Dragon Ancient Buffs

[Andrakhyn]

Especially with the current free to play scheme, giving players more reaons to want to try and keep playing a Dragon makes sense.

Bipeds have 28 adventurer and 19 crafting schools. There's a huge amount of variety in terms of gameplay and potentially years worth of grinding.

Personally I love Dragons. They, and their lairs, look amazing. But combat is a bit one dimensional and for most fights success equals executing gold rage whenever it's off cooldown. Because all Dragons are practically identical and bipeds can't fly, most Dragon group combat is a bunch of Dragons piling in on the target and gold-raging it into oblivion.

Putting the notion of extra Dragon Adventurer schools aside, I think there is a very simple way to offer more variety.

Extreme buffs + caster equivalent of gold rage.

Dragon Adventurer is a hybrid class but currently skewed very much towards melee because of gold rage. I've heard a caster equivalent of gold rage is currently being tested? I hope that rumour is true.

What do I mean by extreme buffs? Basically grown-up / ancient versions of Determination and Primal Roar.

Rank V Determination = +180 strength, +162 attack skill.
Rank V Primal Roar = +155 to +205 Power, + 161 spell attack skill.

I propose a series of Ancient Fortitude, Ancient Mysticism and Ancient Benevolence buffs which would effectively allow Dragons to specialise their roles in combat.

Because Dragons are already very capable in the melee DPS department, piling on more power could create balance issues so Ancient Fortitude would be more of a tanking buff. It could offer +armour and + health.

Ancient Mysticism would obviously be for spellcasters, offering more power and spell attack skill than Primal Roar (enough to make spellcasting viable) but also debuffing strength, attack skill and maybe also armour and health.

Ancient Benevolence would allow for a healer / buffer role. It could debuff strength, attack skill, power and spell attack skill and buff primal (for healing power) and possiby allow the use of some new buffs/heals which only work when Ancient Benevolence is active.

Notes

1. To keep these in line with biped multi-classing and how they need to visit trainers to switch, the Ancient buffs might require Dragons to visit a particular location/trainer or be on very long cooldown timers which don't allow rapid switching.

2. The Ancient buffs would need to be marked as undispellable.

3. As per Determination and Primal Roar, these buffs would all need to be incompatible with each other (i.e. can only activate one at a time).

4. These would be quested abilities and could come either as a single buff each or a series of progressively more powerful versions, eg. Ancient Fortitude I through V.

5. In exactly the same manner that additional dragon adventurer schools wouldn't need to change the existing dragon adventurer school, these ancient buffs would in no way change existing dragon gameplay for those who enjoy it. They could keep playing their dragons exactly as they do now.

[sparkcal]

Especially with the current free to play scheme, giving players more reaons to want to try and keep playing a Dragon makes sense.

Bipeds have 28 adventurer and 19 crafting schools. There's a huge amount of variety in terms of gameplay and potentially years worth of grinding.

Personally I love Dragons. They, and their lairs, look amazing. But combat is a bit one dimensional and for most fights success equals executing gold rage whenever it's off cooldown. Because all Dragons are practically identical and bipeds can't fly, most Dragon group combat is a bunch of Dragons piling in on the target and gold-raging it into oblivion.

Putting the notion of extra Dragon Adventurer schools aside, I think there is a very simple way to offer more variety.

Extreme buffs + caster equivalent of gold rage.

Dragon Adventurer is a hybrid class but currently skewed very much towards melee because of gold rage. I've heard a caster equivalent of gold rage is currently being tested? I hope that rumour is true.

What do I mean by extreme buffs? Basically grown-up / ancient versions of Determination and Primal Roar.

Rank V Determination = +180 strength, +162 attack skill.
Rank V Primal Roar = +155 to +205 Power, + 161 spell attack skill.

I propose a series of Ancient Fortitude, Ancient Mysticism and Ancient Benevolence buffs which would effectively allow Dragons to specialise their roles in combat.

