Ancient Rite of Passage - Helian and Lunus weapon crystals

[Alisto]

Something I've been mulling over - why not add a

For the Helian crystal-
+10 to range for all spells

For the Lunus-
+10 to-hit for all melee attacks

I've found that my spell attacks rarely miss (when I bother to use them) even on my melee character, while my melee attacks sometimes suffer horrible miss steaks. +range would help helians with kiting and +tohit would help lunus hit stuff more without being grossly overpowered or changing anything overmuch.

I thought it would be nice to add a little something 'more' to the crystals that only ancients get beyond a stat and -delay/-recycle, as to me, it's a toss up between my ancient crystal and another crystal (. Something along the lines of these changes would make the ancient crystals more valuable while (Hopefully) still allowing for some choice in crystals.

Thoughts?

[Guaran]

I've suggested ( http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...-Rage-crystals ) to make them passive buffs, but also to grant both buffs to all ancients. Rop is a political faction, not a funnel to a particular combat style. It was originally given some specific combat buffs in a desire to differentiate dragon combat, however tying that to a political faction was a horrible choice. For RoP (originally) only Lunus got Lightning Breath, only Helians got Ice Breath, Lunus got a +20 to t&c, Helians got a +20 to primal. The skill differences were small enough to not really make a huge difference either way.

Then Arop comes along, and the only difference between the factions is the weapon crystals Fangs of Fury vs The Primal Rage. However these have pretty decent bonuses which DO affect combat. +50 skill, chance to buff you with an additional +250 skill, plus a -5% delay/recycle modifier (still broken for Fangs of Fury, and my post above mentions this broken-ness and it is from 2010...) While I am happy for the decency of the combat buffs from the weapon crystals, not happy that now the factions (which are political) are further separated in combat skills, when they shouldn't really have any combat differences at all.

Fast forward to now, the breath attacks have been opened up to both sides. Which is a good first step.

Please fix Fangs of Fury's delay and recycle buffs.. (Fix the Bards Tails modifier as well, it only works for spells, not melee)
And make both sets of skills granted to all who complete Arop. Easy way to do that is just make it a passive buff.


As far as the original suggestion, I have to sideways disagree, since it just furthers the separation in combat which shouldn't exist to begin with. If the suggested buffs gained were some new quest for Ancients only (they remind me of the Dragon's Edge buff which all dragons can get from an early quest from the Adventurer trainers), I think that's great. Make them passive like Dragon's Edge. Perhaps they could be Dragons Edge II (+20 to-hit vs the +10 for Dragon's Edge).

[LOVWYRM]

pls devs, listen to what Guaran says.

[Alisto]

Rop is a political faction, not a funnel to a particular combat style

I agree with this, however....

Personally, I -like- that there is a difference between someone who wanted to be a pure caster and someone who wanted to be a pure melee. Giving all ancient both buffs as a passive or both crystals seem a bit too 'give everyone everything!' type thing. I'm not saying that is what it is and it is nothing else, but it leans a bit much toward that for my taste. I -like- that the choices I make effect my character, though forcing all Helians to get /this/ crystal and all Lunus to get /that/ crystal was not the best idea.

It would be nice to finish the ARoP and be able to choose which crystal I wanted. *ahem* But wandering from the original topic...

Dragon's Edge was the inspiration for the suggestion - mainly the +10 to range for spells, as I believe that Dragon's Edge only applies a +10 to hit for spells ( *checking this* ) and didn't want something added that was just another of the same stat for Helians.

Here we go.
Dragon's Edge I.PNG
The description says it applies to both melee and spell attacks, but the thing below it says spells only.

Again, I'm in favor of a choice - I'd like it if there were two quests, one which gave a +to hit for melee attacks and one which gave a +range to spells, and an ancient could only do one.

[Terao]

Maybe it would be a good choice to take this part out of the ARoP into a seperate questline - to have the possibilty to decide whether being a caster or melee fighter to a later point of the game *after* becoming ancient and independant of Lunus or Helian fraction.

