Jotun Vuln Removal

[BlackWidow]

Fair enough, Dav.

Still, I believe the point Xenyar was trying to make (since I see this as a potential issue too) is that a jotun paladin is simply superior to a human paladin in just about every meaningful way at this point. The other race options for paladins (half-elf, elf, dwarf) all have reasons besides RP or the xp penalty as to why people would play them, but a human does not.

Even half-elf has the racial legacy Greginsham Plate going for them, as this makes solo ranking much easier (you actually don't *want* to receive an excessive amount of healing and can sit at the sweet spot where the legacy kicks in).

Elves are the only ones who can be eradicators, so nothing needs to be said about that.

Dwarf paladin is a strong combo which was removed at one point.

As for dwarf vulnerabilities: water vulnerability isn't especially worrisome. If some cleric or invoker is silly enough to wield a water cube against a dwarf warrior in an attempt to hit his vulnerability, all he has to do is take out two axes and he has superior weapon style. If they use a staff or Paelloran's trident, he can simply use a sword and shield and sideswipe them.

Having read your post more closely... Yes that makes sense regarding piercing weapons. Other examples I can think of include the starfoil sprinkler in Winter (sting damage type), and a ranger's javelins and deadfall carved arrows (both bread-and-butter items and easily obtained) Still, somebody mentioned the gnome blunt vulnerability and illithid slash vulnerability at one point (at least in private to me)... Just listing below the immediate thoughts of what both those races have to deal with.

Illithids have to deal with axes, swords, certain daggers (granted, fewer daggers are slashing weapons), polearms and whips, and possibly an occasional exotic weapon. Illithid slash vulnerability sucks big time if you're an illusionist... With a psionicist you can potentially use the ectoplasm to stop people from using their slashing weapons to hit the illithid's vulnerability, though I don't know how effective that is...

Gnomes have to deal with hand to hand (aside from monks swapping styles), most flails, most maces, most staff weapons, some specific arrows (depending on class), the whip of torture (mind you that's a very specific item). Granted, gnomes are always neutral and this means cleric classes always have a means to hit their vulnerability...

Getting back to the original point (TLDR version): the real issue imo is that there is no meaningful vulnerability at the moment for jotuns (adamantine weakness is useless). Not that it's not piercing.

[lionSpyre]

I quite like the idea of a stone vuln for jotuns. Looking at the codex, there are a good starting selection of weapons that are stone (certainly more selection than water or ice). Mostly maces, but there is a flail and some daggers which means people should be able to maintain weapon style advantage if they're willing to main hand a dagger. You can enchant the crap out of a lot of these and make them an absolute menace to deal with. There's a nice battleaxe as well, which can be a nice weapon for countering paladins given that they can't learn axe. It also kind of makes sense that if they have an alien physiology, then one of the most essential components of the earth is what they're weak to. Plus, points for uniqueness: it's nice not having to repeat a vuln like fire. More points for the fact that jotun paladins won't be able to bypass the vuln with a set like fire-with-fire. Kikikale's use of ginkgo skin to bypass the treant fire vuln should be enough of an example as to why this is a good thing.

[BlackWidow]

In response to Lionspyre's point about stone vulnerability:

That would actually be a great boon to giants (giant warriors in particular) given the oversized maces available. I counted six stone maces in a quick run through (not looking at everything, but also ignoring an item which isn't actually available), one type of arrow (if granite also counts as hitting the stone vulnerability, which it should), one single-handed axe (granite), one oversized battleaxe, a second one-handed axe (noremove mind you), a second oversized axe (there are both rare and non-limited options of each size), 4 daggers (one nodrop and one noremove), one unique flail (granite)*, one rare oversized spear if onyx hits the vulnerability (technically that's a glass in terms of crystalline structure, not a stone, so maybe it won't), and an oversized spear (flint).

* I saw no other currently available flails, the stone-headed flail is an outdated entry from when the mountain duergars were in Redhorne.

I'm assuming an item made of a gemstone material or crystal doesn't hit the vulnerability in this analysis btw. If it does, that broadens the options noticeably. Weapons like the emerald longsword and Daemoran now hit the vulnerability if it includes both stone AND gem materials.

