Wyrmic Redesign Direction

[Davion Fuxa]

In regards the recently closed polls, here is some key points to note as well for digestion:

*Most Players seem to favor Wyrmics expanding their weapon repertoire a bit - such as including Mindstar type talents. These talents however shouldn't displace conventional weapon usage already on the Wyrmic however, but run alongside of them as a valid option to consider for use or to ignore in favor of the convention weapons (unless the player plans to ignore weapon talents outright).

*Very few Players are currently happy with how Breath Attacks work in game, and most would like to see them changed in some shape or form. Sadly however, it is hard to say 'what' players want Breath Attacks to really be. Between Unifying All Breath Attacks into one Talent or keeping them individually separate, on will find there is support for either concept. Most Players want Breath Attacks to be spammable in some shape or form, but whether to have a sort of hard limit on the number of Breath Attacks that can be made or just leaving it up to Equilibrium failure there is no real established direction. The only real established point on Breath Attacks is that players want them to be more powerful then they are now with much better debuff ability attached to them.

*In regards to the Fungus category appearing on Wyrmics, there is no real pressure for or against its removal. This however this could be in part due to the fact that there hasn't been a whole lot of concept building on the category and talents that would replace the category for the Wyrmic Class. Potentially however, this is perhaps also do to the fact that most players don't really care of Wyrmics have access to the Fungus category, coupled with the fact that no other class has access to it that isn't already geared towards being Anti-Magic by nature.

*New categories of some sort are desired for the Wyrmic Class, that is also shared by Dragon type enemies - be it the sort of 'Wyrm Aspect' category I was pushing, a new Mindstar Talent Category, or what not. Much with what was suggested in regards to weapons, these would likely be talents that would run alongside the existing Wyrmic Class Talent Structure and not displace or outshine them.

*A lot of interest seems to be thrown towards the idea I broached on using Air Capacity in regards to Breath Talents - such as for Charging up Breath Attacks to make them more powerful, in regards to enabling spamming Breath Attacks but with a hard limit on the total number that can be made, or perhaps just in general usage with them. A Poll hasn't been made on this specifically and likely perhaps should be.

*More discussion is likely needed in regards to support talents for Breath Attacks on Wyrmics and how they might come into play. This likely also might need to be included in a future poll regarding Breath attacks.

***

I might drop another poll in regards to Wyrmic Breath Attacks later on but I think for the last bit, we've had enough polls and some more discussion should occur first.

From the polls though, I don't think there is a whole lot of support for the sort of concepts of an 'Alchemist' styled Wyrmic class taking hold. The mismatched nature seems to work well enough for most, it is just that they don't like the Talents themselves that they are mixing and matching for one reason or another. My opinion is that most players would probably just like to see the existing Wyrmic class refurbish - maybe with a little talent juggling here and there or a little compression of the Breath Attack talents, but all elements of the current Wyrmic still kept intact.

Anyhow, in regards to work that's being done, SageAcrin might be closest in the current direction that Wyrmics perhaps should go with his addon. Improving the Wyrmic talents and then adding to the class as needed is likely what needs to be done in improving Wyrmics from what they are.

Any other thoughts then on Wyrmics, or perhaps disagreements with what I've presented here?

[SageAcrin]

Well, I biasedly like my own redo, so there's not much useful I can add here.

Having said that, I admit that, trying to stay as objective as possible, I still agree with your assessment.

I was keeping a pretty close eye on the polls. The thing that struck me most is that there wasn't really a clean majority on most things-they're too weak and people would like better melee options and more passives, but many of the details otherwise were very split.

Generally speaking, my own experience with heavy splits in opinion is, people are often okay with a neutral option, which a minimalist rebuild does provide.

[Davion Fuxa]

Indeed, the only real 'clear majority' options that seemed to come up was:

Improvement of what exists.

[HousePet]

Spamming breaths and making them more powerful, is not going to work well.

I don't think many people paid attention to the alchemist style aspect stuff. Which is a bit annoying as it was fiddly to code.
Edit: and it looks like people were grabbing the old version of the addon. So I've just removed all the old versions from the thread.

I'd prefer stamina costs over air costs on breaths.

[SageAcrin]

Actually, my rework boosts the damage by 15-20% on breaths, buffs their status effects somewhat(except Sand, which is nerfed a little), and enables more spamming for the player end.

I haven't gotten a single negative bit of feedback. In fact, the only bit of notable feedback for enemy-end usage of breaths was positive feedback about the Sand Breath duration no longer hitting dozens of turns on the player.

I've had more negative feedback from Wing Buffet buffs, humorously, but even that's along the lines of Fire Drakes/Wyrms being credible threats, not overpowered.

[astreoth]

yeah I tried alchewyrmic and did not like it.

also the problem with wing buffet is it uses accuracy don't get me wrong you went the right direction with it the talent just shouldn't have a chance to miss.

and its totally possible to have both spammable and powerful breaths heck I'll propose a breath mechanic right here to show how.

fire breath
sustain
instant
no cooldown

prepare yourself to breath fire on your foes each turn this sustain will take x stamina to produce one stack of fire breath up to talent level based number. when deactivated you breath fire in an x range cone for x physpower based damage per stack putting this talent on cooldown for the number of stacks used and all other breath talents for half that number provided its greater than x

draconic breath
passive/active

improves the amount of damage per stack of (insert element here) breath by x% and breath attack range by x. can also be used actively to release a bellowing roar in radius x for x damage and (insert status afflicting here)

so with this mechanic

those who want powerful breaths can cap the generic talent for max range and per stack damage and cap one of the elemental breaths for maximum stack cap

while those who want to spam breaths only need to put one or two points into the elemental breaths since they only give you power at the cost of increased cooldown while draconic breath gives damage and range

and those who want both will have cooldown and stamina cost limits to prevent it from being op.

so just tune the numbers right and this could give powerful breaths and spammable breaths not quite sure how to put debuffs in their though.

