Debuffs Need some love
This has been on my mind for a long time, I just finally managed to compile a list.
Over the years I have participated in many battles, both epic and otherwise. More and more often I am finding that I am either completely unable to hit certain mobs, or the damage I do is so small that it is not really worthwhile to participate in these battles except as a buffer/healer and to occasionally slap some ability onto the enemy mob. This is where I find one simple issue: The debuffs available to players simply aren't worthwhile or useful.
Here is a list of the debuffs i've found that are currently vastly underpowered, or completely useless.
I'll start with spell techs:
Bane - 25% to 60% chance for -15% strength/dex. -looks ok, but -15% to t6 or epic mobs is virtually nothing/not noticeable. It would be better if the chance was 100% and the debuff scaled up from say 6% to 30%
Derange - 25% to 60% chance for -15% Power/Focus. Same issue as Bane.
Chill - 25% chance for -10% to -30% ice resistance. -useless, we have no way of knowing how much resistance a mob has, and a small debuff to that resistance is likely to have no noticeable effect unless the mob has an extremely high resistance. Mobs are more likely to have a complete immunity rather than a high resistance, and debuffs are useless against immunity. A better option here would be to increase incoming damage of this type by a scaling %, even if it's a small percent we would notice it much more than a potentially useless debuff to nothing.
Cinder - same as chill
Covalence - same as chill, on top of this, virtually no mob has nature resistance. no resistance = debuff fail
Fog - same as chill, do any mobs even have mind resistance? the mind damage tech is new.
Junction - same as chill, do any mobs have energy resistance? If so it seems so rare as to be pointless.
Scorn - same as chill, ethereal armor has the same effect and it seems mobs have ethereal armor rather than spirit resistance. no resistance = debuff fail.
Taint - same as chill, i'm sure most of the Withered Aegis probably have blight resistance, but there are NO direct blight damage spells, only 1 or 2 DoT's and they are weak already.
Freeze - 30% chance of a 5s root? we have so many other root effects that are 100%. This is an instant fail.
Ice Snare - 75% to 55% reduction in movement speed for 30s. this actually doesn't seem too bad except for the fact that it's broken. the tier I tech reduces by 75%, but the tier V reduces it by only 55% this is backwards. Fix it and it's actually not bad.
Numbing - -5% to -25% evasion. This looks ok, but is only useful on a very small number of mobs (spiders mostly). The vast majority of the time it's armor that is the bigger issue when it comes to chance-to-hit. now if this debuffed magic evasion, or both evasion AND magic evasion I'd be using it all the time. Energy spells are the most often overlooked unless a stun is needed, changing this might make them more popular.
Shocked - 15% to 55% chance to lower attack speed by 15%. Fail. We have dispirit foe/foes which reduce attack speed by 50%. Changing this to lower recycle, or attack speed AND recycle speed and it would be very useful. A higher percentage of debuff, or a scaling percentage (10% to 50%) would make it much more desirable, and as mentioned previously, would make energy spells more popular.
Now onto the Abilities:
Burn Armor - flat amount of flame resist rebuff. Fail. I can't count the number of times i've had new players ask me if this ability does anything at all. Even if used against mobs that have flame resistance, it's effect is so small that it's completely unnoticeable. Add some damage to this ability and it might be moderately useful, better yet, have it apply an increased % of incoming damage from flame spells and it would be very useful, at all level ranges even.
Cherubs Touch - flat crush resist. Fail. The only reason to use this ability is for the small amount of damage it inflicts, and even then its only worth putting on a hotkey due to the linked timers of so many other attack abilities.
Corrosive Rain - flat slash/peirce/crush resist debuff. Hard Fail! This is only potentially useful against beetles when they use harden shell, and even then the debuff is so small its unnoticeable. Turning this into a scaling debuff would be much better as a -10% or more slash/pierce/crush resist. better yet would be to increase incoming damage of those types by a small %.
Curse of Enfeeblement - flat -str/dex. VERY hard fail. Enfeeblement? Only 1st to 10th level characters would even feel this, and even they would probably laugh at it (-30str/-30dex for the mastered version, -50/-50 at the highest level). This should definitely be a scaling %debuff. spell techs do -15% stat debuffs, this should do more. to be a truly enfeebling rebuff i'd suggest changing those flat numbers to percentages instead, that would make this a really nice and useful debuff.
Dessicate - flat -crush/flame ward. Fail. I'm not even sure if this is worth improving. changing the flat numbers into % debuffs would be better, but still not worth much, for all the already mentioned reasons.
Disconcert - 15% chance for a 20% power/focus debuff and +20% delay. might be ok, but it only applies to spells that do mind damage, which until recently was exactly 0 spells. we now have a mind bolt, and mind damage tech, but i'm not sure if this ability will actually apply since it is older than both of those things. If it actually does work, a higher percent chance to proc, perhaps 25% would be much better. The 20% stat debuff isn't bad, but i've never seen a mental stat debuff have any measurable effect on a mob. It would be really nice if debuffing a mobs stats made them unable to use some of their spells or abilities, but sadly this has never been the case. Either the mobs have stats so high that these debuffs cannot ever have that desired effect, or the mobs abilities are not dependent on ability scores. Increasing the stat rebuff to 25% or even 30% would likely have a more noticeable effect.
Feint - flat evasion debuff (-125 mastered). Why is there a listed 0% damage adjustment? This actually isn't too bad of a debuff, but it still seems a bit underpowered, especially since armor often has far more of an effect in combat than evasion. changing that 0% damage adjustment to perhaps a +5% or +10% would be a good modification (can we say sneak attack). This is probably the one occasion where the flat debuff is ok since there is currently no way to tech or improve evasion.
Ruin - flat blight/nature resistance debuff along with a DoT. The Dot isn't bad here, relatively on par with other DoT abilities, but the rebuff is worthless (-40/-40 mastered). The flat numbers here are worthless against even low level mobs. Debuffs need to be scaled to be useful.
Steal Dexterity - flat Dex debuff to enemy/ bonus to self. These are actually fine being flat numbers, but they are FAR too weak. The debuff/bonus on these are weaker than any normal buff. These numbers need to be doubled or even tripled to be really useful/debilitating.
Steal Strength - same as steal dexterity. Just one question to add here: why is the flat number here different from steal dexterity (-62/+62 for dexterity, -60/+60 for strength). I understand that there is a 2 level difference in when the abilities are gained, but this is likely because they couldn't both be given at the same level. The abilities are otherwise the same and should have the same quantity of debuff/buff.
Nature's Adjudication - +125 damage adjustment/ 70% Nature resistance I included this one for only one reason: This is a perfect example of a debuff done right. They should all work this way. The only problem with this one is that virtually no mob has nature resistance, but the 125% damage adjustment is perfect even if mobs have no resistance. If all the elemental debuffs worked like this they would be awesome, and likely widely used.
I realize that changing some of these abilities can have adverse effects on players as well since mobs use them, but in their current form, even players tend to ignore the effects of these debuffs, not to mention we have several cleansing abilities that mobs tend not to use.
I didn't include any of the actual blight spell debuffs here for 2 reasons: 1)this post has gotten long enough, 2) I actually don't have them all scribed due to all of the above reasons. I will add them in a later post after i scribe them all and test them.
