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Nexus Clash :: View topic - [Skill Change] Increase the viability of Nether Grafting
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 8:23 am Post subject: [Skill Change] Increase the viability of Nether Grafting
[TL;DR available in third post at the bottom. Improving it as you read this]
Nether Grafting remains a child skill of Summon Hellhound, but the following mechanic changes take place. For the sake of ease of discussion, I have broken the whole suggestion down into three parts with two suggestions in each to solve the problems raised by several different wyrm master controllers:
1) MOAR Hounds: Discusses alternate pathways of acquiring nether hounds. Possibly the least necessary change since some WMs tell me that the rejuvenating upgrade isn't too bad and happens naturally.
2) STRONGAR Hounds: Focuses on the current lackluster moveset. The most important change of the lot, since the nether hounds we have right now deal easily immunizable/soakable damage types.
3) STURDIAR Hounds: Considers the loss of fire immunity as a nerf from the Hellhound stage and seeks to remedy it. Nether hounds are a 60 CP upgrade of hellhounds that cannot be reversed, so IMO, they should be superior to hellhounds in as many aspects as possible.
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1) MOAR Hounds
The current system, represented by the quote below from the wiki:
The Wiki wrote:
Whenever a Wyrm Master with this skill Rejuvenates a Hellhound, it becomes a Nether Hound. Master of the Pack bonuses apply to Nether Hounds as well, once transmuted.
Becomes ONE of the following:
Suggestion 1: Upgrade on Kill
Suggestion 1 wrote:
Whenever a Wyrm Master with this skill Rejuvenates a Hellhound OR a hellhound belonging to the Wyrm Master scores a kill, it becomes a Nether Hound (if the transmutation occurs via a kill, the pet is not rejuvenated). Master of the Pack bonuses apply to Nether Hounds as well, once transmuted.
Simply put, when a hellhound scores a kill, it automatically evolves into a Netherhound. Note that this does not rejuvenate the new nether hound - it retains the current MP, AP and HP of the former hellhound (only its max MP, HP, to-hit, defense, and moveset change and the new ceiling is acquired when the pet is next rejuvenated). This option goes nicely with the offensively oriented skills of the Wyrm Master in general.
Some concerns were raised that this is similar to the ghoul's innate ability. However, I think the mechanics are different enough to remain flavorful - ghouls have Propagate on Kill, increasing their numbers through killing ALA good old zombies, while hellhounds will have Upgrade on Kill, increasing their power without increased number ALA usual evil cliché of absorbing the life force of their victims to grow stronger.
Suggestion 2: Upgrade on Low HP
Suggestion 2 wrote:
Whenever a Wyrm Master with this skill Rejuvenates a Hellhound OR a hellhound belonging to the Wyrm Master reaches below 30 HP, it sheds 10 extra HP and becomes a Nether Hound (if the transmutation occurs due to low HP, the pet is not rejuvenated i.e the new Nether Hound starts off with 20 HP). Master of the Pack bonuses apply to Nether Hounds as well, once transmuted. Note: A Nether Hound will not give rise to a Nether Hound at low HP.
In this suggestion, the demonic flavor found in skills like Explosive Murder, where the demon deigns healing and instead opts to go out guns blazing reigns supreme. This also increases the power of the vanilla hellhound to a greater extent, and makes them a tad more difficult to tank unless the Tank takes them out as they get weaker.
Concerns raised include the possibility of factions beating up their hellhounds in an extremely non-PETA manner to get those fat nether hounds. This is balanced by the fact that they are sacrificing the defensive value of 10 extra HP for more offensive power (AKA a tradeoff). If they want the new nether hound to be capable of taking a hit, they have to rejuvenate it - in which case they might as well have done that in the first place.
Nether hounds never turn into nether hounds at 30 HP by shedding 10 extra HP or anything. That would be silly.
