No. No. Stop arguing over whose wet paper bag is mushier.

I think you misunderstand Gregori saying that temp insanity has synergy with badluck/anything. Badluck does 100% of the lifting, assisted by people insisting on using focus mind in badluck. That's the "synergy." People don't update their systems.

That's oversimplifying it a bit.

While I agree not you probably shouldn't use focus mind as much while under badluck, the fact badluck costs 0p, and for all intents and purposes means that it's gonna be on you the entire time you're fighting the para user, in the end, you -will- have to focus to keep up in order to avoid getting instakilled. Couple this with the passives of illuminati (hekoskeri, ecto for double balance loss when badluck or eyesnare ticks woo) or warrior attacks (spam dulak/mantakaya, hinders in general), whispers, eyesnare and whatever else rituals has, then it's fairly obvious that badluck + insanity is good synergy. It is not badluck doing all the heavy lifting, there is good synergy.

Whether it is OP or not is an entirely different argument, and I'm sure everyone will make their own conclusions as soon as Gaudi picks a fight with the wrong people. Or the loudest envoys. Whichever, really.

And as I said, once Illu comes out and we see what they have, badluck will need a closer look at. I said that allalong. I also said I wasn't jumping on the OMG nerf Badluck bandwagon, before actually seeing the effects of the main guild going to be using it. This is also why I have a report up for badluck, now. Though I am sure there will be crying to nerf it much harder than it needs to be.

My point was that Aeonics doesn't have a BadLuck equivalent.

2 real options:
Either add a 0p skill in Aeonics that causes fairly hefty balance+eq malus (or really increases focus calance time, since that's what really matters.)
OR
Make Timewarp by itself as strong as TempInsanity AND BadLuck (based on the fact that BadLuck is 0p, but even then you're looking at the new timewarp's efficacy relative to the timewarp level, whereas BadLuck + TempInsanity is actually MORE consistent because BadLuck is a flat rate.)

I went with option 2 of those. If you'd prefer option 1, Gregori, you're welcome to use a precious envoy slot (or get one of your seren alt-brigade to use THEIR slots) to give us a shiny new skill we can spam.

Except, I am envoying badluck to cost power. Well a switch in where we pay the power actually, but in effect it means no perma sticking badluck.

Edit: also envoying based on the principle of "we need the same skills as they have" is a bad way to envoy, otherwise everyone would have choke by now.

Well. No spamming it on an entire enemy group, at least.

Which is not a bad change, admittedly!

I would rather go with a small change that still affects things than a kneejerk change that will never get undone. If it turns out it needs more later on I am open to that, as I have been open to the fact it would need something at some point anyways.

Like I said, I don't think it's a bad change. I just disagreed slightly with the assertion (given how long it lasts and the lack of cure it can still be applied to one person for a very, very long time over the course of a fight). It seems like the best part will be limiting the spamming of it on lots of people for 0p.

But even so, giving skills a power cost does have a non-negligible impact 1v1, and I'm pretty happy with it as a solution / first step in a solution (either way, depending on how it works out).

Actually, from what I can see, all your report is asking is that whispers be made 0p and badluck cost 3p. You're not only nerfing badluck, you're also buffing whispers.

Why should whispers be 0p when its Aeonics equivalent, time echoes is 3p? I'm not sure any rationale can be given for making an incurable, passive affliction 0p, so I can't agree that whispers should be reduced to 0p.

I'd have been fine with making badluck cost 2p and leaving whispers as is. You always have snafu which is badluck for everyone in the room if you're looking for group utility (when it comes to spamming badluck) anyway.

Why must we make Paradigmatics and Aeonics the same set of costs with a small amount of variance and different skins?

EDIT: to clarify, I don't think we need to measure every benefit or issue that each skillset has against each other. That only homogenizes the entire feeling of uniqueness between each skillset while simultaneously breeding this feeling that such blandness is balanced. So what if timeechos is 3p? We should be measuring the actual strength of skills, not some kind of foolish sense of equality. Badluck needs to be limited by a power cost to make it a more prohibitive choice, and greywhispers is not honestly as powerful as you seem to think.

EDIT2: An entire skillset's worth should be measured when balancing a skill as well - if Aeonics is weak, it needs to have solutions brought to it, but that is NO excuse to nerf Paradigmatics out of some bitter agenda to 'bring it in line' just because Aeonics wasn't as well thought-out. I think if you switch Goodluck to 3p and Greywhispers to 0p, you'll see something closer to balance and that facet of the skillset will be fine.

Greywhispers does not nearly as much as badluck in the sense of the skills, and while the affect may be incurable, the symptoms are not. Where as badluck is the opposite, there is no cure for balance loss. Having to spend 5 power every minute on top of hex power useage or other power usage in order to get illumination means illumination is never going to happen. This preserves the power consumption while shifting the focus of power to where it is really needed.

