In FE6, Roy's sword was only on fire when it crit. Make elemental damage from on-hit turn into on-crit. They get a bunch of free damage and it's basically building elemental attack instead of GUI. If their damage is too low, upscale it to make it more similar to critical damage (while being wary of the numbers of stacking both GUI and elemental attack). There are absolutely no repercussions. Ignore the part I said about being wary before.

It's that time again!

With balancefu about to be reviewed by Dev again, I figure it's as good a time as ever to write up my personal grievances with vampires so that they can hopefully be put in a better place.

To give an idea on the state of vampires, right now most vampire players agree the best way to play a vampire... is by not being a vampire. People would rather take fasting vampire and use greymists as an inherent, 5 round cd heal than actually bother with vampire mechanics because it's better than actually trying to make the race work.

Vampire Skills
First and foremost, you should not have to spend skill slots just to be able to use silvermists and lunar lunatism. The recent Homunculi races are able to use their skills without having to burn skill slots on them. It feels bad wanting to use your vampire abilities but having to sacrifice precious skill slots that are generally much more important than either silvermists or LL.

Banquet
Banquet, as it currently exists, is actually probably fine. I think it could stand to either have better weapon stats, such as more hit and crit, but the scaling is good for what it is and it acts as an additional weapon that can crit and give you a third action in combat while using a two handed weapon. 

Life Drain
I currently have another thread up about Life Drain so I'll be brief, but ultimately I think Life Drain should have more range than it currently has now given it's mostly used by mages. Mages do not particularly like being in melee range most of the time, and this skill has also seen a hefty nerf to its damage making it even more fair it get some range. It should also restore essence in some capacity so that mage vampires get ways to regenerate essence in battle.

Lunar Lunatism
Where do I start with Lunar Lunatism... it's a mixed bag, and has the makings of a good skill, but it falls short due to problems that stem from Vampire as a whole and its lack of cohesion. The changes made so Lunar Lunatism lasts as long as you can maintain its essence cost or until you de-activate it were very nice. However, Lunar Lunatism also suffers in part from its effects scaling off of SAN similar to other racial abilities. This is mostly a problem because a large part of Vampire in its current state is wanting to basic attack with banquet to maintain essence mid combat. 

Basic Attacking proficiently is hard enough as it is. It's very stat intensive outside of daggers, and most of the time you simply can't afford to invest points in something like SAN. This means that LL will largely be useless to Vampires, as on top of it needing to pass a status inflict check (which uses WIL, another stat basic attackers typically take none or very little of), the LVs of your statuses will likely be a measly 5 or 6. All of this comes at the cost of your essence being taxed every round as well as inflicting a 50 (40% with trait) holy damage modifier on yourself, as well as a 25% light weakness and outing yourself as a vampire to whomever may be around.

Other races have shown us SAN investments don't have to take away from your build, and that you can experience your race's benefits/uniqueness to its fullest without having to feel like your build is completely gimped. In some cases, these races' benefits end up making for better versions of builds possible than those who aren't members of that race. For example, Redtails and Corbies pull off basic attacking much better than other races due to their racial benefits, and both of them invest SAN to improve those benefits.

My proposed solution to this for a long time has been having SAN also increase things like the Vampire's Hit, Crit, and perhaps even Status Inflict while they're under the effect of lunar lunatism. This makes it so that outside of Lunar Lunatism, your build will still be lackluster, but it turns Lunar Lunatism into a state much more fitting of a Vampire going all out. When they enter it, that SAN they invested will give them the hit and crit the vampire usually desperately wants/needs for its basic attacking aspects, and it would give them status inflict to have a better chance of Lunar Lunatism's debuffs working in their favor. This also ties together the Banquet bite traits that Vampire has, which normally can't be afforded due to not being able to take SAN. 

Also, in regard to the individual lunar lunatism traits, the FAI based trait could stand to be tied to a different stat, such as WIL or GUI. It cleansing Fear, Hesitation, and Charm and providing immunity to them is a very nice boon to basic attack vampires... which have no business taking FAI pretty much ever. For classes that would be stacking FAI such as priest, getting rid of Fear, Hesitation or Charm is almost worthless to them. 

Sanguine Crest
This passive is kind of a joke. When you activate Sanguine Crest, you get 2 STR, 2 WIL, 2 DEF, 2 CEL, and 2 SKI. In exchange, you now have a 40 - 50% holy damage penalty, a 25% light weakness, and all non-designated forms of healing are only 75% effective, with Mercalan healing being 0% effective. Designated healing consists of Life Drain, Vampirism effects such as from weapons like Fellgrant Drinker, and Silvermists. This is a very small list of things you get full healing from, and while 75% effectiveness isn't anywhere near as bad as old vampire, you still definitely feel it. Oh, you also get the ability to activate Lunar Lunatism too as well as 25% dark resistance.

