Blight Patch - 9/21/05

[Nayuaka]

No added base fly speed or hitpoints? Ah well. Can't be greedy I guess. :)

[imported_Denrath]

*Item of note: The quest that will go to live will ask the dragons to turn in their head scale of the ancients before turning into ancient.

DOH! And I like my headscale. Oh well.

[Tympest]

Breath of Flame Burst I - Area of Effect Flame Breath Attack

For 500 hoard a use. The AE breath attack that was going to be returned to adults in "the next patch" six months ago is now an ancient reward. [:@]

Drulkar's Scales 133% Armor
*Item of note: The quest that will go to live will ask the dragons to turn in their head scale of the ancients before turning into ancient.

The word is that this ability is to replace the scale of the ancients, so what about the rest of the scale's abilities?

[Nayuaka]

Hmm this looks like more of a punishment then a reward. I like that headscale and I like the minus to delay it adds. Also...everything using hoard is so not fun. *Decides adults are much nicer then she thought*

[oluviel]

yeah that's just unfair makes no sense to me

why the missing hp bonus as well?
+200 for adult +0 for ANCIENT. Something fishy there.

The very slim stat bonuses are essentially cancled out by the fact that the ancient scale had +50 to our primary stat. Actually we lose +50 to either tooth and claw or primal depending upon your faction, not to mention the haste....

A breath attack that costs hoard....sheesh
for 500 hoard it better be damb powerfull , and NOT steal the slot forour nice consistent breath of fire.

Hopefully this is going to be compensated through "dragon multiquesting...."

[Dragoniade]

Look like to me Ancient = hoard leak back.

I fear how Ancient fare is going to be the decisive blow that will push people away.
Fine, we get a long quest. FOr what?For us to get cheap power we have to pay extra?
Will those ability will finally allow us to be stronger than biped?

So far, I don't think so.

Are the Ancient even Totally completed? Are the post ancient quest done? can we still level?
Or are we stuck as ancient for another year doing nothing once the ARoP is completed?

[Varraven]

New Passive Abilities

Drulkar's Wing's Fly Speed Increase (think sprint in air)

<===Extremely jealous biped here lol

[imported_tjl]

good thing that becoming ancient is totally optional! [Y]

[Fireclaw]

So it looks like the thing to do to become the strongest possible dragon is to complete all the ancient dragon ability quests to get the new abilities (next part of ARoP), but stop short of actually becoming ancient and turning in the headscale. Such a dragon will be more powerful than an ancient dragon... at least until the post-ancient dragon schools are added which probably won't happen for another 6-12 months.

The loss of the 5% haste bonus from the headscale and the +50 to primary skill is a major blow to dragon firepower. This is not compensated for at all by the extremely minimal stat gains that ancients get. Unless the new breath weapon is vastly more powerful than even gold rage, a dragon that stops just short of turning in the headscale to become ancient is going to more powerful than a true ancient dragon.

If the developers plan to get rid of the ancient headscale, they should do one of the following things:
(1) make the ancient template vastly better than the headscale so there is no question that a dragon would want to ascend to ancient. For instance, if an ancient dragon got +1000 health and +150 tooth and claw and +150 primal then no dragon would hesitate to become ancient or
(2) include all of the effects and stat/skill increases that are on the headscale in the ancient template. That way nobody would miss the loss of the headscale and its loss would not diminish a dragon's combat ability or
(3) make "breath of flame burst I" a must have. For instance, if it did 1000 AOE damage and had a 15 second timer, then it would be a must have even at the cost of 500 hoard per use. With stats such as this it would do maybe 2/3 the damage of gold rage, but in an AOE effect finally giving dragons the ability to hit groups of monsters very hard - something they now lack. Doing so would finally make dragonbreath a dragon's signature attack as it should be. Right now a dragon's signature attack is gold rage, which does vastly more damage than any current dragonbreath weapon and can be used much more often.

Seeing the stat gains for the ancient dragon template surprised me. The developers have stated that an ancient dragon should be significantly more powerful than a same level adult. This does not appear at all to be the case.

