UPDATE: Ancient Dragon Stats

[Theolaerynn]

At this point, I would just be happy with the old Ancient models being put back, in addition to the other changes they have agreed on.

Having the old Ancient models in game is really important to me, and I am not talking about client side stuff that other players have to manually mod to see. I mean having the devs put the old models back so all have them. If there are actually folks out there who don't like grouping with large Dragons, chances are they already have a SetScale hack for them. They can use it on Ancients too.

The bi-peds I hunt with want the old Ancient models back too, mostly for the same reason us Dragons want them: Dragons should be large. It is just the way it is supposed to be. Humans have 2 arms and 2 legs, Elves have pointed ears, and Dragons get larger with age.

And as for the power thing, take a look at any fantasy game involving Dragons. Ancients are always the most powerful and the most feared of Dragon Kind.

But at this point I will settle for the minor 'rewards' we have been slated for, and my Old Ancient size.

[Cobal]

I 100% agree with Fireclaw.
Especially regarding the size of an ancient.

/signed,
as they do in the pit of bile that is the wow forums.

Just adding my voice to the masses.

[imported_Frith-Rae]

To get happy ancient dragons all the devs need to do is add to the existing ARoP rewards:

(1) increase the damage from Breath of Flame Burst by 10x so the new damage is 1000-1400. If its going to cost hoard like Gold Rage, let it do comparable damage. Not that even at 1000-1400 damage its still doing a lot less damage than gold rage (which does up to 3k damage per use while triggering powerful procs). However, if you hit 3 target with this its doing equivalent to gold rage. If you really want to make dragonbreath a dragon's signature weapon as it should be up the damage some more to maybe 2,000-2,500 damage with a 3 minute timer at 500 or even 1000 hoard cost.

(2) increase the size of the ancient dragon model back up to what people expect. Players have been looking at those big ancient dragon models for over a year and thats what they expect. Now that the moment of truth arrives and you take it away. Give the players what they expected.

(3) put the 5% haste bonus from the headscale as an innate bonus or on the new ancient crystal. Players don't want to be nerfed upon becoming ancient. Don't make them have to decide to give up a combat advantage you've already given them.

*claps her talons and thumps her tail* HERE HERE!!

Sorry but +250 Health and an 85 wing speed is BETTER - but it still isn't enough.

With the size nerf continuing, an AOE breath I won't even hotkey at this point, an almost useless Rez, and other hugely hoarde burning abilities..

I'm still not seeing a viable or good reason to finish

And I know its gonna be at LEAST a year before that Ancient Advancement stuff comes out.

So sorry, nope, still not enough. Its still a huge kick in the teeth.

[Devast]

Anyone hearing us? Are changes being considered besides some unspecified increase to damage of the breath weapon? Please don't send this to live unchanged.

Anxious dragons want to know.

Devast

[Nayuaka]

I actually don't mind the recent changes. MUCH better then the original stats.We're not suposed to be gods. Maybe in Lore but lets face it this is a game. Why should we become more powerful then the average player for doing less work? Dragons can already kill most things in Istaria rather efficently. Also, who knows what benifets the dragon multiclassing will give us. That's part of the reward for ancient too. The ONLY thing I'm miffed about is loosing my -5% to my spell recycle time and I can live with that.

[Jayne]

No they definetly shouldn't be gods. Personally when I think about the word ancient. I feel they should be wiser in some areas but not as strong in others.

Jayne

[Kitimandiri]

*Lays out a plateful of cookies and hides around a corner*

Heeeere devs devs devs....

[Khoal]

To get happy ancient dragons all the devs need to do is add to the existing ARoP rewards:

(1) increase the damage from Breath of Flame Burst by 10x so the new damage is 1000-1400. If its going to cost hoard like Gold Rage, let it do comparable damage. Not that even at 1000-1400 damage its still doing a lot less damage than gold rage (which does up to 3k damage per use while triggering powerful procs). However, if you hit 3 target with this its doing equivalent to gold rage. If you really want to make dragonbreath a dragon's signature weapon as it should be up the damage some more to maybe 2,000-2,500 damage with a 3 minute timer at 500 or even 1000 hoard cost.

(2) increase the size of the ancient dragon model back up to what people expect. Players have been looking at those big ancient dragon models for over a year and thats what they expect. Now that the moment of truth arrives and you take it away. Give the players what they expected.

(3) put the 5% haste bonus from the headscale as an innate bonus or on the new ancient crystal. Players don't want to be nerfed upon becoming ancient. Don't make them have to decide to give up a combat advantage you've already given them.

