Dragon Ability feedback

[Azure]

The following are my own opinions on what I do not use in game related to abilities only, I'm sure there are others that use these but what I list is my personal tastes and reasons.

Breath Weapons (ALL) : When every you think dragons (not eastern) which is the one ability that come to mind? However this skill hardly if ever gets used on my attack sequence. Why? It misses like no tomorrow and secondly dragons don't spit out laser beams but a cone, its supposed to be a dragons special mass attack? I don't see anything special or massive about it. All breath weapons should have a large cone effect or simplify it to area if the system doesn't support it and secondly the damage from a breath weapon is supposed to be strong not weak like a dog licking someones face.

Dragon Fear : I Don't use this skill much if at anytime. I am sure it has its uses in play and others might use it but honestly I don't use it. Never worry about adds.

Stances : Have not used them for over 5-6 years? Was useful at one time in the beginning when monsters would keep cycling stances but since that changed its garbage in my opinion.

Menacing Presence : Don't group with others much and when I do help lower level players they still die with this running on the target.

All other skills I tend to use in a session or two so to me these ones listed are the ones I scoff at as a dragon.

[Shian]

At extremely low levels, I have found the fire breath weapon useful.

During the ROP, I found my level 30 couldn't hit anything. However, spiked scales and BOF *did* hit for considerable damage. Anything past ROP though and it loses it's effectiveness, so it *does* have it's place.

Speaking of Dragon Fear, I did find a use for it.

I was going to use it to hold a mob for the ROP. Like finding an Enslaver and rooting it so the hatchie would have time to get to it and kill it proper, but it doesn't stick.

Even during the ancient ROP with 8 draggies, it's a toss in the air to see if it sticks. You either have to have massive primal or it's useless. Kinda crappy for an Ancient only ability that one had to die for Not many draggis have a stupidly high enough primal for it to stick.

[Guaran]

heh, add another to the list of undwerpowered for the effort: Drulkar's Wrath. Does about as much damage as my breath of lightning, takes three times as long to go through the animation, has a ten minute cooldown, and a week-long quest to get it.

fail.

oh, and before someone says "raise your power", my power and strength are both base 958

This is essentially true, but the same can be said of the other epic spells as well. Especially sucky is Shining Blades since the biped's can't even muticast it anymore.

For Drulkar's Wrath and the other epics: how about epic damage? remove the ability for them to be multicast so it doesn't get crazy. This is an old suggestion that I know I've brought up multiple times....

I will say that Drulkar's Wrath's damage in comparison to the other epics (when not multicast) seems do as much or a little more damage than they do.

[lightning claw]

Well Amon to be frank the spells for dragons with the exception of the 2 gifts we have are all a JOKE when it comes to fierce combat ( to know what that is I invite you to a hunt on chaos ) they would be very useful if they did some Noticeable damage.

As for abilities haven’t tested the new stuff out yet can’t find some of the npcs to talk to… kind of hopelessly directionally challenged so I can offer a comment on them as of yet .

Combat stances … what are they used for? Is there a point in even using them?

Snarl I use also when dragons reach is in cool down (Dragons reach should be lv 8!!! with a somewhat faster cool down)

As for hotkeys

Dragons reach , spiked scales , bite (For the dot effect ) ,gold rage ,silver strike, Ravage , tail whip, gal wind, BOFB, refreshing breeze

Second hot key bar i have Dragons gift, determination ,shield of gold (Note when mass desomation of certan spawns occurs this is extremely useful skill ) Instant heal,

(something to tweak ) Drain strike
few of our lame breezes and moderately useful buffs , breath of lightning (in-case i need to knock down some buffs on something )

That prity much will take out just about anything unless they got something that nullifies damage

I understand that you do not want to make dragons over powered. (Lets leave that comment alone folks. I know most of you think that dragons are over powered, but with the new content we are not.) Most of our attacks cannot deal OMGWTF damage. With the exception of gold rage and that only works on the old school mobs + having a demon claw helps in this matter : ) . To put it quite frankly I am happy to see some of the new mobs are resistant to slash the immune is a bit annoying with so little in the spell arsenal (thank the gods for a primal striking claw)

But with the new enemy’s Epion now needs to think on his feet : )

very happy dragon

Hurray for new challenges tackes something he know will cause death points

[LOVWYRM]

Not sure why this is so, but:
my breaths nearly never miss, and make good damage (exept lightning)
(just yesterday: elevenhundred something on Elial in the rift with burst)
I`m satisfied with damage my spells do (I know I should not^^)
spiked scales damage is fine for me.
dragon fear works fine.

hmm- maybe I am too decent- what damage do you expect? What is average?
I do not know.