Because Dragons are already very capable in the melee DPS department, piling on more power could create balance issues so Ancient Fortitude would be more of a tanking buff. It could offer +armour and + health.

Ancient Mysticism would obviously be for spellcasters, offering more power and spell attack skill than Primal Roar (enough to make spellcasting viable) but also debuffing strength, attack skill and maybe also armour and health.

Ancient Benevolence would allow for a healer / buffer role. It could debuff strength, attack skill, power and spell attack skill and buff primal (for healing power) and possiby allow the use of some new buffs/heals which only work when Ancient Benevolence is active.

Notes

1. To keep these in line with biped multi-classing and how they need to visit trainers to switch, the Ancient buffs might require Dragons to visit a particular location/trainer or be on very long cooldown timers which don't allow rapid switching.

2. The Ancient buffs would need to be marked as undispellable.

3. As per Determination and Primal Roar, these buffs would all need to be incompatible with each other (i.e. can only activate one at a time).

4. These would be quested abilities and could come either as a single buff each or a series of progressively more powerful versions, eg. Ancient Fortitude I through V.

5. In exactly the same manner that additional dragon adventurer schools wouldn't need to change the existing dragon adventurer school, these ancient buffs would in no way change existing dragon gameplay for those who enjoy it. They could keep playing their dragons exactly as they do now.

even though i dont have a ancient dragon char myself i agree it would be helpful to have this

[Racktor]

I've heard a caster equivalent of gold rage is currently being tested? I hope that rumour is true.

I believe it was called Golden Wrath or something similar and was canceled due to being overpowered. That is what I've heard through 'gossip' in Marketplace, but it'd be nice to get an input from the devs about this.

I'll reply tomorrow to the entire post once I have my brainpower back and am not nearly writing in 3 different languages that are spiraling around in my head.

~Racktor

Quick edit: A way to keep the Golden Wrath (or what it was called) spell to primal-only and not available to more strength-based dragons is to make it require 1,400 primal.
On my rift runs with others when I ask for a primal check, most melee were within the lower 1200s range while my caster and other casters were in the upper 1300 or lower to mid 1400.
Don't know if that would be really fair though since casters would get both GR and GW but GR wouldnt hit for much anyways....
Eh, this is off topic.

[LOVWYRM]

This has been discussed in various threads.
Do not mean to interrupt discussion here- but pls search if you are interested in what the community said about this issue already.

@Racktor What you wrote in small letters:
Good idea-but 1400 is not enough-Lov is hybride-its not prob for her to push up primal
to 1400 without nerving her gold rage. I happyly explain to you how to- gimme a tell ingame:-)

[Andrakhyn]

I believe it was called Golden Wrath or something similar and was canceled due to being overpowered. That is what I've heard through 'gossip' in Marketplace, but it'd be nice to get an input from the devs about this.

It came up in guild chat recently.

I'd read about it being tested and abandoned years ago and said as much. This guildie said no, some alternative form of gold-rage was being actively tested now.

I don't know if it is true - why I labelled it a rumour - just that I'd like it to be true.

Re the balance issues, I think the easiest way to balance it is to put gold rage and gold wrath on the same cooldown timer.

If the player is wearing +str gear and has a lick of sense then they'll use gold rage unless they're at range, in which case they have the option of executing a relatively weaker gold wrath. If the player is wearing +power gear and has a lick of sense then they'll use gold wrath regardless.

I imagine there are balance issues beyond that related to defence, though. Typically the flipside of good ranged damage is poor melee defence. So maybe if gold wrath applied a temporary armour debuff to the user, that would do the trick.

Story from the battlefield...

I already knew caster-type dragons were horribly gimped, but that message got driven home hard when I was playing a hatchling last week and had to kill some of the ghost dragons near chiconis.

There are two varieties - a melee dragon and a caster which mostly just fires primal bolt at you. Guess which one seriously hurts and which one just tickles?

