[Raigen.Convict]

After some extensive time dealing with youkai, it's starting to come to my attention of a few very unhealthy constants among youkai, and not just about their stats either, though that plays a part, it's not the biggest part that's wrong. Almost every youkai excluding Firefox, Vampiric Legume, and Phase Python essentially functions the exact same way. It's summoned, it moves 5-6 tiles, and uses an ability, most youkai don't have to stats to actually utilize their basic attacks properly and those that do don't have the guile to utilize the crit damage on the off chance that they do, and even then most don't have the luck to crit with in the first place.

So my proposal is that we work together as a playerbase to try and give Summoner in general a rework to help it feel more worthwhile to actually use AND fight against. Literally most summoners I see, myself included when fighting against normal monsters tend to summon their youkai which are around their level, and let them sit back while the summoner themself uses some sort of offensive ability from their sub class to take down the monsters. I don't know about you but this feels VERY backwards, it's because of how they feel to use. They all feel like just mindless minions with no soul or personality or even a playstyle to use.

My suggestion is firstly, to bring back from SL how each youkai had a 'set' of abilities and passives, instead of just one offensive skill and two passives per, getting rid of this uniformity will help them stand out more already. Another reason is anyone whom can inflict silence will literally stop 90% of youkai from even being effective on the feild because they cannot use their basic attacks to hit almost anyone. On top of this, some of them I believe would feel better to use if they had ranged basic attacks. This could open the way for ideas for more youkai to be made and give different strategies for both promotion classes, maybe even ranged basic attacks that deal magic damage instead of physical on certain ones with a passive effect that states this. And before you ask about this, it'd obviously need to be tweaked so if that youkai is installed it's not completely bonkers, granting swords +3 range or something. All at once and additional square of range to the main hand weapon sounds like a not so bad idea.

Another thing is if we're doing this overhaul, it'd be a good idea to for certain youkai's maintenance costs, up the maximum cost on them, maybe lower others, depending on their utility. Making these changes will balence out how players utilize specific youkai and actually bring another layer of strategy that was present in SL. "Do I want to bring out 3 weaker youkai and let them overpower my foes or do I want to bring out a stronger one and maybe one weaker youkai to keep from losing too much focus at once?" Another benefit of changing the focus costs is because with how the Great Reckoning changed everything, Focus Point totals are higher than ever before, meaning the old system for summoners isn't as effective at keeping them from storming the field with creatures. Though even then each creature feels less than effective because of how straightforward they all are.

Another point here is that with the current system of youkai, playing Bonder feels very, -very- underwhelming. Your bonded youkai don't actually feel like a partner like they should, they feel more like a minion you can call to your side to distract the enemy with some damage while you do all the real work, before they happen to get taken down in a couple hits by the enemy. Looking at the stats of a lot of the youkai, even with Fight as one and Synchro Summon, their stats aren't very pleasant to see and attempt to use for their basic attacking ability against enemies, or to avoid being crit, or even to crit an enemy.

With the changes I have in mind for youkai becoming a bit more unique, certain skills in Summoner, Grand Summoner and Bonder will need to be altered to accomodate certain changes. my main concern is Summon Storm, I'm thinking instead of making it 6 -random- youkai, it'd give a little more preparationary strategy if the ability used your first 6 youkai in your contract list that can be summoned. The other skills with Grand Summoner until further notice seem like they'd work out with these changes. For Summoner as a base class I was considering changes to the affinity system as just giving them +5 stats seems bland and more like a "You need this" rather than a "This is an option" like other classes present.

Devourer of Souls, i'm very sure you've mentioned yourself something along the lines of disliking having classes with skills that feel like 'you should always take this no matter what'. One idea i'm tossing around in my mind is each youkai class having something unique to that class the no other class does, that the affinity skills boosts, like say night youkai all have a specific passive where something about them gets better at night, and then putting points into the affnity for night youkai increases how effective that night based passive is, while beast youkai might just overall be good with basic attacking and dodging attacks so beast affinity would make them better at doing just that than they already are. I say this also because one of your responses to a balance fu thread involving youkai was that 'they already have a lot of stat buffs they can have so increasing their stats is going to break them'. Not exactly word for word but it came off similar to that. So thats when I got to thinking on brainstorming ideas on how to overhaul them in general so they can feel actually worthwhile both to fight and to use. Another unhealthy thing I noticed is how install ever since the great reckoning has felt so lackluster, I can hardly notice an increase in my stats, and in a few places stats even go -down-.

This also does not feel quite right to use and most of the time most people opt out of it except for the bonus passives like immunity to fire, ice or resisting physical attacks. As for install, changing some of the racial bases on the youkai is probably going to fix this anyway. Sync Mind has been a go to and beloved ability that summoners have, and with the recent reductions to focus costs on youkai abilities, it's been made a little -TOO- good. For example I can literally use 'Fairy Lance' to hit targets across immense spaces for over a hundred light magic damage for only 9 focus each cast, when I regenerate 13 without pacifist boon OR cracked mirror, meaning if I use this twice a round i'm only expending 18 focus and recovering 13 of that back. The costs shoulden't be this low unless maybe the skill is something like Phase Fang which is a modified basic attack, and even then that feels a tad too low for being able to poison the enemy with a class that encourages pumping up Willpower to be able to maintain your summons for a long enough time you can take down your enemies.

Next up looking at Bonders skills. Riagri as i'm typing this is currently still broken with no scaling for it, I was thinking maybe letting it scale with either faith or the Bonders elemental attack for whatever element is being used. Everything else in Bonder seems fine for now. Now that the classes themselves are covered, the hard part comes, the actual reworking of the youkai themselves. This is where I'm asking for the cooperation of the playerbase to come together and brainstorm ideas for each and every youkai and even the GMs and Dev themselves to consider these ideas and possibly make suggestions on it and give feedback. I would greatly appreciate it if you all would remain civil and refrain from dismissing anything without at least an explaination why.