And communes have an advantage over cities in that you can meld a room that has saplings raised in it, but mages cannot meld a room that has terrain in it -even if they casted said terrain.

Had you read my previous suggestions you will see I addressed this topic as well.

After learning to Illusions in Discernment the other day, I thought about this imbalance.

I'm behind this idea completely.

I have a suggestion.

The longer you have scabies or epilepsy, the more likely they are to tick (the base chance at 0 seconds remaining the same as it is now). Currently scabies and epilepsy work on a randomized timer so that sometimes you'll crucify someone and have both of them tick twice in four seconds, and sometimes you'll crucify someone and have neither of them tick in the entire time. What this suggestion would do is to reward a Nihilist who can stick these afflictions by making balance-lock a less random and luck-reliant thing. Currently there is no particular incentive to do this, and in fact I generally just time things so that my demon hits with scabies/epilepsy as I crucify because it's silly to risk having scabies/epilepsy being cured before I can crucify (and curing them is pretty easy if you're smart). I think this is an interesting and balanced upgrade because it rewards a player who is skilled enough to stick afflictions effectively, reduces the impact of an undesirable random factor in combat, and doesn't overly strengthen existing tactics (the base chance for scabies/epilepsy to tick will remain the same). IC, this can be justified by the afflictions becoming more and more pronounced as they incubate. Thoughts?

Actually, for the Divine, it would be nice to get some actual numbers on the probability of scabies/epilepsy ticking, but given how reticent the Divine generally are regarding all formulas that doesn't seem likely.

Actually, piggybacking on my post above; in general, I think the Divine should make damage formulas and such public. It's irritating to have no way of knowing which bonuses will give the most benefit apart from testing them when testing them costs hundreds of credits. I think it would be a good thing if those kinds of formulas were public and I can't really see any reason to keep them a secret the way they are now.

All applicable formulas should be public. There is really nothing to be secretive about. What harm could possibly be done by this?

They already tick faster with full deathmark, a cleanse cure!

I don't believe they tick faster, but the chance for getting them from contagion improves directly relative to deathmark level.

Pureblade comments. Fix up pureblade, and then hopefully we'll be done with knight spec stuff forever. Or at least, a rather long time.

Something else to consider may be the envoy process itself. It seems like often that it has become a game of "I need to use my slot to either buff me/my side exclusive stuff, or alternately harm the other side", rather than addressing changes that need to happen. Nobody can really sit on an empty slot, because everyone is worried the other side is busy doing something obnoxiously biased and stupid. So we wind up with a situation where people feel the need to do something, even if nothing really needs to be done, meaning that coding and intellectual resources are spent running around in little political circles.

The lol things about the luck of sacrifice.

The recent change to make it balance if you fail it. Could have up'd the mana cost instead.
As Shamarah said the fact that some things will never stick (I never see scabies far more than epilepsy because focusmind trigger on a gorgulu hit is just too easy, and even butter luck catching rigormortis) and if you get it off on cross that moment (meaning you spent 10p to scourge and have them both hit at the same time), its still based on luck cause you had to toss an ectoplasm out there and hope they didn't cure it.
Deathmark doubles balance loss from the initial crucify, from the way I understand its 1 second off balance from crucify, 2 seconds with ectoplasm, 4 seconds with deathmark, ectoplasm and 8 seconds if you did forced writhe, deathmark, ectoplasm. Now you can hope for scabies or epilepsy ticks. Since its a 5 second cool down from crucify, and 3 seconds each for shrivel and you usually have to wait for a power regen or two (8-16 seconds) given that it costs 14p (deathmark, ectoplasm, crucify, shrivel, shrivel, sac) to sac someone (not including the 10p for scourge).
The usual sac luck factor comes in from getting an opponent with ectoplasm to actually expend balance on their own right before you crucify. Unprepared fighters will not cleanse at times because they are too busy mashing keys and sometimes if you scare people with enough afflictions they will attempt to tumble.
You will never land a sac in a 2 on 1 situation due to stuns, webs, anything no matter how perfectly you lay down the 'lock' especially with this change to adding a balance tick to sacrifice fail.


I love Nihilist combat and I love affliction based attacks and it takes alot of skill to really watch your target, know what he is affected with, spend the proper amount of power, toss in random happenings of combat (dealing with stun, ents, powerregens) and I think this has to be one of the most skill required instakills in the game (its not building wounds or soft locks or turning on a lame deathsong), and yet even with the skill of timing exactly it and expending all the power, you will still fail probably 2 out of 3 times.

How much skill does it take to check what afflictions your opponent has cured when that's a function of deathmark, no?

It's still what, 5s to writhe the cross without contort? That's +5 of any of those figures. The log of our most recent Astral adventure has me at 3 broken limbs in under 7 seconds, wherein I am not even able to start my writhe until balance is recovered 4+ seconds later. Had it not been for TH/DF the Sac would've happened with almost no set-up.

Edit: And it usually has nothing to do with unprepared, it has to do with latency and command availability. 90% of the time in my logs when I swing with ectoplasm I enter the command and ectoplasm happens before my command is processed server-side. The alias stringing of putting sacrifice before any action removed any "skill" of watching what a player was afflicted with. It's like having absolve with no cost/consuming balance or eq. Just forget contemplate or discern and smash out on ABSOLVE PERSON;CHANT AMISSIO PERSON, whee!

Bzzt, wrong. Also it's like 3ish seconds to writhe from crucify I believe. Also sacrifice has a balance cost on failure now, gg nub.

Which is why I said removed, not removes. Past tense nub, gg.

OK WHATEVER SCRUB

PWNIJD

Don't pull that Tael crap in my house, son.

WHAT YOU SAY

Besides that, I think Desi has a deep want to be as awesome as I am. Oh yes.

Sorry Desi. It takes years to perfect the greatness that is the Taelure™

Hey sham, the guy who posted above me thinks that pre-restoration is a viable tactic against any Atabahi. He also thinks I wish to be him. He has a common theme, you know?

Huh. If I recall, I merely stated that pre-restore was there because of Lycans in general, not that it was a tactic against them. But it's not first time you've been completely ignorant to any kind of argument in lieu of trying to substitute lulz instead of logic. Proceed.