I am a died-in-the-scales Helian myself, but in any kind of conflict with the Lunus I would totally bet on the other side winning.

[Northwind]

With all those proposals regarding aditional classes for dragons and this spell that should be the GR equivalent you forget the one and most important issue: the current team at Virtrium (and not only them) consider Dragons being overpowered. That is a fact.
They'd love to change that, but on the same time they're aware that nerfing dragons will make them lose subscriptions.
Adding a spell equivalent to GR will make them even more overpowered allowing them to be utterly effective with both melee and spells - and that will not happen.

As it is now, dragons are gimped badly when it comes to spells and their melee prowess is sometimes negated by high miss rate provided by certain mob buffs. Having a GR spell will negate those buffs, not to mention that a ranged spell GR is even more OP that a melee GR.

Keep in mind that some of us, me included, suggested an improvement for the epic spells like Volcano and Drulkar's Wrath - which are both epic but only in gfx, their DPS being pathetic at best.
What was Amon's answer? It was something along the line of: that will not happen without altering the current dragon school, hinting the nerf of GR.

But,
If you insist to have a GR spell then the only way (as it being easier to implement and not making Dragons even more OP-ed) would be to make it single target and with a very short range (like melee range) and having it would mean to lose GR entirely.
Not sharing the same timer, but sharing the same ability slot. So you do a quest to get either the GR spell or the GR melee - with the quest being repeatable but on a timer. That way you are not stuck with one of them forever but at the same time not being able to switch them from fight to fight.


Still, as I pointed in several other threads, I'd rather not have the dragons touched at all.
We're the melee beasts not sissy weirdos waving claws in the air.
And btw, this comes from a Helian.

[Andrakhyn]

@Northwind

1) This thread isn't proposing additional classes.

2) Re what it is proposing, dragons would be no more powerful than they are now. They'd just have a few different styles of gameplay at their disposal.

The proposed buffs all come with self-balancing debuffs, eg. more magical power at the expence of melee strength and maybe also armour / hp.

3) Re a caster equivalent of gold rage making dragons too overpowered, I'd refer you to my post directly preceding yours.

If a spell version was on the same cooldown timer, seriously debuffed your armour for 10-15 seconds and did no more damage than the melee one, you wouldn't use it unless you were reasonably certain you weren't going to be attacked by anything in the near future.

There's no issue of overpowered-ness anywhere in what I've suggested.

___________

I don't doubt what you say about the dev's typical response to stuff like this. I've read some of their recent contributions.

Worth putting these ideas forward though. This would be a relatively simple and cheap way to achieve something lots of players seem to want.

[Northwind]

Oh but it is...

Allow me to quote myself

As it is now, dragons are gimped badly when it comes to spells and their melee prowess is sometimes negated by high miss rate provided by certain mob buffs. Having a GR spell will negate those buffs, not to mention that a ranged spell GR is even more OP that a melee GR.

Again, what are you asking?
A melee Gold Rage AND a spell Gold Rage sharing the 15s timer?
That would be OP indeed as it will make us very strong in melee AND very strong in spells.

I would love it, but come on. Lets be realistic - that won't happen.

[AmonGwareth]

A melee Gold Rage AND a spell Gold Rage sharing the 15s timer?

Northwind hit the nail on the head. This is the exact reason that a Primal version of Gold Rage for Casters has never been released. We haven't found a good solution to this issue without nerfing Gold Rage in the process.

[Northwind]

Amon, I proposed a solution several posts above, allow me to quote it since I have the feeling that it got lost in the wall of text.

But,
If you insist to have a GR spell then the only way (as it being easier to implement and not making Dragons even more OP-ed) would be to make it single target and with a very short range (like melee range) and having it would mean to lose GR entirely.
Not sharing the same timer, but sharing the same ability slot. So you do a quest to get either the GR spell or the GR melee - with the quest being repeatable but on a timer. That way you are not stuck with one of them forever but at the same time not being able to switch them from fight to fight.

