21 replies to this topic

[Yurai]

I'd like some opinions on these three skills, mainly cure and barbarian. Recently, barbarian and witch's curse were changed so that the rate of success is completely unaffected by aim rate, similar to how a myrm's stumblebum always hits. While they do have a failure rate, it's still an extremely significant change that allows priests to be even more useful in supporting than they already were. Witch's curse isn't too bad since it breaks upon taking any sort of damage, but barbarian is a bit ridiculous. It's essentially a medium sized aoe instant freeze that lasts 4 seconds with a cooldown of only 6 seconds. The only other comparable skill is a WM's blizzard, which is at less than half the success rate of barbarian and isn't instant for the entire aoe. Not to mention, all other disables outside of barbarian with a duration of 2s or higher do require aim rate to hit.

Cure also seems to be a problem. At max rank, it removes 5 debuffs each from all allies on only a 3 second cooldown. The extremely low cooldown of this skill does not encourage selective play and makes it impossible to debuff the priest and his/her allies. Other skills that offer a cure are only for the player using it (atropine and barricade). Atropine can only cure 1 status, has a 10 second cooldown, and has negative sideeffects upon using it too much. Barricade offers a 5 status effect cure, but its drawback is having a 30 second duration. The problem with cure only recently surfaced along with the change to barbarian and witch's curse because it makes it so that the opposing team is always debuffed/frozen while the priests team is immune to all debuffs, making it extremely difficult to kill anyone.

If you take it a step further and factor in emergency escape (fine as is) and heals (requiring a rework still), it's literally impossible to kill anyone. To recap, I'd like this thread to discuss only the skills mentioned in the thread title and possible changes that could be made to balance them, or if you feel that they are already balanced, state your reasons.

[Coolsam]

Cure's cooldown is way too low. And at 5 debuffs cured which is the same as barricade, in Priest vs Priest or team pvp with priests, the priest can cure all the debuffs given by the muddy skill.

Question: Can cure fix netbind status from hunter-pathfinder-setinel? If so then Priest's could cure all but Silence on themselves and everything to team-mates.

[xBayoo]

Question: Can cure fix netbind status from hunter-pathfinder-setinel? If so then Priest's could cure all but Silence on themselves and everything to team-mates.

Yes, which is why the sentinel's first goal is to silence the priest.

[Jumpluffspore]

Yes, which is why the sentinel's first goal is to silence the priest.

A+ for critical thinking. To balance cure, it needs at least a cd increase, and frankly, it shouldn't heal multiple statuses and MULTIPLE people. Maybe it should auto target the teammate closest to it with a debuff, or remove one debuff (randomly? idk) from all teammates within range. That or make cure stay the way it is but give it a 1 sec cast time with increased cool down. If Barbarian ignores evasion now, success rate should be lowered to 50%.

Edited by Jumpluffspore, 08 January 2012 - 10:48 AM.

[Endbringer]

Personally for cure, i'd like to see it only remove debuffs from the caster and one other person per cast on top of its MP cost being increased. Keep the duration and amount of buffs it removes the same. Reasoning it would force the priest to be more diligent about keeping people cured, without having a one button and forget about it mentality.

As for Barbarian and Witches curse. I feel these skills are where they should be. People shouldn't be ignoring the support characters, They need skills to make them an actual threat, not some minor annoyance. And these skills in their current form give them just that. Also the fact that it bypasses evade makes it one of the very few counters to evade stacking.

[Bhreemon]

i think the priest class has been nurfed into the ground already...if they haven't figured out a way to successfully balance the class THUS FAR, what are the chances of it happening at all? if they nurf anything else i would be most appreciative priest actually got a skill IMPROVEMENT rather than more and more nurfs!!!

take into consideration that i'm mainly a pve invoker, but from what i've seen thus far the game is forcing invokers into a support role (and one INFERIOR to summoners!). before you had the option to act in an offensive/defensive/support capacity. being limited by constant skill "alterations/balances," invokers just aren't what they used to be.

the story maybe different in pvp, but instead of further breaking down a once powerful class, maybe ADJUSTING (not nurfing!!!) the skills and abilities of ALL of the classes to ACTUALLY make some remote semblance of "balance" is necessary.

Edited by Bhreemon, 08 January 2012 - 05:54 PM.

[StormHaven]

If they make to where you can't evade/block while frozen then Invokers would be a really wanted class in group pvp along with a major threat to any class that relies on those.

edit:
I do think the Duration vs cooldown of the skill is a little absurd though it's too spam able maybe increase CD by 1 or 2 seconds?
Witch's Curse: I don't see a problem with this skill as it's easily broken.
Cure: 90mp to remove 5 debuffs every 3 seconds seems a little too much for such a low mana cost.

