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HSDW Tweak in Light of Mage Update
#1
As per tradition, mages have once again shifted from useless to strong. Hopefully we don't see that cycle continue any time soon, but I'd like to revisit a change I suggested right around the time Martial Artist was updated.

Invocations cast with High Speed Divine Words suffer from repeat action penalty.

To clarify, this means it would take 7 momentum total to cast an invocation in one turn. Starting the invoke would take 3, then finishing it would take 3+1 from repeat action penalty. Specifically, this would tone down the power of Screaming Tome and Burn Up + Winged Serpent. As of right now, any mage who has Charge Mind and High Speed Divine Words active is (almost) entirely unapproachable because of Screamer. Going into a damage race against someone who is threatening your entire health bar and Lazarus Wind that can't be stopped by Silence -- or Knockdown, in the common situation that they run Martial Artist in tandem -- is entirely unfeasible. Stacking resists can only take someone so far, and mages in this game do not often follow the glass cannon stereotype. Indeed, we are more often than not seeing bulky mage-tanks throwing Sear or Isenshi at people. Additionally, the distance players usually spawn away from one another often gives someone enough time to put these buffs up before their opponent is even capable of reaching them to punish it.

By making this change, keeping a mage silenced will at least force them to loose non-invocation spells. Triggering a resist on the first spell cast would then become meaningful, since it would then bring them to 2 momentum. This works out well, since the tome already skews the action economy in the mage's favor. Inflicting silence is almost always a 3 momentum venture, and outside of a few setups -- Void Assassins with cutthroat, nightflower weapons, water damage stacking Summoners with Drown -- using that three momentum for silence is often doing far less damage than your other options, not to mention less reliable if a status infliction check is present. And while Screaming Tome does have relatively poor scaling compared to the rest of its weapon types, most people simply run their real casting weapon in the off-hand since the game chooses the best one automatically.

On the other side of the coin, Burn up + Winged Serpent (Which I will now call BUWS to make life easier) does the opposite. Instead of making a mage impossible to shut down or approach, it makes their range of approach far greater. BUWS accomplishes the same thing as Blink without siphoning an action from the person using it. The only time blink becomes more worthwhile as far as invocations are concerned is when one is already in the process of being cast. In this scenario, you are no longer safe from invocations even at ludicrous range. Unless someone is able to reliably attack from 15 range or greater, AND create that distance every single round, it is impossible to avoid being Overloaded/Isenshi'd into the dirt within one or two rounds. Because of this, requiring 7 momentum for one-turn invocations would drastically lower the amount of damage being threatened at those incredible ranges.

Hopefully I made it clear enough as to why this change would be helpful. This was not originally necessary because, in their first iteration post Great Reckoning, mage invocations didn't do enough damage to be a meaningful threat. That has since changed, and rightfully so. If these disproportionately powerful combinations can be tweaked as a result, that'd be even better. If at all possible, discussion about silence as a whole should go elsewhere; any thread that mentions Screaming Tome has a habit of quickly devolving into outcry over how polarized the status effect is.
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#2
I agree. It just doesn't quite make sense to have mages doing 3 actions.
Duelists? Fleur, they had to crit in a luck-based chance. Elemental Weakness? That's the autohit version of crit. But 3 actions because Repeat Action doesn't apply to HSDW'd spells? Heck nein.
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#3
I agree entirely that invocations are only strong because there is no way to stop them from nuking your entire health bar WHILE remaining careful, you could play a fight like a genius and try to thwart a mage at every turn but the moment you stand in range of an evoker (Which, their range is rather large, being rivaled only by specialized gunners and archers) you will die.

However Kameron brings up a good point here, invocations costing 3 and then 4 momentum will put them into a state of balance to where silence will matter a lot but not be too overbearing for the prepared mage.
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#4
Seems like a fair change actually.
+1
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#5
Supported. Anything that leads to less people offhanding a screaming tome is a good idea.
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#6
Maybe, although that would make HSDW useless unless you have the Tactician trait, and when I inevitably remove that it'll cause problems.
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#7
Removing tactician is gonna cause way more gamebreaking issues than you think...

For now though, it can be changed. especially since, in the future, you're gonna have to rebalance entire friggin classes because now that they can't do certain combos (that the class needs: See; Verglas/Demon hunter)... It'll be fine.

Also if you can cure silence for 10% of your HP and 1m.. and then have 5m... you might as well have just used a friggin throatopener less you know your opponent's elemental weakness.
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#8
It's true, removing tactition, the ability to have 7 momentum, will break almost entire classes like Martial Artist or Soldier (Charge/Charging Strike and Shukuchi). Why not just add cooldowns instead? That'd work. Tactition is basically the core to almost all builds currently.

I will say that HSDW is a problem with screamer, but that's it.
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#9
I suggest it temporarily be implemented then, until you decide to cross that bridge. Personally I believe 7 momentum should be made baseline, and tactician removed. It feels like almost the entire game is balanced around people having 7.
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#10
"Neus" Wrote:Maybe, although that would make HSDW useless unless you have the Tactician trait, and when I inevitably remove that it'll cause problems.

And uh, yeah, I forgot to add this one: Tactician trait is not a choice. It's a 'must-have'. You can't do anything with 6M, that's why playing as a low-level is a pain in the booty. And if you do a research, you'll be (not quite) surprised that 100% of the server (pre 15 SKI/people below LV 4 aside) have Tactician in their Trait Pools.

You say HSDW is going to be unusable if you add repeat action, but Charge (1M) + Move (3M) + *Soldier Skill* (3M) or Shukuchi (1M) + Move (3M) + *MA Skill* (3M), or even a Priest's Needle (4M) + *Light damage skill* (3M) will be impossible to use with 6M only. And those are not even worth being mentioned, since playing Evoker is so easy right now. You can't get silenced while casting your stuff.

So like, either tweak HSDW, or make Screamer cost 2M instead of 1M. I'm (sorta) fine with Cobra's mobility, since it can be shut down by Immobilize. (I guess?)
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