Talk to the Team: Reaver

Reaver was mentioned in another thread as a school that isn't used much and needs help. I spent a few minutes looking at it and its another school that has no real definition or purpose... Is it a spellcaster, a warrior, a tank, what?

Some quick and probably crazy brainstorming came up with some ideas:

Replace Syphon with:
- Syphon Blade - A self-buff that causes the weapon to drain life of targets to heal the Reaver. Target’s hit by this attack have a chance to gain a debuff, Spiritual Weakness
- Spiritual Weakness - A debuff that causes the target to take greater damage from Spirit attacks and reduces the target’s Ethereal Armor. Conflicts with Spiritual Bleed.


Replace Area Syphon with:
- Aura of Pain - An aura that slowly drains the life of allies to heal the Reaver, but provides those same allies with a boost to Ethereal Armor and causes attacks to have a chance to convert damage to Ethereal
- Target’s that have Spiritual Weakness have a chance to heal the attacker.
- Target’s that have Spiritual Bleed have a chance to cause maximum damage.


Carve
- No longer reduces target’s damage. Has a chance to cause Spiritual Bleed. Also lowers the target’s ethereal armor by 10-50%.
- Spiritual Bleed - A debuff that causes a Spirit DoT. Conflicts with Spiritual Weakness.


Evisceration of Life
- Ethereal damage. If it went against ethereal armor then lowering it would make this more powerful. Boost damage output by 2x perhaps. Should be a special attack, not a spell attack. Use the Reaver’s blade!
- If the target has Spiritual Weakness, then Evisceration causes 50% greater damage.
- If the target has Spiritual Bleed, then Evisceration also heals the attack for 50% of the damage inflicted.


Group Ethereal Blade
- Rename to “Aura of the Ether”. When active causes allies’ attacks to do ethereal damage, the Reaver becomes incorporeal, but generates 4.5x threat, lowers damage output by 50%


Ethereal Blade
- Leave as is, self buff that causes weapon to do ethereal damage.
- Convert to be a non-masterable passive.

Greeting,
As i played reaver alot and still like it,
these changes sound intresting, but i have a question about Aura of Pain.
"An aura that slowly drains the life of allies to heal the Reaver" just to make sure, does it mean it drains life from the group members to heal itself?

Chajanum Siamun (Chaos)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chajanum

Greeting,
As i played reaver alot and still like it,
these changes sound intresting, but i have a question about Aura of Pain.
"An aura that slowly drains the life of allies to heal the Reaver" just to make sure, does it mean it drains life from the group members to heal itself?

Chajanum Siamun (Chaos)

---

Yes, exactly

would you consider a passive that works like the old misty crystals, 20% to do ethereal damage on each strike? or have it tiered, 10%-15%-20%?
*E* the rest looks good, the question is, what does reaver bring to the table? I think group ethereal blade is one of those signature abilities.

Both Auras look interesting. I think 4.5x threat and -50% dmg are too high though, considering that Eviceration of Life is a pretty 'core' ability of Reaver and the heal scales off damage. It's a bit contradictory to have one defensive mechanic severely cripple another defensive. Furthermore, having one Aura be utterly useless for solo play is a bit...eh. What's your goal with the Auras? It looks like there are enough bonuses across two of them that you could make a third aura, so that Reavers have 2/3 auras usable in solo play.

I'd do it with three of them (for example):
1. Group damage support, such as convert allies attacks to ethereal, small dmg increase, and a HP-drain on the reaver ('giving life to support allies'). Still useful in solo play if you want the guaranteed ethereal dmg to just nuke down a single target, but would need to be carefully managed turned on/off - in both solo and group play - so you don't kill yourself. Like, turn it on when you've got Weakness on your opponent cuz you'll be getting extra heals.

2. Tanking - decreased outgoing damage, increased threat, decreased incoming damage, chance to apply one of the class's main debuffs when struck?

3. Selfish bonuses (personal damage increase, lifesteal, etc, but no grou support)- chance to apply one of the class's main debuffs when attacking? A %chance to convert attacks to ethereal (compared to #1's guaranteed, maybe). Selfish bonuses would have no/few drawbacks, but be weaker. Better if you're alone, but #1 becomes more useful in a group.

This would give some nice flexbility in Spiritual Weakness/Bleed application depending on how you wanted to implement it (% chance when struck to apply Weakness for example, with Syphon Blade and Cave having 100% chances to apply).

Looking at how the target might be the Spiritual debuffs, it seems entirely RNG based. You use the skill that has a chance to apply the debuff you want. If it doesn't apply that debuff, then you hit the other one cuz...why not, might as well have -something- on the target. I'm not too fond of having a school's main mechanic be RNG based and there's a chance you get nothing out of it.