I`m a Lunus, playing hybride with 1098 base for primal and I put some more efforts in dex one year ago to have better results with breaths.

[Zanukk Sytheclaw]

I guess ill put my take. This is comming from a dragon who bears the new dragon teches and runs around in full tanking gear. With Full Teched gear (headscale, wings and on wep) Our damage is significanly increased. Many just dont know that. due to this no regular mob, not even giant ice beetles cannot survive 1 smack of goldrage and goldrage alone.

15 seconds i have to wait for another thing to die. That means i have to use plenty of skills aval to me that dont do much damage / and or have timers that make you want to chew your eyes out.



I want to add. Smart dragons carry different blighted claws that change their damage type to rip appart resistant to slash and immune to slash mobs.

while i play lunus and have little primal (1020 to use my teched heal spell) Galewind can hit for over 600 dmg on my target. Yet i still have to wait very long to use it again. 2 min is overkill.

2 min = 8 goldrages with = 8 dead mobs.

Ravage nice 5 hits, Thanks to My high tooth and claw and my teched chance to hit head scale i rarely miss a hit. each hit with teched scales do avarage from 250 to 350 a smack. Now once again this is on a 2 min timer. this attack cannot kill a mob unless i decide to combine it with other skills.

once again 2 min = 8 gold rages = 8 dead mobs.

Bite. what can i say, my maw is pretty close to the mobs im killing yet it takes me a long time to bite them again. Only used as a filler with ravage and silver strike.

Menacing precence. Since I do constantly hunt for epic bosses this has its use. however only if it lands. Sometimes im lucky to keep the bosses to smack me but its on a long cool down and if it hits you only have a 50% chance to intercept. Make this an aggroing skill. Then tanker dragons can keep those poor poor str glass cannon dragons alive (pity cuz they do just as much dmg as i do )

Stances. when i joined i never saw use of em, still to this day they have no use.

snarl and staggering howl i rarely use , reason, I rush into a huge group of mobs, obliverate them have no use for em other than as fillers on a boss.

drain strike. The heal does increase with the amount of damage done. I can avarage a 700 to 1000 hit with this skill with my teched scales. I get healed for 400+ health. be careful on attempting to tweak this skill.

Drain bolt... feels meh dont use prob caster dragons will.

Dragon reach. the 1 min cooldown is to long. and well my teched adv primal bolt has a 55 range and can use every 10 sec. this rendered dragons reach useless.

Dragon fear. Useless only for pvp which kinda no one does.

I may have missed a skill or 2 (been gone for a week hospital >.<) but basicly those who play meele play the 15 second waiting game.

Ill have to agree with the other dragon who said. nerf goldrage and buff up the other skills.

I would prefer to have multiple skills to constantly use than 1 I win button. with teched scales gold rage can hit up to 1700 dmg per hit. avarage 1350 per hit. Only named mobs can survive this. All other skills can probably kill another mob but then your playing the 15 seconds and I win game until the cooldown of those skills finally come up.

Dragon casters I do not want to burst your bubble. But as a lunus I can easly take the whole fire opal spawn with the named golem all at once and rip them a new one. Its really all in your tanking scales and taking the right xtals to provide more protection on what you plan to farm. sadly as it is tooth and claw has the major advantage.

which brings it down to this.

Our heals are fine as they are. the breezes do their job and a teched heal spell every 10 seconds with heavy armor you can survive. (i know i soloed sog)

our damage spells also need a buff or two.

the acc on the breaths ... needs some help.

Now seriously. do somthing about gold rage and make the other skills up to par to it where you constanly use all of your skills to your disposal.

P.S. why are dragons all right handed? we have another forpaw we can use to swing. have them alternate every now and then.

[Dracaena]

A couple things that I can think

Menacing presence: longer cast range
I have been playing body guard lately for low level crafter in t5/6 areas. It gets crazy when the mob shows up on the far side of my guildie, she is running in a circle trying to stay alive and I am scrambling to get close enough to do something.

Primal Roar: Why do primal dragons have to spam that key (consult char stat window and try again) to get a good buff where t&c dragons are one click and done? This has been a pet peeve of mine for years.

Probably think of more things when I am not half asleep and on the way to bed. *evil chuckle* I might be back.