Edited by StormHaven, 08 January 2012 - 06:39 PM.

[Rimmy]

I've taken some time to think it over and I agree that Barbarian is a little too effective as it is right now. For one thing, it shouldn't ignore evade, IMO -- instead, it should simply work off of your full Aim Rate like any other skill, so that if you have a 100% hit chance because you have enough Aim Rate, the % chance of the skill taking effect is whatever is in the description (74% at level 5, 89% at level 10). Also, I think the cooldown could stand to be increased to maybe 8 or 10 seconds (primarily for PvP balance purposes), as currently the skill seems a little too spammable (the current cooldown is 6 seconds). However, I don't think the duration should be nerfed to be any lower than it already is (4 seconds), b/c any freeze/stun that only lasts for 1-2 seconds isn't going to be of much use in the first place. By the time we'd use any of our follow-up skills, the opponent would already be free and counterattacking or running away.

I'm mostly basing this off of repeated matches with Nillachan, b/c with Barbarian's cooldown as it is currently I feel like I can keep a combo going a bit too easily using only one or two skills. Also, bypassing evade just doesn't seem fair to me when there's only one other skill in the game that can do it (Stumblebum).

As for Cure, I think it should be limited to 2 people (the caster and one other person nearby) as Endu said, the cooldown should be increased to maybe 6 seconds (currently 3 seconds), and the maximum number of debuffs it can remove should be set to 2. This way, it's still incredibly useful, but it will be possible for people to "override" Cure's capabilities by stacking multiple debuffs on the priest/invoker, and it will also force the player to be a little more selective with Cures, as others have said. Having said that, if the cooldown is increased, I'd like to see the range of the skill increased a bit to compensate, b/c currently it is reallllly tiny and you have to be standing almost directly on top of your party members/teammates in order for it to successfully take effect.

I think priests/invokers should play a support role first and foremost, but honestly I'd rather see us get a variety of useful skills instead of relying on one or two skills too much. I'd much rather have a slew of less-powerful buffs and debuffs to choose from, so I could take action more often, just with a slightly less powerful effect (I think this would fit into the more fast-paced nature of PvP in DS pretty well).

EDIT: Almost forgot Witch's Curse. I too think this skill is fine as is.

Edited by Rimmy, 08 January 2012 - 06:46 PM.

[Himeyasha]

witch's curse has a horrible cooldown and is pretty easy to break out of. If anything I'd nerf freezing itself rather than the skill barbarian. Freezing in this game is pretty hax. Then again most classes have something that needs to be nerfed

[HavocInfinity]

Barbarian and witches curse can easily be avoided by jumping. Same with Quagmire, which helps priests with the jump block. All of which are one-sided and don't have a ridiculous range, unlike stumblebum. You can't keep a combo going with barbarian simply because it does have a failure rate; one which is reasonable at 74%. Priests are a support class; even if we can "lock" you, it requires a lot of effort to actually kill you.

As for cure, I don't see it too much of a problem. You need to be close to an ally to cure them of their ailments, which puts you at danger as well (for the most part, minor status effects such as poison and burn aren't too bad, but I understand curing silence is a big thing...). If you're in PvP and see that all of the opponents you are freezing are instantly cured, then there is a problem, but I doubt that is the case. Regardless, I don't use this skill every 3 seconds, or anywhere close to that, so as long as there is no cast time, an extension to 6 seconds isn't too bad (though when I sit around in town, I like to use on the my party members because it looks pretty :|)

Oh I just stopped to actually read some posts and Rim says its 89% success at Lv10 for Barbarian, which is very nice. I think it would be fair to increase the cast time when it reaches higher success rates though (about 8 or 9 seconds).

[Yurai]

Barbarian and witches curse can easily be avoided by jumping. Same with Quagmire, which helps priests with the jump block. All of which are one-sided and don't have a ridiculous range, unlike stumblebum. You can't keep a combo going with barbarian simply because it does have a failure rate; one which is reasonable at 74%. Priests are a support class; even if we can "lock" you, it requires a lot of effort to actually kill you.

As for cure, I don't see it too much of a problem. You need to be close to an ally to cure them of their ailments, which puts you at danger as well (for the most part, minor status effects such as poison and burn aren't too bad, but I understand curing silence is a big thing...). If you're in PvP and see that all of the opponents you are freezing are instantly cured, then there is a problem, but I doubt that is the case. Regardless, I don't use this skill every 3 seconds, or anywhere close to that, so as long as there is no cast time, an extension to 6 seconds isn't too bad (though when I sit around in town, I like to use on the my party members because it looks pretty :|)

Oh I just stopped to actually read some posts and Rim says its 89% success at Lv10 for Barbarian, which is very nice. I think it would be fair to increase the cast time when it reaches higher success rates though (about 8 or 9 seconds).

