Hello everyone. This is my first post; I originally submitted it as a ticket suggestion but I was correctly notified that I should post this here for everyone to see/discuss. I hope this adds value to the discussion!

Section 1: A question of uniqueness and diversity

Thoughts on Adept school:

When looking at the Adept school, I noticed that the casting potential is very diverse. Not only would such a school have access to elemental damage types not previously simply available to dragons through abilities/spells, but they also get some signature spells from various biped schools. Let us look at each of them one at a time and I will lay out the significance behind the propositions.

"Rez (Hoard) (Superior)"
This presumably corresponds with Superior Resurrect (given "Superior" in parentheses), which is currently exclusively available to the Healer school. This is one of the significant active abilities healers get access to, and it is unmasterable so it could never be used as any other school. The other unique and unmasterable abilities they are left with are Full Heal and the varying levels of Superior Heal. These abilities including Superior Resurrect are currently significant because:

  • They are the unique "cream of the crop" abilities as a Healer, akin to Lightning Claws as a Storm Disciple.
  • They provide a reason to play the school as your active school, as they are unavailable otherwise.


Making one of Healer's 3 desirable, significant, and signature spells available to the dragon adept school removes some of the little (but improved) existing reason to ever play as Healer. My view as such is that this is not productive design. It detracts significance from one school to add value to another.


"AoE Mez (Hoard) NEW (Ferocious Stare ?)"
This corresponds directly with Sorcerer's Area Spellbind. Such a significant AoE Mez is currently exclusively available to players with Sorcerer as their active school, as it is only obtained as a Sorcerer and is unmasterable. It uses the Mind skill, which is effectively only valuable for ensuring crowd control spells such as this actually apply to targets.

The developer proposition seems to be, for dragons, a spell that is roughly equivalent or (hopefully not) better for the purpose than Area Spellbind, which is only available to Sorcerers. This would not only devalue active school Sorcerers by making one of their most essential and unique skills available to your common adept school dragon, but it also diminishes reason to ever invest in the Mind skill, which is already lacking. The reason for the latter is that presumably, the dragon AoE mez will rely on the Primal skill, which will also benefit some of their various versatile dps spells and/or abilities (including "Bomb NEW (Primal Bomb?)"). Why invest in Mind as a biped sorcerer for the sake of crowd control quality when you could play an adept dragon where you would get crowd control quality and spell damage plus accuracy for most of your spells simply from investment into just Primal.


Thoughts on Juvenile school:

"Mez (Howl)"
A simple mez is okay, and this adds to the school in a way that does not significantly detract from existing schools.

"Root NEW"
I'm not sure why juvenile dragons need a root ontop of their mez and numerous close and far range proposed dps abilities.

"Self Buffs (Roar, Determination)"
They also seem to benefit from access to personal augmentations much like a cleric or healer would. Notice the fact that they are self buffs. While this helps prevent an issue of too may cross-player buffs, it doesn't encourage group play. In fact, removing this self buff access would promote grouping with players who can provide the benefit of buffs (referring specifically to some support specialized schools).

"Lower incoming attack (Negate) (Snarl)"
Defensive abilities directly akin to a warrior's. To be fair, this can't hurt. It gives a nod to defensive strategies as a dragon.

"Rez (high level) NEW (Primal Resurrect ?)"
Now, even resurrection, previously only available to support/niche schools.

"Gift (Self, All Stats)"
I'm not sure why such a spell is even necessary, especially given the reasons I mentioned in regards to the other self buffs.

My impression from the Juvenile Dragon School idea listing is that they get some of the best of every single one of the basic biped adventure schools, and then some bonus dps capabilities on top of that. It appears to be grossly overpowered compared to the basic biped schools individually (I'm referring to cleric, warrior, mage, and scout). It is effectively all of them at once, with no cost in rating, which is very significant. In particular, I can now see no reason to ever play warrior as an active school besides for the skill benefits for other schools. Juvenile does 90% of what warriors can and far more, although, they are slightly squishier. Not that the slight squishiness really matters very much when they have value from heals, buffs, rezzes, numerous forms of magic and melee dps, and both primary forms of crowd control. As is, Juvenile does not seem remotely balanced to me for all of these reasons.

One more small but important thing to delve into further: The Juvenile school does not encourage group play, unlike the basic biped schools seem to do, as they all complement each other in combat. Juvenile, on the other hand, does everything that could be needed in combat on its own. In my opinion, Istaria's combat is at its best when the experience involves two or more players. It showcases many valuable dynamics that are not very apparent when soloing. This notion of group play being valuable should thus be capitalized upon in school design.


Thoughts on Soldier school:

Soldier is much more well designed than the other two for the following reasons:

  1. The school features abilities that encourage group play: "Bolster Friend", and "AoE Group Gift". Perhaps more actively used support abilities would be good as well. For example, an ability that intercepts only the very next attack made against a friendly selected target.
  2. It has its own array of dps abilities and doesn't downright steal abilities from other schools... Wait.


Stop right there, "Enrage (More Strength) (Hoard)"! You look suspiciously like Berserker Rage, but possibly overall more useful, as you are lacking significant downsides. Hoard corresponds with wealth, and in the current state of the game, veteran players have copious amounts of wealth without much to spend it on (trinkets are helping to address this). As such, hoard cost is not a significant downside in the grand scheme of things, and thus should not be balanced around, in my opinion. As an added note, couldn't this enrage ability be abused to boost crafting/gathering skills? After all, it does provide a significant buff to strength. This problem was avoided with the various biped equivalents (Berserker Rage, Unbridled Energy) by having the abilities specifically adjust only combat related modifiers (attack delay, damage percent).


Section 2: Resolve

I understand that the goal is to continue to have dragons be versatile and yet unique characters, and that two of the proposed schools serve as specialization into areas of that versatility. However, versatility is not productively obtained by simply copying it from somewhere else. Not only would these proposed ability lists be eliminating what uniqueness dragons had ability/spell-wise by giving them a myriad of abilities equivalent to biped specialties, but you're removing reason to play as various biped schools. These ability lists are often taking those biped's schools most signature abilities and making them available to dragons schools which have access to a plethora of other copied specialty abilities, along with their own array of abilities.

It raises a question of why play as an active school Sorcerer when you can play as a dragon who is very generously equivalent to Sorcerer, Healer, and Battle Mage all as active schools at the same time. After all, Dragon Adept has two of the non-masterable abilities from Sorcerer and Healer, and have the melee/magic dps capabilities of an active Battle Mage or better.

My recommended strategy is to further build upon what uniqueness dragons already have, rather than taking the best parts from other schools and making a dragon equivalent. That way, value is strictly added, rather than creating overlap that invalidates numerous schools.

Build upon the prime skill, something bipeds do not have access to. Don't tell me it's not possible to create unique abilities or spells that don't overlap with others in a terrible way. Just look at how unique Chaos Warrior's abilities are. Those unique abilities don't even stem strictly from a damage type or skill. Rather, they derive from a concept of randomness/chaos and CHSW is a result of incorporating that into a school, along with some Energy magic for flavor.

In closing, I'll say that I would really hate to see the uniqueness of both dragons and bipeds getting diminished by tossing around signature abilities and thus capabilities as schools. I appreciate the developers for continuing to build upon the great game I had the pleasure of growing up with, and I appreciate the time any of you have invested into reading this.

Thank you,
Hlec/Doloire