Dracaena

[velveeta]

well, technically i guess i am not a helian or a lunus yet, so this maybe be meaningless, but i loved spiked scales, myself -
altho making it more like cloak of thorns would be awesome - draggys really could use a cot like ability.....

except for stances - i don't even know what they are for......i just keep the green one on cause i like the green circle around me when i run.....



i don't know - being a noob, i truly do use all those abilities and for the most part, i like them. more damage and/or less ability downtime is never amiss, but i don't think i would really be in favour of losing any of the abilities.....
as an old d&d player, i am of the philosophy that its not what you have, its how you use it........
you would be surprised what a wand of wonder can do at the perfect moment.......

[Dhalin]

Our damage is significanly increased. Many just dont know that.

Fully Tech'd Dralnok's Doom Gear is like "Endgame" Gear in any other MMORPG. Compared to WoW, it is like wearing armor from ICC25 or something. The best the game currently has to offer. Trying to balance the game around the assumption that -everyone- has it, is fallacy. Only the current "endgame" encounters should be balanced in that manner.

due to this no regular mob, not even giant ice beetles cannot survive 1 smack of goldrage and goldrage alone.

This further bolsters the point I made earlier, about Gold Rage being Overpowered, and the fact it needs a nerf in favor of buffing everything else to compensate.

once again 2 min = 8 gold rages = 8 dead mobs.

Ditto. When you have endgame dragons agreeing that everything starts and ends with Gold Rage in mind, is when you need to change something.

Menacing precence. Since I do constantly hunt for epic bosses this has its use. however only if it lands. Sometimes im lucky to keep the bosses to smack me but its on a long cool down and if it hits you only have a 50% chance to intercept. Make this an aggroing skill. Then tanker dragons can keep those poor poor str glass cannon dragons alive (pity cuz they do just as much dmg as i do )

They do the "str glass cannon" thing because they aren't fortunate enough to have full Dralnok's Doom techs on all their scales like you do. They must become "Glass Cannon" dragons to compete and put out respectable damage. Once they get ahold of some of the special stuff you have, then they could think about becoming more survivable.

Until then... on the subject of Menacing Presence...

Change it to how Taunt works in most other games. Make 2 versions, one for Melee and one for Caster (or have the ability automatically choose the best stat to base itself off of). When used, it places a debuff on the target if it hits (based upon T&C or Primal, depending on the dragon using it, or which ability is used if the game can't do this). With this debuff, 50-75% chance that a mob's hostile action is to be done to the dragon who casted it (Biped Tanking classes should get a similar ability while we're at it).

The mob may only have 1 of these debuffs, and the aforementioned biped abilities would be counted the same as the dragon ones. I'd make the taunt recycle and duration both 30 seconds. This way, we have more grouping dynamics, and a way to actually control mobs, but yet not control _everything_ a mob does. The 30 second recast on the Taunt-like abilities make it so that you cannot position 2 dragons so that a melee-based mob isn't forced to endlessly run back and forth between them while everyone else beats the crap out of it, etc.

[Darkwing_Duck]

On the subject of Primal Rebirth, I propose giving dragons a second Resurrection spell.

This spell would NOT avoid death points, cost 2500 Hoard and have a 10 minute or so recycle. Maybe name it "Primal Revive" or something, I dunno. Heck, make it quested or something if you feel the need to, and have it bring the person back with a very minimal amount of HP, maybe like 25% of their max or something, who knows... but dragons could use a Rez that doesn't take a full hour to cool down. That's basically saying "Bring a Biped if you want resses!" but then things like ARoP, you can't exactly do that, and deaths do happen.

I totaly agree! maybe make it a questable spell, like Spirit bolt, where it goes in teirs, first being minimal HP, and go up from there, but doesn`t prevent DPs. it would make ARoP much easier, I`ve had many ocurrences where I was pressed for time, and needed to rez someone. but my Primal Rebirth was down. plus there`s not always enough players on in the late night when I play to really help on a rift run. having a faster cooldown rez, would help loads in a situation like this.

[Zanukk Sytheclaw]

Fully Tech'd Dralnok's Doom Gear is like "Endgame" Gear in any other MMORPG. Compared to WoW, it is like wearing armor from ICC25 or something. The best the game currently has to offer. Trying to balance the game around the assumption that -everyone- has it, is fallacy. Only the current "endgame" encounters should be balanced in that manner.

This further bolsters the point I made earlier, about Gold Rage being Overpowered, and the fact it needs a nerf in favor of buffing everything else to compensate.

Ditto. When you have endgame dragons agreeing that everything starts and ends with Gold Rage in mind, is when you need to change something.

They do the "str glass cannon" thing because they aren't fortunate enough to have full Dralnok's Doom techs on all their scales like you do. They must become "Glass Cannon" dragons to compete and put out respectable damage. Once they get ahold of some of the special stuff you have, then they could think about becoming more survivable.