/signed

[Tympest]

To get happy ancient dragons all the devs need to do is add to the existing ARoP rewards:

(1) increase the damage from Breath of Flame Burst by 10x so the new damage is 1000-1400. If its going to cost hoard like Gold Rage, let it do comparable damage. Not that even at 1000-1400 damage its still doing a lot less damage than gold rage (which does up to 3k damage per use while triggering powerful procs). However, if you hit 3 target with this its doing equivalent to gold rage. If you really want to make dragonbreath a dragon's signature weapon as it should be up the damage some more to maybe 2,000-2,500 damage with a 3 minute timer at 500 or even 1000 hoard cost.

(2) increase the size of the ancient dragon model back up to what people expect. Players have been looking at those big ancient dragon models for over a year and thats what they expect. Now that the moment of truth arrives and you take it away. Give the players what they expected.

(3) put the 5% haste bonus from the headscale as an innate bonus or on the new ancient crystal. Players don't want to be nerfed upon becoming ancient. Don't make them have to decide to give up a combat advantage you've already given them.

Aye, that will do it, #2 and #3 especially... I don't use hoard attacks unless I absolutely have to, so all those new hoard using things don't really exist to me. If this doesn't happen, then I will do what I suspect many dragons will be doing. Complete the ARoP up to the guardian fights in the rift and then stay adult and keep the scale.

[Guaran]

My thoughts on Ancient Stats:: [A snip from a post I made under the blight patch notes]

Spiked Scales VIII is long overdue. None of the quested abilites go past the level 70 versions, ala Spiked Scales VII, Drain Strike VII

Drain Strike VIII We may finally get one that worth using the current version is a joke.

AOE breath attack was something ADULTS used to have, hoard free cost no less. Now we get it back with a rediculous hoard cost for the way it currently dishes out damage. Luckily it does not replace Breath of Fire III. This new breath of flame burst wouldn't be such a kick in the gut if the plain breath of fire III still had the AOE damage it used to have. It's not like the old version had a huge area, but it was handy. Of course the old version had a rediculous long cycle time (5 minutes I think), so this one is tough to call either way. A smaller AOE effect for Breath of Fire III, larger AOE, more powerful for the hoardpowered version to me would be ideal. Another idea for an Ancient bonus would be to grant both factions the use of both elemental breath attacks. They could share a timer. But would give a choice thats long been asked for.

The fly speed increase is nice.

The armor and health stat gains are around 10% improvement. logically it seems too low. Im not saying it needs to be higher because we need it, just that it makes more sense to me.

The rest of the stat gains are minimal, I wonder if anyone will notice. They are likely there just so something could be listed as "what you get for becoming Ancient".

The Primal Fear ability is nice, but not sure how much use it will get since it is only single target. It will have ocassional use though. A bit pricey to use if you ask me.

The Primal Rebirth is also nice. Nothing game breaking, it's a 1 hour recycle. Probably will most often be used to Res our fallen healer comrades.



The alacrity thatis being taken away stillsucks. With the client lag, and with the long casting times for primal spells, every bit of alacrity helped. I really hope they can find a way to make this a passive bonus, perhaps even grant ALL ancients both the melee and magic affecting hastes. I'm of the opinion that as ancients the Faction rewards are fading into the past and the eventual multiclassing for Dragons can allow the seperation of fighting styles of magic/melee. That should never have been aligned to RoP Faction, which is something unchangeable.



My suggestions in a nutshell:

1) Give Breath of Fire III an area effect, although smaller AOE than the Flame Burst.

2) Flame bursts damage needs a boost. Manga mentioned the damage will be adjusted. Might want to look at the size of the area again also.

3) Grant Ancients the ability to quest for either Elemental breath attack, so that we can add the missing one previously limited to the factions. (Suggestion for down the road: Improved versions of the Elemental breath attacks. Currently they miss more than land, against higher level mobs)

4) Grant the -5% delay/recyclefor both melee and spell attacks to all ancients as a passive bonus. This would be an undeniable improvement if you combined the hastes from both scales into a single bonus. The Lunus headscale grants a 5% haste to melee attacks only, The Helian headscale grants a 5% haste to spell attacks only.



Now the model size question: I can see why the ancient models seemed too big, but myself I have played with both and do prefer the larger model.

