Feedback Request- Spirit Lord Job Skills - Archive - WarpPortal Community Forums

Jump to content


Photo

Feedback Request- Spirit Lord Job Skills


  • Please log in to reply
9 replies to this topic

#1 Hastur

Hastur

    Too Legit To Quit

  • Retired
  • 1553 posts
  • Playing:Nothing

Posted 10 April 2012 - 08:22 PM

We will be opening up this thread for people to voice their opinion regarding Spirit Lord. (Please direct all other Shaman related questions here)

If you have an issue with class balance, please post it here.

A skill which you feel could be better? please post it here.

A known bug or issue with a specific skill? please post it here.

Now remember this is for Spirit Lord ONLY.

Feedback for Jumeaux can be posted here.
  • 0

#2 Coolsam

Coolsam

    Too Legit To Quit

  • Members
  • 4997 posts
  • LocationHiding from my Subscribers
  • Playing:Dragon Saga
  • Server:revreS

Posted 10 April 2012 - 09:53 PM

Brace Yourselves, Mana drain and Damage reflect posts are coming.

I feel as though Spirit Lords are great PvE wise. Their summons are pretty good at later levels and they have a good balance between summons and their own magic. They are a deadly combination as the summons are not meat shields but actually are good.

In PvP, the class uses this balance rather well. The Golgon is a decent tanker and can stun up opponents and also knockback which seems to screw up skills. The 4th job summon, is a beast in every sense of the word. He's powerful, literally his damage does well versus defensive types. And the summoner being the main target, can back itself great in group pvp. Summoners, like Warmages are more suited to this style. Their magic is used mostly to keep opponents away and use magic to trap up opponents and inflict damage as well as status effects.

Two skills (which I stated that people may post alot about) are the unbalanced parts however.

Mana burn: This skill is a game changer if used correctly. Basically crippling opponents. If item is off in pvp, the mana lost can disable a player for an easy kill. I believe the rate it drains is the main problem. It can zero out enemy mp too fast at times.

Damage Reflection on Summons: This was a big problem when it was first released. it just turned summons into meat shields that have a chance at wasting your opponents instantly if they get hit.
  • 1

#3 epifanes

epifanes

    I am New.

  • Members
  • 7 posts

Posted 11 April 2012 - 06:34 AM

First, I'm an EU server player, but I do believe the game mechanics is the same for both, so I'm gonna post some feedback here.

Bugs I found:

1) in Battlesquare, a minion with Revenge(Spirit Counterattack) skill on returns damage from Blizzard skill, regardless the team the mage who casted is in. Tl;dr - you can kill your own teammates with it, and they are rarely happy about it.
2) some minion types attack and damage each other in BSq (only when an enemy is not in the range?). Dark Knight attacks Mists and Golgon, while Mists and Doonamik attack each other for example. Tl;dr - you can have your minions at half HP even before the first opponent get to hit them.
3) visiting MyHome with minions make them disappear, while the cooldown to recast them is still on, so you are basically losing the support until CD gets reset.

Skills which could be better:

Actually, there are too many good skills which you will never have enough skill points to use on anyway, so I shouldn't complain, but if you insist...

Area Spell - based on base DEF, and as such, 20%-60% DEF increase is laughable (but all %DEF increase skills in the game work like this, so nothing new here).

Spell Prison - there is a significant delay on when the enemy gets inflicted by the skill actually. It takes a while for it to start to work after the enemy is in the range, but when he leaves the range the effect is gone almost instantly, so this seems not balanced. Faster mobs in F7 often rush through it without slowing down at all, and it's very ineffective in PvP as well. It should also apply for jumping within the spell range, at least.

Impact Presser - the range is very narrow, and it doesn't seem too practical especially in PvP. If getting attacked, you either miss with it because of long distance from enemy (unless they stay at the spot or move very slow due to some debuff), or you will be unable to cast it due to being hit/locked.

Blesser - the heal effect should be the real Slow Heal, i.e. not once per 15 secs, but once in every 5 (or was it 3?) seconds. As it can't get over level 3, it wouldn't be too imbalanced having 3% healed every 5 seconds IMO. It's quite hard to get the heal anyway, as you need to be very close and almost immobile to get healed.

Stronger Summon - even maxed, the effect is not noticeable. Is this also working upon the base DEF? If so, minions as PvE mobs should have close to 0 base DEF anyway, so this passive seems useless.

Shot Mastery - completely useless, as Smart Shot is not affected by ATK Speed boost. What skill is it supposed to work with?

Class balance:

I also think the class is balanced pretty well - it has the highest MATK in the game, but compared to human magician classes, it has no effective heals so it's much easier to kill. With so many skills, you can have many potential builds so it's quite variable class to play. Some skills require absurdly high points in prerequisites though, but this should probably support specialization in certain skill tree rather than taking all the best skills at once.