[Goriax]

I'm wondering if many people will do the quest right up to wherever they have to turn in the head scale. And then stop. If it's after they've been to the rift then at least they get some nice abilties and they get to keep one of the best scales in the game including Fangs of Fury. It appears to me that they'd be more powerful if they did that unless there are additional bonuses to ancient that haven't surfaced yet.

I consider some of the ancient skills pretty nice but only some. The mez and the rez could be cool if you have the hoard. Improvements to spiked scales and drain strikestrike are nice but only nice (perhaps to a Helian who has a much higher primal they'd be nicer). A lot of the abilities are ok I guess, but I'm not going to stay awake nights looking forward to my next session because of them. I consider an AoE breath weapon to be so so unless damage goes up a LOT. I figure that if I don't have enough AoE capability to at least heavily damagestuff, then it does no great good since I'll have to kill it one on one anyway. LIkewise a fly sprint would be really useful if there were flying mobs to avoid but there aren't so it isn't. The stat increases of course just partially compensate for loosing the head scale of the ancient so they're a wash. In short, ancient has a couple abilities dragons never had (with an attached hoard cost which many bipeds still don't seem to grasp), but they really aren't much better then adults as far as power goes.

I'm not surprised. Well,maybe I'm surprised a little -- I didn't expect them to actually make ancients take a step backwards in power even if it's only a small one. Months ago I posted that people better not expect too much in the way of powerfrom becoming ancient. I thinkTG considersdragons more or less balanced. Perhaps not exactly where they want them (and it's just as likely they would want dragons weaker then stronger then they are) but not too far off. If they WERE too far off they'd have done something before now with the adults. If they consider a level 100 adult to be balanced they're not going give a huge boost in power to a level 100 ancient thereby making him overpowered.

Ancient may have other benefits some day maybe. I'm hoping for more things to do and some ability to specialize and become a bit distinctive from the other dragons. But I've never considered it realistic to expect them to have a whole lot more power then adults the same level and that people who were expecting that were letting themselvesin for a huge disappointment.

[Theolaerynn]

This is a serious blow to my moral. I can't believe I have waited two years to do a quest that, if completed, actually nerfs me. I mean, the whole concept of a Do-It-Yourself nerf, someone at AE has got to be laughing thier ****** off.

I especially like the neft to Ancient size, because there just is no way to justify that. It serves no purpose other than someone at AE has an odd sense of humor.

Although, I like the hoard-cost AE flame breath, that one is good too. It was an ability we worked very hard for (RoP and side quest), so they take it away months ago, lie to us and tell us it is coming right back, and then we find out it is an Ancient-only hoard ability.

Seriously, are you guys at AE trying to get people to quit? Honestly. I am beginning to think that old joke of mine isn't so far off.

[Goriax]

I went back and reread the thread.

So that AoE breath weapon costs 500 hoard?!?!?!? That's almost as much as Gold Rage! It better do some really serious damage.

If having that takes away either of my old non hoard cost breath weapons thenI will be ...

...

...

<trying to think of a word which won't get me banned>

...

...

Well, lets just say that I will be very very angry.

Come on TG. I didn't expect ancient to have a huge bonus, but do you think you could at least try not making an ancient LESS desirable then adult?

And yes, I'm still pretty upset over loosing the other bonuses on the scale of the ancients. You guys really need someone over there who has played a dragon as a main all the way to high level.

[Click]

From a former player who lurks here, it's getting more tempting to come back. This latest update is very encouraging actually and the the little things like sounds added and artwork changes count for a lot, too. Good on the developers for taking their time and doing it right this time around, I may have to pop in and check it out pretty soon.

Click.

[Lumineux]

This is utterly incredible. I cannot believe you would take the scale from us if you are not making ALL of the bonuses innate. (Are you aware how nice 5% haste is to thoes of us who cannot run arround with Gift of Alacrity on all of the time, without bugging someone else, anyway.) I guess this is somewhat tempered if Ancient "Schools" are actualy availible right away.

And while I'm on the topic, why does Vlad tell us we have a choice in the scales, but never give us one? There are many Lunus mages and Helian warriors, you know...

[Dragoniade]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Dragoniade wrote:I fear how Ancient fare is going to be the decisive blow that will push people away.

/setpref Sarcasm True

I've never heard this before! In any way/shape/form!

