Analyzing the Wyrmic Class

[Davion Fuxa]

Greetings!

With a lot of ideas and updates being thrown around, it appears Wyrmics have been overlooked quite a bit in improvement. There has been a lot of discussion finally going on regarding the class but it doesn’t seem like enough analysis is really being done on where exactly Wyrmics are specifically failing. I hope to rectify that with this thread.

I took sometime to try a new Wyrmic character for the recent update to get a feel on how the class has been effected by most of the recent changes. Not a whole lot has really changed with them, though a couple of things are worth noting.

For this thread I’ll start by giving a brief summary on Wyrmics in general for those who aren't as familiar with the class. I'll also throw in what I think are the main strengths and weaknesses to note for the class.

Eventually I may add some suggestions to general improvement of Wyrmics themselves; perhaps in this thread or in others regarding Wyrmics. When adding subsequent Analysis posts to this thread, I'll be coloring then Dark Blue.

Playstyle and Class Structure

To describe the Wyrmic, they are a Melee class with support abilities tailored after the many Dragon type enemies found in game - which of course also includes their breath attacks. The nature of many of their talents are ranged with an area of effect, which can allow the Wyrmic to engage numerous foes at range before closing in or even keeping there distance. Some of their talents also present some interesting tactical abilities that can be used offensively and/or defensively as the situation requires. The rest enhance the Wyrmics abilities, mostly for melee range attacks or just in relation to the Wyrmic character own abilities.

Looking at the class categories of Wyrmics, one will find that many are based on each of the five distinct types of dragons you encounter game: sand, fire, cold, storm, and venom. Each of these categories which I'll dub the 'Element Drake Aspect' categories feature the talents that the various Drakes and Wyrms can use including the respective breath attack of the respective Drake. They also possess a locked class category called 'Higher Draconic Abilities' which contains some advanced abilities for the Wyrmic Class to make use of; notable for including a talent with resistance penetration and another with some status immunities in stun, blindness, and knockdown.

In addition to the various Dragon related categories above, Wyrmics also have access to both the 'Shield Offense' and 'Two Handed Assault' categories. They have the option should they wish to pursue it of making use of Mindstars for weapons as well since they tend to invest heavily in Willpower and Cunning influences several talents both due to improving Mindpower and Mind Critical Hit Chance. Along with the above weapon considerations, Wyrmics also have 'Combat Techniques' as a locked category as well as 'Combat Veteran' which is available for immediate use to the Wyrmic class.

In regards to Generics, Wyrmics like many other Melee centered classes has access to 'Combat Training' and should they wish to unlock it can make use of 'Survival'. These can help give some basic combat ability to help Wyrmics in surviving. They also receive 'Harmony' immediately on character creation as well - though that is locked and generally all players will gain access to it once they consume the Heart of the Sandworm Queen.

However, where their Generics truly shine is in regards to the categories Call of the Wild and Fungus. 'Call of the Wild' is a useful category which can allows the Wyrmic that can have some neat utility and healing for them to use. They also have a very powerful regeneration category in the form of 'Fungus' which can make a Wyrmic extremely durable and can even help lower their equilibrium. It is noted that Fungus is a category that other classes can take advantage of, but it is limited to classes that are able to pursue an Anti-Magic path, and going Anti-Magic means cutting yourself off from the Arcane; this makes Wyrmics the only class that can have access to the Fungus category while retaining the usefulness of Arcane abilities and items.

In regards to stats: Wyrmics 'usually' primarily focus on Strength as that increases the damage both for many core dragon related abilities and their physical attacks, as well ask for gaining access to the Talents in the Two Handed Assault and Shield Offense categories should they choose those weapons over using Mindstars, or for Combat Training, Combat Techniques, or Combat Veteran talents.

Willpower is a secondary focus for Wyrmics since the rest of their talents besides Survival only become available through investments in the Willpower stat; notably Willpower also helps with Mindpower which plays a wide roll in many of your dragon related talents, Call of the Wild talents, or Fungus talents. It also helps the Wyrmic through bolstering their Mental and Spell Saves, as well as giving them an abundance of stamina for use in a fight.

