Comparatively speaking, the city Bard specs are lacking when compared to their Commune counterparts. I've heard Starhymn has a report going in soon, which just leaves Necroscream. Since I've never seen a real effort to give Necroscream a direction, I've been talking to Ceren, Malarious, and Incabulos to work on ideas for changes.

The problem, as we see it, is that Necroscream is unfocused. DespairWeb and Torturesong are based around writhing, BlackDeath, and CarillonKnell have a plague theme, and SickeningPlague has hunger. Furthermore, the Plague affliction theme is lackluster because, aside from scabies and epilepsy, the plague afflictions are largely ineffectual. Even with Epilepsy and Scabies, Bards have no way to really disrupt balance and use it as a kill method. Attrition was dubbed an ineffective tactic for Spiritsingers, but Necroscream retains it's attrition method.

The aim with these changes is to give Necroscream a focus so that it meshes well with Glamours. We've tried to make it mental affliction heavy while interfering/preventing curing, which can achieved with both the Undead theme of Magnagora as well as the general Insanity theme found in places like the I'Xiia Asylum.

Currently this is what Necroscream looks like. Bolded skills are what will be changed.

Composition You may compose songs expressing your own creativity.
Sustain The ability to maintain a song.
VileBlood Let dark music surge through the blood of allies.
UndeadBlues Undead flesh can withstand physical punishment.
DiscordantChord This painful chord shall crush the disharmonic soul.
TortureSong Bindings will cut into the flesh of your enemies.
DespairWeb Entanglements will hold enemies longer.
Refrain A musical structure that allows repetition of a stanza.
NecroBallad Who will flourish under the ballads of the dead?
CarillonKnell The raging sound of Ashtorath harms plague victims.
SickeningPlague Plague your enemies with pox and hunger.
CaptiveAudience Both friends and enemies hear nothing but your songs.
SobbingDread A dark despair so deep it is difficult to move.
EngineWords A sound to inspire the citizens of Magnagora.
DemonSong Demons who hear will increase their speed.
QueensLament Let the Laments of Nifilhema touch another.
WrathfulCanticle The wrath of Ashtorath shall incite terrible violence.
Encore Play a rousing encore performance.
TaintedLove Love for you can be a twisted and cruel gift--or not.
DarkMaster All must obey the Voice of the Dark Master!
BlackDeath This terrible tone will cause plagues to persist.
Threnody Accompany enemies to the grave with the song of death.

Here is what I propose:

TortureSong: Change it so that instead of 150 bleeding it does per entanglement, make enemies bleed for 5% of all damage they take. So if they are hit with Minorsecond for 1000, they would bleed for 50. Currently, Cacophony have web enchantments and possily hangedman, and the bleeding isn't enough to cause significant damage to health or mana while the attacker is using hangedman/web.

DespairWeb: Double the mana cost of Focus Mind and Focus Body for all enemies.

CarillonKnell: Mana/ego drain based on the number of mental afflictions your enemies have. Currently, CarillonKnell is useless. The damage is absolutely worthless, and I'm note exagerating.

WhisperingMadness (to replace SickeningPlague): Enemies recieve 1 to 2 mental afflictions per tic. (Proposed list: masochism, addiction, gluttony, anorexia, paranoia, hypochondria, and loneliness). As stated before, Plague afflictions aren't effective for Cacophony. This would change it to mental afflictions to mesh well with glamours.

SobbingDread: Cancel all forms of mana regeneration to enemies

WrathfulCanticle: Increase the rate it fires. Currently it's incredibly unpredictable. Even in groups, it doesn't fire enough to make a difference. Increase it to a 20% chance to fire.

MindRot (to replace Blackdeath): Again, Plague afflictions aren't an effective kill method. This would keep with the current BlackDeath but instead of Plague afflictions, MindRot would have a 25% chance to void an attempt to cure a mental affliction, either via herb or focus mind. This would still take herb/focus balance, but instead you would recieve a message like "Your rotting mind is unable to shake of what ails it."


I hope you can see the central theme were going for. Mana draining with mental afflictions. The mana draining, obviously, to slow down curing. I beleive this would mesh well with glamours

Thoughts, suggestions, and input are welcome. I'm not sure if the Admin have any interest in this or will even look at it, but I think the common opinion is that Necroscream needs help in the PvP department to compete with Wildarrane and Shadowbeat.