None of that is worth it in the slightest. Even if Lunar Lunatism itself got buffed to something similar to what I suggested, it still wouldn't be worth it. To start with the stat buff... it's a slap in the face. The reality of the matter is that 9/10 these stat bonuses will actually do nothing at all. If you're a tank, you likely have enough scaled defense already that the DEF bonus will not add any scaled DEF or just 1 at best. For evade strategies, the CEL would have the same issue probably, ending up not giving any bonus evade due to diminishing returns, or just 1. In fact, all of these stats follow a similar problem for builds that they would otherwise be useful to. On top of that, these stats do not synergize well in particular. A tank getting 2 cel 99% of the time changes nothing. 

If you look at races like Kaels, Corbies, and Redtails, they get stat bonuses that would make anyone laugh at Crest's buffs. With traits and chimera prayer in particular for Kaels, they can get upwards of 5 in a collection of stats that all synergize together just from hitting 90% HP, which this doubling at 75% or so. Corbies can easily get 30+ hit with only SAN investment. Redtails just need to equip an already decent accessory with some SAN investment to get absurd boosts in things like crit, evade, status inflict, etc. Notice that none of these races have real downsides. Certainly not on the level of what you get when you activate Crest as a Vampire.

My suggestions for Crest are as follows: Adding traits that the Vampire can pick to make their Crest bonus specialized and thus, be allowed a bigger stat buff. For example, a defensive trait that would make your crest bonus 5 DEF and 5 RES. 

Alternatively, Sanguine Crest could stack in LV with each proc since it's already LV based--increasing the stat bonus and also increasing the weakness associated with it. 

Lastly, Sanguine Crest could increase things like Hit/Crit/etc. rather than raw stats such as STR and DEF.

Closing
I think that the recent update to Vampires from the big race rebalance patch made Vampires more thematic, more flavorful and it was a step in the right direction in some ways. It did create more problems than it solved imo, such as making a race that wants to accomplish things that simply can't be done together due to the limitations of stats. It also turned Vampire's 'benefits' into those that are even less deserving of the penalties it gets. I do not think it would take much to get them to a spot where they feel good to play, and where they wouldn't be overpowered either.

Applicable BYOND Key - BiSexyUau

Character Name - Aurora Clersen

Request Type - Character Ability

Request Details - Since Aurora is a vampire, I would like her to have a purely interpretive ability where, by ingesting someone's blood, she would acquire information about that person, such as race, age, diseases... depending on the amount of blood, maybe even brief memories of what that person once lived (If the person agrees in OOC to give such information, of course). 


Reason why you are making this request (if applicable) - I love studying about vampires and vampiric powers in different games and urban legends, which makes me interested in certain peculiarities tied to blood itself. I understand that SL2 has its own lore and it is not my place to force an element from another lore into this game, so I think it is valid to question whether it would be allowed to interpret this kind of ability. 

Roleplay & Lore supporting your request - Blood may be common to other races, but to vampires themselves, it carries magical properties, it is like an essence of each individual. The cursed blood trait is proof of this, where a cursed individual inflicts penalties on others who try to consume their blood, and is even prevented from donating ig. Since my character has always been someone who likes to do "experiments" with different types of magic or activities involving blood, I could assume that certain knowledge and tricks involving this could have been learned.

However, I don't plan on requesting any more powers or tricks related to this if this one is approved. If it cannot be approved, I will totally understand!

Thanks for your time.

Could Marching Bands have an option to use Youtube links instead of OGG files, like profiles do?

I think it'd be worth it.

The HTML <br> tag no longer works in any descriptions, including signs. It shows up as an actual visible tag and it doesn't apply the rule.

This broke right after the v.2.40 update became live.

Basically, I've tried to consume a corpse to restore some HP after bashing my health away against a door, but it seems Shark Fangs lied to me. You do need stamina higher than 0 to eat corpses, even though the passive says 'it no longer uses stamina'.

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but 'no longer using stamina' from this passive should void not having stamina to eat corpses.

Currently it only outputs the total results of the crafting. Could we also get how much Murai we used during it?

Due to the new item belt changes, I might as well make a suggestion like this.

I'd suggest a new craft item, two to be exact.