As a note, it is possible to make a Wyrmic build that centres more around Willpower more then Strength for a ‘caster-like’ Wyrmic with the current setup. This is usually the case for Mindstar wielding Wyrmics for example since Mindstars run off of Willpower and Cunning; both stats of course tying in to the use of many talents.

Outside of Strength and Willpower, Cunning is an important tertiary focus for Wyrmics, as you need it for improving critical rate both through your normal physical attacks as well as your breath attacks and the Devouring Flames talent. Cunning also improves Mindpower which helps improve the effectiveness of many Wyrmic talents and Call of the Wild and Fungus talents. It’s also useful for opening up Survival since Wyrmics don’t have very good detection abilities against concealed enemies. Notably for those who pursue using Mindstars, Cunning will help add a little damage to them as well.

Wyrmics can also make good use of the Dexterity and the Constitution stats as well. Dexterity can be helpful in improving defense and accuracy. Constitution stands out as being very useful for players who choose races with less hitpoints received per level, just want more legroom for pursuing a build that focuses on regenerating lost health, or perhaps want to nab the Draconic Body prodigy when they reach level 30.

The only stat a Wyrmic can't really make good use of is Magic; outside of Escort Categories or Prodigies.

Strengths of Wyrmics

Overall, Wyrmics have do have a lot of strengths for a class. For the most part there strengths come from available generic categories, their ability to handle groups of enemies as Melee character, and how the talents in their class categories are set up for acquirement by the player for his character.

Because Wyrmics start with Fungus and don’t have to go Anti-Magic to pick up the category, they don't suffer the loss of not being able to use Arcane items if they don’t go Anti-Magic. Along with some investment in the Call of the Wild category, Wyrmics tend to get pretty good value over their Generic Point expenditures. If they wish, they can pursue going Anti-Magic which can help them with managing their equilibrium resource as well as augmenting their abilities to take on spellcasters.

Wyrmics have fairly free reign with Generic points for use since they don’t necessarily have a lot of talent considerations outside of Fungus or Call of the Wild; unless they are planning on using Mindstars or pursuing an Anti-Magic build. Wyrmics of course invest heavily in Combat Training and potentially may also want to unlock Survival, but excess points can be thrown Racial talents or Escort Rewards category talents.

Due to having all the various Elemental Drake Aspect categories, a Wyrmic shouldn't be low on options for handling a fight. Through a variety of debuffs it can place on enemies, attacking with a multitude of different elements, several area of effect attacks in several formats, some good single target abilities for one on one battles, and many useful utility options to empower the Wyrmic character in many ways; Wyrmics are very adaptive regardless of what the situation throws at them.

Each individual Elemental Drake Aspect categories also has their talents organized in a very good and easy to understand progression. All the Elemental Drake Aspect categories start with a very strong first tier talent that will likely have a lot of use for the player. The capstone talent for all the Elemental Drake Aspects is the breath attack, each in their own element with whatever little fluff that comes attached. Some of the second and third tier talents are also set up to be very useful ‘One Point Wonders’ which is not a bad thing if the player wishes to make use of multiple different breath attacks on their Wyrmic but still get some value from the talent points invested along the way. Many of the Mindpower or Willpower based talents can also be useful even if not fully concentrating Willpower or Cunning in one way or another.

In addition to the Elemental Drake Aspect categories, they also have immediate access to Two Handed Assault or Shield Offense to begin training talents relating to weapons if the player can decide what type of weapon style he will pursue on his character; notably giving them two separate resource bars to make good use as the situation requires. If the player plans to use Mindstars, a character need only pick up the Mindstar Mastery category from the Zigur Mindstar Shop or betray an Alchemist Escort. Having immediate access to advanced weapon talents means the Wyrmic player can maximize specific weapon usage at their leisure when they decide too, and can do a lot to add more tactically ability for handling enemies as well.

Regardless of the weapon plan the character will utilize as well, they can generally expect the value from the Elemental Drake Aspect talents to remain the same since most don’t run off the power of their weapon, but rather the Strength, Willpower, or Mindpower stats of the character. Due to talents not running off weapon damage and because many talents are AoE or provide powerful detrimental effects on enemies, talents themselves can also be quite useful even in spite of possible debuffs that may be placed on you. Most talents will deal full damage even if you are disarmed, cannot see your opponent, or are fighting a very evasive enemy such as those who used a Lightning Rune. Even if your character is suffering a weapon reduction such as from being stunned, talents with various status effects that can be place can be used to debuff enemies.