5) For the bipeds concerned about grouping with humonguos ancients, my suggestion would be to change the khutit effect for ancients, and remove or significantly lessen the reductions to stats that it currently incurs. Granted the limiting of flight altitude to0 would need to stay, but the -strength and -power could be removed, giving us the ability to effectively fight in khutit form. This would be a huge bonus to our biped friends.

[Image]

I have to ask, AE what are you thinking? How many times are you going to screw over dragons.

First came adulthood...yeah, become an adult and you become powerful, first joke....not many found it funny. But we stuck with the game. Now here comes ancient, 75 to power. I'm helian and thats not even 10% to my power, thats just silly. But to lunus, what the heck is that? Plain insulting is what it is.....oh and you have to give up your lunus scale, theres a little injury to the insult. +15 to focus....that doesn't even register on the joke scale, thats just stupid....and there again is the lunus, focus?

250 health, well that is a token. +500 to carry, well thats 5000 bulk, Whats a 100th biped with full cargo capacity at?

Do we have to be inferior to bipeds in every way?

OOH you have read my mind exactly. I cant beleive they are doing it to us again. Adult increase stat was indeed a joke and this is just another slap in the face to dragons. +10 speed increase! +15 focus! the same as a T3 tech. Gees, I'm powerful now. No armor increase. Unbeleivable!

The worst in that is that after being dissapointed so many times I actually gave them the benefit of the doubt andthough that maybe thistime they didnt lie aboutmakingAncient powerful. They fooled me twice.

Image, shocked and very very dissapointed.

[Khoal]

I advise patience. Jumping to conclusions may be counterproductive.

The devs claim that the upcoming design preview will shed some light on what is ahead for Ancients. Remember, there's an awful lot of Roman numeral "I" abilities, and this suggests there's better variants out there. My guess, and this is only a guess, is that the better variants come with post-ARoP progression, and that is where we'll be earning our power as Ancients.

If the devs read these forums, they'll have seen the concern shown by many long-term players, and will make an effort to explain their actions and their plan for Ancients and beyond. They know that if they screw Ancients up, they've screwed up one of the biggest draws in Horizons, and that could cause problems for their recent growth trend in subscriptions.

So, let's see what the devs have to say.

[Ebonfyre]

I think i speak for most of the dragon players when i say im tired of waiting. Its been nothing but promise after promise with little to no change. I know a bunch of dragon players who are already thinking about dropping out.

[Goriax]

I just logged onto Blight and my dragon had been updated with the new stats.

I tried the new flame burst breath weapon on a level 99 nahguk pygmy.

It did 845 damage.

The dragon on Blight is not uber. Level 100 yes, but only about 3 million hoard.

Unfortunately some real world stuff just came up at the worst possible moment so I can't linger. However, the flame breath may not be so bad after all.

[Dragoniade]

I think i speak for most of the dragon players when i say im tired of waiting. Its been nothing but promise after promise with little to no change. I know a bunch of dragon players who are already thinking about dropping out.

You're not the only one.
Ever since the dragon got released we've been given false hope.

At release, we lost everything to become a single class race with no quests. The RoP and lairs weren't even released, while other races could pick any class and even get a plot.

As time went, they got new building, new biped only events and, new powerful weapons and more. We, we got our RoP and a lot of incomplete abilities quests. We were underpowered, suffered the hoard leak for a long period.

We were told we would get a lot more powerful once we reach adulthood. So we waited, and waited. Then the RoP arrived. Bugged at first and very unbalanced (Kaa anyone?).
What happened when we reached adulthood, we got bigger, received flight and a new breath weapon. And some pitiful stats increasd that were supposed to compensate for our mere 7-8 points per level we were receiving. But we were told Adult couldn't be too powerful after all, but that ancient should solve it.

So we waited, and waited, and waited. We were promised a lot of improvement. We were told being an ancient were an achievement. We waited... ANd now, our reward...
A stat increase SMALLER than the one we received when we got adult for a quest a lot longer. No distinction between faction. And some abilities being nerfed.
Where's the Rez? Where's the armor? Where's the SPELLS?
Everything we had is being converted to hoard abilities. Our stats increase still don't compensate for our 7-8 per levels. Our adventuring and crafting are still locked at 100. We waited 2 years, unable to gain anything because we were locked and promised improvement.

Now, they're giving us crap. We raise our voice, and they throw us crumbs. Well guess what, those are still crumbs!! A pitiful increase that leave us locked for another 6-10 months. Why should I pay for nothing? I won't even be able to level again once I reach Ancient Hood.