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Suggestion 1.5: Upgrade on Low HP and Kills ONLY
Suggestion 1 wrote:
Whenever a hellhound belonging to a Wyrm Master with this skill scores a kill OR reaches below 30 HP, it becomes a Nether Hound (losing 10 HP more in the second case). In the first case, the pet is immediately rejuvenated, but this only happens during the upgrade, not on every kill. Master of the Pack bonuses apply to Nether Hounds as well, once transmuted.
A hybrid of the two above suggestions that removes the upgrade on rejuvenation as it really feels very Lightspeaker-y (take care of your pets as well as you can, make them live foreeeva). This means Nether hound upgrades will only happen when you are involved in combat. Of course, there's the potential abuse (literally) by factionmates... _________________ For the Kin!
Last edited by Aidan on Thu Oct 29, 2015 10:56 am; edited 3 times in total
Or the Secondary could just be 7 Piercing. I don't mind, but I liked the randomness.
A nether hound rolls the damage type of the primary/secondary whenever it _switches_ to its primary/secondary attack. This means that a nether hound will either use Fire OR Death against a particular opponent, switch to a secondary (rolling for either Slashing OR Piercing) if the target is immune, and then, if its target changes, reroll for primary damage type and continue attacking with that damage type (so not rerolling for every attack).
Random damage types have a precedent in the form of the WM's Metamorphic Unguis. An extra damage type to handle, albeit one commonly considered anyway when raiding. This still makes nether hounds a far more dangerous adversary to poorly prepped teams, but equivalent to a hellhound and a zombie present at the same time.
Suggestion 4: Compound Damage Type + Mundane
Suggestion 4 wrote:
Primary Attack: 7 Death
Secondary Attack: 7 Piercing Aura: 5 Fire
A netherhound's attack does 7 Death and 5 supplementary Fire, and Master of the Pack does not increase the Fire damage. This may screw with Adaptation NCs badly, which may or may not be a good thing. An option is to have the supplementary damage from the aura ONLY work with the primary attack i.e when a nether hound switches to its secondary, it temporarily loses its aura. This would mean Adaptation NCs just have to pack an extra pot. _________________ For the Kin!
The current system can be summarized by a single line from the wiki:
The Wiki wrote:
Loses immunity to Fire damage.
Becomes ONE of the following:
Suggestion 5: Immunity to one of two types
Suggestion 5 wrote:
Immune to EITHER Fire OR Death damage, but never both. The immunity is rolled at the time of spawning and does not change thereupon.
Returns the immunity to fire to Nether Hounds - sometimes. The other times, nether hounds are death immune instead, which isn't necessarily better, but helps them avoid lich auras and increases the WM's effectiveness against an enemy lich. In my head, I like to imagine that WM > Lich > LS > WM in the petmaster RPS, but that's definitely not an official stance, from what I've seen.
Suggestion 6: Immunity replaced by Affinity
Suggestion 6 wrote:
Loses immunity to Fire damage. If hit by a Fire attack, retaliation strike has a damage floor of 2. If hit by a fire aura when attacking, the next attack has a damage floor of 2.
(was previously: provoking attack has a damage floor of 2. Apparently not possible since the pet attack happens first?)
Nether hounds, from a flavor point of view, have lost the need to protect themselves from fire, drawing strength from it instead. Mechanically, nether hounds will function similar to wights against IBs, helping in the process of bringing down the fat sack of HP and being an obvious improvement to hellhounds in doing so.
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Summary/TL;DR:
Here are all the suggestions in mini form.
1.a) Hounds upgrade when they score kills and when they are rejuvenated. They DO NOT rejuvenate when they do this. They need to be rejuvenated so they can reach their new ceilings.
OR
1.b) Hounds upgrade when they are low on HP and when rejuvenated. This costs the hound some HP, and a Nether Hound does not upgrade again at low HP. They never rejuvenate in the process.
OR
1.c) Hounds upgrade when they score or are low on HP, but never on rejuvenation. This emphasizes the combative necessity of a WM compared to other petmasters.