Weaknesses of Wyrmics

However, while the Wyrmic has a decent amount of strengths, there are many weaknesses to make a note of as well that greatly diminish the worth of the class on a whole….

With just a quick glance from the Playstyle and Class Summary, one can see a weakness in regards to categories. Wyrmic Players don't have much in ways of locked categories to open with category points and where they can is only moderately useful. Harmony is available immediately but a Wyrmic player can easily just wait for that to unlock when they get through Sandworm tunnels, and that essentially means Wyrmics just have Higher Draconic Abilities, Combat Technique, and Survival for locked categories.

As a note, Wyrmics are one of the few classes where it is a viable consideration to consider investing a category point into an open category, specifically Fungus. Arguable Wyrmics also have high consideration for Non-Magic related Escort Reward categories as well for use in trying to bolster their defenses. However, they still come off lacking in regards to what to do with category points.

Taking a closer look at Wyrmics talents, one will notice that several talents rely on Mental Critical Rate for landing critical and several also run on the Mindpower stat. Mental Critical Rate and Mindpower are very hard to build up for characters and Wyrmics lack any talents that increase Mindpower or Mental Critical Rate outside of the indirect boost from Wyrmic Guile; unless they specifically pursue a Mindstar focused build. For those using more conventional weapons though, the end result is that eventually most of the talents are simply regulated just for use in debuffing enemies.

In regards to direct or indirect talents that augment the other talents available to Wyrmics, they do have Chromatic Fury which can help increase the damage of the Elemental Drake Aspect category talents by simply increasing damage penetration on enemies for them; along with a passive increase to the amount of physical, fire, cold, lightning, and acid damage they inflict with such attacks. Outside of this though, Wyrmics don’t have any other talents dedicated to increasing damage on enemies; due to changes for Two Handed Weapons they even lost access to Berserker.

Many of the Wyrmic talents also really don’t scale well. All the Breath attacks area pretty well a 5/5 or skip talent, talents like Corrosive Mist, Devouring Flames, or Static Fields are also 5/5 talents – or just 1/5 if you plan on skipping them. In terms of damage scaling, one will find that while many of the attacks are useful immediately as you are building up Strength or Willpower stats; however they will abruptly stop scaling once you max those stats and the damage will drop off.

The impact of these weaknesses leads to Wyrmics having a whole lot of impressive talents that are usefully immediately – that are only moderately effective later on (or completely ineffective). As the game progress the Wyrmic noticeably feels like it gets weaker and weaker.

[Suslik]

y so many threads?

[Davion Fuxa]

Back when you started your thread it seemingly just jumped straight to 'how can we fix this class' without anyone really bothering to note what was working and what wasn't. Eventually most of the suggestions that came off from it have also seemed somewhat clueless in regards to how the Wyrmic actually works to begin with. I also started the write up for this thread before astreoth posted his poll for trying to establish a direction for how to change Wyrmics since people have run off in every direction imaginable on how Wyrmics should get improved.

If Wyrmics are to be looked at then they really should be given due analysis in all respects. Throwing random ideas leads to a lot of 'hit and miss' in regards to whether it will actually helps mitigate weaknesses the class seemingly demonstrates or even hinders what strengths it has further.

[astreoth]

yeah random ideas going every-which-way is why I started my poll to try and see how people really wanted the class to go whether they wanted to just repair it, build it up or start from scratch.

as for analysis here's my two cents.

the wyrmics have two major strengths first is defense they have the combination of fungus, Armour training, icy scales and a tendency to acquire a lot of resists making them a pretty durable class, and secondly is breaths which due to the tendency of wyrmics to get a few of these gives them pretty good area of effect damage with statuses and combined with swallows equilibrium management they can spam these breaths a lot.

the major weaknesses of the wyrmics are how most of their trees are full of s****y ability's I mean there's some good utility's in there but still, and aside from the already mentioned synergies theirs not much interconnection of ability's for the class their mostly just disjointed separate entities that don't make the cohesive whole that other classes do leaving them with weaker melee since their dragon powers aren't really helping there like they should be.

overall the class's winners end up tending toward venom as the best singular draconic aspect which actually does help with melee a bit so this is a good indicator that more synergy between ability's and melee would be a good direction to take the class

p.s. yes I'm aware of the harmony and burning wake combo but since that draws points away from fungus I'm considering it a side grade to fungus

[Parcae2]

To me, the biggest weakness of the Wyrmic class is that they just don't feel that draconic, and, consequently, not that special. Their best defensive ability is Fungus. What's draconic about Fungus?