If they still maintain that ridiculous reward (hoard based breath, hoard based Rez, pitance of an state raise, lack of spells), then I won't be renewing the months after the ARoP.

I had expectation about the ARoP. They promised us gold, they flashed their coins at our eyes... It ended up it was all fake. Plated gold coins.

[Kitimandiri]

*noses through hoard looking for [World's Smallest Violin]*

Edit: Thats at the whole situation in general, my sarcasm has broken through my gloom ^_^

[oluviel]

I just logged onto Blight and my dragon had been updated with the new stats.

I tried the new flame burst breath weapon on a level 99 nahguk pygmy.

It did 845 damage.

even 400dmg per mob wouldn't be a slap in the face for 500 hoard. If that's the new standard for the bw i'm sure it will be widely used.
(assuming they don't tweak it before launch)
For single targets of course we can stick with the weaker single bw, but with our breath weapons also being impacted by our stats now
i'm sure they will be far more usefull.

I would agree that some of the base stat increases are a slap in the face, but the sheer amount of strength or power to see a real difference in base power would have to be way too high for a quest result.

I think the stat increases are fine but we are still missing key bonuses here

__________________________________
Breath of fire, give it an area effect with a range of 2, basically the npcs would have to be ontop of you to be hit

Reinstatethe haste we lost form the scale and make it passive

Make some abilities turn ae like tail whip, and give a 2-3% chance of any normal melle swing or primal bolt turn ae.

Primal fear...cut it's duration to8 seconds, its cost to 250 hoard, andmake it an area effect STUN with a range of 8. Also give it a small debuff effect
Demoralize: -100str 10%slow

the rez... Cut the recycle to 10 minutes, and make it a 100% rez for the entire party while removing the dp reduction
___________________________________
MY focus on ae abilities lies in the fact that we are bigass dragons. We Tower over every race, and most can fit under us like an overpass. It would be a challenge for an ancient dragon to only hit one target within a defined area.

[Cobal]

Another reason I see this as a nerf;
Some things that we loose when turning in the scale get moved to crystals:
http://community.istaria.com/images/temp/tfof.jpg
http://community.istaria.com/images/temp/tpr.jpg

Right now I have two armor sockets, one holds my burning embers (that cannot be quested for twice like some biped suggested) and the other holds a WD crystal.
If i want to equip the two new crystals I have to make new scales with two additional armor sockets.
I'll loose 2 +25 stat techs to make room for armor sockets.

Bah.

[Xenthrix]

I've been keeping my account active but I've only been playing when they add a new section of ARoP. I was hopeing becoming ancient would add a little something to the game to make me want to start playing on a more regular basis. However, after looking at the bonuses u get and reading this thread I'd have to say that the ARoP is a bust.

Way back in the day we were told hatchlings are supposed to be weak. We were just baby dragons. It was expected and accepted. Then we became adults and were told we still werent equal to bipeds because we still had the ancient rop to do. Then we can become equal. Possibly even superior to bipeds. But I'm not seeing any equality in the stats and abilities that are shown here.

The new spells and abilities we will be getting all cost hoard. The new breath weapon is a bad joke to say the least. And if I remember correctly the new rez spell is on a one hour timer? Bipeds can cast a rez every few seconds and it doesnt cost them an arm and a leg to do it. If u dont have a very big hoard u probably wont ever use these new abilities. I've got a small hoard a I've only used gold shield twice and regreted it.

Then there is the size issue. When we become ancient there is a slight increase in size. But if u put the height bar down to the lowest setting when u created your dragon then when u become ancient u wont be much bigger than an adult dragon who put his height at the highest setting.

There doesnt appear to be much of a difference going from adult to ancient. A small increase to some stats, a couple new hoard abilities I'll probably never use and virtually no increase in size to distinguish me from the adult dragons.

So in conclusion from all that I've read, if u want to be an ancient dragon then all u need to do is ask a friendly biped for a couple buffs and u wont know the difference.

Just doesnt seem right.

Hopefully what we've seen is finalized. Maybe when it goes live we'll get a pleasant surprise. I certainly hope so. Because if this is all we get then its not going to change the game in any significant way and so I'll still have no reason to come back and play.

I'm not asking for any super powers. Just a little something that makes people say "Hey any dragons want to group with us?"

[Varangaard]

If i want to equip the two new crystals I have to make new scales with two additional armor sockets.

They're weapon crystals, so you actually are needing to craft a new claw with an additional socket. Also, I doubt you can have both, to me these seem lunus/helian specific just like the head scale is.