Spiritsinger attrition was not deemed ineffective. It was deemed far TOO effective. You need to remove yours if you want upgrades, like they did. I notice you seem to have done that if I'm reading it right, but in case I haven't, keep that part of events in mind.

Also, mindrot is kind of reminiscent of herbbane...

Common opinion is not nearly as unanimous as you imply, btw. I've heard several people saying necroscream is fine compared to wildarrane (post-nerf, not pre-nerf.)

I dunno. I really like despairweb for group combat, with it playing, it increases the writhe time by a second, I think. So, I usually just sit there and whore hangedman, I get balance at about the same rate as they writhe out.

Comments, blah blah.

Torturesong - All damage seems iffy to me due to the nature of bleed and how it stacks incredibly well like blackout. Not to mention the inevitable usage it will get when it comes to teams. Maybe just magic damage.

Despairweb - 500 mana for focus body/mind? Wouldn't you consider that a bit much since given the fact that 1/4 of the time, it won't even cure anything due to mindrot? While we're here, what does focus body have to do with the 'mental affs' theme?

Carillonknell - Would depend on how much mana drained per mental aff, should also take into account the rate at which an average glamourist necro deals mental affs. And again, what does ego have to do with the theme?

Whisperingmadness - 1 mental aff per tic with specific message ought to be fair considering you're also gonna have rainbowpattern, colourmaelstrom, and whatever else smacking you. I am concerned about the affs you listed as possible ones though, typically attacks like this have about 2-3 'not that good' affs, while here, you have like 1.

SobbingDread - Sure

Wrathfulcanticle - Isn't this the song that gives you a plague aff when you hit someone? So it'll be a mental aff instead and it will tick 1/5 of the time? Though I've no problem with it.

Mindrot - Eh, no strong feelings.

Yes, I removed hunger. As for Mindrot, I can see how it looks like herbbane, but with a few modifications and restrictions. Affected by mental afflictions only and requires deafness to be removed. I honestly didn't try to model it after anything. I could change it to function like current BlackDeath so that 1/4th of mental afflictions will return after being cured. Serves the same purpose in the end.

Most everyone (only one exception, really) I've spoken to or heard from things Caco is great for bashing (don't get me wrong, they are...but this is a PvP Mud), but is lacking in PVP. The general consensus is that it's unfocused and Plague afflictions suck.



Despairweb is nice, but it doesn't mesh with anything Cacophony has. It would be an amazing skill in the hands of a Guardian, just not with Cacophony.



Thanks for the input so far! I hope an Admin looks at this.

Necroscream was the first bard spec with a special report from what I remember

Yep, and it got this Plague affliction theme that is proving to be remarkably ineffective. I want it to have a real report.

I personally think this is a decent set of ideas. I'm not sure how balanced it is, but I like it.

Does it work with transfix?

It works with all forms of entangle.

I think the change for sobbing dread is a bad idea. The current form is probably one of the most useless songs we have though.
The problem with ego vice and mana barbs is that if they don't have any mana or ego to lose they don't take any damage. If you focus things around draining mana it literally does no damage if they let it run out. While it would have a use in group it would hurt us in 1v1.
Maybe something fairly nasty that fires when someone runs out of mana would be more helpful.

Sickening plague was changed from having a chance to give two afflictions for giving just one but masked affliction. I don't know which would be better though but it was a change that the guild asked for in the past.

Black death has a 50% chance to re-afflict you with a plague affliction whenever you cure one. The affliction you get is masked and random. I kinda like that approach better than just blocking the cure as it's more sinister and harder to code for. Before people go off on how that would be op keep in mind that bard songs have zero effect on deaf people or those that step out of the room to cure up. SS's are the only one with "songs" that can hit deaf people.

If they have no mana they aren't focusing mind or body, or clotting, leaving them to die to mental affs, paralysis causing them to be unable to move or whatever, or bleeding.

Good point, I stand corrected. Down with mana regen!

Also remember that going deaf against a bard mid-fight is a great way to get stunned for a longer eq than whatever the bard was going to do anyway while simultaneously eating your herb balance, so blackdeath/mindrot would have to be watched extremely carefully. It -does- seem to have a couple balancing factors over herbbane as Celina notes (doesn't provide massive degen due to minor m/e loss + barbs on every whiff, for example) but glamours afflicting potential has never been really weak, particularly with song effects adding more affs anyway, and this is also comparable with pre-nerf recessional except that instead of also sometimes blocking sipping, it works on focusmind AND you lose herbbalance so it isn't weakass outside of aeon. On balance it's probably too good for a power-free passive effect.