[Guaran]

...Personally, I -like- that there is a difference between someone who wanted to be a pure caster and someone who wanted to be a pure melee. Giving all ancient both buffs as a passive or both crystals seem a bit too 'give everyone everything!' type thing....

The thing is, if they are both granted as passive buffs, and someone wants to be a pure spellcaster for example, that choice is not hurt by their political faction. Nor does having the Fangs of Fury buff land on them while using mainly spells even affect their combat anyway. It's there, but doesn't hurt anything.

The way it is now, you have to know waaay ahead of time, before you start RoP, which combat path you want to pursue, if it is left tied to political faction. If that political faction isn't something you agree with, too bad.

The political factions would be a MUCH more interesting part of the game if the combat was not tied to them, and players could freely choose the faction solely for rp reasons.

And what about those of us who did Rop waay before the huge bonus from Arop was put in? We had no idea that was coming in a few years... Our choice for the political faction is already made. But wait, too bad, you can't get this or that, it's tied to the factions... Really was a bad idea to tie combat to the factions...

[Alisto]

The thing is, if they are both granted as passive buffs, and someone wants to be a pure spellcaster for example, that choice is not hurt by their political faction.

If you look at

Rop is a political faction, not a funnel to a particular combat style

I agree with this

However, I -do- want there to be a difference between someone who is a caster all the way and someone who is simply wearing caster scales with correctly teched spells and uses them, even if that that difference is small(ish). Do I want combat ability to be determined/hurt by faction? No. Do I want a choice in a quest to effect combat ability in a certain area in a small way? Yes.

Nor does having the Fangs of Fury buff land on them while using mainly spells even affect their combat anyway. It's there, but doesn't hurt anything.

What about hybrids, or pretty much every caster I know as I know of no caster who doesn't use Gold Rage/occasional Ravage? The damage there is too good to pass up. Even if I was in all caster armor, I'd still use pretty much all my melee attacks because they hit pretty hard, and even on my melee dragons I still use Drain Bolt, Breaths and Snarl to name a few (though only one actually has drain bolt >.>)

The political factions would be a MUCH more interesting part of the game if the combat was not tied to them

Combat is only tied to factions a small bit. +20 tc or +20 primal doesn't make much of a difference, and while the +50 tc or primal -can-, one can just substitute in a dex or strength crystal if someone a caster going melee and a power/focus crystal if someone is a melee going caster - and so it ends up being not all that much of a difference. I barely even notice -5% delay/recycle when I use my crystal. As I said earlier, I agree that combat style shouldn't be tied to faction, but they're not really as dependent on each other as the sentence I quoted implies (to me, anyway).

The goal I was shooting for with my first post was to make a noticeable difference between someone who went the melee path and someone who went the caster path (though I think I failed with the melee crystal).

Note that it was/is not my goal to have someone who went the caster path be such a much better caster than someone who went the melee path but decided to try their paw as casting. I just want there to be a difference between the two.

Edit for clarity

[Guaran]

I think if a way could be found that lets dragons specialize a bit one way or the other, that's great. Lots of ideas on how this might happen have been put forth over the years... doesn't seem like it is in the cards.

The arop skill difference is an additional 320 tooth&claw for a lunus vs a Helian. +20 from rop, +50 from fang of fury crystal, +250 when the fangs of fury effect procs.

For some of us the faction was chosen long ago, not really fair to be channeled into a combat style based on past gameplay or rp choices.

The downside to packing all of that into a crystal, is that you lose about 250 skill if you decide to wear the epic claws... This alone is why a crafted claw teched with the dragon claw techs will always outstrip the epics... Requests to have the epic claws buffed a bit have been mostly ignored, save for a small buff to the demon claw, but it wasn't buffed enough. Crafted claw with battle forged (+50 t&c) with fangs of fury crystal (+50 t&c) plus chance for fangs effect (+250 t&c) vs demon claw (+100 t&c). Fangs effect has twice the chance to land, lasts 15 seconds. Demon claws' armor shreds has half the chance to land, and lasts only 5 seconds.

Making it passive will give the epic claws a chance.