Mana burn - only an issue with 'Use Item' ticked off, and frankly, no one should even try to PvP a shaman with this option off. In mass PvP where you can't turn this option off, it is not a problem anymore.

Spirit counterattack - I still don't think it's imbalanced. There are ways to counter it, the minions can be killed without any damage reflected, and most of them (mainly Golgon) have long cooldowns so if you relied solely on the damage reflection, you would have no other option than just run around until the CD is gone.

Edited by epifanes, 11 April 2012 - 06:43 AM.

  • 2

#4 tainguyen

tainguyen

    Amateur Blogger

  • Members
  • 329 posts

Posted 11 April 2012 - 08:28 AM

Mana burn was an issue back then... and it still hasnt gotten nerfed? Revenge is a new prob.... dark knight damg output is WAY too high. Shamans spell trap caste time should be increased. This skill in combination of new passive makes this skill a easy catcher, and once shamans catch you, its gg already (unless golgon shows u sympathy and smacks u out of lock). Spell trap should be like 1.1 sec caste time imo.

Edited by tainguyen, 11 April 2012 - 11:23 AM.

  • 1

#5 Jumpluffspore

Jumpluffspore

    Awarded #1 Troll

  • Members
  • 823 posts
  • Playing:Dragon Saga

Posted 11 April 2012 - 02:18 PM

The cast time decrease went too far. There should still be some time to cast a spell instead of lol insta. If they have no cast for a huge AOE catch and warlocks have a cast for a LINE-based attack that freezes there's an issue.
Summoners went from being this gimmicky-enemy disabling class that took some skill to play in a 3v3 or higher to this lol take everything to the ground class that maintained its disabling prowess.
Things that shouldn't even be a skill:
Mana Burn
Damage Reflection. (On PvE based damage, one hit= death.)
The no heals argument is null and void because summoners CAN heal and the other mages don't have giant floating mobile shields that kill you if they are attacked.
Spirit Lord's dps is too high in comparison to a warlock as well
to reply to epifanes "Mana burn - only an issue with 'Use Item' ticked off, and frankly, no one should even try to PvP a shaman with this option off. In mass PvP where you can't turn this option off, it is not a problem anymore."Then why bother having mana burn in the first place?

Edited by Jumpluffspore, 11 April 2012 - 02:19 PM.

  • 0

#6 Monyot

Monyot

    I made it Off Topic

  • Members
  • 51 posts
  • Playing:Nothing

Posted 11 April 2012 - 02:52 PM

Gotta say something about this:

Class balance:
I also think the class is balanced pretty well - it has the highest MATK in the game, but compared to human magician classes, it has no effective heals so it's much easier to kill. With so many skills, you can have many potential builds so it's quite variable class to play. Some skills require absurdly high points in prerequisites though, but this should probably support specialization in certain skill tree rather than taking all the best skills at once.


Personally i think the class that should have the highest MATK in the game is WM since it suits the description of summoner. I would not be surprise if summoner MATK is slightly higher than WM (maybe drakan is smarter than human?), but twice as higher as WM imo is ridiculous (have seen summoner with 32k MATK, and the max MATK i have ever seen in WM is about... 17k?). So i think it should be toned down.

About slow heal, WMs slow heal itself already a problem at endgame (i think it is balanced for PvE early and mid-game though), so i think summoner slow heal should not be upgraded. Imo what summoner should do is rely more to its summon in fighting and supporting its summons, therefore it doesn't really need heal and that amount is good enough. In addition, summoner can "eat" their summons to heal him/herself too. It has more than enough heal

Spirit counterattack - I still don't think it's imbalanced. There are ways to counter it, the minions can be killed without any damage reflected, and most of them (mainly Golgon) have long cooldowns so if you relied solely on the damage reflection, you would have no other option than just run around until the CD is gone.


That's exactly what a summoner in this server do in BSQ/EW. While sure it is a valid tactic and there are many ways to counter it (though i think not all classes can counter it well), but if you can kill an army of super stacked people by running or heck by getting himself/herself to the AoE, i think there is something wrong with the skill. I think the main problem of this skill is the summoner takes a PvE damage. If somehow the summons are toned down to... has less HP but higher defense, i think it may solve the problem.
  • 1

#7 Maronu

Maronu

    Too Legit To Quit

  • Members
  • 2358 posts
  • Playing:Nothing

Posted 12 April 2012 - 07:15 AM

I think much of the problem with this class has to do with the duration of skills and how powerful they are. I feel that gameplay would be more enjoyable and the class would be more balanced if duration of some skills was increased and power was decreased. Other cooldowns should be changed to encourage smart play. As it is now, the summoner can just spam summon and buff up and overwhelm opponents. Here are some possible changes based upon this idea, and some other changes to skills that I feel the class needs.