/setpref Sarcasm False

Call that translation error

[Leviathan]

To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement. Profoundly disconcerted would more aptly fit. I have nothing more to say.

[Valornyx]

What a load of dragon poop!!

Now to get back out fangs of fury - we have to put it in a weapons socket - which means I'd have to take out my WDL crystal.

We waited all this time for THIS???

[PJ]

That's not necessarily true. Based on the stats of the crystals, there's no reason they wouldn't stack with any of the WD stones.

[imported_Twelvebagger]

Those who were curious about the Template updates here is the information.

(A note about the other stats/attributes, those change made available with Ancient Dragon schools.)

Inate Base Stats Boosts

Flight Height of 2000 max
Power +75
Strength +50
Focus +15

New Passive Abilities

Drulkar's Scales 133% Armor
Dimensional Mastery I +500 Capacity
Drulkar's Wing's Fly Speed Increase (think sprint in air)
Breath of Flame Burst I - Area of Effect Flame Breath Attack
The Abilities above will have need a special process added to the delta to appear on the Ancient's that are already Ancient on blight. Ancients created from this new template will have all the above abilities.

*Item of note: The quest that will go to live will ask the dragons to turn in their head scale of the ancients before turning into ancient.

With all due respect and if I'm understanding the above correctly, I'm disappointed.

I know you guys have worked hard at this and I'm sure we all appreciate it, but there's a few glaring things here:

1) AROP was the perfect opportunity to further differentiate and define the helian and lunus factions. The above does zero towards that.

2) As mentioned in all sorts of other posts, I don't think the above cuts it, in terms of a reward.

But I'm more concerned about 1), only in that you're doing zero to differentiate the two schools. Ancienthood could have been the vehicle to really give the dragon his or her role.

Unique dragon spells and AoE attacks for the helian, tactical combat opportunities for the lunus...........


For starters, and I'm tired so hopefully I'll get to edit this later or post in suggestions:

Helian:

+400 power
+250 focus
+25 str
+300 health
+20 flight speed

Toxic Gust:
Area:12
Damage: 300-400 impact
75-100 damage per 3 seconds
dur: 30 seconds

Ability recycle: 5 min

Shocking Breath:
Area: 10
Damage: 200-300
Limits speed to zero
Prevents all actions
Duration: 10s

Ability Recycle: 5 min

Breath of Ancients:
Area: 12
Damage: 900-1000 impact
150-200 damage per 3 seconds
Duration: 30 seconds
Hoard Cost: 2000
Ability recycle: 15 min

Breath of Life:
Ressurects all slain group members
Heal: 400-500
Recycle: 15 min

Breeze of the Ancients:
Heals: 200-300 on impact
Heal over time: 75-100
Duration: 3 min



Lunus:

+200 str
+200 tnc
+600 life
+30 flight speed

Shielding Wings:
75% chance to intercept attack
Duration: 3 minutes

Tail contriction:
DoT: 75-100
Limits speed to zero
Prevents any action
Duration: 10 seconds
5% chance: Lunus Squeeze
Suffocation
-50% to all stats
duration: 1 min

recycle: 3 min

Wing Scrape:
+150% damage
6 attacks
recycle: 3 min


Rage of the Ancients:
Area:6
Activates Gold Rage
Hoard cost:2000
Recycle: 15 min




Just measly examples, but the point is they serve some purpose for further defining the melee tactics of the dragon, and allow the helian to experience some sense of being a helian. Add more spells that are ancient only and differentiate them between factions. . . . .



I'm rambling.


For some reason I can't say "scrape" --- it got censored, apparently for having the word "crap" in there? odd.

Edit: LOL. S-C-R-A-P-E.

Apparently it's censoring the C-R-A-P part.

[Fireclaw]

Interesting ideas Twelvebagger, however I prefer that dragons not be forced into any particular combat style based purely on whether they chose lunus or helian 20 months ago when there was no functional difference between the dragon factions. Some lunus dragons might prefer to be casters while some helians might wish to be meleers. Players might have chosen their faction based on the RP lore that helians respect bipeds while Lunus do not.

Far better to have dragon specialization be based upon the upcoming dragon classes than to have it based upon a faction choice made so long ago.