Can't get rid of that; everyone knows that Druids can't catch you if you're on fire.

Kidding of course; Lashes are a total non-threat thanks to ignite, and SOMETHING should be done about that.

Not to mention others being able to ignite you, and while we all know group combat is a different mess altogether...it's really easy to get out of thornlashes. Right now, the only real way someone (who is not a newbie/non-combatant) can die to it is through an instantaneous simultaneous thornlash attack from 5 druids.

I can't find any envoy reports about Deathtouch in the backlog of REPORT LIST HARMONY The last and only envoy report for Deathtouch is Report 48 which was rejected in September 2008, in which the Furies replied that it should be included in the Harmony report. If memory serves, the skill has entirely remained unchanged since then and has been largely ignored, so I'm wondering what Estarra's (and the Furies') thoughts are about it now, in September 2011. It is, in my opinion, the only instakill that's bafflingly inappropriate for its archetype. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Shofangi and Tahtetso have exactly two ways to pull it off and neither of those two can be done alone:

1) Grab a bunch of Telepath mages and, after a Mindblast volley, steal their kill preempt Mindburst with a Deathtouch.
2) Grab a bunch of monks and have them spam MANTRA MINDFIRE and MANTRA HEARTFIRE while you do all the damage anyone else in your org, guardians/wiccans and bards especially, and have them forgo doing anything but help you set up for your instakill. In this case, you may as well just try to chase the more reliable Gahtirak'sho or greenlock (as the case may be), which would be easier if you have three or more monks actually using Kata skills allies trying to do what they should be in a fight instead of spamming a mana/ego drain every EQ.

If the skill were to be envoyed, would the Admin find it agreeable to change Deathtouch into an aff-based instakill, a time-based with power cost like Judgement, or at least change the requirements for it? It doesn't seem feasible to bump the 66% hp/mana/ego requirement up, because then it becomes too easy to pull off in group combat. At least aff-based or time-based gives you an alternative instakill that can be feasibly done in both single or group combat for Tahtetso (which may or may not be acceptable - I'll defer to Janalon, Malarious, and co. who say Tahtetso is a solid combat spec.) and Shofangi.

I realize I don't have the best grasp of combat balance and monk mechanics, but I'm throwing this out to get opinions on how the skill can be made not-useless.

EDIT: Edited, but I left my original post in strikethrough so you may all poke fun at me.

While I haven't really gone for it, researchers, telepaths and bards could possibly get someone in to deathtouch range with a monk. I agree that it is a weird insta for the archetype but putting a judgement clone in there or giving harmony monks an aff based thing like the tahtetso insta would also be inappropriate.

Here's a random idea that just came to mind:

Cause heartfire and mindfire (and add some sort of body skill) to form a harmonic bond with the target. Then there's a couple of possible ways you could change the instakill:

• Cause health/mana/ego damage when attacking with a form based on what connections you have with the target. One neat thing you could do for flavor/balance is to have this drain be taken by the monk as well. The actual insta wound remain as it is.
• Turn it into some crazy mixture of soulless and gore/toadcurse if you have a body mind and heart connection with the target and one of there stats was below 50% it kills for a 5-8p cost. You could also do a similar drawback as above where 50% of whichever stat is taken by the monk.

Edit: List tags are hip these days.

Estarra, if you're still willing to hand out reasons why reports were rejected, could you tell me what the thought process was for report 500? It was concerning moving broken arm from a heavy Axelord aff to a medium one, and replacing it with mangled arm. I'm looking at ways to bring Axelord a bit more in line power wise with pureblade, and broken arm (also a bc heavy aff, which seems to break the trend that 2h's get 1h crit affs at heavy) is one of the things that bothers me.

Bump, anything about that thornlash report? REPORT 622, solution 1.
Also:



Wait, roots is not good burrower protection. It has no passive (preemptive) function, and it dosn't work on anyone who is below the second level. Because distort blocks burrowing and a large part of combat is based around raids, where distort is nearly always a part of the equation, the times when burrowing is used are very limited. One such use is burrowing to sneak in past prime guards or other watches. Any time you'd want to do that, you will have burrowed down far enough that roots wouldn't effect you at all. In addition, the druid would have to be aware of your presence and be in their meld ready to roots you to have any effect anyways.

I'm okay with turned down solutions, I really was just fishing for SOMETHING to make roots remotely useful. I also agree that burrowing protection can be useful. However, part of my explanation in the 'Problem' section is that roots fails as burrowing protection. It does nothing to preemptivly stop you from burrowing, does nothing to you if the druid is not aware of you being down below. Even if they do properly understand the clues (watch sensing you enter, not being able to scent or scry you at all), roots will prove useless, because you will be burrowed below the second level.

Why not have it dig people up 2-3 levels every tick.

It doesn't tick.

This could be considered the change?

I wanted to ask (though this is not technically a report), why did we buff distort? At this point raiding is now bordering suicidal even with a group because you can be broken up but cant move enemies while also being mostly unable to do much. You have to dig in to raid now? So wondering the motivation and thoughts on this one.