Spiritual Weakness - Maybe reduce the Spirit inc dmg increase, but compensate with a small increase to incoming slash damage? A not-insignificant chunk of Reaver damage is slash, and you indicate in a different part of your post about uh. The. 'Use the Reaver's blade!' . More a 'this makes more sense to me' though, and probably isn't even needed.

I'm only reasonably sure about the numbers for Aura of Ether - all the rest, presumably the numbers would need some messing around with to see what's the sweetspot of good but not too good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trust

would you consider a passive that works like the old misty crystals, 20% to do ethereal damage on each strike? or have it tiered, 10%-15%-20%?
*E* the rest looks good, the question is, what does reaver bring to the table? I think group ethereal blade is one of those signature abilities.

---

If that is all that Reaver brings to the table then, seriously, it is perhaps the worst school we have. Really consider that for a moment now. What good is the school? To allow others to do ethereal damage, but nothing else. That alone means it should have some other mechanic.

Changing the school so that:
1) It can take advantage of some of its abilities while solo (e.g. Syphon Blade/Carve, Ethereal Blade and Evisceration of Life)
2) It provides more in a group battle than simply "convert damage to ethereal" (e.g. Syphon Blade/Carve, Aura of Pain, Evisceration of Life)

Beefing its true signature ability, Evisceration of Life, by not only boosting its damage, but by providing some interaction with the monster and with other Reaver abilities adds an interesting twist to the school's existence. Don't just hit the monster with Evisceration right off the bat, instead hit it with either:
- Syphon Blade to get Spiritual Weakness on it so that your Evisceration does 50% more damage, in the meantime your regular attacks are healing you a small amount.
- Carve to get Spiritual Bleed on the target, lowering the target's ethereal armor by up to 50% and causing a Spirit DoT. Then hit it with Evisceration and heal yourself for 50% of the damage you inflict (which is higher cause you reduced the target's ethereal armor).

Alternatively, hit it with Syphon Blade or Carve and then buff your group with Aura of Pain. Not only would they get ethereal damage for their attacks, but they would get a bonus from either Spiritual Weakness or Bleed. Or, if you want to tank, buff the group with Aura of the Ether, giving your allies ethereal damage, while generating a ton of threat for yourself (drawing agro) and resisting most of the incoming damage.

@Alisto. I get it, a chance to apply the debuff would be a pain. One thought might be that the chance is 100%, but each individual debuff wouldn't do a lot, but perhaps they could stack... So, you might want to delay the use of Evisceration while hitting the target with Carve 5 or 6 times to get a reduction of 30-40% ethereal armor before using it for maximum effect.

Also, I woudl think using Evisceration would remove the Spiritual Weakness/Bleed debuffs.

I won't deny that I'd prefer 100% on a lot of things that don't have it >.> But...Istaria is old and introducing RNG is definitely a viable way to balance out some abilities, as long as its presence is compensated for elsewhere. However, you'd also have to be careful in order to ensure that something isn't ridiculously strong when it procs, but <something> becomes useless if nothing procs. ESO suffers from something similar to this and it's horrid. Again, yadda yadda, I imagine there'd need to be a bit of messing around with numbers.

Anywho!

Oh gosh. Clarity question - are you able to make it such that you can stack the same debuff on a target, track that, and then do..other stuff with it? If I'm interpreting this right that sounds amazing :O It'd be fun to have the play have to weigh hitting evis -right then- and get immediate benefits vs waiting for a few more strikes of Carve or the other skill to get more benefit. On that note, though...

How open are you guys to having more regularly used, but weaker skills? IIRC, the only 'spammable' things in Istaria are repeater bolts, while Carve (for ex) has a cooldown of...40 seconds. Ouch - unrelated, but it definitely needs a shorter cooldown for such a (currently) weak ability. It looks like an auto attack that applies a small debuff. And, if stacking the debuff from either of the two debuff-applying skills becomes a thing, it'd certainly need a much, muuuch shorter CD even after generic 'this CD is too long in the first place' adjustments.

It doesn't look like it has any damage modifiers - 5-10 sec sounds appropriate for what (would) basically be an auto attack with a minor debuff.

Would it be possible to scale up the effects of the debuff itself based on stacking, too? So the reaver has to weigh, for example...Using Evis immediately vs. waiting until the stacks are higher so they can get a stronger nuke (or heal) vs. letting the debuff just sit there to give benefits to their party. It'd be a fun way to make them decide if they wanted more personal healing, personal damage, or group healing/damage.

Concerning ethereal armor - it's been a while, and I'm wondering about percentage based debuffs vs. flat reductions. Again, IIRC, but...I don't recall very many - if any - mobs having much ethereal armor at all. Would it be possible to have the game apply either a percentage reduction or a flat reduction, whichever is higher? 30-40% reduced ethereal armor sounds absolutely amazing, but it'd be suddenly lackluster if your opponent has like...100 ethereal armor xD This would let the debuff scale well against opponents with low and high ethereal armor - a flat reduction of 100 isn't too good when your opponent has 4k, but 10% definitely is. But I'd rather stack -100 on an opponent with low ethereal armor.

