Currently on live, using your arbalest cannon skills disables some, but not all, passive effects gained from your offhand weapon.
Example: The hit bonus from a staff of eyes is lost when the weapon is no longer "equipped", and my understanding is that this is as intended.
The following bonuses, that rely on a specific offhand being equipped, persist despite the armament being "unequipped" by a cannon skill:

1) The attribute bonus from vent petale is not removed on the use of a cannon skill, the FP cost reduction is removed.
Tested by looking at the crit & hit values for attacks performed under the same conditions in debug mode

2) The attribute bonus from weapons is not removed on the use of a cannon skill
Tested with a mutated Nullifying Dirk for +5 Res, stats on double clicking character does not update, DR value on taking damage does not change: "reduc_multi was 76.048. (59.4695); 21.6 MAG DEF, ..." both before and after use of cannon skills.

The consequence is that this gives additional power to Howling Handshot on duelist / Arbalest setups, but also narrows the choice of offhand armaments.

Ruler's Enhanced Enchantcraft effect does NOT break pacifist boon. Clearly this is still damage caused by the Ruler but it is not being counted to break Pacifist Boon.

Reconnecting Mid Fight has a PLETHORA of bugs involved with it now. Especially if someone takes your turn for you. Namely, complete game lock-out for the person after they rejoin. Not able to put any inputs.

Passive: Upon using Invite Insanity the first time, deploy a permanent Aposemagika LV0 field effect, which increases the Status Infliction of Aposemagika users by LV%. (+2 LV if butterflies are destroyed next to an enemy, +1 LV if you succeed with a luck-based status infliction, max LV20).

The passive effect builds up IF any luck-based status inflict goes off. Not if it's the Papilion's.

The 3 star bland Shuriken doesn't have a throwing animation like the other shurikens.

I think this is dumb.

We should change that.

Cat and bird omina don't have much of a distinction outside of flavor, so here's a pair of ideas for traits I had!

Black Cat: Other characters (allies included!) moving over your tile have a small chance to trip. Silly cats always getting in the way!

CAW: Grants a skill that deals a small amount of sound damage and inflicts fear in a circle. Also gives a chat message like play cute with an FI keyword! (May also work as a prereq for the phenix and heron trait that gives gain air?)

The first is moreso silly flavor and the main fun idea I had. It's a little more impactful when it comes up, but it's entirely on other characters triggering it. The second is a little more consistent and somewhat relevant for dodgie omina but is just as silly paired with the message I feel.

I think given the recent upcoming changes with Special Strikes that it's worth talking about them again.

Firstly, here's what has improved since the last time I brushed on this topic:
- Cooldown is much more manageable, down to 2 Rounds by default and 1 Round with the Set Bonus with Weaponmaster's Glove and Cypelle Amulet.
- With the introduction of Star Charts, we now have the Duet's Boon, which is a buff that can add +10% additive chance to triggering the next Special Strike, as well as a bit of HP and FP recovery.
- In the upcoming patch, Special Strikes that replace attacks will no longer be actively detrimental, keeping desired benefits of basic attacks like On Hit effects, Critical Hits and Critical Momentum.

While these are all nice, it unfortunately still isn't enough to bring Special Strikes into being an archetype of builds that are effective and fun to play.

There are major three pain points they still have:
- Very low activation chance.
- Low impact compared to other weapon effects and skills in general.
- Attack focused builds are typically reliant on Attack Skills, which work against how Special Strikes work.

Two of these can be mostly remedied by some number changes. The third is a bit more nuanced and would require some kind of change to the mechanics of Special Strike to alleviate.


Issue 1: Low Proc Chance

Low procs aren't a bad thing ordinarily but that often comes with the caveat that the effect is powerful to make up for the rarity. With the limitations Special Strikes are currently designed with and their intended power level, they do not intersect well in terms of "risk vs reward", being high "risk" but low "reward". But we don't just want to make Special Strikes so strong that scoring one essentially wins you a PvP fight on the spot, thus it's more reasonable to increase the odds.

For comparison, in Golden Sun, which has a similar mechanic, the default rate of their "Special Strikes" are 35% for most weapons. Now, SL2 isn't the same kind of game but even so, I remember it being pretty satisfying in Golden Sun to have these go off, so I think at least emulating around the same ballpark would work well for us too.

There's one other item I'd like to touch on and that's the Cypelle Amulet, which is okay but the one-time 10% boost is mediocre compared to what some other accessories can offer while those benefits tend to be more more impactful (like Spirit Mirror) or not limited to once a battle (like Deadly Shades). So I think it should shine in it's niche by being a guarantee to the first Special Strike you use.

