SoulMasters suck

[Sidas]

I'm thinking a reverse ratio to how recharge backfires, Krodoc.

Maybe 0.5% + 0.5% per plateau or something like that.

[Sidious]

Soulmasters do suck.. and they're both a joy and boring as hell to play. We have a ton of arts, but we use 2. Once you get to 5th all you do in a fight is abjure. It's constant, always trying to get that FA, and hoping someone para's when you tell them to. And then the dark mare reapplies FA and you're doing it again.

Entirely 1 dimensional and boring. Nevermind a fight with dreamers, you definitely spend the whole time abjuring each target then. And being primary target.. with nothing extra to help you with that. Abjure is the most useful curse ever placed upon us.

So if you don't feel like doing that.. fire up your restore, because you have the best one. At least SM's aren't DS's, stuck with only 1 art to use in battle.

But why do we even have the other arts at all? SM's have offensives, but most would rather put them on as abjure bait than evoke them on an enemy. Poison is what I'm talking about. And I think if you did anything, you fix that. And you have SoT to learn from in order to do it right.

Why not fix vampiric? It's not all that powerful anyway, if it's going to consume the essence it should take at least half of their dreamsoul. But fine, lose VD and give us a working healing aura.. the healing aura can cure the VD.

[Tary]

Ah, SoulMasters...

The truth is I think advancement sort of sucks past orbit 60 anyway. There's no uber-powerful arts. There's no game-changers as you advance. That sort of sucks.

But, yeah, VD? Healing Aura? Useless. Abjure? Amazing. Curse? Seriously: Curse is an SM major and it does fuck-all. Purify costs like a billion resilience and you never use it because, seriously, who gives a shit if you're cursed? Poison is another one: it does almost nothing except act as a nuisance, but in a fight you'll barely notice Poison because it leeches DreamSoul so slowly.

Having a high level Restore is super useful. Reweave is kind of nice. But Curse can be made significantly more powerful by doing more interesting things. Poison can be made better too. Let's add some higher sphere arts for everybody that are just completely bangin'.

And, yeah, I think Drain Self really SHOULD allow for force restoring but should come at a much higher cost -- and maybe you can't force restore until Drain Self is at a much higher level like past level 40 or something. And then it shouldn't drain 4 piddly DreamSoul, it should drain 40. And it should drain your effects onto the castee as well -- randomly! So if you're FA'd and RF'd, it will "drain those" to the castee along with your DreamSoul. Force restoring should be akin to suicide.

I will say that I still think FateSenders have it way worse than SoulMasters. GKs kind of sucked until the damage bonus and even then they could use some love. Like I said: we need to make the end-game more interesting.

[Sidious]

Tary I think you just said all the classes suck, except seers? I think the GK damage bonus is too rough (because fighting isn't only 6th sphere vs. 6th sphere, it's 6th sphere vs. whatever sphere, those extra 6 points can hurt a lot. But I won't lobby for a change.

You really think FS's have it worst? They get firestorm.. and then razorwind. They have the ONLY endgame art. And firestorm is the highest damage art in the game aside from.. you guessed it, razorwind!

But until endgame, fatesenders are just para bots.

I think after a certain plateau, every offensive art should be doing at least some damage. Problem solved.

[Voxaroth]

I'd like to see some revamping done to all the class arts across the board (and potentially some new ones), but done via focus guilds and in-game workings.

Ideally, each guild would have a designer run/influence character who could see the big picture in making the game more balanced across classes that could steer those in the guild via tasking, etc to reach that designers desired outcome for a particular art.

What we already know is: if you let players of a class design the arts, they end up massively overpowered (to everyone but them, they end up thinking it's fine). But we want the players involved in the evolution of the art in game so it doesn't just spring up as "random".

[fancypearl]

hearing about return made me wonder about an art..
Being around someone makes you in tune with their soul.
Then if such level of attunement has been reached you can pull on the thread between you. At which point that character being pulled upon can choose to be summoned or.. take damage, and the soulmaster gaining an essence of that person. resetting the attunement. Allowing for vampiric draw to work. (or random effect of either damaging them from far away if dreaming, or pulling them to them, harming themselves, and if high enough level collapsing them where they are the essence is obtained by the soulmaster) Protected by some art that protects from it no idea:P kinda pulling it out of thin air. Curse increasing the effect. thus having a point even if abjured further away, less time spent away from that person less chance of doing anything but a bit of damage.

[fancypearl]

sorry thinking it would be funny for a player to suddenly feel a tug on there very essence,.. and suddenly a soulmaster appears collapsed next to them in middle of a war or such:P due to failed attempt to tug at someone whom was protected, or a failed to work properly:P

[Dakkoth]

By the way, I'm bummed by how this thread has been derailed. Vampiric Draw and Healing Aura are two examples of "failed features" in the game, but we don't have to dwell on those. Other ideas for how to make the SoulMaster class more fun/dynamic would be nice.

You're right Ghazgkull. Allow me to explain how we can make SoulMasters more fun/dynamic.