Quote:

---

Also, I woudl think using Evisceration would remove the Spiritual Weakness/Bleed debuffs.

---

A+ to this.

Edit: http://www.istaria-lexica.de/Carving_Strike . Used this as a reference.

[QUOTE=AmonGwareth;319606]If that is all that Reaver brings to the table then, seriously, it is perhaps the worst school we have. Really consider that for a moment now. What good is the school? To allow others to do ethereal damage, but nothing else. That alone means it should have some other mechanic.

You misunderstood me Amon, I'm asking what do you think of when you think reaver?

Ah, sorry, misunderstood.

A warrior who relies upon a heavy sword, one who is good at aoloig, but who supports a group with life draining and spirit based attacks.

Idea I had years ago regarding Reaver. Bit of background, this was part of a larger idea to revamp Spiritist and Bloodmage as well and tie them all together as manipulators of the Spirit:

What is a Reaver?
Reavers are Warriors who have learned to manipulate the life forces of their enemies to aid them in combat. Woe to any Warrior who thinks that a sturdy suit of armor is all the defense they need, as a Reaver will soon show them that the spirit cannot be protected by a physical shell.

How does a Reaver cast their magic?
Reavers are adept as pushing their life-force beyond its normal limits to give themselves boosts of strength or regeneration or even health. Unlike a Spiritist or even a Bloodmage, a Reaver must gain its lifeforce from enemies, not itself.

How is a Phylactery used?
Unlike the other spirit schools, Reavers use a sword called a "Reaver Blade" to draw life energy from their victims and to act as a phylactery, storing this energy for later use. In this manner, the blade also acts as a conduit through which the Reaver can draw this energy to cast spells.

What is a Phylactery?
In this context, a phylactery is a type of enclosed vessel used for storing magical energy, akin to a magical battery.

The old definition of reaver is "a plundering forager", but that's colored by the Viking reavers who would slaughter and plunder. Add to that the Firefly reavers who mercilessly slaughter and move on, and we have reavers characterized by movement and slaughter. They are not tanks or defenders, but mobile and opportunistic. I hope the Istaria Reaver would continue to lean in the direction of the general understanding of the word.

Right now, Reaver is a Warrior/Spiritist meld with the heavy melee ability lines and the Spiritist/Bloodmage ability lines. The notable integration of the two comes from making melee damage ethereal, and that's pretty much it. The only other unique abilities are Evisceration of Life, Carve, and Wither.

EoL is nice, Carve seems pretty useless. I have never used Wither.


Would it be possible to give the Reaver an effect that buffs it or allies when the Reaver kills its target (or when someone else kills it)? Perhaps that would stack/increase if the Reaver kills again within a certain time? Is it possible to do a 'trigger on kill' effect?

To shift the current Reaver more towards the spirit/soul-powered slaughterer (but not stepping on Berserker toes):

Reaver Blade(s) that use damage to fuel Strength, Dex, Attack Speed or Slash Skills, not just heal. (Think Mournblade from the Elric series.) Alternately, Reaver Blades that raise Spirit/Blight skill or Spirit spell damage to tilt more towards the mystic magic side. Either trigger the buff(s) after a threshold of damage dealt, or trigger stackable small buffs upon damage (or trigger on enemy death, if that's possible).

Spirit Saps Body: a Bare Soul parallel, that reduces Slash Ward instead of Spirit and Blight. (Plus Crush and Pierce, to make it group-friendlier?)

Esoteric Carve: half/third duration of Carve, but significantly stronger (triple or more damage reduction, or % damage reduction). Put it on the same cooldown timer as Carve. Why this? Because some players can predict monsters' attacks and this gives them a tool to play with. It also is more useful than Carve when playing in a group that CCs monsters - the players can interleave stuns with a strong short carve.

Reaver's Shield: a buff that adds Spirit/Blight/Ethereal resist or enhances Block against Spirit/Blight/Ethereal attacks. Only usable/active when wielding a shield.

Spirit Crush: a debuff that reduces the opponent's attack skill. (a mystic version of Warped Perception, but an ability rather than a spell.)

The Mournblade-style Reaver is how I see the ideal Reaver.
The current Carve effect is unique in the game, it should stay and be improved/extended. I like the phylactery-style Reaver Blade because it is like Mournblade. Lifedrain effects don't give Reaver much distinctive -- they seem like Spiritist Theft of Life shifted to melee form, and meh.