Proposed Suggestions:

Quote:- Trigger and Bonus Rates bumped to triple the rate. (The current Default: 10% Trigger + 5% Bonus -> The new Default: 30% Trigger + 15% Bonus)
- Cypelle Amulet being bumped from 10% to 100%. (First Special Strike always triggers but effect is consumed afterward.)
- Red Letter's Strike has a lower rate, due to the potential of spamming Fire Absorb. (20% + 10%)
- Sthenno, Shadow Wind Claw and Rapier of Resentment's Strikes have increased rates, due to their lower perceived effectiveness: (40% + 20%)

Quote:- Bonus Damage effects damage increase: 25-50 -> 75-100 (AoE & strong utility on the lower end while single target with low utility on the higher end.)
- Thunder Strike & Flames of Rebellion: Bonus Damage ignores Armor.
- Bonus Attack Damage effects bumped from 5-15 -> 15-30
- Rose Flourish, Deadly Roundabout, Machinegun Punch: 110% SWA -> 150% SWA
- Black Spear: 100% SWA + 6 -> 100% SWA & 100% Dark ATK

Quote:- Attack skills do not trigger Special Strikes but will grant you Bonus, much like a failed attack roll will do. This allows you to use Attack Skills to "charge up" for a Special Strike.

Anyone wanna play City of Heroes with me on the Homecoming servers?

I'm on Everlasting specifically, which is a roleplay server. I'm up for bouts of roleplay in-between missions. Right now, I've only got villain characters (my highest being a 29), but I'm willing to make new characters from scratch on heroside. The game has a level-adjustment system for partying, so any high-level characters anyone else has can level down to help!

If you've never played City of Heroes, it's an old-style MMO that came before World of Warcraft. Due to this, it doesn't have the "holy trinity" of MMO design of DPS/tank/healer. It DOES have class categories, but there's a lot more, and you get to choose two main sets of powers (a primary power and a secondary power). The game is still clunky from age though, as it relies on hotbar combat. The freedom in the character creator, both cosmetically and conceptually, along with the freedom in party composition, is what really makes the game for me.

Anyone who's interested in doing some missions and roleplay, I'm Sawrock on discord!

okay so looking at it, as it stands, for spellthief alone, by itself, you need sarasha gi, plus spirited distortion and southern wind, to reliably evade. which is kind of silly if you ask me, and also fortune wind got hit too, which like, i figured all of this stuff was fine but

evades are fine as is capping their evade with one buff. such a change makes certain combos that could barely evade cap even worse at it and it's honestly kind of stinky to think about, and also

windswept gi in general is trash as an equip. not even worth using. remove the for 1 attack, even if it stacks up to 2 apparently, that's not shit, plus it'd help mage builds evade cap too, and maybe help in general if you wanted to keep these horribly low evade buff numbers too

don't just make it stack endlessly, cause then multihits will still absolutely shred you and leave them with +20 hit against you basically. please. please i beggeth of you. make evade capping great again

okay making a small edit to this to drive the point further: these nerfs to evade buffs actually suck, the biggest thing i love about sl2 is the build freedom. but it's really an illusion of build freedom. i honestly have an easier time and less headache with being a tank than being an evade, if you want to tank, you would only need bk. and then you can have whatever the hell secondary class you want and have all the fun in the world. meanwhile, evade, you need rogue, or archers promo, as one of your classes, plus you need to put in a bunch of extra momentum to just evade cap, and in the case of if you only have spellthief, you need to spirit southern wind, distortion, and then use sarasha gi to evade cap, without being on the southern edge. that's actually horrible, actually evil.

it limits build choices so much that it stands no reason for distortion to just be +40 by itself. or even increasing southern wind, too. i'm fine with having to have a rogue or archer promo. that's okay. but i shouldn't need to go through five different steps and spend like a bunch of momentum just to set up my several evade buffs i need, like, if you want to evade with evade buffs being this bad, you need to change your build heavily around it, limiting creativity and making each and every evade build more copy and paste than they already were. also it's kind of also silly to gimp all of them if fortune wind remains the best evade buff and still basically lets you evade cap if you go into luck enough, which archer is all about critting, so you know.

please. please just make evade capping great again. i beg of you. revert these nerfs to the evade buffs

   love, chain 

Can we please please please change Excel Sear's effect to something actually usable? Now that it's been ages and we've had plenty of people warm up to the Evoker changes I think it's a good time to give it something that doesn't rely on a separate element's tiles (ice).

How about just increasing its range by +1 at excel level 2? Or turning it into a Lux Relido-esque 'beam' at excel 3? I don't mind if it keeps the burn, but I really want it to do something else that's cool too. Libegrande turns AoE, Ryemei turns into a cross, Wind Slasher gets increased range and Magaisendo has a 1 tile surrounding push into the direction plus a niche rock tile explosion.

And sear gets... a chance to inflict burn, at level 10 + Charges x 5... that can only happen if they are specifically on ICE TILES.

A level 25 burn is a complete joke, coupled with the very specific and weird requirement to even get the CHANCE to inflict it.

If anyone has any better ideas for Sear, please add it in. I just want it to be useful.