Illu dupe change

[Ergorion]

Basically as illus now, I think they're insanely powerful. They can take 5 minutes to gate to all the most powerful mobs in the game and get an army of insanely powerful dupes that they can summon at will.

I have two ideas to counteract this.

(1) illus can only memorize one or two dupes. This will mean there will still be some typical dupe prep time where you have to gate to them and dupe it at will which will allow someone to potentially camp your favorite dupe spots. But it will also let the illu have a somewhat weaker army to finish off a fleeing foe.

(2) an illu can only memorize a certain combined level of dupes. Something like 130 levels amongst all their memorized dupes. That way they could have two level 50 dupes memorized and if they're lazy, a level 30. Something so that they're not running around with a trifecta of super powerful duders.

[Davairus]

If you don't like the dupes just summon him from them. If you don't have summon this fight is a bit tricky, but anything that scatters dupes (like passdoor, emancipation song etc) is what you want.

[Dogran]

I hate to say this, but Illus are stupid strong right now. I logged in a couple of days ago to an illusionist I have so he would not inact. There were like 10 50s on. I promptly went and got the strongest dupes I know, and inside 10 minutes I had 4 kills. Two of them I initiated with dispel and killed before they had any kind of chance to flee. They are Largely OP unless you are 100% prepared for them and the right class. As it is, I saw an illusionst invade on someone, and before the character could walk two areas to cabal, he had slain both door guards and taken the item and run. Kind of crazy. If we aren't going to tone them down, we should at least give the cabal mobs a powerful swing, make it dangerous for classes like that to capture. As a warrior it takes about 10 minutes to capture an item. As an illu it takes less then a minute.

[asudan]

All illusionists needed was longer lasting dups and a broader range of duplicates be able to choose, the change to haste made them on par with warrior-type classes. It sickens me to hear "well, your gonna have to pick this class in order to beat this class." - That is not Abandoned Realms.

[Davairus]

To have all that "good to go" in 10 minutes, you really need all of this:

A) hitroll to ensure your dupes succeed instead of arrive blurry
B) affbreak to be able to do good colour spray
C) mental break to land the other stuff
D) saves to defend against summon
E) knowledge of the game to know where the good duplicates are from
F) some luck duplicating because if they yell then you have to dupe something else
G) the skill needed to keep your spells up other than just quaff purp

ok, now how is this better than logging in a warrior with 65 damroll and a godly weapon, and beating up on people without needing a mana resource and having the best defenses and natural hp in the game. Please let me know what I'm missing. It looks to me like a geared warrior is still the best thing there is period. In fact, you could probably take all the eq from an illusionist, put it on a warrior, and it would be put to better use., especially with the AC stacking going on.

I didnt say other classes can beat them, I said the easiest way to do it. Name a way to reduce a warrior to rubble that easily?

We can:

a) double the hitroll requirements to produce good dupes if you guys want
b) factor the mob level in so its harder to produce those and really demands more hitroll. Let me know how a level/2 penalty sounds.
c) make a save check on mobs that are being duplicated so they need men break items for that as well. make this reliable with a strong level advantage, but make a mob attack an illusionist that fails his duplicate so its a real risk trying to dupe the priest of balance and he cant try it ever again.

I can code all this in 5 minutes.

Nerf nerf nerf. You guys complain about nerfing though. Make your minds up please. Let me know what you are willing to sign off on from a,b,c and then lets lock it down and leave it alone. I am not going to allow the class to be subjected to "nerf creep" which is what happened to it before. Like you can look at invokation from literally a month ago and people are saying illusionist color spray is terrible and will never play one. If the class is unplayable the only honorable options are (A) fix it or (B) delete it.

There's a brawl day coming up this saturday for a few hours so we can test the changes then.

[Nycticora]

A. you have 10 hitroll naked and without getting into the numbers you have a very good chance of getting 2 perfect dupes and one blurry with no hitroll
B. color spray is worthless with affbreak or without, nobody is casting it
C. mental break is unnecessary because illusionists are the only class you truly need mental saves against so few people have a maxed mental save (they need to be 100% prepared to fight an illusionist to have that and if they have it it reduces their damage output or AC to compensate anyway so it increases your dupe effectiveness). Note this wouldn't be such a problem if we hadn't removed psions
D. Valid against characters who have summon, which are: healer, dk, shaman, necro? 4 classes out of 18 iirc, I don't think that's a strong shut down
E. This is not valid, everyone knows about the high priest of balance and there are multiple alternatives
F. I don't know what this means. You can try multiple times to memorize a duplicate
G. how much skill does it take to cast prot shield and weapon ward and recite a fly scroll


I want to emphasize that the way to defeat illusionists used to be "log out or go hide when they disappear to go dupe illusions, then be patient and catch them off guard". You could always run around for a few minutes to try to run their dupes out of steam. They were easy to stay away from, so when they caught you with a pile of dupes it was avoidable. That's why it was OK for illusionist dupes to be so powerful. The same is true for necromancers - it takes them a VERY long time to get 3 strength damned zombies, and you can then try to separate them from the zombies to make their time investment a waste.

Removing the prep time removes the way to get rid of them. Even if you separate the ill from his dupes, he can just solitude and recast 3 more duplicates for 105 mana total. If you separated an old illusionist from his dupes he was done. An ill can also summon 3 dupes up from nothing right away and engage you with just 3 to 5 rounds of prep time instead of whole minutes of walking to Ford or wherever. The dupes he can have are also much more powerful now because he can dupe powerful mobs from areas that are impossible to walk to (or back from) in a timely manner, and also use mobs from areas that are far apart from one another. This used to be the exclusive domain of the necromancer.