No idea how hard could be to implement - sorry for making the assumption that it would be easy in my quote- that's for your team to analyze, but I kind of like it and it would certainly make happy the caster part of dragon population.

[Arzel Rashemi]

I could go for that Northwind. The way I see it is that if you choose to be a purely spellcasting dragon, then your claws should be 'soft.' I'm one of those pure spellcasters, I don't have a single point in str, dex, or T&C. I wouldn't mind losing GR if it meant gaining a spellcaster version of it that hit only one single target.

There are two other things I could see that would still make it OP to a normal GR. Triplecast and range. Easy fixes tho. Lessen the damage dealt to make up for the gain of range. And do something that they did with Shining Blades, make it so it can not be triplecast.

However, as a pure spellcaster, I don't exactly find myself 'gimped' compared to other dragons. Just ask those who have hunted with me. You learn to take on a different methodology. I have to use different strategies and tactics on my targets, that's all.

[Northwind]

If it is ranged, then it would be rather OP to be able to kite an still hit something with 3x1000 at 30m range. If you don't make it triple casted then missing it means missing 3k damage at once instead of still having a chance to hit with one of the 3 spells.

But I'd rather have the casted GR the same as melee one: that is the same damage (tripple casted), the same short range (maybe the same range as normal breath attacks) and ofc single target.
Also Primal Cast should not work with the casted GR

Edit: Having the casted GR performing exactly the same (or how closely a spell can perform when compared with a melee attack) as the melee one will also have the advantage of not allowing endless debates and whines around the "the spell version is better / the melee version is better"

[Arzel Rashemi]

If it is ranged, then it would be rather OP to be able to kite an still hit something with 3x1000 at 30m range. If you don't make it triple casted then missing it means missing 3k damage at once instead of still having a chance to hit with one of the 3 spells.

But I'd rather have the casted GR the same as melee one: that is the same damage (tripple casted), the same short range (maybe the same range as normal breath attacks) and ofc single target.
Also Primal Cast should not work with the casted GR

I meant the ability of using Primal Cast with it Northwind. Sorry for the confusion on my part.

[Raptress]

I always found the idea of a single-target Gold Burst (the original name of the theoretical spell-equivalent to GR) to be counterintuitive. Dragon spellcasters are all about AoEs, and two of them have no range at all. Gold Burst therefore, to me, doesn't need to have any range either. I'd rather see it take the form of a point-blank AoE that does something like half to a third of one GR swing's worth of damage to each mob around the caster. That is, each mob in range of the AoE would probably take 500ish damage max. That number may be a little high; I'm just guesstimating here on what would not be too OP.

I used to advocate the idea of GR and Gold Burst sharing a timer before, but I can see now that it is still an issue. You'd still have both abilities at your disposal, able to pick which one you wanted to use. There may be a solution, but it requires that a dev clarify if it is possible: can dragon abilities be removed (and possibly re-added)? What I am thinking is a non-trivial quest that will switch out GR for Gold Burst (and maybe vice versa). This way, a player would only have access to one ability at a time, and it would not be cheap to switch back and forth.

[meepsa]

I always found the idea of a single-target Gold Burst (the original name of the theoretical spell-equivalent to GR) to be counterintuitive. Dragon spellcasters are all about AoEs, and two of them have no range at all. Gold Burst therefore, to me, doesn't need to have any range either. I'd rather see it take the form of a point-blank AoE that does something like half to a third of one GR swing's worth of damage to each mob around the caster. That is, each mob in range of the AoE would probably take 500ish damage max. That number may be a little high; I'm just guesstimating here on what would not be too OP.