[astreoth]

true more passive / sustained dragonmanness would go pretty far for the class.

[Davion Fuxa]

Outside Core Issues to Address

In thinking about how the Wyrmic might be improved, some thought should probably be given to what the class should be enabled to do or how it should thematically appear. As it is now, Wyrmics can receive a lot of benefit from investing in any of the stats other then the Magic. They can make use of Two Handed Weapons, Sword and Board playstyles, or even opt to run around with Mindstars if they so choose.

Combat wise, the Wyrmic’s currently do quite well if they take a simple conventional weapon approach and ignore most abilities that effectiveness is derived from Mindpower. They can use their Breath attacks for limited Crowd Control by damaging and debuffing enemies. There are also several talents which can be used to augment this playstyle. Alternatively they can try to pursue a more Mindpower focused build and make use of talents that give Wyrmics a more spell-like playstyle. Breath attacks cater more to being just debuffers on Mindpower builds – unless the player also invests in Strength a bit at a the cost of potentially making a really weak ‘Jack of all Trades’ build.

One of the more important things that can ply a big part is in regards to overall stat investment on Wyrmics; since everything but Magic is useful for Wyrmics to invest in. Every player will likely want to consider investing in Dexterity or Constitution for defense or possible prodigies, and Cunning plays a large roll in Critical Attack Chance, Mindpower, and Mindstars for those who use them.

Flavor Changes and Stat Simplification

I figure that I should at least attempt to maybe think up a picture of how the Wyrmic might be improved here, but a lot of it is really flavor so to speak. I’m personally fine if Wyrmics using Mindstars is pushed off as a fringe build for the character for those who want to play it, or even the stats are somewhat left as is for general investment for what they do and can offer.

The following idea work for bringing Mindstars into the class and potentially make greater use in regards to involving the Constitution stat in the build

Wyrmic Mindstar Class Mastery Category:

A lot of people seem to like the idea of Shapeshifters or a Wyrmic with more pronounced Draconian features being displayed in the class. This probably isn’t what they had in mind but I figure this is a nice way that Mindstars and the ‘Dragonman’ idea could be incorporated into Wyrmics as a sort of base example. This would probably be a more 'shamanistic' approach I guess where the user isn't really transforming into a Dragon but rather temporarily forming the features for attacks based on Draconic characteristics.

The idea I guess would be simply that the Wyrmic projects certain Draconian features through his Mindstars - ie, Wing Buffet requires Wings, so Wyrmics mentally form Wings to use in making such an attack.This would be a Wyrmic Mindstar Weapon category, which I’ll name for now ‘Mental Draconic Talents’ (until someone thinks up a better name if it is use), that requries Willpower to unlock the talents and revolves around the Strength and Constitution stats.

I’m not sure if this has been thought up before as well, but an idea might be to make this category use both Equilibrium AND Stamina resource bars for talent use. Else because these talents are Equilibrium based, the First Tier Talent should include an option to help players out on managing their Equilibrium further since they won’t have Stamina to fall back on in a crutch; or it should be based on the Stamina bar to keep Wyrmic gameplay centred around using the Stamina for weapon talents and Equilibrium for everything else.