[Xenyar]

The availability of piercing weapons is a valid point. But then I think about gnomes and illithids....everything does smash and slash.. like everything. The difference is, a Jotun paladin or DK is equipped to handle the vuln. Equipped very well, at that. Illithids are the LEAST able to handle a widespread vuln, yet they have the most easily exploitable. Nobody talks about that...

@BW... It's not just humans, it's hard to argue why roll any other race as a paladin, unless you do it for RP. I'll give dwarf a close-ish(?) 2nd(dwarf addition was another racial paladin buff btw).

[lionSpyre]

I do agree that jotun is far and away the best paladin pick from a meta standpoint. But @Xenyar, maybe you can agree that a stone vuln would bring them back onto par with dwarf. I think @BW outlined the perks of fighting against a stone vuln nicely.

For my part, you're preaching to the choir about gnomes and illithids. However, I don't exactly think that's the bar we want to hold jotun to, since neither of them have been viable in PK in a long time. The last illithid that I remember was successful in PK was an alhoon (illyiza or something?). And they had a very particular cheese playstyle where they summoned, slept, spelled you up, stunned you and zombie bashed you so that you had no defense. It's not like they were getting into a lot of knock-down drag-out fights, which is what you're likely to find when fighting a paladin or DK.

All of this to say, we want jotun to still be viable in PK, but not overpowered. Hence I wouldn't hold them to the same standard as gnome and illithid. Instead, that argument makes me tempted to start a separate discussion about how to balance illithid (not necessarily gnome because maybe we like them squishy). At least that would give the people who've played illithid pscions a chance to pitch into that argument.

[Davairus]

Well I don't think every race/class needs to be, as they say, "balanced" perfectly on the score sheet. Paladins always come up in these conversations, but I really don't see that it would make sense for paladins to be anything other than a significant adversary for a "strong" evil to contend with. They have a lot of roleplaying restrictions, too, something an evil warrior definitely does not have. Evils in general get wider freedom, they can kill whoever they want (including neutrals), loot whoever they want, and talk trash to whoever they want. An average random evil warrior/dark-knight/etc just spams his bash and looks around for better equipment.. he doesnt need to worry about trying to look like a hero, he can just dunk some noobs and brag about how awesome he is. Whereas paladins do not get to be cool, they are actually meant as a party pooper - they are likely to have invested time itemizing just to serve that exact same evil player their come-uppance. I do not think that paladins are anywhere close to "unbalanced", just they've been given a leg up vs evils. this is the entire point, and it seems an obvious thing to say. It would be a problem if one paladin was going around flattening literally every other player in the entire game, but they have no business doing that, and it'd lead to an outcasting (an outcasted paladin character basically might as well have been deleted).

[lionSpyre]

Ah, yes. That point has come up before, about how we’re not striving for perfect balance here. I tend to forget that point when we get really in the weeds with balance discussions. But it’s fair if that’s the vision of the game.

It would also be interesting to see how paladins fair if changes come to Warlords / Keepers like was discussed in the other thread. Those changes would likely lead to them having to confront more neutrals, where practically half their kit disappears.

[Xenyar]

Maybe stone vuln would be a good idea. That would be a start.. With the most important stats for shield and parry being 22 and/or 23, they'd still be a step ahead of dwarf pally regarding mana pool and defenses, and at the very least on par HP wise with the 4 prac/lvl - for HP conversion.
It's the Wisdom stat that's making the biggest difference over a dwarf.Go down to 21. Bring a point of that over to INT, raise that to 19.

I get it that paladins are supposed to be the OP superhero to take down the bad guys. But that is where the line should probably be drawn. Getting into racial buffs that enhance the class further is probably where it goes a step too far. And that's why we're discussing vuln options I suppose...

[Davairus]

The pierce vuln was a very obvious disadvantage, a big problem that anyone can recognize and run off to find some pointy stick/dagger/polearm to exploit it. This new stone material vuln will instead be making their healing a lot more inefficient, and potentially adding this innate frenzy makes it more difficult to parry. We can't see mana bars, that means we won't know whether its working until we see some jotun limping around with no mana left for heals. I think its going to be too early to tell if the stats need nerf. But these factors that I just described are going to be obviously a lot bigger than lowering wis by 1.