---
2.a) A primary that switches between Fire and Death, and a Mundane secondary. This retains the Fiery-death flavor thingy, while making them worthy pets against tanks.
OR
2.b) A fire aura to go with a death primary, a mundane secondary. This also retains the flavor and makes them viable, but might be programmatically more difficult.
---
3.a) Fire OR Death immunity. Never both. Never changes once you have spawned.
OR
3.b) No Fire immunity, but fire attacks strengthen nether hounds, making them better against IBs than hellhounds as they should be. _________________ For the Kin!
Last edited by Aidan on Thu Oct 29, 2015 10:58 am; edited 2 times in total
Offense: I like the fire aura. It puts their non-immune damage floor up to 2, making them slightly better versus tanks without being better versus unarmored squishies. (Point in favor of fireman's jackets, T2 Paladins, and other innate armors though.) Also, I support lighting Tattoo of Adaptation on fire and throwing it in a dumpster (you have to do both, otherwise it'd be immune) so that's a plus.
Not a fan of the 50% attack stuff. Feels a little fiddly, and also something that will be dang near impossible to keep track of unless you're reviewing logs after the fact.
You don't touch on the 5% accuracy loss in this section, so while we're on the subject: to what extent do you consider that an issue? IMO it looks/feels like a bit of a bummer, even though nethers are still a net upgrade in terms of damage per attack (which makes it mathematically fine).
Defense: Once again, don't like the fire/death immunity randomness since there's no way to actually notice it until a fight has already broken out, at which point you can't be reading logs that closely or you're already dead. Retaliation strikes are a decent idea, but complexity/readability feels a little off. The pet attacks, is hit by an aura, requiring us to go back and modify the pet's original attack?
If we go with a fire aura discussed as an offensive option, does that not already provide a valuable bit of extra defense?
Rejuvenation and Spawning: I'd actually go further here: hounds transform when they score kills, and they rejuvenate upon transformation. But normal rejuvenation does not trigger the hell -> nether transformation.
Reasoning there is a bit of class flavor. The Lich is all about building a gigantic horde engine, with SM serving as an amazing MP battery and ghouls spawning fresh ghouls to replenish the old. The Lightspeaker is all about tending to his flock, improving his ability to rejuvenate pets (Caretaker's Blessing) and improving the benefits of doing so (Vitality of Justice). The WM thus seems like it should carry the demonic theme of violent aggression, but instead it apes the LS idea of upgrading via rejuvenation. Making the nether hound a kill-only upgrade gives them more incentive to get out of the house and kill something, and making the trigger harder to achieve means the upgrade itself could be made even more substantial.
Not a fan of the 50% attack stuff. Feels a little fiddly, and also something that will be dang near impossible to keep track of unless you're reviewing logs after the fact.
Hmm. I thought it would be pretty scary going up against a horde that is doing all sorts of weird damages at the same time. Why'd you want to keep track of it, though?
Quote:
You don't touch on the 5% accuracy loss in this section, so while we're on the subject: to what extent do you consider that an issue? IMO it looks/feels like a bit of a bummer, even though nethers are still a net upgrade in terms of damage per attack (which makes it mathematically fine).
Nether hounds still have better accuracy than Judgemasters, don't they? I understand why you are saying this, because when it's ping-war time, accuracy trumps damage. An interesting point along this line of thought is that Dissident (my suggestion adviser) told me to make it an accuracy buff on Suggestion 6, possibly a 10% buff that makes it possible to, so to say, 'spurn' the hounds into action when needed.
I'd like to see a coupla more WMs comment on the accuracy issue, since I didn't see it mentioned much in the PM discussion thread.
Quote:
Once again, don't like the fire/death immunity randomness since there's no way to actually notice it until a fight has already broken out, at which point you can't be reading logs that closely or you're already dead.