Until then... on the subject of Menacing Presence...

Change it to how Taunt works in most other games. Make 2 versions, one for Melee and one for Caster (or have the ability automatically choose the best stat to base itself off of). When used, it places a debuff on the target if it hits (based upon T&C or Primal, depending on the dragon using it, or which ability is used if the game can't do this). With this debuff, 50-75% chance that a mob's hostile action is to be done to the dragon who casted it (Biped Tanking classes should get a similar ability while we're at it).

The mob may only have 1 of these debuffs, and the aforementioned biped abilities would be counted the same as the dragon ones. I'd make the taunt recycle and duration both 30 seconds. This way, we have more grouping dynamics, and a way to actually control mobs, but yet not control _everything_ a mob does. The 30 second recast on the Taunt-like abilities make it so that you cannot position 2 dragons so that a melee-based mob isn't forced to endlessly run back and forth between them while everyone else beats the crap out of it, etc.

whoa whoa whoa! stop there and think.

I do not mean to be rude. But you have No idea what your talking about.

One the techs can be found in the market with ease, anyone has access to them there is no need to Raid or anything of the like to obtain them. Once you hit lvl 80 you can get these teches on your scales . No epic rare drops. This is accessable to even hatchlings who hit lvl 80 craft.

The str, glass cannon is the misconception of dragons thinking that str = more dmg, it does NOT mean they do not have access to the tech gear mention above which can be added to str scales also.

Str does NOT add dmg to your attacks, it does however increase your Tooth and Claw which add damage to your attacks. It takes tons to make a difference and infact fully str scaled armored dragons will deal maybe 40 to 50 more dmg per goldrage hit (tested) then an armored or health scaled dragon..

Once again NONE of the teches is endgame. you got that wrong. No gear i use is Hidden epic gear that drops off bosses. the fact that the lvl 100 crafted claw with the tech for chance to hit ends up outpreforming demon claw (you dont miss) add your fangs of fury for a slower attack wich causes all your skills to hit even harder due to the delay ajusted dmg.

Once again you dont need to kill any fancy boss to get these items, the cosingers will have it or high chance most dragons have these new teches already and are willing to create them.

very accessable NO END GAME GEAR.

I also want to point out that there are tier 1 thru 5 variants of the teches, thus at any level you can have these said teches on your scales which significanly increase a dragons damage vs someone who does not have them so yes a lvl 10 dragon can have all the techs it can get on its scales and out preform other lvl 10 dragons.

[Veruliyam]

Yay!

Someone finally noticed Bite does damage over time!

I'm curious as to why Dragon Reach is a flame-based skill...?

What is the basis in lore for it? An extension of a dragon's flaming breath, focused to a ray? Or a primal-based attack that does flame damage?

I think it should be based on breath or primal skill.

[cauri_order]

Str does NOT add dmg to your attacks, it does however increase your Tooth and Claw which add damage to your attacks. It takes tons to make a difference and infact fully str scaled armored dragons will deal maybe 40 to 50 more dmg per goldrage hit (tested) then an armored or health scaled dragon..

Errrr, this is flat out wrong, unless of course they changed something over the years. Here's the posting from one of the original devs that details what does what when it comes to stats and skills:

Attributes:
Note that all skills are slightly increased by some or all of the four main attributes, so they have that value in addition to the specifics below.
Strength: Increases damage with physical attacks. It is 50% more effective than attack skill in this respect.
Power: Increases damage with magical attacks. It is 50% more effective than casting skill in this respect.
Dexterity: Increases chance to hit with physical attacks, and decreases chance to be hit by physical attacks. It is 1/3 as effective in these roles than attack and evasion skills.
Focus: Increases chance to hit with magical attacks, and decreases chance to be hit by magical attacks. It is 1/3 as effective in these roles than casting and magic defense (which is being renamed to magic evasion) skills. Also increases friendly healing spell amounts by 1/2 as much as does the casting skill for the healing spell (usually Life).

Skills:
Offensive skills (including weapon-using skills as well as spellcasting skills for attack spells): Competes equally against the evasion or magic defense of the target for chance to hit. Weapon skills also compete equally against incoming attack skills for initial Parry checks. Also adds to damage by 2/3 as much as Strength or Power.
Defensive skills (evasion and magic defense): Competes equally against incoming attack skills. Evasion is also re-checked equally against incoming attack skill for initial Dodge checks.
Healing skills (mostly Life): Adds to healing amounts by twice as much as Focus. Note that the healing amount cannot exceed double the healing spell's specified range.
Shield skill: Competes equally with incoming attack skills for initial Block checks.

