be called a special report in the sense that the Admin took some special time to look at it, but it can not be called in a special report in the way that Wilderrant got a special report, because ours accomplished nothing.

My third issue is with this statement: "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."

Okay. First, I do not understand the utter inflexibility with the plague affliction theme. They are bad. Bad. Pox and worms are bad. Scabies and epilepsy are marginal in the hands of the Cacohony because those afflictions mesh well with Necromancy. Ectoplasm and Crucify, as well as wind for warriors. It's not as if glamours or tarot afflictions even come close to synergizing with plague afflictions, because they don't. Plague afflictions are generally salve cures, which bards can not stack. There is absolutely nothing in a Cacophones arsenal to prevent someone from curing plague afflictions, which is the reason Carillonknell is such a ineffectual damage song, yet you are so focused on keeping the plague affliction theme. I'm sorry, but the afflictions are probably the least important part of a Cacophones song. Spiritsingers, however, synergize like a beast. Blanknote+passive sensitivity. Damage that vastly outpaces Carillonknell. Damage boosting songs (and familiars). Passive hindering with paralysis as well as faeditty plus passive confusion to increase the eq loss from faeditty, plus dodge which knocks off eq. Notice a trend with the curing as well? Stackable smudges that provide ranged combat as well. Shackles, transfix, spirit stacking for a substantial (emphsasis on the substantial) damage all from spirits. Batbane (uncurable) to further boost damage.

I ask you, what is it that you see in Necroscream/Starhymn that is comparable to the synergy of Wilderrane? I certainly don't see it. Narsrim doesn't see it. Is it hunger? Something that is prevented by preserved food, and a an entire archetype (warriors) laugh at? I can't speak for Cantors, but Necroscream is a mess of skills that don't synergize. Part writhe stacking (with no way to actually stack writhes unless you are a tarot user) and torturesong (which ironically enough is less effective when used with despairweb), part undead buffing, part inneffectual plague afflictions.

What Charune is suggesting is that we get a gaggle of envoys to mass envoy for the Cacophony. Has that ever been done? Have the envoys banded together to buff a certain guild in the past or is this a fantasy?

Cacophony/Cantors have consistantly been in the basement on Topguilds while Spiritsingers have hovered near and at the top spot for a long while. This can't be blamed entirely on game balance, but you certainly have to consider the possibility that in a game that revolves around conflict, people aren't looking to crippled guilds. Honestly, if Estarra is going to take the stance that she doesn't believe the Cacophony is as bad off as we think, I sincerely want to know what skills she is looking at and how she thinks they are synergizing.



On a side note, Incabulos has a really interesting idea that will keep with the "plague/affliction" theme but allow us to build sickness levels as opposed to rely on afflictions that don't synergize. It looks kind of cool.

edit: Sorry if I am coming off as annoyed and frustrated, but I am. I've tried, lord knows I've tried, but I'm working with an inactive envoy without any plan. Magnagora is lacking active envoys as well. I've made the attempt to consult multiple sources, put together a decent skillset and present it for players, admin, and envoys to look at and it was well receives until it was, essentially, entirely dismissed by Estarra as not needed. I'm frustrated. Several of the Cacophony are frustrated. People are upset because their guilds aren't recieving equal attention as others.

I read this earlier in this thread and was intrigued, so I went and tested CairnLargo on a friend with no special resistances. Freeze (5-spirit) takes about 1300 damage (not boosted by any other effect), along with the stun. Chill (3-spirit) takes 1500. I don't know where this 'half your health' thing is coming from. Just wanted to clear that up.

EDIT: This isn't to say that they aren't powerful when boosted, I merely wanted to address the 'takes half your health' claim.

It might be that the concept of Necroscream needs to be expanded upon or changed - what looks cool does not necessary mean what play effectively. I believe this has already been stated, but it's what I'm understanding a lot more from these statements. I think root of the problem with the plague/sickness thing is that the afflictions suck - so why not tweak them so they are more effective only under the power of Necroscream songs? Allow certain afflictions to boil over and become stronger/new plague afflictions - thus making certain songs become a catalyst to turn afflictions in to plague afflictions.