Part of the reason I want it to be random is to add to the danger of facing a nether hound. You are never entirely sure of his whole arsenal in advance, so you don't know whether to pop him with fire or death (preferably neither, of course).
Quote:
The pet attacks, is hit by an aura, requiring us to go back and modify the pet's original attack?
Oh, the pet attacks happen before the aura activates? Dang.
I'm okay with boosting the next attack's damage floor instead, but I have no idea how code-possible that is. I will edit it in, though, since it seems like an easier wording to understand.
Quote:
If we go with a fire aura discussed as an offensive option, does that not already provide a valuable bit of extra defense?
It still means Nether hounds are worse pets than hellhounds against IBs, and by worse, I mean a million times worse since hellhounds are fire immune. A lackluster option, of course, is to just return the fire immunity to nether hounds... But yeah, all options should be considered.
Quote:
I'd actually go further here: hounds transform when they score kills, and they rejuvenate upon transformation. But normal rejuvenation does not trigger the hell -> nether transformation.
Hmm. I actually really like that. However, that would make them the hardest pet, arguably, to obtain... Another option that comes to mind: Combining suggestions 1 and 2, never upgrading when rejuvenated. If you are scoring kills, or you are dying, it is likely that it's because you are getting pummeled or pummeling, and that's the essence of the WM's style of play. _________________ For the Kin!
Dropping the suggestion I made to you earlier in IRC, addressing not sure what in particular (Sturdiness I suppose):
Whenever one of your hounds* dies**, it rejuvenates ONE other hound*** in your pack. That essentially makes your pack count as 2n-1 of what you initially had in terms of longevity, while not being exactly double the pets (you do the same damage-per-pet-tick, but sustained over a longer period of time). I'm thinking that is a good analogue to Judgemasters' rejuv on kill and Ghouls' reproduction on kill.
* nether? hell? both? does it matter?
** "dies" including despawning from ap or mp loss?
*** at random? the weakest of them in terms of HP?
RE: Different damage types, I think I mostly just want to know what a given pet is doing, both as a petmaster and as a target. If an idle WM's dogs are munching on a fire-immune IB, how is he going to know which one is pelting him with death damage and need to be dealt with first? If I'm a WM, how do I know whether I've got an equal-ish spread of damage types rather than a fluke pack of fire-only dogs? It's a combination of the UI not being able to explain this and existing pets being pretty uncomplicated.
RE: IBs vs. nether/hell hounds, you're right that the hell hound is better, but I'm not totally convinced it matters. An IB is going to wreck you and your pets either way, and the dozen HP that your hellhounds peck him for is not going to make a difference in the face of his 150+ HP. (And also probably Blood Taste, and possibly a regen potion if he's raiding you.) The hellhound is infinitely better, but infinity times zero is still zero.
And the more I think about it, the less sure I am about the fire supplemental damage idea. The attack having two small components rather than 1 big one makes it more susceptible to soak, and I worry about tweener classes (and just about anyone in the Kinship) being borderline impervious to the WM's core pet. Although I'm realizing now that you're using the non-Master of the Pack numbers so maybe it's not so bad overall? I dunno.
Last edited by MerlintheTuna on Thu Oct 29, 2015 12:57 pm; edited 1 time in total
RE: Different damage types, I think I mostly just want to know what a given pet is doing, both as a petmaster and as a target. If an idle WM's dogs are munching on a fire-immune IB, how is he going to know which one is pelting him with death damage and need to be dealt with first? If I'm a WM, how do I know whether I've got an equal-ish spread of damage types rather than a fluke pack of fire-only dogs? It's a combination of the UI not being able to explain this and existing pets being pretty uncomplicated.
RE: IBs vs. nether/hell hounds, you're right that the hell hound is better, but I'm not totally convinced it matters. An IB is going to wreck you and your pets either way, and dozen HP that your hellhounds peck him for is not going to make a difference in the face of his 150+ HP. (And also probably Blood Taste, and possibly a regen potion if he's raiding you.) The hellhound is infinitely better, but infinity times zero is still zero.