In other words, not making a kneejerk change to nerf an entire skillset right off the bat.

edit: but as I said I was sure there would be crying to nerf things more than they needed to be

I agree, why do they need to be the same?

Surely you disagree, then, that Temporary Insanity and Time Warp have to be balanced against each other as indicated in the following quote from earlier in this thread...



...so, why again is there such opposition to changing Time Warp to be a little more constructive in the context of our strategies with continual and repeated reference to how it measures up in regards to Temporary Insanity?

Need is fairly relative, I just threw 2p out as a number and would even be fine with 1p. Perhaps I shouldn't have said 2p for -badluck-, I'll admit that, my bad.

So I can change my suggestion and say that badluck being 3p is fine, but I don't think whispers should be 0p either. 2 or 2p for an incurable aff that passively afflicts + insanities.

Because I don't think 'fixing' timewarp will 'fix' Aeonics. As well, there is a difference between what you're trying to propose and what I'm pointing out: you think that temporary insanity plays some kind of tremendous part in our strategy. That is incredibly far from the truth in the most practical senses. The affliction 'temporaryinsanity' does nothing for us - skills that operate off of levels of temporaryinsanity do. There is a line that needs to be drawn here, and 'comparably strong but unique to one another' is where it should be drawn. If you want timewarp to slow people down more, we can talk about that - but any solution to make timewarp more 'useful' should be done within the constraints of new or changed Aeonics skills.

Yes, and the first step in doing so is changing timewarp itself to be conducive to our existing strategies; even if it is only negligible in effect, anything that is absolutely ineffectual, in combat, is dead weight.

Then, after the timewarp mechanic is fixed, I agree: it is time to assess the Aeonics skillset as a whole to create more coherent goals and tactics.

In balancing, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. Timewarp, as a mechanic, is the bottom; timewarp is broken; yes, it is negligible; yes, it is only meant to be marginally helpful; however, at present it is not even marginally helpful it contributes to our success or failure in - essentially - no meaningful, noticeable or measurable way.

Keep the negligible aspect of it, just move it to something that could - in some way, no matter how small -- effectively assist us and then start looking at other things.

Otherwise, you're stuck with a skill that is admitted dead weight with no way to balance around it, because you've balanced yourself into a corner by ignoring it.

Btw I have this really strong feeling that you both actually agree on the same thing.

The point of the stacks of timewarp and temporaryinsanity isn't to do anything by themselves, they exist to generate a 'combo point' effect to use other skills in Aeonics or Paradigmatics. There is no need to buff them to do anything by themselves, and in fact it is headache-inducing that they in fact DO do something by themselves. You don't need to make timewarp more effective by virtue of buffing its own effect; by way of making more Aeonics skills LIKE timewarp stacks, you inherently buff timewarp itself by way of worth and priority. Now, if you want to talk about making timewarp stick, I can't help you there as I don't know enough about Harmonics and Aeonics yet.

I don't think making timewarp, as an affliction, do anything more than what it does, is the way to go. The mechanic being worth more is what you should aim at.

Why do you keep comparing them while also saying: "Why must we make Paradigmatics and Aeonics ... a small amount of variance and different skins?" Why do the mechanics have to be the same? Yes, it works for Paradigmatics; what Aeonics users are saying is that it doesn't work - as effectively - for them. Why, then, do you insist that the skills have to remain mechanically similar while also bemoaning the fact that the skillsets contain only "a small amount of variance"? Why not add more variance?

So 2% is consider effective at maximum level?

I bet you this...If we were to do a test of 100 actions, the balance increase would be *holds breath*



...two percent

Because the way the skillsets are designed in term of how their abilities operate are, regretfully, the same, and nothing short of an open-minded special report will change that. I accept the inevitability of certain similarities, but I refuse to support MORE of them. Let me pick something out:



The solution to this does not lie in making timewarp better directly. It lies in making Aeonics as a whole LIKE timewarp more and generate more timewarp stacks. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you think that because your skillset lacks the ability to capitalize on its mechanic, you must buff something totally irrelevant to mechanic (i.e the numerical disadvantage granted as a side perk of the mechanic's affliction-based counter)? This thread started mostly to argue that using sensationalist wording ("Temporary insanity is sooooooo much better than timewarp") is a pretty dirty method and it needed to be fought, but then it became discussions like this. I'm arguing the merits of your idea to change timewarp, because you aren't arguing to keep timewarp within the same level power of temporaryinsanity while also changing it, and because I don't think making timewarp strictly better as an affliction will fix your woes about Aeonics.

EDIT: I also don't think that your idea of upholding variance being ruined by keeping two afflictions at the same level of power has much merit, but I don't think I should argue that anymore, or really any of this when the topic originally began to point out certain other things.