[Autumn]

Removing the vision denial mechanic takes a lot of the annoying aspects of smoke out of the game, personally I like being able to see the battlefield as its important to know what might be going on at all times, but its not completely impossible to deal with should you have cyclone spear/air pressure on the team.

If it were changed to not deny vision, I might suggest the difference be made up for by granting allies an evade bonus while inside smoke. That would probably be fine.

[Swiftkusura]

the thing is fern if you make it placement only then it should acquire a better duration as to fulfill its purpose still, otherwise the rune becomes pretty heavily useless, while blind is nice we all know people use smoke to protect their assets, as a rune mage I don't mind if it can be seen through, hell I don't mind if it lost its blind infliction too, but I do prefer it keep the ability to protect itself like a scared squid inking itself.

[Snake]

If possible, I'd like for Smoke Rune's smoke not block vision at all. The effect of denying ranged attacks to be made to an object is already strong enough. Blocking vision on top of that is just pure overkill.

Don't forget the fact that Rune Magician can also inflict a shit ton other crippling status effects, such as Glowing LV90 and Immobilize for just staying in range.

[Kameron8]

I don't have a preferred solution in mind, but I do want to emphasize that I also think Smoke (in general, because of vision blocking) is extremely annoying to play with or against, and that the ability for a Rune to make itself conditionally immortal isn't being done in a way that's fun to try and work around.

[Miller]

I think placement is the way to go, it adds onto deciding which runes you'll put in order while also trimming down on the amount of smoke a singular rune can generate without burning through swift rune cast or several rounds.

Though I will say, I can see an issue where RMs will intentionally refuse to move their runes for a bit to protect them, but I don't think that'd be a huge issue so long as the duration of said smoke is short enough.

Adding more bonuses to being in smoke instead of trimming down on the quantity/quality of sources will make it more obnoxious in the long run in my opinion. It'd only make it so large-scale sources of smoke would deny basic hitters from hitting each other unless more sources of smoke removal is added. (Less so in the case that they're inner circle only of course.)

[Autumn]

It seems to be agreed upon that the vision blocking mechanic is incredibly annoying, White Prison may also need to be addressed in that regard.

[HexGirlBestGirl]

Time to respond to this garbage.

For starters. As far as my thoughts go on this whole thing. It's simple. Smoke can stay if more ways to deal with it are made to deal with it/mitigate visions issues or whatever. Vision blocking is ironically fine by me. Vision Blocking having minimal ways to deal with it is not.

That is my entire take on this. The rune mage part is irrelevant to me mostly. Smoke produced is smoke produced rather than the rune. Placing it down is whatever. It producing smoke, whatever. It being 2m or 1m? Whatever. As long as it has a countermeasure, that's fine by me.

Make the smoke not screw melee over trying to hit it for example. Already miles better. If someone is within 2 range of the rune, it should be destroyable even in smoke.

Make it make smoke every two rounds or three rounds, maybe. Three is a bit on the higher end. Make it make smoke on placement then every two rounds after. Cool.

So. Time to respond to some comments here.

It could certainly be adjusted to the outer circle + the center tile only. Another alternative is to make smokescreen not block vision but that would obviously remove some of its power. I am also willing to make it a Placement effect only.

As I said earlier. That last one is fine.

I personally think seeing through the smoke but not losing its overall mechanical impact would be fine personally, I don't believe it'd lose any power if it kept the rune protection and hit debuff on targets if it could be seen through, it's better than the user and all watching to just be blinded in a fight. I feel that's an exceedingly powerful thing but also just as self-harming.

Consider other sources of smoke as well. Aka the one and only really just smoke bombs and that's it. Ninshi Shuriken too but you know. Unless Rune Smoke is a 'special kind of individualized and unique smoke' then consider that all smoke changes here will affect that respectively. As well as any potential future additions of the nonsense.

Rune Protection already is inherently super powerful and the main reason it's used more than anything. Hit debuff is fine since if you stand in smoke, you deserve to get pained.

I think it should be placement effect only.

Yes. Read above.

the thing is fern if you make it placement only then it should acquire a better duration as to fulfill its purpose still, otherwise the rune becomes pretty heavily useless, while blind is nice we all know people use smoke to protect their assets, as a rune mage I don't mind if it can be seen through, hell I don't mind if it lost its blind infliction too, but I do prefer it keep the ability to protect itself like a scared squid inking itself.

At times, one can only wonder how you'd defeat a rune mage before they detonate a rune if you can't destroy said rune. But yes. Placement only sure. More duration, 3 rounds at best. That's more than enough to have it stay immune and probably destroy whatever target you want it to.

If possible, I'd like for Smoke Rune's smoke not block vision at all. The effect of denying ranged attacks to be made to an object is already strong enough. Blocking vision on top of that is just pure overkill.

Don't forget the fact that Rune Magician can also inflict a shit ton other crippling status effects, such as Glowing LV90 and Immobilize for just staying in range.

That latter half is exactly why Smoke Rune makes me question life.

I don't have a preferred solution in mind, but I do want to emphasize that I also think Smoke (in general, because of vision blocking) is extremely annoying to play with or against, and that the ability for a Rune to make itself conditionally immortal isn't being done in a way that's fun to try and work around.

And I would be fine with this if there were more feasible ways to rid of smoke. Even if temporarily. A mere moment to be able to destroy said rune is more than fine by me. The whole 'more ways to destroy a rune' tier mentality sounds bad though so. Yeah, more ways to destroy smoke otherwise, this quote in general speaks volumes.

If it were changed to not deny vision, I might suggest the difference be made up for by granting allies an evade bonus while inside smoke. That would probably be fine.

Smoke already makes whoever is in it lose hit unless they have Kagero (The Ninjutsu Talent) , so are you saying you want them to get MORE EVADE while in smoke which is retroactively the same thing as LESS HIT? Are you saying you want the same thing to be added to what's already there? I'm not understanding that one.

It seems to be agreed upon that the vision blocking mechanic is incredibly annoying, White Prison may also need to be addressed in that regard.

Yes. And to repeat myself. I'm fine with the vision blocking if there's more countermeasures. I'm also most everyone here hasn't said that the vision part was annoying but rather that they're fine with it being removed. Beyond you and Snake, most either haven't commented on it or in Swift's case just said that it's exceedingly powerful. Lest i'm misunderstanding something.

Also White Prison is a damn wall. That one gets a pass from me. Especially since it can be shot through and what have you. It's only dense against actual basic movement. Fundamentally different than a Smoke Rune. Feel free to make a thread on that though.