I just want to clear a couple of things up here:

The thing about Barbarian and witch's curse is that they both debuff immediately upon casting, so there is no possible way to react to the priest casting it, and even if you do predict it, the latency between the server and the clients will give enough time for the priest to still successfully freeze you. I have no problems with witch's curse -- I only brought it up because it was recently changed. However, Barbarian's cooldown seems a bit low for what it does.

The problem with cure is that there are many debuffs that can change how a match goes, which include but are not limited to slows, jump/dash block, silences, sleeps, stuns, freezes, april fool's, aim debuffs, etc. A priest can cure all of these and several of these skills have a significantly longer cooldown than cure, making it impossible to even try debuffing their teammates since the priest will just cure any long-term status debuffs.

Edited by Yurai, 08 January 2012 - 10:22 PM.

[Coolsam]

I just want to clear a couple of things up here:

The thing about Barbarian and witch's curse is that they both debuff immediately upon casting, so there is no possible way to react to the priest casting it, and even if you do predict it, the latency between the server and the clients will give enough time for the priest to still successfully freeze you. I have no problems with witch's curse -- I only brought it up because it was recently changed. However, Barbarian's cooldown seems a bit low for what it does.

The problem with cure is that there are many debuffs that can change how a match goes, which include but are not limited to slows, jump/dash block, silences, sleeps, stuns, freezes, april fool's, aim debuffs, etc. A priest can cure all of these and several of these skills have a significantly longer cooldown than cure, making it impossible to even try debuffing their teammates since the priest will just cure any long-term status debuffs.

Cure seems to be the only problem in my book. Witches curse well some DoT's actually get rid of it for you supposedly (Or maybe those few times with Bloody Roar curing my Witch Curse were flukes). And Barbarian and Magnet seem to be two good moves to catch opponents. Barbarian ignoring evade in pvp isn't too bad because as stated earlier it's one-sided and jumping works against it. However Yurai you are right the cooldown is alittle too low.

Cure seems to just be a priests possible game-changer. Only 1 class can put silence well 2 if you could weapon suspension which isn't 100% silence and much lower duration.

[Bhreemon]

nerfing cure is like nerfing resurrection. as a support class, that's what invokers do.
if a player is willing to put the points into the skill they should reap the benefits.

[Yurai]

nerfing cure is like nerfing resurrection. as a support class, that's what invokers do.
if a player is willing to put the points into the skill they should reap the benefits.

How is that even a valid comparison? They are completely different skills with a huge difference in mana cost and cooldown. According to your logic, we already have a perfectly balanced game since all classes should reap the benefits of every skill they put into!

[xRainrain]

I don't know if anyone noticed, but my invoker's lvl5 instant heal only heals 50% of hp. And not the description of 50% of caster's full hp. Anyone got any info for instant heal changes other than cure, barbarian and witch curse?

[Yurai]

I don't know if anyone noticed, but my invoker's lvl5 instant heal only heals 50% of hp. And not the description of 50% of caster's full hp. Anyone got any info for instant heal changes other than cure, barbarian and witch curse?

This thread is about cure, barbarian, and witch's curse. Please do not derail threads in the future. However, instant heal is still working as the description says. Create your own topic in the bug reports subforum if you're still having issues.

[xRainrain]

This thread is about cure, barbarian, and witch's curse. Please do not derail threads in the future. However, instant heal is still working as the description says. Create your own topic in the bug reports subforum if you're still having issues.

I don't see how I am derailing your thread, if your thread is about 1. Invokers 2. Changes made to Invoker's Skills. 3. It's a Game Balancing forum. We're suppose to be collective about the topic...

On another note lol @ "Create your own topic". It's true what people say about you. You got one big ego.. I've now experienced it first hand. #just saying

Edited by xRainrain, 09 January 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[StormHaven]

I don't see how I am derailing your thread, if your thread is about 1. Invokers 2. Changes to made Invoker's Skills. 3. It's a Game Balancing forum. We're suppose to be collective about the topic...

On another note lol @ "Create your own topic". It's true what people say about you. You got one big ego.. I've now experienced it first hand.

Just going to say, this thread was created for those 3 specific skills and not invokers in general. There is an Invoker general discussion thread in their sub forum or in the game balance summit topic.