[HousePet]

How complete was the AlcheWyrmic addon when you tried it?

I suspect people want powerful and spamable breaths at the same time though.

[astreoth]

yeah pretty sure it was the latest version it had the sand and lightning trees as well as the melee and ranged if you want more detailed feedback then.

the lack of early utilitys made the class feel a lot weaker early game I didn't really get very far but I never really felt strong.

a lot of the talents are only worth the sustains your running meaning if they got knocked out those abilitys become worthless(I know this won't happen often but it will(weirdling beast)) this was very noticable with the spit talent as it has no effect without a sustain.

once I got a couple of sustains up spit continued to disappoint with very weak debuff and very weak damage it may get better later with more sustains but the ability did two different things poorly.

the radius talent ended up being nearly useless the rearranging of quake ended up making the other effects well null since I couldn't seize the moment to press in on their confusion.

during play I ended up mostly relying on my healing talent and had to push my equilibrium to insane levels to survive something I rarely had to do with the regular wyrmic.

yeah overall the class just felt really weak.

yeah some people may want both at the same time but not even democracy can break the laws of game balance.

[HousePet]

Seriously, the power of the abilities is not important.
Numbers are easy to change.
The addon was for testing out the concept of using sustains to alter basic dragony talents.
Weakness of class is totally irrelevant.

[Talow]

Random thought: spammable and powerful, but inflicts a non-stacking debuff that halves breath damage for the duration, and is refreshed each time a breath is used... not sure how good of an idea that would be however.

[astreoth]

yeah the spit talent is the only one that felt bad in a way numbers could fix everything else was mostly talent availability and well useability.

if you want non numbers based stuff only then

still a lot of talents that are useless without sustains

having the sustains in the first slots still takes away early game utility's that the class previously had and makes those utility's more expensive to get later.

the way you've got this set each sustain is a grab bag of effects a lot of which may not interact well like quake making it hard to attack afterward.

again your mushing effects that would be far more effective separate into one talent.

overall its not really the numbers that are wrong here the class is far less flexible than the regular wyrmic and its talents tend to try to do a lot of things at once and not do any of them effectively.

the concept itself also feels poorly implemented if you cut it down to one sustain in the second slot after the utility's and gave the general talents some better no sustain useability this would probably work out better but the concept itself doesn't feel too good so I'd consider just dropping it.

[SageAcrin]

Also, not to put too fine of a point on this;

Ultra-focusing on single elements depresses me as a gameplay decision.

I know, this is somewhat opinionated, but hear me out here.

If you have multiple elements, you can't focus your +damage% as efficiently, leading to an overall damage hit.

However, this:

A: Can be mitigated with higher damage values(This is why I have one of the highest single hit damage values in the game on Swallow, for instance; It's Nature.). Not entirely, but then there's...

B: You can ignore +damage and focus on other things. Particularly, defensive things. Wyrmic is a pretty good tank already, thanks to Fungus and +2 Life Modifier and an armor booster and a lot of passively granted resists, and I tried to build on that. You can give up on trying to scrabble for damage and instead boost durability, leading to a different playstyle, and...

C: This then leads to two distinctive gear orientations. A defensive one and an offensive one. And I tried to allow for both to have differing talent builds as well. First, a bunch of early granted/granted without requiring elemental talents physical talents, and some talents that largely don't care about your elements. And then a bunch of elemental talents, which incidentally specialize often in status, special forms of damage, and tanking.

So yeah, this is why I sorta like not focusing too much on a single element as a design; You can do things with it. You can make people think about their gear and do things differently. I suspect many people won't and instead will just complain, sadly, but that doesn't make it bad design.

This isn't to say that all classes should do stuff like this though! Classes should be different. That's also something I really feel.

[astreoth]

yeah most classes tend to specialize in one or two elements or just give you options to specialize in.

wyrmic is one of those few classes you can get multiple elements for I mean effectively you'll probably just end up with 2 or 3 but thats more than most classes get let alone with choices for those.

we could really use more multi-element classes but for now lets just focus on wyrmic.

[HousePet]

Slot 2 only requires level 4. Waiting until after your first boss for a utility talent doesn't seem too arduous.
Having to spend an extra talent point is I guess.

I made up most of the effects quickly, without much thought. Most of the effects were based on general theme and including existing talents.

Two sustains were made to make it so that you could either maximise one or two colours, or spread between many. But it did make things a bit overcomplicated.

I did get many positive comments about the general idea of having core talents that are altered by colour talents.
This was an extreme test case and it does look like it took things too far.
I'll make up a more simple design:
Remove the aspect sustains.
Use the number of talent points spent in each element to add extra effects to the basic talents. eg. Each talent point spent in fire drake talents adds 2 fire damage to drake claw.
Keep the damage and debuff effects better separated.

[edge2054]

Keep in mind that buffs to Wyrmics will result in buffs to drakes. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing for most drakes but after getting spammed by a multi-hued vault drake last night and almost dying just from breath weapons it is something I hope people will keep in mind.

Personally, as a player, and a developer, I'd like to see the melee aspects of drakes buffed substantially. I want to be afraid of getting in melee with a big dragon. They should be apex predators. I'm not saying breath weapons shouldn't be dangerous but that as a player, at least on drakes, they feel like they're in a good spot.

Now some of this is due to how high of talent levels drakes have, which of course could be adjusted if breathes where buffed.

Sorry I'm babbling here.

What I'm trying to say is that if we make Dragons more interesting that Wyrmics will follow.