One of the interesting things to me about my return after a 3-year hiatus is how big a difference some small changes have made on my experience. When I write “small change” I don’t mean small from a developer’s perspective. I also don’t mean to minimize anyone’s work in the least. I just mean small in scope. For instance, changing HES and courage made a huge positive difference for me and VoS truly excels at its niche now. Given that, fellow paladin players, what are your thoughts on small changes or additions that would make a big difference for you? Below are a few of mine.
• A thrown buff. Don’t care if it’s a spell or a glyph. A knight should be able to throw a light spear at least as well as a warrior mage. I can see crossbows being a part of the theme, too. Something like a Righteous Wrath metaspell (Pre-M3.0 and M3.0 had RW buffing ranged weapons) or a new spell could remedy this.
• At least one more debilitation option. I’m a big fan stun foe and halt, but they share a diminishing returns timer with each other and our holy warrior cyclic. That leaves one stun or immobilize option and shatter. I could be wrong about this, but I believe we have half as many debilitation options as the guild with the second fewest, and debil is a Big Deal in DR.
• An engagement solution. I think this can be remedied through some changes/fixes to Crusader’s Challenge, namely:
1. Making it a standard rather than battle spell, AND
2. Making the taunt component cause the target to advance uncontrollably and then stay at melee rather than just stay at melee if you defeat instant-retreat and manage to get to melee (sort of like a reverse compel), OR
3. Making the taunt apply a retreat RT if at pole or missile range (currently the spell does nothing and triggers cooldown if not at melee), AND
4. Giving the taunt more charges and/or a lower cooldown.
I think some anti-DFA love is still in the cards w/r/t GoD, so I didn’t include it. A huge help to paladins, but way bigger in scope would be reducing the time to buff. I think that’s something that could benefit all guilds to some degree, so I posted about that here: http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Abilities,%20Skills%20and%20Magic/General%20Discussions/thread/1942056
I didn't get a chance to say thanks before... Thanks for all the changes made to the guild, including but not limited to HES, Courage, VoS, TK, and GoD. They've made my experience materially better.
2DUMBARSE
VOROSR
Re: Small Changes, Big Happy
07/21/2021 02:21 PM CDT
>• At least one more debilitation option. I’m a big fan stun foe and halt, but they share a diminishing returns timer with each other and our holy warrior cyclic. That leaves one stun or immobilize option and shatter. I could be wrong about this, but I believe we have half as many debilitation options as the guild with the second fewest, and debil is a Big Deal in DR.
Bards.... arguably have two - whichever cyclic they're running, if any, and then DMRS. Their suite is on the small side in general. Other small ones include Necromancers and Traders - notably, traders have no CC whatsoever, with a non-combat skill debuff and a damage enhancer as their sole debilitation abilities. They do have a defensive SVS contest in Elision, however. Overall, Traders have it worse than Paladins, but Paladins are... very scant on battle debil. I think I'd prefer to see us get functioning engagement control (your spitballing on CRC, for example) and resistance to debilitation more broadly than expanding our debil suite, which is functional, if sparse. That said, that - especially resistance to debil in some form - is quite possibly much trickier to implement.
>1. Making it a standard rather than battle spell
Nitpicking, but duration doesn't strictly relate to battle vs. standard. There is at least one battle speed spell with Standard (10/40) duration. I believe you and I both feel it'd be better for it to last longer, rather than caring about the prep time (and, nominally, sorcerous backlash rate) specifically.
Bards.... arguably have two - whichever cyclic they're running, if any, and then DMRS. Their suite is on the small side in general. Other small ones include Necromancers and Traders - notably, traders have no CC whatsoever, with a non-combat skill debuff and a damage enhancer as their sole debilitation abilities. They do have a defensive SVS contest in Elision, however. Overall, Traders have it worse than Paladins, but Paladins are... very scant on battle debil. I think I'd prefer to see us get functioning engagement control (your spitballing on CRC, for example) and resistance to debilitation more broadly than expanding our debil suite, which is functional, if sparse. That said, that - especially resistance to debil in some form - is quite possibly much trickier to implement.
>1. Making it a standard rather than battle spell
Nitpicking, but duration doesn't strictly relate to battle vs. standard. There is at least one battle speed spell with Standard (10/40) duration. I believe you and I both feel it'd be better for it to last longer, rather than caring about the prep time (and, nominally, sorcerous backlash rate) specifically.
2DUMBARSE
Re: Small Changes, Big Happy
07/21/2021 04:32 PM CDT
>Bards.... arguably have two - whichever cyclic they're running, if any, and then DMRS. Their suite is on the small side in general. Other small ones include Necromancers and Traders - notably, traders have no CC whatsoever, with a non-combat skill debuff and a damage enhancer as their sole debilitation abilities. They do have a defensive SVS contest in Elision, however. Overall, Traders have it worse than Paladins, but Paladins are... very scant on battle debil. I think I'd prefer to see us get functioning engagement control (your spitballing on CRC, for example) and resistance to debilitation more broadly than expanding our debil suite, which is functional, if sparse. That said, that - especially resistance to debil in some form - is quite possibly much trickier to implement.
This is true. I should refine my point. The way I see it, we have shatter + a stun/immobilize. What's more, HOW minimizes the effect of the stun/immobilize because of diminishing returns. You can say, "Just use TR" and that's fair. Then, if I'm using TR rather than HOW, the only thought that goes into halt or SF is which SvS contest is more weighted in my favor; I'm never going to use both unless it's testing the waters.
If I'm a necromancer with only 4 debilitation spells in my arsenal, I still need to juggle whether I want a damage amplifier, immobilize, perc/wis debuff or AOE immobilize or some combination thereof. Same goes for bards. It's not so much about the size of the suite for me as distinction of features. If halt were immobilize + kneel like SICK and SF did something in addition to the stun, I might still juggle them in different strats despite diminishing returns. I'd never expect a ton of debil because it just doesn't fit the guild, just maybe another in-guild option or tweak to SF/halt to make them more distinct.
With due apologies to traders, I did not consider them at all with respect to debilitation. I wish more of them would come to sparring events so I can see them in action. Sadly, I've never played one outside a gem selling alt.
This is true. I should refine my point. The way I see it, we have shatter + a stun/immobilize. What's more, HOW minimizes the effect of the stun/immobilize because of diminishing returns. You can say, "Just use TR" and that's fair. Then, if I'm using TR rather than HOW, the only thought that goes into halt or SF is which SvS contest is more weighted in my favor; I'm never going to use both unless it's testing the waters.
If I'm a necromancer with only 4 debilitation spells in my arsenal, I still need to juggle whether I want a damage amplifier, immobilize, perc/wis debuff or AOE immobilize or some combination thereof. Same goes for bards. It's not so much about the size of the suite for me as distinction of features. If halt were immobilize + kneel like SICK and SF did something in addition to the stun, I might still juggle them in different strats despite diminishing returns. I'd never expect a ton of debil because it just doesn't fit the guild, just maybe another in-guild option or tweak to SF/halt to make them more distinct.
With due apologies to traders, I did not consider them at all with respect to debilitation. I wish more of them would come to sparring events so I can see them in action. Sadly, I've never played one outside a gem selling alt.