Is this revamp still being looked at? I really like the idea of Reaver and I think some of the thoughts here on how to improve it have been spot on. I also read the Neo-Spiritist post from a few years ago and I think the two concepts could mesh really well.

Some thoughts:

At level 20 the Reaver could get two passives and one active; Ethereal Blade and Siphoning Strikes being the passives and Vampiric Strike being the active.

Ethereal Blade could be a progressive % increase to ethereal damage, e.g. at 20th level all strikes with the ethereal blade are 20% ethereal. At 40th this could be 50%, then 80% then penultimately 100% or something. Each level of Ethereal Blade would have a number of Phylactery charges which are used by a number of other abilities.

Siphoning Strikes could be a passive much like the Spirit Disciple, where on a % number of hits, the reaver heals some amount (10% of HP?) while at the same time generating a point for the phylactery pool for the ethereal blade.
Alternatively Siphoning Strike could be a low CD (30 seconds max, I'd say 15) ability that allows the reaver to deal a decent amount of damage and heal 50-100% of it. Additionally it would generate one point for the phylactery.

Vampiric Strike could be an that functions similar to Theft of Life only it's a 30 second CD and requires 1 point of energy from the phylactery to use.

Something along those lines would be a pretty good start to a really interesting class that just needs a little bit of love. The idea of using the sword as a phylactery to power spells/abilities is really cool and something that I can get behind.

-Quiiliitiila

So I have a Reaver character as well, the self heal potential was a great draw, as I always liked the idea of life leeching magic. The class has another big draw for me though, the even distribution of melee and magic potential. The Reaver has a good spirit gain per level with decent focus and power as well. It makes keeping those attributes high with skill points pretty manageable, which makes the effectiveness of spells high too. Important for a hybrid class.

Through my time playing a Reaver I've noticed that the class places a strong emphasis on melee attacks that debuff, such as carving strike and rend armor. I really gotta say, in terms of satisfaction, these skills fail to deliver. Neither give a particularly noticeable advantage, so psychologically, it feels like activating the skills are next to worthless. With each click dealing or avoiding only a few points of extra damage in an encounter. And with the Ethereal blade ability making enemy armor worthless for a time, the skill rend armor seems even more redundant.

That being said the class desperately needs a staple melee attack to use with regularity throughout combat. Something like the Warrior's Powerstrike, or the Battlemage's equivalent blazing strike. Skills that add some oomph to combat. The Spiritist has a skill called stinger that fills the role well, and seems like a good choice for a Reaver ability. I'd like if Powerstrike and Stinger found their way into the repertoire.

The only proposed ability that I have an issue with is the 'Aura of Pain': Definitely not. Unless the group is carefully balanced with good healers to manage whatever damage the Reaver is doing, I don't think there is any benefit good enough to justify hurting allies. Especially since the benefit is mainly increased ethereal armor which is a very niche protection as it is. I'd like to see an aura that damages enemies and slowly heals allies, giving the Reaver a way to help keep group members up without compromising their ability to continue fighting.

The ideas presented here are very good, I'm excited at the prospect of seeing them, though it has been a while since anything was mentioned about this. I hope it is still being considered!

I love my Reaver. I admit I never use or used carving strike and rend armor and Evisceration of Life is ok, think it messes with timers on other abilities. Using nature and spirit spells is a plus. Group Ethereal Blade had a buff now a minute long ability, very nice btw, and ethereal blade is only ability in Reaver that's useful. Very little life taps besides syphon and spirit spells. Not worth using as it lowers dps. A chance to steal life on attacks as a passive that would be cool.

Looking more closely at the other posts in this thread I see a bit of discussion about the feasibility of adding multiple debuffs that augment other abilities; such as syphon blade adding a debuff (spiritual weakness) which increases other abilities like evisceration of life if cast while the enemy is affected by the debuff. Most of the worry was whether the engine had the capability of tracking multiple elements like that at a time.

Is that a concern at all? I don't believe I ever saw Alisto's questions addressed by AmonGwareth.

No, the engine would have no trouble with anything like that. Its just data to the engine.

That’s an extremely limited response, could you elaborate a bit more Amon? Is this class still being worked on, can we expect any changes in the near future?

Its a limited response because its a very generic and broad question.

Reaver is not currently being worked on. It has not been dropped, but there are numerous projects that have higher priority at the present time. School changes are not something I like to rush into so I find it better to consider them over time.

By limited response I was not talking about my most immediate question, I should have been more specific.

There were a number of other questions and comments made since you last responded on the 7th of May 2018. And the response you gave was about two sentences, which only addressed my most recent post. We’re all eager to hear your views and ideas, get feedback on our suggestions, and generally get a feel for the game development as it progresses.

So I thought the group ethereal blade was a 5min timer 1 min buff of ethereal damage for entire group. Nope, it is still just a one hit of ethereal damage for group members. Weak.