• -First Tier Talent that enables Wyrmics to apply a #% Strength Damage Modifier and a #% Constitution Damage Modifier when using Mindstars in additional to the Willpower and Cunning Damage modifiers currently present. The talent could have additional effects on general Equilibrium usage. Note that the Mindstar Mastery will only improve the effectiveness of the Willpower and Cunning stats if it is taken, and not Strength or Constitution in correlation with this talent.
  -Second Tier Talent that takes Swallow from the Sand Drake Aspect category and make dual Mindstars a requirement to use the talent. Have the talent work mostly as now with weapon damage scaling and talent level increasing the health threshold of enemies that can be Swallowed; though when swallowing an enemy you get stamina back along with health and equilibrium.
  -Third Tier Talent that takes Wing Buffet from the Fire Drake Aspect category and make dual Mindstars a requirement to use the talent. Change the Knockback effect to a Pinning effect and make Constitution instead of Strength determine damage scaling and chance to Pin an enemy. Make Talent Level also help determine Pinning effect.
  -Forth Tier Talent that takes Bellowing Roar from the Fire Drake Aspect category and make dual Mindstars a requirement to use the talent. Make damage and chance of Confusion based off both Strength and Constitution for scaling off stats.

Make a note as well that some new talents could be create instead of taking talents from the other categories; I just chose these ones because they all seemed closest to being talents any Drake of any element could thematically come to have.

One advantage though of taking talents from the other categories however is that it opens up those slots for additional talents outside of just creating an entirely new category (which will likely still have to be done since Wyrmics lack locked Categories to really open up). These slots could include a Fire Drake Aspect talent that directly increasing Mental Critical Rate and Mindpower for example that could bolster their other abilties.

Additional ideas for Mindstars

• -Ice Claw could be changed so that you attempt to attack and enemy twice with each Mindstar with Weapon Damage applied individually to each hand along with two potential Freeze chance at talent level 4.
  -Could potentially include another Claw like talent from one of the other Elemental Drake Aspect Trees – maybe call it Fire Claw and have the ability inflict a DoT burning effect on an enemy that is based on Strength.

General Ideas for working Constitution into some of the other existing talents

With the Mindstar idea above I made a great effort to try to include Constitution as much as possible. Besides the obviously listed talents I stole, some other talents could also perhaps work in regards to incorporating Constitution as an important stat.

• -Change Burrow so that there is a hard cap on the number of Tiles you character can burrow through, based on Constitution.
  -Change Ice Skin so that the amount of Armor is based on Constitution, keep damage based on Willpower
  -Make Breath Attacks based on both Strength and Constitution for damage.

[astreoth]

okay while I can get behind a mindstar tree for the class this proposal would make mindstars the only real choice for the class the damage mod for them would be too good and with swallow and its equilibrium recovery to fuel breath spam this would be the only real choice for the class.

I mean that damage mod is a bit too far but its something a wyrmic mindstar tree would need to have and putting those three talents together for a general dragonman tree is a pretty good idea but putting them together for a mindstar tree will just kill the melee diversity of the class.

[HousePet]

Since no other class has a class category specifically for Mindstars, I really can't see Wyrmic having one as working.
Psiblades is so powerful, that adding any extra bonuses will make it a no brainer.

[astreoth]

eh Oozemancer has those two locked trees that reference channeling acid and nature beams through mindstars so it may be debatable but yeah unless wyrmic melee was buffed quite a bit this would be a bad idea for build diversity.

[Parcae2]

Personally, I'd like them to go unarmed and have a Talons tree.

[anonymous000]

I would really like a mindstar tree. However, stripping Swallow, Wing Buffet and Bellowing Roar from conventional-weapon users means reducing their already-lacking dragonness. New talents that increase the dragonness of mindstar users will be a better direction.

On top of that, I think a mindstar melee tree(not necessarily a Psiblade tree, thematically I don't think dinky lightsabers suit Wyrmics well) should provide a new melee style, instead of just being thematically different while functions the same as the conventional weapons do. Maybe talents with short/no cooldown which delivers small AOE. I have posted the below on another topic

Draconic Combat tree, requires mindstars. Thematically you are calling forth the attacks (except for Thunder Wrath) instead of actually growing these things
Fire Claw: attack in a arc of range 2, short cooldown. Crit inflicts burning and has a chance to lower its cooldown by one turn.
Acidic Tail: 3 separate attacks in range 3, ignore obstacles, short cooldown. Crit inflicts poison and has a chance to lower its cooldown by one turn.
Ice Fang: beam attack in range 4, short cooldown. Crit inflicts bleeding and has a chance to lower its cooldown by one turn.
Thunder Wrath: Sustain, focus the energy of your Psiblades into a layer of plasma which wraps around your knuckle. Increase attack speed for your bump attack if Psiblade is on and inflict extra lightning damage. Crit inflicts small AOE which has a chance to daze. When it is on you cannot use other skills in the Psiblade tree

