Re: Upcoming Changes for dragons
First of all Shield of Gold in the current game should never be changed. It's a real *** saver, maybe not used a lot due to cost, but hey at least it's there when you need it!.
Secondly: You want dragon changes I have dragon changes for you:
The following is only a basic layout for what would need a lot of tweaking and adjustment, so take any examples with a big grain of salt. Thank you.
Dragons main complaint is that once you hit ancient, you about have seen it all, done it all.
Also dragons are supposed to be uber killing machines. I feel the dragons in Istaria are a pale reflection of that image.
How about we spice up their life a bit.
I would rework the class from the ground up.
The first 20 level should be about questing for your basic abilities and skills.
Also all of our abilities and skills should change to the formula system. So that we can put techniques onto them.
Yes techniqueing your skills you read it right.
Techniques should be learnt in your following eighty levels. Having 3 to 5 levels of the same tech just like we have now.
Now a basic dragon should hold his/her own on a fight with a same level basic biped class.
As a basic fighting machine you would not be using hoard, including all current hoard costing abilities, who should be reworked for balancing issues.
Do not forget a dragon has currently no way to become better than level 100, in contrast to bipeds who can keep continuing multiclassing to nearly no end.
In relation to that a dragon should actually level a bit slower than a biped.
In any case a dragon would mostly be questing to learn more and more and different techniques.
How would hoard fit in the picture.
Stances or Rages: that's how.
A dragon would need to have several stances available: I will explain in colours, but of course appropriate names could be found.
You would have 5 in total.
A Hatchling would start in Green: your basic stance. You do normal damage, have normal health and defensive skills. Your basic average dragon.
The real power of a dragon comes from his/her hoard.
Yellow stance: yellow stance/rage is learned after a decent-length quest. Upon completing you have a basic understanding of controlling the rage you feel while fighting. You learn to focus that rage into your advantage. However it comes at a cost namely your hoard.
Any dragon level has a base hoard cost attached to it. For easiness of explanation lets make your base hoard cost equal to the level you are.
Any skill/ability/spell has a factor attached to it. In green stance this doesn't come into effect. But once you enter yellow stance/rage it does.
While in yellow stance all of your abilities/skills/spells operate at 150% of their normal effectiveness. A claw swipe which normally hits for 50-100 damage would now hit for 75-150 damage, ...
Now when entering a stance all of your skills would start costing hoard.
How is it calculated? Multiply your base hoard cost by the skill factor.
A basic swing could have a multiplier of 1: so at level 100. An auto attack would cost 100 hoard.
A tail whip with multiplier 1.3: would be at level 100. 130 hoard, ... .
Each rage would increase in effectiveness (Orange 200%, Red 250% and Black 300%) but of course each stance would also have a multiplier to it.
Yellow: 1, Orange: 2, Red: 3, Black 4.
Also Orange, Red and Black would introduce hoard leak again. Again severity depends on the stance going from
Orange: base hoard cost of level/sec divide by 2: so 50/sec = 3000 per minute for Orange stance
Red: base hoard cost of level/sec= 6000 per minute for Red stance for a level 100 dragon
Black: base hoard cost of level/sec * 2 = 12000 hoard per minute for a level 100 dragon.
The hoard leak comes into addition to the hoard cost for skills used.
So you would not be running around in those stances.
However depending on the situation: to many pulls, lag, boss mob, .... You could be more powerful, the more powerful the more draining onto your hoard.
You can become that uber biped rating at a cost. The biped needs to level for it, you need to gather hoard for it.
For full effect: techniqueing your skills:
You can learn techniques to better your skills.
Techniques skills can only be used in Yellow or Higher stance, if not in those stances the normal basic skills is used instead.
Techniques would enhance basic skills: apply an Area of Effect or a Damage over Time, increase the number of swings, ... . Lengthen the duration of a DoT, or increase the number of ticks, we could learn to apply different damage by training with certain bipeds. So you could apply Ice damage with your claw attacks, or nature, energy, ethereal, ... damage.
All of this techniques would add to or even multiply the basic skill factor.
Eg.
Adding a second attack to your basic swing would add 1.5 to your skill factor.
Making it do ice damage would add another 0.5 to that factor.
Now you make it an Area of effect skills; you multiply that factor by 3.
So instead of doing your base skill attack swing costing 100 hoard at level 100.
You would be doing Double Full circle swing of Ice damage: at (1 + 1.5 + 0.5)*3 = 9 So you are doing much more damage but now it would cost 900 hoard.
Do it in Black stance a 300% effectiveness it would cost you 3600 hoard. A lot of hoard for a lot of power (don't forget the hoard leakage as well).
A dragon would virtually be limited only by his lust for questing for learning all the different techniques, and the hoard he/she manages to gather.
So yep you are more powerful than a biped, but a biped can keep going and going leveling, you need keep gathering hoard and more hoard to stay in power. So that is why a dragons hoard is so precious!
Of course hoard drop rates need to be adjusted for full effect of the new system.
In the end a dragon can basicly adapt his play style to whatever fits, or whatever the situation requires.
Want to be that legendary dragon, feel free however make sure you gather enough hoard to burn.
Want to be the dragon you are playing now, feel free to stay in Green/Yellow stance.
What do you think?
Salis
Originally Posted by cauri_order