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...hlight=smeglor

Link for the full info. Again, this may have changed in the intervening years but I highly doubt it.

[cauri_order]

To Amon's original post:

• Staggering Howl - used as a filler. I never really notice any change in the mobs delay

• Snarl - on some mobs it seems effective, on others not so much

• Galewind - cooldown much too long for the damage inflicted

• Ravage - even with the bonus to hit and over 1200 in T&C this still misses roughly 20-30% of the time

• Gold Rage - in all honesty could use a nerf. Way too much damage. Would prefer the damage be split amongst other dragon abilities

• Tail Whip - why isn't this an AoE stun as you become an adult and then Ancient?

• Bite - useful for the DoT component, but very long cooldown

• Silver Strike - feels good for the damage output and cooldown vs hoard cost

• Drain Strike - the final version gained through the ARoP does very nice damage and good health return. cooldown is long

• Reach - cooldown too long for it to be used for what I'm assuming it's intended purpose.

Now most of the dragon base abilities, and well even the quested abilities are geared towards a melee dragon. Aside from Galewind, spiked scales and now Drulkar's Wrath a casting dragon has very little to pull out of his/her bag of tricks from the dragon adv class or dragon quested abilities.

Hopefully they can add some new level up abilities or additional quested abilities that focus on the casting side of the dragon class:

• Multicast like ability - call it primal fury or something similar
• Primal Resist debuff - something a caster can actually hit with. In up tier content, a caster focused dragon will most like miss with Gold Rage
• Enhanced Prime Bolt - every other caster school gets one. Decent instant damage on a fairly low cooldown

I'll keep my talons crossed.

Amon - are you going to make a separate thread on the breath weapons? I'm sure we'd all love to chime in on those

[Dragonboy]

Now most of the dragon base abilities, and well even the quested abilities are geared towards a melee dragon. Aside from Galewind, spiked scales and now Drulkar's Wrath a casting dragon has very little to pull out of his/her bag of tricks from the dragon adv class or dragon quested abilities.

Hopefully they can add some new level up abilities or additional quested abilities that focus on the casting side of the dragon class.

Why do we need more abilities? It could be an idea to if possible link all the dragon abilities to both TnC and Primal/power and use which ever skill is higher, This way all abilities would be usable for both melee and casters.
This would mean that casters would probably get a slight advantage over the melee dragons, but frankly I don't care about that.

[LOVWYRM]

do not nerf gold rage.
It makes no sense for me.
As a hybride I`m not overpowered with that.
Helians aren`t either.

Pure Lunus might make much damage with that- but they have to do without other abilities or spells.

[Dakoren Ironhand]

Changing the major abilities dragons have currently would most likely do more harm than good without changing the ones that arent used first and let people get used to them.

Other than the ones named by Amon I would say that both the spells Unrelenting Winds and Grazing Winds arent used much either.

[Raeshlavik]

Why do we need more abilities? It could be an idea to if possible link all the dragon abilities to both TnC and Primal/power and use which ever skill is higher, This way all abilities would be usable for both melee and casters.
This would mean that casters would probably get a slight advantage over the melee dragons, but frankly I don't care about that.

It would make things easier from the development side if everything was homogenized like this, but I don't know if others (myself included) would relish suddenly being a copy of every other dragon out there... We sort of do that already as there is a hard level cap we all hit, a standardized set of abilities we all get, and we don't even have the benefit of sexual dimorphism so our parties are fairly boring.

I rather enjoy being one of a handful of Helian dragons and a member of an even smaller 'pure caster' segment within that group. Yes, it's slower to level, yes it's slower to craft, and yes I'd like it to get a bit easier - but not at the expense of loosing my, at this point hard won, individuality.

((Quietly sings "I've gotta be me" while having a meal at the Clearport Tavern to reduce his deathpoint load))

[Raeshlavik]

Primal Roar: Why do primal dragons have to spam that key (consult char stat window and try again) to get a good buff where t&c dragons are one click and done? This has been a pet peeve of mine for years.

Ha. Never really noticed that, but yep, the tool tip on the ability even gives a range (Primal Roar III (+95 to +125 power / +89 attack on spells)) versus (Determination III (+100 strength / +90 attack on melee)).

[LOVWYRM]

isen`t it a very good thing, that nearly no dragon looks like another?
A great feature of Istaria.

Same goes for how to play a dragon.
Its obviers in this thread and in others- we all have different opinions and experiences "how to"

I totally agree with Raesh: Do not change the variety we dragons have.
Its a nighmare to become a clone of a dragon.

Its a challange to make a dragon YOUR dragon, and to find out how to play it.