Rock/paper/scissors meditation rework suggestion

[Roccandil 959]

OK, time for another edition of Roccandil's Radical Ruminations!

 

Based on the new PvP priest meta, in which everyone in SotG is getting fried, frozen, rotted, and otherwise eradicated by fancy spellwork, it has occurred to this observer of gameplay that the Paths of Power and Hate could be a natural counter to priests, and instead of encouraging a meta in which everyone is the same build, it would be very cool if we could have rock/paper/scissors builds.

 

My goal here is something like the following:

 

- Berserker SotG melee warriors destroy priest-hunters;

- Priest-hunters destroy priests;

- Priests destroy SotG melee dudes.

 

So, here are some radical changes to possibly encourage that, as well as make other med paths viable:

 

- A toon cannot be both Path of Insanity and a priest, and the healing resistance penalty is doubled on Insanity toons. If that's not enough of a nerf, then maybe make the DR physical only (and then bump it up to 50% again?).

- Path of Power's elemental immunity ability is no longer dispellable, but while active, the toon cannot cast spells (full priest-hunter mode). The path would also get an additional DR passive to elemental damage (from spells or weapons, but not Venom): maybe as much as 25%.

- Path of Knowledge protects affinities on death, provides a bonus to getting affinities from kills (maybe even multiple affinities), and at 11 is an automatic 100-power Mind Stealer against players (not that enemy players would lose skill, but the killer would have a chance for a nice skill tick based on a higher enemy skill). That could be a nice choice for newer toons.

- Path of Love provides more frequent natural healing ticks, makes the player immune to BT infection, provides additional resistance against Venom, and diminishes the effect of healing resistances on incoming and outgoing healing actions. Perhaps it also increases the offensive effectiveness of Venom and chances for BT infection while wielding those weapons.

- Path of Hate still looks pretty good to me, to be honest, maybe too good. A PoH priest would be able to use spells, while always being immune to them (other than AoE). The difference between this and PoP is that PoP would have a "sotg-lite" for all elemental damage, including from imbues/weapon enchants. Perhaps spells cast by a PoH toon would trigger higher temporary resistances?

 

Anyway, I'm not married to those ideas; just throwing them out there.

[Roccandil 959]

Had another idea for PoK:

 

- Level/skill draining: in PvP combat, a PoK toon has a chance on a successful hit to temporarily drain fight skill from an enemy, and add it to theirs.

[Roccandil 959]

Another crazy idea:

 

- A new meditation path, "Path of Skepticism". This is the true priest-hunter path: can't be a priest or even a follower. Gets PoH's spell immunity (would need to do something else for PoH). Higher bonus damage versus priests, lower versus followers.

 

Other possibilities:

 

- Costs less karma to use sorcery

- Power buff to sorcery spells

- Extra DR against weapon enchants, not counting imbues and Venom

- Bonus for using unenchanted gear: both weapons and armor

- Ignores enemy armor enchants

- Aura of interference passive: combat spells significantly harder to cast within an X-tile radius of the toon (PvP servers only)

- Able to craft Scavenger runes

- Able to apply multiple runes to a single item

- Significant boost to crafting and using runes (maybe even only damages spell runes, so can use them more than once)

- Should probably be penalties to using CoC/WoA tools

 

Honestly, not sure it really fits, since so much revolves around gods (how would a toon on this path do missions? and so many enchantments in the game). Might be cool, though, if a toon on this path could do Epic Valrei missions for -Wurm-.

 

Oh, and I belatedly notice that the acronym is PoS.

[FranktheTank 1,901]

Always open to more meditation ideas because I still fail to see the point of having so many available paths and such a fleshed out feature that is almost entirely unused aside from one path that is clearly better than all the others in almost every situation pvp or pve.