Changes I would recommend:

Mana burn: Reduce the amount of mana absorbed from 5% at level 5 to .5%. Increase duration at level 5 from 23 seconds to 230 seconds. This skill should be mostly an annoyance rather than something powerful that the summoner has to constantly spam apply and can to wreck players with. Reduce the sp cost from 20 to 15 due to the significant decrease in power.

Mana react: I love this underated skill. Increase this skill from absorbing 50% of the mana absorbed at level 5 to 500% (indirectly proportional to the mana burn change, so mana react essentially does the same thing as it did without burn being nerfed). Not having to worry about mp pots in group pvp is my favorite thing about burn, and I believe this skill would work very well if Mana burn's duration was increased by x10 and it's effectiveness reduced to 1/10 like I proposed. I kind of also wish that you could mana react monsters (I wouldn't care if burning didn't make monsters run out of mana and unable to use skills. I just would like to regain mp by having burn on and being near mobs). I somewhat dislike that burn is a pvp only skill. Reduce the sp requirement from 15 to 10 unless this skill is changed to work on monsters.

Summon Dark Knight: Half or forth the attack power of this summon but double or quadruple the duration this guy is out for. This guy is too strong. He destroys everything, but it also feels like he disappears almost right after you summon him. I like this summon, and I would like having him out, but when you are running around he is often just trying to follow you and not really attacking anything, so usually he only gets 1 or 2 attacks off before vanishing. =(

Mega Inferno: The damage of this toggle skill is pretty high, but smear shot and dragon tooth do about the same amount of damage and have none of the draw backs. Smear shots cost 0 mp to use once the buff is cast and dragon tooth cost about a 10th as much mp as Mega Inferno. Mega Inferno drains your MP very quickly if you leave the toggle on. What is worse is that inferno has a slow start up time, leaves you open, has a fairly high cooldown, and cancels if you get hit. Smear and dragontooth both have no cooldown and are relatively safe. Mega Inferno needs to deal significantly higher % damage (at least double), to make up for how slow it is and how many draw backs it has, imo. Also, Mega Inferno skill and the lower level version "Inferno" used to sometimes glitch and continue draining mp even after you turn the toggle off. I don't know if this still happens sense I haven't used either Inferno in a long time. Fix this skill! Breathing fire is a very unique and awesome idea for summoner gameplay,but currently Mega Inferno sucks too much to be viable.

Mega Spike Wave/ Mega Inferno: I feel that summoners should get a skill that upgrades Spike Wave into Mega Spike Wave and Inferno into Mega Inferno instead of getting a separate skill that is simply an upgraded version of a skill we get early on. I do not have room on my skill bar for the 2 base skills and upgraded versions, and the fact that inferno and mega inferno are perquisites that players must get to lvl 3 in order to get other skills feels like an unnecessary waste of skill points. Passive for upgrade would be better and save players skill points. Simple enough.

Summon Mechanics: Currently we have a system where the summon cooldown begins immediatly after you use a summon. This should be changed because it is very exploitable. Summons should have no cooldown themselves (I would like to be able to summon all 5 mists at once, etc. It would speed up play, especially in the early pve game), but summoners SHOULD have a recharge time on their "summon points" (the point system that limits how many slots a summoner has or in other words how many total monsters can be summoned). This recharge time would put a limitation on summoners that would require them to use their summons wisely, instead of spamming random hoards of assorted low point creatures, and it would also give them an incentive to keep their summons alive.

Currently, the amount of a summon points a summoner has used and has remaining are invisible. We need to be able to see our points. Have a small summon point bar implemented that shows our summon points remaining (or just put a fraction to the side of our mp bar) and possibly add another little bar or ratio that shows us how many are currently actively being used by our summons.

Now the most important thing is...our summon point bar has a recharge time, but it does not constantly gradually refill by itself (that could result in limitless numbers of summons). I want to be very clear that we have two distinct sets of points, summon points actively being used (in the form of the summons we have out) and summon points that are in reserve (and can be used to summon our monsters). What would need to happen is that when a summon is destroyed (killed, regained, or impact unsummed) the active point or points used by that summon get place in a sort of queque or there is a cooldown before the points get moved out of active points and back into the reserve. This cooldown could be based upon the particular summon that is destroyed, but it is a cooldown to get the points back, not for the summon, and the cooldown does not start until the summon is destroyed! This means that when you kill someones summon or a summoner sacrifices a summon, they would have to wait awhile before they can summon something else to replace it. That means smart play would be required!