[Rimmy]

The thing about Barbarian and witch's curse is that they both debuff immediately upon casting, so there is no possible way to react to the priest casting it, and even if you do predict it, the latency between the server and the clients will give enough time for the priest to still successfully freeze you. I have no problems with witch's curse -- I only brought it up because it was recently changed. However, Barbarian's cooldown seems a bit low for what it does.

I would just like to point out that there are advantages and disadvantages to both the "instant" catching skills (like Barbarian) and the "non-instant" catching skills (like Rocket Punch). Sure, Barbarian is hard to react to if you get in range, but if you're anywhere near a priest/invoker you should generally be expecting it, anyways -- in the same way that one can expect a thief to use RP when they suddenly move out of range and try to lure you into chasing them. Moreover, the fact that Barbarian has such a limited range and has an instant hit means that you have to basically get right up in your opponent's face to use it effectively, and the timing has to be very precise or it fails. Likewise, the fact that Barbarian is an instant cast and its limited range means that if you miss your target initially the skill fails and if you can't see your target, it's mostly useless -- while for a skill like RP, as just mentioned, you can use it even if you can't see your target or even if the target isn't immediately in range and it will sometimes hit the target anyways as they move into range.

Also, I'd like to point out that all you have to do to make it incredibly difficult for a priest to land Barbarian on you is be literally on top of them -- and as others said, it doesn't hit while you're in the air (if it looks like it did, it's lag), so you can just jump-dash directly into range for a cutdown-style attack (warriors/thieves), meteor attack (mages) or shootdown attack (archers) and start a combo on the priest without ever giving them a chance to use Barbarian on you as you approach. The range of Barbarian actually starts just a little bit out from where the priest is standing, so in fact you even have a little wiggle room in this regard.

For instance, when PvPing Nilla, it's really hard for me to manage to catch him without getting launched or getting hit by shootdown b/c he just approaches me in the air or uses a launch skill to lift me up into the air before he moves into range.

As a ninja, you also have additional ways to approach without putting yourself in danger b/c you can stand above or below the priest on the y-axis and use Sky Penetration/Fly and/or Ambush, use Swift Attack to knock them down before you approach, etc.

When we were PvPing the other night, the reason I kept catching you so often is b/c you kept dashing around or running on the ground with very little jumping going on. If you have really high movespeed and/or you jump around a lot, that immediately makes it more difficult to land Barbarian successfully because it makes it that much more difficult to get the timing down -- and if you're in the air, we have to be careful you don't move in too close while airborn and catch us off guard.

Still, like I said, I think the CD could be increased by a couple seconds. It really wouldn't make a huge difference except forcing priests to implement a bit more foresight in combos.

Edited by Rimmy, 09 January 2012 - 01:38 PM.

[Yurai]

I don't see how I am derailing your thread, if your thread is about 1. Invokers 2. Changes made to Invoker's Skills. 3. It's a Game Balancing forum. We're suppose to be collective about the topic...

On another note lol @ "Create your own topic". It's true what people say about you. You got one big ego.. I've now experienced it first hand. #just saying

You've done a good job at demonstrating your ignorance, as well as your lack of reading comprehension.

I would just like to point out that there are advantages and disadvantages to both the "instant" catching skills (like Barbarian) and the "non-instant" catching skills (like Rocket Punch). Sure, Barbarian is hard to react to if you get in range, but if you're anywhere near a priest/invoker you should generally be expecting it, anyways -- in the same way that one can expect a thief to use RP when they suddenly move out of range and try to lure you into chasing them. Moreover, the fact that Barbarian has such a limited range and has an instant hit means that you have to basically get right up in your opponent's face to use it effectively, and the timing has to be very precise or it fails. Likewise, the fact that Barbarian is an instant cast and its limited range means that if you miss your target initially the skill fails and if you can't see your target, it's mostly useless -- while for a skill like RP, as just mentioned, you can use it even if you can't see your target or even if the target isn't immediately in range and it will sometimes hit the target anyways as they move into range.

Also, I'd like to point out that all you have to do to make it incredibly difficult for a priest to land Barbarian on you is be literally on top of them -- and as others said, it doesn't hit while you're in the air (if it looks like it did, it's lag), so you can just jump-dash directly into range for a cutdown-style attack (warriors/thieves), meteor attack (mages) or shootdown attack (archers) and start a combo on the priest without ever giving them a chance to use Barbarian on you as you approach. The range of Barbarian actually starts just a little bit out from where the priest is standing, so in fact you even have a little wiggle room in this regard.

For instance, when PvPing Nilla, it's really hard for me to manage to catch him without getting launched or getting hit by shootdown b/c he just approaches me in the air or uses a launch skill to lift me up into the air before he moves into range.

