Ok, so I think the Necroscream skill set has a great theme. I would like to see a way to remove hunger attrition and replace it with something else.
I think we can work out a way to use the envoy system to tweak things but we are looking for ideas on how we can move away from the hunger thing and are actively seeking suggestions.
Please keep it calm and civil. Don't jump on people, or me, if an idea it OP or something. We are looking for constructive comments and ideas.

So, just a few ideas to get it started.

Have sickening plague passively give plague marks that when enough are built up will reduce constitution or max health.

Have it give some kind of sickness levels that boost the effectiveness of our skills based on the number of levels they have. (Inky's idea)

There are tons of variations that we could take with either of those. I like the second one better since it's a little more versitile as to tying in other skills to work with it.

Discuss!

I believe that there needs to be a new song that worsens the power of plague afflictions. I'm evaluating the list of plagues you gave me, and I can see a few ideas right now that go with a damage kill theme:

* A song that multiplies the damage of pox and/or speeds up its tick rate depending on how many other 'plague' afflictions exist on the target. This song could also make other plagues worse to deal with - rigor mortis could harm multiple limbs or even hurt the limbs further, scabies could throw you off balance longer, etc.

* Perhaps a song that makes it harder to heal a set list of afflictions, possibly making that list just the five from SickeningPlagues.

* This one I am not sure you can ask for or implement: a song that can go on any stanza of your full song 'rotation'. Make it have a scaling power cost of 2/4/6 - it does a burst of damage according to how many plagues your target has at that time. Perhaps explain it as the plagues beginning to cause you internal bleeding - which would then make the damage 'delayed' by being a bleed? Perhaps make the damage reasonably better/worse per stanza it's attached on. If you're afraid of it being spammed over and over, make it consume the afflictions on cast. I would personally not prefer this, because it opens up wonky abuses like using the song on an ally to cure them at the expense of their health (then again..)

I like the theme of plagues and sickness, but the theme needs to either become the sole focus similar to how ancestral spirits is the focus of Wildarrane (which is why I believe it is such a success), or it needs to ditch that theme and come up with another.

Regardless, hunger attrition needs to go. Hungerwhoring is sort of annoying in my opinion anyways, and it doesn't provide a truly visible, satisfactory indicator that you're achieving anything in combat. If the target remembers to carry food, you're done for. 'Cool' ideas on paper like that don't usually play out as well mechanically.

Let's think of a plague mechanic that is independent of simple garbage afflictions like pox. The power of Wildarrane is that you can't just shrug off spirits (whereas all plague afflictions can cured super fast), the "building" of spirits centers around the caster and then latching them onto a target, etc.

I was thinking perhaps of a song that over time started doing more and more like how a simple infection can begin to fester and become worse and worse over time. Example:

0-15 seconds: plague afflictions
15-30 seconds: plague afflictions and passive damage
30-45 seconds: plague afflictions, passive damage, and passive hunger
45-60 seconds: plague afflictions, increased passive damage, passive hunger, 75% chance to fail curing a plague affliction

At this point, the Cacophonist can cause a massive poison based damage attack + make you instantly starving to reset this song. Every 10 seconds the target is outside the room, the effect of this song drops a level.

=====+=====

Bear in mind, this would a single song that is the focus of the skillset. They would still get other stuff to go with it.

Another idea is a song that limits the amount of food you can eat at a given time and decreases the satiety of that food. Essentially, "food balance" + decreased impact of a given food item (1 platter takes you from starving to full).

I like this idea a lot, actually. The question is what else could we give them to synergize with this? I was looking at the base Bard skills and happened upon the auric stuff - what if we played off that or that concept? Taking poison damage does something special?

Another song could provide positive benefits/buffs to the Cacophonist based upon how sick they are making the target. A sort of "feeding off their sickness" vibe. The last song has four levels so we'll work with that based upon three additional mechanics: leeched regeneration, leeched sipping, leeched dmp.