Or instead of elemental attacks. The attacks can be more about nature damage/manaburning/arcane disruption/dealing small area AoE at melee range. Damage-wise it should be inferior to shield+two-hand weapons but the good point is more utility, decent against non-arcane enemies too

Or we can even have Wyrmics go unarmed, like what Parcae2 said. Remove the Shield/2H, let them have Pugilism instead, and add some dragoness to their unarmed combat. We already have Berserker/Bulwark/Arcane Blade/Shadowblade/Marauder/Sun Pally to handle the more traditional weapon stuff, so I don't actually see the point to have Wyrmics stick to Shield/2H. Maybe why Wyrmics are so un-dragonlike is that they rely on Shield/2H, which has nothing to do with being a dragon. Unarmed combat/Talons+Extra Dragonness goodies can solve the un-dragonlike problem that Shield/2H cannot solve

[astreoth]

claws may be better but that could totally work

[Davion Fuxa]

okay while I can get behind a mindstar tree for the class this proposal would make mindstars the only real choice for the class the damage mod for them would be too good and with swallow and its equilibrium recovery to fuel breath spam this would be the only real choice for the class.

I figure a new talent could be made to help Convention Weapon Wyrmics manage their Equilibrium - specifically one that's more on demand then Swallow. This would likely be an Equilibrium category as well, which means Wyrmics using Psiblades will have no real use for Stamina outside of Rush and talents acquired through Escorts. Swallow is just insurance to make sure the class doesn't keel over due to Equilibrium failure.

I mean that damage mod is a bit too far but its something a wyrmic mindstar tree would need to have and putting those three talents together for a general dragonman tree is a pretty good idea but putting them together for a mindstar tree will just kill the melee diversity of the class.

Another option might be to have Wyrmics use Strength in place of Willpower and Constitution in place of Cunning if it is higher with Psiblades still only applying to Willpower and Cunning. In any case Wyrmics could use a big melee boost - this just handles the Mindstar part, Conventional Weapons will get theirs someway too.

Since no other class has a class category specifically for Mindstars, I really can't see Wyrmic having one as working.
Psiblades is so powerful, that adding any extra bonuses will make it a no brainer.

anonymous000 (I think it was him) touched on a Two Handed Weapon and Sword Class feature for Wyrmics, which along with Mindstar weapons might be a good way to make them more defining. Whether in combination with the current categories or just as a whole new category though, arguably I think it could compete.

In any case the category can get nerfed down if it's too strong, or I could grab Parcae2 idea and apply it here - works with Unarmed only.

I would really like a mindstar tree. However, stripping Swallow, Wing Buffet and Bellowing Roar from conventional-weapon users means reducing their already-lacking dragonness. New talents that increase the dragonness of mindstar users will be a better direction.

Part of my reason for stripping those talents out is because those abilities really should apply to all dragons. Putting them in the Mindstar category is one way of separating them from a specific elemental aspect so it can be available to all dragon type enemies - so an Ice Wyrm can buffet you or a Storm Wyrm can unleash a Bellowing Roar. It would also notably improve Orc Wyrmics since you could expect Ice Wyrmics to roar at you now.

It also makes some thematic sense, giving a reason on how the Wyrmic can Wing Buffet in the first place.

Another approach though would just be putting them in a Generic Drake Aspect category which is obtainable regardless of weapon, which could then we applied to all Drakes and Wyrms.

The Draconic Combat category as you suggested might be another way forward as well, though personally I would make 4 separate Sustain talents to chew up a chunk of Equilibrium.

*****

In any case I only planned to touch on the idea of Mindstars and the sort of jist of separating some of the Wyrmic Talents that could apply to all Dragons out; if someone wants to run with it then by all means.

[HousePet]

Sword and Board fits well with the big tough dragon theme.
However a mindstar and shield or dual mindstar would be more of a dragony shaman than a dragony fighter.
I think there is scope for both options, but mindstars are caster weapons. Talents that make them as powerful as a conventional weapon, make conventional weapons redundant.
There is currently no nature based elemental type caster, and I think Wyrmic fits perfectly in the lore for that.