I used to advocate the idea of GR and Gold Burst sharing a timer before, but I can see now that it is still an issue. You'd still have both abilities at your disposal, able to pick which one you wanted to use. There may be a solution, but it requires that a dev clarify if it is possible: can dragon abilities be removed (and possibly re-added)? What I am thinking is a non-trivial quest that will switch out GR for Gold Burst (and maybe vice versa). This way, a player would only have access to one ability at a time, and it would not be cheap to switch back and forth.

^this, this all the way.

[Velea]

Before anyone gets too excited here... There is no way to "undo" the completion of a quest. So once you did a particular Gold Rage quest, it's done and can't be undone. So the idea of having a choice between "Gold Rage" and "Gold Burst" would have to be one which each player made once.

This is in NO way saying that we are even considering Gold Burst again, because we aren't... as has been pointed out, this idea has been hashed and rehashed in numerous other threads over the years. (Search Results for Gold Burst)

Feel free to rehash it again, but I wanted to be sure you understood that we can't "undo" a quest nor can we take back an ability once it is earned without causing a LOT of distress among the player base.

[Northwind]

Well Raptress and Meepsa, now you know why Gold Burst is not in game yet.
A powerfull AoE or even PBAoE on 15s timer is not acceptable since it will give dragons too much power and will allow mass-farming.
A powerfull AoE spell, sharing the 15s timer with Gold Rage, is even less likely to get accepted.
Hence my proposal for a single target, breath range Gold Burst.

Velea, no one said to undo the completion of a quest.
There is a NPC that gives the quest for Gold Rage abilities. That NPC could also give the quest for Gold Burst ability.
The only thing that needs to be sorted is the trick that will allow the abilities to overwrite each other*** (or to invalidate each other) then make those quests repeatable on a timer, lets say 24h for example.

Also YOU, developers, will not take anything from anyone. The player himself will decide at any given time if he wants Gold Rage OR Gold Burst. Not both. One OR another.

So that's my rehash


***Edit: Which is already in game, I think, since Gold Rage VII overwrites Gold Rage VI and so on

[Racktor]

There aren't any search results, Vel? "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

[Velea]

Just search on Gold Burst, Racktor. It's been hashed and rehashed to death. Not sure why the link doesn't work.

[Andrakhyn]

A melee Gold Rage AND a spell Gold Rage sharing the 15s timer?
That would be OP indeed as it will make us very strong in melee AND very strong in spells.

Northwind hit the nail on the head. This is the exact reason that a Primal version of Gold Rage for Casters has never been released. We haven't found a good solution to this issue without nerfing Gold Rage in the process.

1) I have to state the obvious? They use different stats. Even though you can use one or the other every 15s, depending on your scales (and training point allocation) one will be much stronger than the other, so you can't be strong in both melee and spells at the same time.

2) If you're worried about players equipping power scales, firing off the ranged version, then equipping strength scales for melee combat (tedious but do-able I suppose), recode gold rage and the caster equivalent to be like Infix Fury and Summon Flame Elements.

Gold rage could still function exactly as it does now, but it will only execute if you've buffed yourself with let's call it.... Dragon Rage. Dragon Rage does nothing but let you fire gold rage - by invisibly adding an effectively infinite number of charges for it (either just a huge number or make the supply auto-refresh).

Same would apply to the caster version. And just to be clear, they would both still consume hoard as they do now.

Put both buffs (undispellable of course) on a 20+ minute cooldown timer and guess what? Players have to choose to use one or the other for at least 20+ minutes at a time.

3) As previously suggested you could apply an armour debuff to the ranged version. Hoard fuels gold rage and passively magically boosts AC - so a caster ability fuelled by hoard that temporarily debuffs your AC has a built-in lore explanation.

4) As per the OP, tie it into the Ancient Buffs.

Gold Rage could be the default dragon mega-attack. But buffed with Ancient Mysticism / Benevolence either gold rage functions differently (ranged spell attack or heal) or not at all.

It's possible to do this without creating any balance issues.
_______________

@Velea - thanks for confirming you're not working on gold burst. I'll be sure to mention it when next I see this guildie on.