I'd like clarification on this report

Report #536 Skillset: Aeonics Skill: Paradox
Guild: Institute Status: Rejected Jan 2011
Problem: Paradox is not useful in one versus one or group combat. In combat, you do not want to hit enemies with the following: aeon, displacement, oracle (possibly) and you should have already hit
them with: oracle (possibly), time echoes. The only useful proc of Paradox is timewarp. You don't want to hit with aeon because you want control over your aeons. You don't want to hit with
displacement because you want your enemy in the room, in group situations, displacement is a failed attack if the target is not timewarped. You don't want to pay 10 power for the chance to hit with
time echoes and oracle when you could spend 6 power, hit with both and have control over who they hit and when. Furthermore, you often do not want to hit with oracle at all, since it causes fear which
makes it more difficult to pin an opponent down. Paradox is entirely too random - it hits 1 random enemy with 1 random attack - to be useful or applicable in proper combat. This, on top of its hefty
power cost and combined with the fact that 4 out of the 5 attacks that it is able to hit with are undesirable means that it is largely ignored.

Solution #1: Give more control over what Paradox hits with, and the order it hits in. As per Eventru's suggestion, the syntax would be: TIMECHANT PARADOX
. It would then hit with these attacks in this order, lending a bit of predictability to the skill and making the less useful effects more useful, since the user will know what
will hit and in what order. Additionally, make Paradox always hit the last person that the caster attacked. Therefore, if I cast Paradox then attack Morbo, the next Paradox hit will hit Morbo. If I
then attack Wuylinfe before the next Paradox tick, the next Paradox hit will hit Wuylinfe. If the caster has not attacked any person in the room, then have Paradox default to hitting a random enemy.
In addition, optionally allow Sentinels to specify "raze" in their casting of Paradox. For example: TIMECHANT PARADOX RAZE TIMEWARP RAZE TIMEWARP RAZE RAZE. This would provide a much needed "link"
between Aeonics and the other Knighthood skills and would be a decent step towards creating a more unified offense for Sentinels.
Solution #2: Provide a solution here.
Solution #3: Provide a solution here.


I'm mostly wondering if the administration sees the problem with paradox not being usable at all or if the solution was just too outlandish or something

Bump for the reasons report 500 was rejected. :)

Esty explained that one a bit back (I think). There was ambivalence and it was decided to just not mess with it, I think.

Edit: No, it was the bonecrusher thing.

Report #461 Skillset: Telepathy Skill: New
Guild: Geomancers Status: Rejected Sept 2010
Problem: While telepathy has a nice range of attacks, it has no defensive or utility skills like telekinesis. I feel this is a major reason as to why it's considered inferior nowadays.

Solution #1: Add a new skill called MassConfusion or Chaos. This would use a locked channel on super (thereby trading almost all the offense of telepathy). When someone attacks you, there is a 15% chance that the attack will target a random other person in your room instead. Each time this happens, you are drained of 400 + 3% of your ego, and will burn out if you hit 0. The beauty of this is, it won't add any dodging to 1v1 because there'll be no one to redirect attacks to! Also, on prime this'll need to select only from people the avenger will allow the attacker to hit.
Solution #2: Add a new skill called MassConfusion or Chaos that locks on super as above. Gives you a 20% to confuse someone's mind when they attack you and cause the attack to fail (AKA regular ol' dodge). Same ego cost of 400 + 3% per dodge. While indeed, I do hate traditional dodge skills and would much prefer solution 1, I feel this one would be tolerable given that it makes you sacrifice psyvamp/mindblast/mindburst, has an ego cost with risk of burnout, and is disruptable.
Solution #3: Add a new skill called Hypnosis or Mindbend. This locks on any channel and makes you more efficient at influencing mobs, represented as a 10% faster equilibrium on influence attacks. Could potentially apply to debate too, but I feel telepaths may have enough advantage there already from Hivemind.
Furies' Decision:
We do not find this to be necessary.

While I hate each of the solutions, I'd like some clarification on this.

Just thought I'd throw another bump for Esty out there. Report 500 details please? I'll buy credits even if that's what it takes :)

Solution three on that one is kind of funny. It starts out saying "Telepathy needs passive defenses" an then it says "Influencing buff"?

Morbo:

I'd like clarification on this report

Report #536 Skillset: Aeonics Skill: Paradox

I don't have many notes on this, except that I was open to making the skill more controllable. Feel free to resubmit and SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY!

lilija:

Bump for the reasons report 500 was rejected. :)

Solutions weren't well liked. They were viewed as OP considering that most wounding axes can get their target to heavy wounds in one or two hits. (Some mention of liking Filin's solution where alternatives are created for a weaker version of the critical state to work on the lower tier of wounding but that was never developed.)

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AquaNeos:

While I hate each of the solutions, I'd like some clarification on this.

Don't have many notes except it needed a better RP name than "Chaos" (which is very out of place in psionics). We were considering mass confusion, though ultimately decided against it. Feel free to tweak and resubmit.

Don't think this was asked yet, but regarding Report 627, why do you feel Reality should be the sole exception to distort stopping magical transport, giving how powerful it is, especially in stopping raids?