First, if you haven't played a high level (6th sphere+) SoulMaster in 1vs1 1vsMany, or party vs party then you shouldn't comment because you truly don't know what it's like. You may have the knowledge but you have not the experience.

When you look at SoulMasters arts that can be used in battle, there's serious issues. Here's what they are:

1.) Abjure vs Every effect - There are about 8 - 10 effects (if not more for GKs/DSs) that can be applied (even self applied) that make Abjurers go nuts trying to get that Free Action off. But then you need to time that perfectly with a para from FS or para chak or else, you guessed it, they just pop a FA alt and you have to start again. Or how about the Abjure para combo that works but you don't know it so you abjure again and take off the para. Yeah... you can't just blindy cast abjure and win. You must pay attention to what you strip and know what effects are being cast on the person by looking at it/hearing it. This also leads to a very bad game mechanic of people NOT wanting to use offensive art effects (like poison and curse) because it adds to the difficulty of removing other effects you want to remove

2.) Artform Curse weaker than charm/chak Curse - WTF is up with this? Anybody who's ever been hit with a curse charm/chak knows that you fail a TON of times more than you do from even a 6th plateau Curse (the failure rate doesn't increase only duration fyi). The failure rate from the artform is miniscule at best. If anything this should be reversed (artform more failure rate vs chak/charm) or at the very least (prob best result anyways), have the artform failure rate match the failure rate of chak/charm curse.

3.) Weak Poison - I've always loved this art but low and behold never used because of getting in the way of Abjure and not being strong enough on it's own to think about using OVER abjure. So I say let's strengthen the poison. At current, only the duration is extended per plateau and drains 1 dreamsoul every so often. Let's have it increase +1 per plat as well. so a 5th plat Poison would tick -6 dreamsoul every few seconds.

Having a Curse (artform) that fails as well as the chak/charm and a more potent poison will add to the battle dynamic greatly. Here's how. When entering a battle, SoulMasters are tunnel visioned abjuring one target at a time. With a better Curse and Poison, you can Curse the standing still casters (blasters/firestormers/etc.) and greatly hinder their ability. Then you can Poison those that are running amok blazing chakfire everywhere to sap their life away as the only true damage over time (DoT) skill in the game. Then you can abjure certain targets that your party will focus on. But the dynamic has changed. It's not just an Abjure spam. It's more strategical. You would have viable options rather than to just Abjure! Purify is minor artform so even if the cursed can't purify themselves, somebody else can so it's not OP. Poison is not only countered by Antidote, it's also countered by healing elemens and restore (again another minor artform) so again not OP, just making it effective. And if SoulMasters are using these artforms, they aren't JUST using Abjure so... dynamic changes.... Purify, Antidote, Restore even becomes more equal to the effectiveness of Abjure and therefore making SoulMasters more than a 1 trick pony in fights with more than 1 viable option and strategy.

4.) Vampyric Draw is a second wave offensive opener at best - Look...you NEED a dreamers essence to evoke it AND it gets consumed. So the ONLY time this is effective is if you win a battle and are able to collect the head of an opponent that is going to get restored and come BACK to fight again. Then you get to use it once. Big whoop! This is why it's not effective. Neat concept and cute RP tool....but not even on the radar. If the head didn't get consumed and you could use it again and again....that's perhaps all it needs to get ON the radar.

5.) Healing Aura useless - If you really don't want any of the above changed but want to make SoulMasters better in some regard, fix this f'ing art. The art heals 8 or 12 or 14 randomly at unplatted and then as you plat it, only the top range increases.....so a higher level (like 5th plat) will restore 8 or 12 or 20, for instance. And still has a ridiculously long cast time even at 5th plat that still renders it utterly useless as you can chain cast Restore on yourself and 3 other targets multiple times and heal for more in less time at same cost of resilience in total. This art needs faster evoke time to be better. Want us to be the true healers of the game? Want us all to be effective at defending against DM razorwinds? speed up this art cast. It's really all it needs. Make it like restore (maybe a tad slower) and keep the cost high if you will (as it will burn through res eles fast but for a good cause). But it needs to be spammable to be effective. Right now again, not even on the radar of usage because it's too damned slow.

SoulMasters don't suck. We just have limited options because our arts are conflicting or imbalanced/uneffective. Fix Curse and Poison to have a really great battle dynamic. Vampyric Draw and Healing Aura CAN become viable if you remove the consuming of head for Vampyric Draw and shorten the evoke time of Healing Aura drastically to be spammable.

Mike

[Voxaroth]

My suggestion:

Curse: 10% base fail rate + 5% per plat
Poison: -1 dreamsoul per 5 sec + -1 additional dreamsoul per plat
Vampiric Draw: Only works on Nightmares, doesn't require essences
Healing Aura: +1 dreamsoul per 5 sec for everyone in party +1 additional dreamsoul per plat

Basically: Evoked curse better, evoked poison better, vamp draw against mares only, Healing Aura becomes buff on all players in party like a reverse poison when evoked for X amount of time.

Class balanced, class fixed.