As a ninja, you also have additional ways to approach without putting yourself in danger b/c you can stand above or below the priest on the y-axis and use Sky Penetration/Fly and/or Ambush, use Swift Attack to knock them down before you approach, etc.

When we were PvPing the other night, the reason I kept catching you so often is b/c you kept dashing around or running on the ground with very little jumping going on. If you have really high movespeed and/or you jump around a lot, that immediately makes it more difficult to land Barbarian successfully because it makes it that much more difficult to get the timing down -- and if you're in the air, we have to be careful you don't move in too close while airborn and catch us off guard.

Still, like I said, I think the CD could be increased by a couple seconds. It really wouldn't make a huge difference except forcing priests to implement a bit more foresight in combos.

I think it's pretty difficult for anyone to catch Nilla when PvPing him. That's besides the point, though. I don't think you can count sky penetration, ambush, or swift as a catch anymore since it is impossible to chain anything due to having infinite amounts of aerial recovery with no delay. I do understand the point you're getting at, though, and it certainly is valid. However, doing a little bit of damage here and there isn't enough to change the outcome of any match.

As for PvP the other night, one of the main factors may have been that it was a small match. I don't think the problem is that I don't jump around enough because I'm pretty sure I do. As one of the many classes that have to actually stay in one spot to deal any damage, I found it impossible to debuff/save my teammate while taking advantage of the situation and dealing some damage without getting frozen. I think you should have noticed that nearly every time I was frozen, I was in mid-jump, already anticipating the freeze, but unable to escape from it. There aren't really any mobile damage dealers outside of paladins (who additionally have a ridiculously high block rate and seem to be able to block freeze) and sentinels. I don't have any experience with twin fighters yet, but all the other classes besides those two previously mentioned need to stay on the ground to dish out their damage, which may be another reason why barbarian is as strong as it is currently.

In any case, I agree with you on the barbarian issue where only a slight change should be made to it. I was never intending anything major to be done to the skill, such as quadrupling the cooldown (oh wait, already happened to some other skill) without any significant buff to it. A cooldown increase of 1-2 seconds is already sufficient and should make things a lot better.

Edited by Yurai, 09 January 2012 - 05:54 PM.

[Rimmy]

As for PvP the other night, one of the main factors may have been that it was a small match. I don't think the problem is that I don't jump around enough because I'm pretty sure I do. As one of the many classes that have to actually stay in one spot to deal any damage, I found it impossible to debuff/save my teammate while taking advantage of the situation and dealing some damage without getting frozen. I think you should have noticed that nearly every time I was frozen, I was in mid-jump, already anticipating the freeze, but unable to escape from it. There aren't really any mobile damage dealers outside of paladins (who additionally have a ridiculously high block rate and seem to be able to block freeze) and sentinels. I don't have any experience with twin fighters yet, but all the other classes besides those two previously mentioned need to stay on the ground to dish out their damage, which may be another reason why barbarian is as strong as it is currently.

Hm, I suppose it's difficult to tell in that situation, but in my experience, 9 times out of 10 when I catch someone with Barbarian and they aren't frogged, it's b/c they're standing or running. I agree with your point though, as I was able to mostly just let my teammate distract you and catch you that way. I think I hadn't really considered that earlier in relation to the jumping issue.

But yeah, in short, I think you're right that part of the issue here is what you described regarding ground-based classes, b/c I generally have a much easier time catching pallies, thieves and other mages than most other classes. Archers are tough to snag, overlords are kinda tough b/c you have to be wary of Stumble, and summoners have that pushback move that's pretty clutch for interrupting close-range attacks if they have the timing down. For fighters I think it kinda depends on the player and their style, b/c some will focus on avoiding you while others are more aggressive.

[Yurai]

Hm, I suppose it's difficult to tell in that situation, but in my experience, 9 times out of 10 when I catch someone with Barbarian and they aren't frogged, it's b/c they're standing or running. I agree with your point though, as I was able to mostly just let my teammate distract you and catch you that way. I think I hadn't really considered that earlier in relation to the jumping issue.

But yeah, in short, I think you're right that part of the issue here is what you described regarding ground-based classes, b/c I generally have a much easier time catching pallies, thieves and other mages than most other classes. Archers are tough to snag, overlords are kinda tough b/c you have to be wary of Stumble, and summoners have that pushback move that's pretty clutch for interrupting close-range attacks if they have the timing down. For fighters I think it kinda depends on the player and their style, b/c some will focus on avoiding you while others are more aggressive.

I tend to disagree about pallies since they're a pretty mobile class. You can pretty much instantly jump cancel all of your skills and keep the lock going, which enables them to jump around between skills and while their opponent is immobile.