And the more I think about it, the less sure I am about the fire supplemental damage idea. The attack having two small components rather than 1 big one makes it more susceptible to soak, and I worry about tweener classes (and just about anyone in the Kinship) being borderline impervious to the WM's core pet. Although I'm realizing now that you're using the non-Master of the Pack numbers so maybe it's not so bad overall? I dunno.
Name brand:
If you get Death damage hound; "Plague Nearther hound" as its name
If you get Fire damage hound: "Fury Neather hound" as its name.
Seams like the solution in this regard. The names are just examples of the point. _________________ “I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.” ~Oscar Wilde
"Everyone loves to hate a good villain!" Dr. Cleaver
RE: Different damage types, I think I mostly just want to know what a given pet is doing, both as a petmaster and as a target. If an idle WM's dogs are munching on a fire-immune IB, how is he going to know which one is pelting him with death damage and need to be dealt with first?
Part of the idea was to make it harder for the target (usually the Tank) from telling apart problem pets from non-problem pets. I honestly doubt a dedicated tank is not going to suit up with both fire and death immunity before entering a WM's hold, really.
As for the WM not knowing which pet has which damage: I think you misunderstand the numbers. All nether hounds are _both fire and death_, picking randomly between the two (so if you have 10 hounds, you can roughly say you have 5 fire hounds and 5 death hounds). The _immunities_ are the ones you can't see, but I don't it's impossible to add a WM-only view of nether hound immunities.
Quote:
IBs vs. nether/hell hounds, you're right that the hell hound is better, but I'm not totally convinced it matters. An IB is going to wreck you and your pets either way, and the dozen HP that your hellhounds peck him for is not going to make a difference in the face of his 150+ HP.
It still makes hellhounds _longer lasting_ simply by virtue of being fire-immune, and longer lasting pets are automatically better (Yukari's suggestion above has a similar theme with rejuvenation on death). If Nether hounds must lose their fire immunity, they need to hit harder or something. Against an IB, a pack of 10 hellhounds will ping away for 10 without taking damage. The changes suggested result in netherhounds either not taking damage as well, or pinging away for 20 per tick, which could be useful.
Quote:
And the more I think about it, the less sure I am about the fire supplemental damage idea. The attack having two small components rather than 1 big one makes it more susceptible to soak
Great point, but it still reasonably improves the Nether hound over the hellhound. Ignoring MotP for now (which adds 2 to both primary and secondary attacks), a hellhound has a non-soaked maximum of 7 Fire, while a Netherhound has a non-soaked maximum of 7 Death + 7 Fire, giving it almost twice the potential damage (currently, the nether hound does 11 damage with its primary) but with the negative of being soaked twice. Again, an AK dude relying solely on soak will have to face 2 damage per tick instead of the usual 1 (raising the floor while lowering the ceiling).
Here we have more concrete examples. Assuming our Tanks haven't used affinity pots for some reason, we get the following soaks:
Seraph: 8 Fire with all relevant skills, 8 Death
IB: Fire immunity, 5 Death
ES: 4 Fire, 3 Death
I am not considering Piercing soak because that will always be soaked down to 1 anyway.
Current hellhounds (now we are considering MotP) will do 1/1 to the Seraph, 0/1 to the IB, 5/1 to the ES.
Current nether hounds will do 5/1 to the Seraph, 8/0 to the IB and 10/5 to the ES.
Aura nether hounds will do 2/2 to Seraphs, 4/1 to IBs and 9/4 to the ES.
The numbers in case of the aura nether hounds are definitely lower, but less 'spready', and improved over those of the hellhound. Thing I ignored in all cases was that people would usually have chugged affinity potions, and considering only primaries, aura nether hounds will consume the greatest number of pots possible _________________ For the Kin!
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