I know that making afflictions incurable is not the answer, but the reason why it is such an appealing one is because curing afflictions is a visible loss to your 'combat swing' or 'combat momentum' so to speak. In a class based entirely off of affliction, curing afflictions would be a score against them in their leadup to victory. In a class entirely based off of real, health-based damage, sipping would be that negative. Perhaps the Necroscream buffs should follow a line of making plagues harder to heal, and if you fail to heal them, they worsen and become even worse afflictions or effects?

Just throwing out ideas, I only have a very shaky grasp of how Necroscream works after asking what some stuff does.

As for Starhymn, I'm at a loss right now because the discussion isn't really focused on them - I'm not really sure what they could possibly do. The administration seems to believe that keeping their anti-sip/herb/apply songs at a certain rate is smart, though - I see the makings of a class that can go anywhere with those songs. Right now they have the tools to help preserve their swing, but they actually have no swing so to speak to preserve in the first place.

Spiritsingers have virtually always been the highest of the four bard guilds since the day we first had four bard guilds, every weave for two RL years now. That was true during the long period (about 2/3 of that time) when Spiritsingers were considered the weakest of the four. Topguilds is no indicator at all of combat balance in our case; even now, only a small proportion of our most active members are also active combatants. We've always gotten and kept people active for reasons that have nothing to do with combat, and our topguilds score has never reflected where we fell in the "UP/OP" spectrum (and we've been on all points on that spectrum over the years). Actually, our topguilds score took a small drop after the Wildarrane revamp (for reasons that have nothing to do with it).

It is that powerful. So your friend probably had like 2600 health or something. Plus the stun, it's bad.

Actually, it was him doing it to me and I have over 5k health.

You've neglected to mention several important factors here.

Your int. Your targets max health. Your targets DMP, proofings, etc.

Freeze has been known to knock off half or more of someone's health, I've had it done to me. You can't arbitrarily claim it's false and throw up a couple numbers while leaving out the important factors.

Then you obviously are forgetting to mention something. Because I know what hit me, and it was for half my health.

Mea culpa. My friend is, apparently, a trill, his Int sucks balls. I should stop assuming all Spiritsingers are elfen. Sorry about that confusion!

Fine, I did a test of my own. It did 1310 damage out of my current 4936 with cold proofings, level one racial cold resistance, fire potion, and 25 DMP to all elemental damages through energy containment. This was with Lekius at 18 cha and intelligence. That's about 26.5% of my max.

Xiel, on the other hand, hit for 2046. Xiel is at 22 and 23 intelligence and charisma. This was out of a max of 5661, however, so it totals about 36.1%. So, yes, I think I can see where people say half from.

Yeah...

Had that for both, at least! I just have alot of resistances to things.

Right. I figured you had it for both.

The damage on that second would be pretty deadly otherwise.

That would probably come close to about half, without all that cold resistance. I swear, some people just need to chill. Ba dum tch.

Here's the problem. The major problem. The root of the evil.

The theme for Spiritsingers was designed by the administration. I'm going to guess it was by you - and you did a great job. However to perform this great job, you had to do as you said (think outside the box, etc) and in turn a new mechanic was born (the spirit building and what not).

In the case of Cacophony, no new mechanic was generated. A set of various afflictions (most of which are garbage) were lumped together and entitled "plague afflictions." The skills were then built around these not-so-wonderful afflictions with more restrictions being added to passive damage than Spiritsingers. In turn, it's just not that effective.

I have no doubt a cool plague mechanic could be created, but that would require more than using some existing stuff and trying to call it a theme.

For my final point of the night:

Imagine you are the Cantor Envoy. You have been given a special envoy report to fix your guild. You aren't an overly savvy combatant, and you aren't really sure how to fix/tweak your skills. The catch is, you get a single chance. If you screw this up (see Cacophony), you won't get a second chance. Add to this most other Envoys don't really care. Some will comment here and there (largely about what they don't like), but no one is really "leading" the process.

Do you think this might explain why the Starhymn envoy report has been open, yet relatively inactive for so long? Isn't this where the administration should step in, take control, and work its creative magic?

I thought it was due to having an inactive envoy for a month and a half or so.

How long has the special report been open? I'm fairly certain it's been months. When Shric was the envoy, he and I spent a great deal of time tossing around ideas (I did the same with Nezha). However, both of them were quite hesitant. They didn't want to "waste" their chance.

And yes, you make a valid point. An inactive envoy in charge of a project to fix a skillset isn't exactly what one would consider productive.

If you tell anyone I said this, I will deny it until I'm blue in the face.

I love you.