1) The idea of "Emperium Shards" is actually pretty interesting, but sadly, it has some issues
- The quest to kill the emperium would put non-aspd classes (non-breakers) at disadvantage regarding the collection of shards. A huge disadvantage since you specified "This quest would give a large amount of emperium shards. When turned in".
- If the emperium shards get scattered around the mentioned parts of the castle, some players could abuse that and collect more than other guildmates by taking advantage of the circunstances (for example, during the breaking, the enemies -the ones holding the castle- were attacking the intruding guild and killed some of its members; suddenly, the emp got broken and the shards got scattered. The players who couldn't survive the enemy rush would have to get back in, and while they're on it, the rest of the players already cleaned the floor).
- The new equipments don't sound that promising to many players because they jeopardize the need of specific gears in order to survive, inflict a decent amount of damage, or avoid statuses. Instead they would be useful to certain classes or builds (and playstyles) that focus on debuffing, and new players that can't afford high-end or even mid-end gears and are more prone to perishing in battle; So, a guild as a whole wouldn't be that motivated to destroy emperiums just to get shards (which doesn't help your goal: "Increase Participation and Breaking of Castles").
- To counter the previous points, the idea of a NPC that appears once the castle gets taken (emperium breaks) and gives out shards to each player is actually better, because even non-breakers and classes/players that can't tank that much and die before the emp gets broken would have an equal chance to get shards (assuming they'd want them; this has something to do with the next point). It was already mentioned by someone in this thread, just retaking it.
- If the rewards given by turning shards in were to get better (A LOT better), guilds attacking random ocastles just to farm them would become a common occurence. There's got to be a mid-point to avoid this and avoid indifference towards shards, but I can't think of anything right now; maybe making the mentioned gears available (if someone wants/needs them because of reason "x", they'll be there) but adding buffing scrolls or something in order to attract players that don't.
2) WoE Bounty Tokens are conflicting too:
- Tokens earned for killing players near your character level seem okay, it's only natural to kill during WoE (obviously), and on top of that you get rewarded? Great. BUUUT the only ones who will actually get any benefit out of it are killers, and that's unfair towards support classes/players. Like, they have to help you survive and kill, but since they can't kill by themselves they get nothing out of a TEAM-EFFORT?
- The same goes for the tokens earned by destroying barricades, guardians, and stones; non-dps and non-aspd players (A.K.A. support players -maybe leaving Maestros out of the "non-aspd" classification because of the Berserk Guitar effect-) don't stand a chance to earn any reward.
- If support players can't get access to the rewards you get by turning tokens in BECAUSE THEY DON'T GET TOKENS AT ALL, what's the point?
- The reward system seems okay itself, you just have to change the mechanics (a lot lol). The bounty (killing, destroying) rewards should be aimed towards the guild because at the end of the day it is actually the guild as the sum of its parts that gets the job done. I mean, instead of rewarding individual players reward the guild in a way that it rewards its players equaly. For example, when WoE ends the recaller would have to talk to an NPC (available in any realm) that gives him an X amount of weightless tokens based on the guild's performance (the bounties), which can be used the next WoE to protect castles or something (not quite sure about the usefulness of the tokens for a guild at WoE. Would have to look further into it); this could help to destroy opportunistic guilds that only break empty castles and avoid battles because they're only interested in farming Godly pieces/items.
3) Destroying formal guild alliances seems fine, because WoE would become more challenging. And since guilds can still be allied (just not in the same way) and merges are still possible, small guilds have the chance to merge with others (let it be temporary or permanent, whatever, it's their call) in order to help each other out against the big guilds, and guilds within an alliance can agree not to meddle with each other's castles (I mean, not attacking but not helping either; just being apart and letting fair battles develope).
4) I have no idea about Doram Cat Race, so no opinion regarding that one.
5) The fix on SD's cast time sounds good in order to avoid abuse. Many think it would deem Mechanics useless or less useful, but it won't. increasing cast time would only bring balance; Suicidal Destruction is OP on itself (because of the amount of inflicted damage), but you don't even see it coming and almost every time the mech explodes before you can even see what's happening. There's that, plus abusing them as alts. So increasing the fixed cast time of the skill would help to avoid that kind of thing, but Suras and other classes can still immovilize you and let the mech have its way, so it's not actually deeming them less useful, just trickier/harder to use in order to wipe the enemy. Making the cast of SD stoppable should be on the table too, but would need further review.
6) Total agreement regarding Stasis not being able to work through walls. Many abuse alts, and it is a problem; most alts don't have a full set of reductions (if any equipment at all, though I'm not saying it's always the case), so being able to place an alted Warlock behind the safety of a wall in order to cast Stasis succesfully isn't fair at all; you get Stasis no matter what and that's it, can't even fight it. Instead, forcing people to use Stasis by getting close to the people they want to disable (not "close" behind a wall), actually gives the targeted people a chance to avoid it; if it's an unequipped alt, they kill it easily and it could reduce alt abuse, and if it's someone playing Warlock as a main (or a well-geared alt) and they can't stop him, then they get Stasis in a "fair way".
7) Not sure about how the SP cost of the Masquerade line of skills would be of any help, but I'm not really that knowledgeable regarding Shadow Chasers, so no opinion here. Some people suggested increasing their cast delay in previous posts, but that would be a huge nerf on the class since you need many attempts to masquerade certain classes/builds/players, so it's kind of unfair (for example; I would love to incease the cast delay of Masquerade Gloomy, it's coming from a DB-oriented RK that hates having to bwing out of the castle to get the friggin' dragon back. But it's still unfair). Maybe there's a middle-ground.
8) Not sure about the potting issue either. A little testing should be done before implementing that kind of change. Even without macros or hacks some players are faster than others at spamming buttons, so it's unfair to punish them and make them less tanky (again, not sure if the potting delay can be compensated by the 25% increase in potion healing ability, hence the need to test). Maybe it is better to addres the hacking/autopotting/macros issue, though I personally don't think *certain* macros are bad (the other two are plain wrong, they automate the game. Macros on the other hand can vary a lot; with some, you automate certain aspects of the game and it's wrong, but with others you just make it easier/more confortable to use certain buttons -like using a mouse button instead of a keyboard button; you just change which part of your gaming set-up you use, you don't actually stop pressing buttons-).
9) No complaints about disabling monster transformation on WoE maps. It will be harder for some classes to hide and avoid being targeted by others, but it will also be harder for some classes to target without being targeted, so it balances itself.
I don't really have an opinion regarding the remaining suggestions, and right now I can't think of any new suggestions per se.
I guess that's it, just wanted to give my point of view.
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