EDIT: Actually I guess it's not really comparable with recessional, still too good though

1. Mindrot seems a tad iffy, considering just how many methods of passive mental afflictions are available. I would say Mindrot only affect FocusMind and increased to a 50% chance to fail. Makes it clearly different from HerbBane, too.

2. For TortureSong, only magic damage sounds like a good idea.

3. WhisperingMadness sounds fine in idea, but I'd prefer the removal of passive paranoia.

There’s no point in having mental afflictions at the cornerstone of the new set up if we can’t afflict faster than people can cure. From the passive song you would be getting one to two mental afflictions every 10 seconds. That’s pretty manageable. Throw in a passive glamour affliction and you are getting about 2 to 3, lessened by blindness. Even with a 1 in 4 chance to not cure i don't see that as overwhelming. If we are setting up octave, perfect fifth, ego and mana vice we aren’t using targeted afflictions. Also, keeping someone hearing and seeing takes time away from attacks and in the case of flare, it takes power and two shots of it. That’s a lot of set up before we can start spamming glamours and minor sixth. The whole time we would be getting wailed on by whoever we are attacking and afflictions aren’t enough to put someone on their back foot and go pure defensive.

I’m not sure about the exact effects of all of the afflictions suggested but I don’t think any of them break eq or balance? If they don’t they aren’t all that hindering to someone’s offense.

This is more than enough time for someone to either kill us while their system cuts down most of the afflictions with zero effort on the part of our opponent.

Against someone who is prepared, Necroscream is annoying at best. It’s not the skill set that it needs to be to give us the headway to get a kill.

You aren't blind against a glamour user solo for any significant period of time. You're not deaf against a -bard- for any significant period of time solo (unless it's the significant but shorter period of time you're running from p5.) Not only does deafness not take away time from afflicting, because of the passives, it leaves the ex-deaf person stunned for even more time that they should have been curing during.

There is in fact a glamour that knocks off-eq (a LOT) and isn't even a curable affliction, and Celina suggested epilepsy, which knocks off-bal. Also, transfix buys you time if you're somehow in more danger of dying than anyone else would be in a similar scenario. So you don't need a herbbane-like affliction on top of all that. Synl's focus-mind only thing is probably more reasonable, if consensus is actually that necroscream needs another large set of tweaks/upgrades like this. Not sure about the rate though. There's "outpaces afflictions" and there's "significant chance to demolish curing."

Well i was referring to the passive mental afflictions. I guess you could include wrathefull canticle as a passive, although it only has a chance to fire on attacks.

I agree that bards shouldn't be able to swoop in swamp people with afflictions and one shot demigods. There should be plenty of testing done and tweaking for balance. However, if you stand toe to to with one of us long enough to build up mental and auric afflictions then, yeah, we should be able to get a kill in. The same with warriors bulding up wounds, if you let them they will smack you down.

No, all bard songs, regardless of specs, are stopped by earwort.



Now, for a majority of my thoughts on Necroscream, people have already covered them pretty much, though I have a few more things to poke out.

For TortureSong, I agree that to limit the effects of a Low stanza skill to fire only on magic damage would be best for the suggestion.

For DespairWeb, focus body has nothing to do with this new aim of stacking mental afflictions, so I agree that the song affecting the skill would make no sense.

For CarillonKnell, depends on the rate of passive mana drain, and again what does ego have to do with mana draining?

For WhisperingMadness, as long as the afflictions being given are purely mental (since this is the theme going for), and limited either in the way Shuyin pointed out or some other process, shouldn't be too much of a problem. Hypochondria should be removed since it's not even a focus mind affliction.

For SobbingDread, I've no problem with that.

For WrathfulCanticle, no strong feelings either.

For MindRot, I see a lot of things being thrown about. If being compared to HerbBane, the rate of success of the skill is at 50% yes, but it does not consume herb/focus balance. If the focus balance being used up is what is being sought though, then the lower percentage is needed as is the case with Recessional. Herb eating being stopped to cure afflictions is eh, iffy since in the case of trying to use pennyroyal to cure stupidity and is stopped since paranoia is cured by pennyroyal too. Removing paranoia from the list would alleviate the problem and stick to galingale or coltsfoot consumption for the skill to stop.