[Ranylyn]

In SL2, there is one thing, one hideous thing, that completely forces all characters to have at least 30 defense, if not much more. Between softcaps destroying glass cannons and this other thing destroying glass cannons, even magic gunners or evokers are god damn space marines in their builds, simply because the alternative means being completely shredded to pieces the absolute second you step foot anywhere near Tannis or Dormeho.

I am of course talking about Dark F****** Calling, which I will refer to as DFC for the rest of this post. A skill that needs a very, VERY important change to be made to it, for reasons I'll be getting into. The "DFC" is to differentiate it between disconnecting, which is a very different problem, and to troll people who are into loli characters. Yeah, I went there. Come at me.


Scenario: Steadfast Black Knight and his partner, Glass Cannon Gunner/Rogue are in a party and go to Tannis to fight beasts, spawning on the opposite ends of the battlefield. The two begin by moving closer together so they can concentrate their attacks and drop the beasts quickly, but due to the terrain are not yet beside one another by the time DFC begins. While ordinarily, Incognito would mean they'd charge towards the Black Knight, Dark Calling is an action with a range spanning the entire battlefield, allowing the three beasts so teleport straight towards the gunner/rogue and spam Black Roar. "Okay, fine, Roar doesn't do all that much damage, even a glass cannon can take a few roars." Except Roar jacks their attack up, and DOES NOT COUNT AS AN ATTACK, MEANING THEY CAN IMMEDIATELY DFC TO THE GUNNER AGAIN, EVEN IF IT RUNS AWAY AND HIDES BEHIND IT'S FRIEND. Without fleeing as an option, the gunner has one choice: "Do I sit here and attack twice, and die, or do I run and die tired?"

There's no defense besides raw numbers. There's no kiting, there's no keep away, there's no strategy at all. You either tank or you die, end of story, goodbye, see you. And I'm seeing it more and more with the mountain raid. There'll be that one utility/support character or maybe someone lower levelled, etc. DFC ganking. No keepaway, no kiting, just raw numbers or death.

The change: Obviously, Dark Calling was added as a failsafe - if the town terrain made the battle impossible to resolve, the beasts would teleport. The problem is, they can teleport successively since a basic attack is the only thing that counts towards "If it hasn't done X in X many turns." Dark Calling is important, and can't be removed. But what absolutely NEEDS to happen is that Black Roar needs to count as an attack towards preventing DFC Spam. It also needs to prioritize characters without Incognito if someone DOES have it.