Summon HP and Defense: Summons need to have their defense based upon the summoners defense in the same way that summon attack is based upon the summoners attack. The summons don't necessarily need to have really high amounts of hp (3-10 times the amount of the summoner like it is now), but they do need to be moderately difficult to kill, and the damage that players do to them can't be so high that when "Spirit Counter Attack" is applied to the summon it causes the attacker to kill himself/herself due to damage reflection. PVE damage to summon = WTF instant gib! If like I proposed, summon mechanics are changed to where cooldown is based around getting summon points back, I feel that some sort of scaling of the summons defense with the masters defense is a perfectly viable solution to our current problem with "Spirit Counter Attack". There is a lot of room for playing around with an idea like this, and a lot of strategy could be added by such a feature. For instance, certain summons might have better attack stats while others are more defensive/hp orienated and are used simply for survivability so that the "Energy circulation" buff stays up.

Cry of Life: This skill which restores a large % chunk of summon health may be problematic with the above HP and defense changes, so some slight adjustments could possibly be necessary depending upon how difficult the summons became to kill. Currently, cry of life is pretty much useless due to the fact that summons can be killed very quickly in pvp and in pve summons don't die until cooldowns have ended anyway. The suggested changes would make a skill that heals summons viable and useful.

Pain division: If summon hp were reduced, as proposed in the "Summon HP and Defense" section, the damage shared by the summons by this skill should not be doubled.

Regain Refresh and Damage Output: By reducing summons hp and changing how summon cooldowns work, the power of this healing skill would be dramatically reduced. If the proposed changes (including the change to the damage of Dark Knight and burn change), I feel that the currently high magic attack value possessed by summoners would be fair from a balance perspective.

Edited by Maronu, 12 April 2012 - 07:23 AM.

  • 6

#8 Kazu731

Kazu731

    Too Legit To Quit

  • Members
  • 3347 posts
  • LocationSky Garden
  • Playing:Dragon Saga
  • Server:Sky Garden

Posted 12 April 2012 - 08:46 AM

I like those ideas, Maronu, but I'm a bit confused. Doesn't the Summon window show how many point you have remaining? That is, it will say [3/7] for example.
  • 0

#9 Maronu

Maronu

    Too Legit To Quit

  • Members
  • 2358 posts
  • Playing:Nothing

Posted 13 April 2012 - 08:53 AM

I like those ideas, Maronu, but I'm a bit confused. Doesn't the Summon window show how many point you have remaining? That is, it will say [3/7] for example.


Interesting. It seems the points are not invisible. It actually does say [summoned creature x/7], although it is pretty hard for me to see. It seems that when I'm playing in both window and full screen modes I can only see a small part of that word and ratio, while the majority of it is covered up by the first summon on my list. Perhaps it is just my screen or resolution, but unless I click the arrow button that hides the summon boxes, it is pretty hard to notice that number and read how many summon points I am using. Are you able to see the ratio clearly?

And I guess if my idea were to be implemented, displaying what I called "active points" is something that has already been implemented. We would just need to have the bar or ratio for the reserve points added along with some sort of timer for moving the points back to reserve. Anyone else have any thoughts about that sort of proposed system?
  • 1

#10 Kazu731

Kazu731

    Too Legit To Quit

  • Members
  • 3347 posts
  • LocationSky Garden
  • Playing:Dragon Saga
  • Server:Sky Garden

Posted 13 April 2012 - 09:41 AM

Interesting. It seems the points are not invisible. It actually does say [summoned creature x/7], although it is pretty hard for me to see. It seems that when I'm playing in both window and full screen modes I can only see a small part of that word and ratio, while the majority of it is covered up by the first summon on my list. Perhaps it is just my screen or resolution, but unless I click the arrow button that hides the summon boxes, it is pretty hard to notice that number and read how many summon points I am using. Are you able to see the ratio clearly?

And I guess if my idea were to be implemented, displaying what I called "active points" is something that has already been implemented. We would just need to have the bar or ratio for the reserve points added along with some sort of timer for moving the points back to reserve. Anyone else have any thoughts about that sort of proposed system?

I can see it but it is a bit bunched up. Regardless, I think if there were something like your queue system we'd need something a bit more obvious and substantial. I'm very much a fan of that sort of idea, because often people feel discouraged from Summoner early on, and I fail to see how it would create any sort of imbalance in terms of cooldowns, but would also streamline the play a bit more. My only worry would be that, ideally, I'd like to see the actual queue itself, rather than have an invisible arbitrary timer going on. I suppose someone would get used to the timers after playing the class for a while, but it always helps to see such things. Anyway, I completely like your ideas for the class and really do like the idea of that point timer rather than a summon timer most of all.
  • 0




0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users