[Xenyar]

I'd be lowering wisdom by -2. Increase Int by +1. Slightly less elite defenses, and 3 pracs instead of 4. Stat change isn't anything I was really pushing for anyways.. Just a quick thought to Lion's "on par with dwarves" question.

Remember Pips take on the original Jotun... It was high praise with a "Absolute dump truck" comment, or something like that.

Anyhow, let's see how the revised jotun will turn out.

[lionSpyre]

Also just to clarify, is the plan to make the stone a special weakness that hurts healing, rather than a vuln with a damage multiplier? Knee jerk reaction, I’m a fan of the classic vuln damage multiplier here, but I think it’s worth trying new things too.

I’d also generally recommend implementing one change at a time and see how it affects gameplay, rather than multiple changes since it’s easier to track how it affects combat. But that experience comes more from home brewing DND rules rather than a faster pace feedback system like AR.

[Davairus]

The plan is that instead of a material vuln directly causing more damage it would have a cumulating impact on all forms of healing and regeneration. Numbers to be determined, but for e.g. we might say 10% of the damage you take gets to be attributed to your stone vuln. which means if you take 100 damage then it would reserve 9.02. (90.19 + 9.019 is about 100, I'm not sure if I'm doing this right off the top of my head, but it has to be that damage + 10% of damage = 100). then when you heal, you have to pay the vuln back. so that if you did two 50 hp heals (or slept two ticks), you would heal 45.5 two times which means you heal 90.19. so its pretty much just a 10%-ish tax on healing . Also, this is for all material vulns, not just jotuns stone.

[Dogran]

That is a very interesting concept.

[lionSpyre]

I agree, and not just for fighting jotun paladins, but for all cleric/hybrid classes. I like the idea of hitting their attrition at the expense of your own damage to them. It's sort of in the spirit of my suggestion that damage dealt from weapons made of a material weakness can only be reduced by so much. But this is frankly better because it adds an extra element of strategy, rather than just being an inverse of material vulns.

I'll also take the chance to say that after some thought, I really don't like the frenzy idea strictly for the consequences to PVE.

[Davairus]

OK we can walk this slow and just do the material weakness change first then (I'm calling it exposure). I am finding it hard to code particularly fast in this dumbass heatwave anyways.

[Kalist19]

does this mean fire giants no longer have an up front ice vuln? that'd be p sweet for a fire giant bc typically fire giants don't reeeaaaally rely on sustain. it's more like 'hit super hard super fast and then loot the shiny stuff'

at least that's in my experience haha

[Davairus]

no no, dont get it twisted kalist, its an effect of the presence of a material weakness not vuln. for a jotun, this is like suffering from being exposed to kryptonite

[Xenyar]

Will this include materials like diamond, sapphire, emerald, ect. as part of the stone weakness? Those are considered stones by definition.. Just curious.

[BlackWidow]

Responding to some stuff at random from this thread...

Lionspyre: you make a good point about bypassing vulnerabilities. There was a time when barrier and mana shield did not block vulnerability attacks due to Eloret dominating as a gnome invoker, though that change seemed to be reverted for reasons unknown to me in my absence.

Davairus: I totally understand having issues getting stuff done due to the heat. Even though I have lived in warm climates basically all my life (originally Southern California, and I have been a permanent resident of Florida since I was a teenager with only occasional vacations elsewhere), it feels like things have gotten worse over time. Hurricane seasons are hit and miss for me, but it's not uncommon for me to lose power at least once during the regular hurricane season.

Even putting aside the hurricane seasons, the weather has taken a turn towards extreme heat waves. I have no idea where you're at Dav, but anyway... My point with this and the above paragraph is that I don't mind waiting for updates if the heat is contributing towards them not getting added, and that you also have my sympathy regarding that problem.

[BlackWidow]

PS. Since I can't edit my own messages here and something popped into my mind immediately after posting... The "lowered healing" concept can be incredibly effective against classes which rely heavily on healing. Grievous wounds from tiger style in AR is probably the most effective physical debuff against cleric classes; I remember one of my shamans was healing something like 20-30 hp from a cure critical after enough chakkras were hit in a duel, which was much less healing than what I was used to getting.