Level 1: leeched regeneration (10%), leeched sipping (5%), leeched dmp (5)
Level 2: leeched regeneration (10%), leeched sipping (7%), leeched dmp (7)
Level 3: leeched regeneration (15%), leeched sipping (10%), leeched dmp (10)
Level 4: leeched regeneration (20%), leeched sipping (15%), leeched dmp (15)

Essentially, at each level, the target becomes less regenerative, sips for less, and suffers a dmp reduction. You "leech" the amount lost so instead it benefits you. Example: If the target would regenerate X health every Y seconds then at level 2 they regenerate X health - 10% every Y seconds. You in turn gain this 10%. The same follows for sipping. The leeched DMP would be constant and apply to all sources. For example: if Shuyin has 40 dmp to X at level 4, he'd only have 25 dmp. I would gain an additional 15 dmp to X.

with viscanti's lvl 2 sip penalty a sip bonus would be awsome

Maybe make it to where a platter takes you from starving to peckish?

Or maybe something that gives you a chance of vomiting upon eating?

Any plague symptoms you have can be spread to the people around you who you have allied?

For instance. Celina is fighting (For lack of a better person) Narsrim. Narsrim isn't deaf, so PlagueSong (whatever it's called) hits him. He develops plague symptoms, whatever they are.

Nydekion walks in swinging. He has earwort up, he's safe. Right?

No. Narsrim has him allied, so their "closeness" makes Nydekion contract some of the same symptoms, earwort or no. Nydekion could bring it back to allies outside the room, if not treated.

This sounds odd, but it's sort of like Rabies from D2:LOD's druids. I think.


Just some thoughts.

You have to take out hunger attrition altogether if you expect upgrades. Especially upgrades that make you better than spiritsingers.

Says who? And why?

Incabulos proposal was quite similar to this. The idea was to ditch hunger and change SickeningPlague to build up an infection. The effect on most other songs (CarillonKnell damage, WrathfulCanticle proc rate, SobbingDread delay and such ) could be based on the level of infection on the target.

The root of the problem lies in the fact that apparently we won't be getting another report any day soon, and historically, suggestions like this are rejected by the furies for being 'too complicated'.

We can try to send the suggestions through the Envoys, but I would be positively surprised if they are not outright rejected and even if all of them get accepted (quite improbable if you ask me) we'll be around the 2010 Ascendance event by the time we are finished.

We've been trying to get rid of hunger for a while. It's like our choke and it's hard to get buffed while we have it, only choke is good and hunger is not. The problem is, we aren't going to do it through envoys because we would be outright garbage for PK if we didn't have it.

What upgrades have been suggested that make us SS level? I'm not seeing it.

Love the festering infection idea. Sexy.

edit: to clarify, we aren't looking to go through envoys to erase hunger and then get buffs because of the timespan we would be outright crippled. Though, with Narsrim's idea, hunger would stay and I like the idea as a whole. Hunger alone is nothing to fret over and is preventable. Hunger that meshes with an offense is dangerous though.

Admittedly, I love the idea too. Given, I don't really do much fighting on my alt, but still. Sounds neat.

This isnt better than SS by far.

Maybe remove where it says hunger and put in blackout or something to show intensity maybe, because hes right everyone would want you to remove hunger.

I like where this is going, now you will just need admin to ok it.

Anyway, back to ideas.

I think NS has a song that makes it do damage/bleeding when a target writhes. How about giving it a chance to raise the "infection level" when they writhe (slight synergy with tarot), maybe a chance of rigor mortis or some sort of lockjaw-type of affliction. Chance of sips spilling down their chin when they drink, or herbs falling to the ground or being lost.

If the sobbingdread time got long enough, it would synergize very well with tarot.

And for those of us who don't play Caco's, Sobbingdread is the song I was talking about?

No, just talking about Tarot. Sobbing dread is like moving rubble.

SobbingDread would be the rubble song

by Casilu...

Ninja'd by slowpoke. That's low.