Hip pouch - Level 5 Tailor Crafting. It works similar to how Pet kit operates. Whereas selecting use equips it thus allowing the player to add more battle item to their belt. This increase slots by 3-5 (?)

Backpack - Level 6 Tailor Crafting. Similar to Hip pouch but instead, it increases by 5 - 8 (?) in return, items beyond the first 5 will take 6 momentum to use instead.

YesI'mdoingitfortheculture.

So, as we all know, damage over time effects (henceforth called DoTs) are insanely annoying to deal with. There's only really two major cases talking about here, but it seems to share a common theme; it disproportionately affects some builds, does either too much damage or has too strong of an effect without too much counterplay beyond "choose a different race" or "just build elem. resistance/status resistance". While I will cover the reasons why this argument is flawed, what I really want to do is propose changes to the two biggest offenders.

Poison

To put it simply, Poison does too much damage as a baseline. The base level of Poison is usually around LV30 at high end PvP fights and PvE, which doesn't sound like a lot, until you realize base Poison does either 3x its base level, OR 10% of your max HP per turn, whichever would be lower. If you have less than 900 max HP, it's 10% of your HP, and if you have more, it's a flat 90. This isn't counting effects that are higher, like Spirited Wretched Oil, or higher end Wyverntouched bites, or Argent Fangs/Demon Drool.

This ALSO isn't accounting for damage increases that apply either to all damage or specifically to Poison effects, eg; Hunted, Fallcall, or Menov's Fang. With these, a good Hexer can quite literally stonewall out any options you have, and let you die a terrible death as you're Super-Poisoned and you just end up dying trying to make up for the free passive damage they get off instantaneously.

How I would fix it is at least halving the max damage Poison can currently do, and making Menov's Fang do the Poison damage that we see today (if not slightly adjusted/lowered), and to compensate for the immediate damage loss, extending the duration of Poison so it doesn't lose as much damage, so much that it's just spread more over time.

"But GSM," you say, "you can just play a Glykin, Wyverntouched, or Salamandra and just say no to Poison or take no damage from it!"

My biggest issue with Poison specifically is that there's only very specific counterplay against it, and half of the "counterplay" is just playing a race that doesn't take as much Poison damage or is altogether immune to the status in the first place. To which I say, that's not fun nor interesting, and I really sincerely hope that the argument of choosing a race other than those 3 races is shut down.

"Okay then what about building for Poison resistance?"

Snakescale is already insanely hard to farm for, let alone it only applies on cloth. It's hilariously bad to try and make a full cloth build just to resist Poison, and even then... full cloth builds are usually dodgy characters, who are already the most susceptible to Poison due to not having ANY status resist.

"Then do status resist!"

Hexer would like a word. It's not fun, not interactive, and basically a stat check to see if you get free damage off. Which, unless you're hyper invested in Faith and Sanctity and also have items on belt specifically to pump up your status resist, you're more than likely going to be inflicted anyway.

tl;dr Poison does way too much damage for how easy it is to proc, and the "counterplay" for it is just either building specifically against Poison or belting items to counter Poison, which isn't fun to deal with for any character.

Burn

Burn theoretically should be fine, since as a baseline it does very little damage. However, Burn has a devastating side effect of negating bonuses to DEF, including from APT, which is an ultimately game-winning effect. This makes an insanely strange side effect of fire mages able to entirely invalidate earth mages, for the sheer reason of lowering their actual stat by such a huge amount, for pretty much nothing. Which, shouldn't make sense in a narrative sense, and definitely effects the validity of earth enchantments to begin with.

The damage I'd say is too low, actually, but Burn has such an insanely powerful effect. I'd rather Burn reduce Physical Def% rather than the actual DEF stat, similar to Acid Rain from Tactician, or Fray, and Hellflame Uorate reducing Magic Def% as well, more than likely going to LV% or 10% each, if not 15% as a cap. This still gives value to Burn, but doesn't entirely shut down tanks and especially earth mages which already have a multitude of counters to look out for, and need to accommodate for.

"But you could just play a Salamandra or any of the 10 races that are naturally resistant to fire!"

Read the paragraph why I hate the same argument with Glykin and Poison.

"What about Fire resistance?"

I actually don't think the damage is the issue. The issue is the insanely overwhelming side effect.

"Status resist, then!"

Read above with the Hexer lines.

Honestly, if these changes do go through, or Poisons/Burns get hit, I would want to see most of the other DoTs get hit too, since it's... a very unhealthy playstyle, especially with the influx of new players coming in.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.