TL;DR - illusionists are obviously drastically more powerful than they used to be. This is, in fact, so obvious there can be no debate to the contrary.

[Olyn]

I don't particularly like option a,b, or c unless you're considering adding a chance to forget a memorized dupe. Otherwise, I can put a set of cheese hitroll gear on my pet to wear when I memorize dupes and then forget about it.

I think someone (Ergorian or Kato?) was on the right track with the idea to add something to prevent 3 uber memorized dupes. Level cap was brought up, but there might be a better way.

[Davairus]

OK, first, we're definitely not considering changing a class because people refuse to wear saves. We are absolutely not doing that. All of this discussion will therefore consider players that are using GOOD saves vs illusionist. If that player is not bringing GOOD saves to fight an illusionist, that's his own retarded choice to be vulnerable. That in itself does not make illusionist stronger, it just means they are fighting people who do not have their wits about them. It is very easy to grab tantalum and have maxed mental saves, and its not that much more work to gamble excellent -10 svs pieces.


To clarify, there is no excuse for fighting an illusionist with bad saves.

[Davairus]

E&G are valid, plenty of people can't keep spells up. Perhaps you found that easy. Good for you, but there are people who can't handle that and let their spells fall midfight. Anyone you have seen PK'd because of losing sanc has been guilty of that, and I am sure you can see logs on invokation of people - especially mages - getting pk'd with no sanc if you care to delve. A player who can keep up his spells deserves some credit for doing it, and deserves to die if he doesn't do it (and the game is setup to make sure it is that way). You can't just write that off as easy. Its really not a freebie with all the other shit going on.

[Mikoos]

I'd make the illusions dissipate faster. and have a cool down on gate. hence a player fighting an illusionist should just survive for a certain amount of time then go on the offensive.

[Nycticora]

The class doesn't exist in a vacuum bro, they ARE the only class that requires mental saves. Therefore, you have to itemize specifically to fight illusionists.

If you want to ignore the fact that that is a unique advantage that only illusionists have when considering whether or not to modify the class, well, all I can say is that does not sound very scientific to me.

[Dogran]

I don't fight them without saves, and I don't stay in combat with them unless I am winning. I killed Gahnim tons of times, because he did not keep all his spells up, and he was running around with three high priests of Balance. Wrax is quite obviously skilled, and I have fought him many times. Saves are absolutely a must. Thing is you give a class uber dupes ( Wrax and I definitely know where to get the good dupes.) As it is you give a class like that Superior Damage, and survivability beyond any other class. So they have the Largest sheer damage output (Albeit crappy defenses), but by far the largest survivability. (word, Teleport, Shadowform) and it makes them very hard to kill. (Not saying can't be done, just hard.) Then you top it off with dreamstruck. So Im fighting an Illusionist in my normal suit of 40 50 hit dam. I wear 100 saves, and it takes me down to 30 35ish. (these aren't exacts just averages) So here you are, already vastly limited your hit and your damage. Then they walk up and dreamstruck you for minues 30ish saves. Now instantly they are able to land basically any spell they want to, coupled with the highest damage output in the game.

Now I mentioned that I logged into an illu and killed several people back to back. Two of them were with no break at all between. I walked into the room, dispelled one, they died instantly, dispelled the other, they died instantly. Got attacked by a third, and had to run around to chase them, and they died shortly after. It took a little longer, but I fought three people as my illusionist without a break to rest between and won. I am not really sure how to balance them, but It is definitely a lot. If anything I would just say take away dreamstruck. If I am going to go to the effort of wearing 100 plus saves, You shouldn't have a free banish my saves card. (fought one person later who I fought them off and on, and they wore a bunch of saves, so I initiated with Dreamstruck, dispelled and killed them nearly immidiatly.)

[Nycticora]

my last post is invalid because apparently there is no saving throw against dreamstruck so saving throws basically don't matter

[Andrael]

Ya know, if there was a decent bard around with a decent mental break, and they got lucky enough to land two songs, it would fuck an illu over. Emancipation and Travel of Solitary. OH and for someone not realizing it, Most of bards nasty songs are mental type.

[Davairus]

We have a fix coming down the pipeline for duplicate. We'll be making it more in line with DK compulsion which is working very well. Literally, the two spells will share common code.

Dreamstruck is a real serious can of worms and unfortunately needs to be redesigned. This will take me a while longer. I don't have an immediate fix for dreamstruck, but I'm getting close now. Please bear with me.

[Nycticora]

will appreciate feedback on illusionists as we keep tweaking to get it right. It's ok to get heated about it too, shows you care. The upshot of this duplicate change is that it should be harder for ills to memorize duplicates (slightly easier than necromancers) but ills will also be hurt less by getting separated from their duplicates, losing a fight, and having to heal.

Illusionists of different alignments will have different pools of mobs they can charm.

This should bring duplicate back down to normal power levels. If it doesn't, keep this discussion going. Note that illusionists WILL still be nastier than they were a couple months ago when you could just log out on them when their illusions ran out and this is intended

[Kato]

after the change is it possible to have 3 marines or fire soldiers? Those were pretty popular lineups before memorization

[Davairus]

Good point. Enabled that.