Anti-Paladin improvement ideas

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Siw
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Anti-Paladin improvement ideas

Postby Siw » Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:30 pm

Paladins are currently far superior with guard, better spell selection (heal, anti-undead, remove poison/blind), better zone weapons, and are better suited for the majority evil-aligned zones. At the moment, it seems like paladins are not only much more defensive, but offensive as well.


Some ideas to bring anti-paladins a little closer to paladins.

1. Vampiric touch for 9th circle instead of harm. Give anti's an offensive method of healing self to counter paladin's heal. Except perhaps the antipaladin's version would work while wielding a weapon. Heal is still superior in many ways, so I don't think this would be unbalancing at all.

2. Shorter cast time on Tazrik's frenzied hound so that this fun spell might see more use.

3. Increase lifetap damage/drain. Layhands is currently far superior since it heals for so much and can be used on others. Lifetap at ~270 is quite weak in comparison.

4. Redo useless spells. Cause light, pain touch, spectral hand, and harm might fit an antipaladin's RP, but what is the point of casting a spell that does less damage than a normal hit? Poison is completely useless. Animate skeleton/zombie/ghoul would be a little more useful and fit the theme as well. Anti's can raise undead, paladins can destroy.

5. Make unholy aura affect neutral as well. One step further... make unholy word affect neutrals too!

6. Guard. Antipaladins are lawful and honorable knights too.

For area writers, create another anti-paladin weapon with area gimping effects.
Thilindel
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Re: Anti-Paladin improvement ideas

Postby Thilindel » Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:37 pm

Siw wrote:1. Vampiric touch for 9th circle instead of harm. Hell, even if they did have to remove the weapon this is good. removing the weapon would be a way to prevent some argument of too strong, but I REALLY like this idea. That and allow it to be cast while fighting. It's annoying some spells can't be cast while engaged.

2. Shorter cast time on Tazrik's frenzied hound so that this fun spell might see more use. 2nd that!

3. Increase lifetap damage/drain... If vamp touch is allowed, I think LT should be left alone.

4. ... Animate skeleton/zombie/ghoul ... Great idea but only allow one of each *shrug* Maybe 10 undead points at 50th lvl :P

5. Make unholy aura affect neutral as well. One step further... make unholy word affect neutrals too! Being neutral means you can't create holy water and limited on eq. I think neutral fence hopping should stay the same.

6. Guard. Antipaladins are lawful and honorable knights too. TRUE

Waelos
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Postby Waelos » Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:38 pm

While I agree Anti's might be a step behind Paladins, I really don't think they're that bad off. Lets just forget about ambran vs. unholy. There is no contest that unholy is probably the best weapon in game (other than Khanjari, but Khanjari isn't really a weapon, its more of a minor artifact that people can get over and over. . =P)

To address points:

1. Vampiric touch for 9th circle instead of harm. Give anti's an offensive method of healing self to counter paladin's heal. Except perhaps the antipaladin's version would work while wielding a weapon. Heal is still superior in many ways, so I don't think this would be unbalancing at all.
Absolutely unbalancing. Vampiric touch on a weapon is flat out broken. Even a weapon that simply 'heals' with each strike and doesn't give hps over the person's max is too strong (unless the hps healed is like 1-5 hps or something). If you want to be 'in theme' harm is the spell you're looking for. Anti's are not about healing at all, they are about chaos and destruction.

2. Shorter cast time on Tazrik's frenzied hound so that this fun spell might see more use.

Agree. All pseudo-casters (ranger, anti, paladin, etc.) need to have reduced casting times on many of their spells.

3. Increase lifetap damage/drain. Layhands is currently far superior since it heals for so much and can be used on others. Lifetap at ~270 is quite weak in comparison.

Lifetap should deal 1 point for every point it heals, up to how far the antipaladin is wounded. . . (I thought it did this?) or it should vamp for 250.

4. Redo useless spells. Cause light, pain touch, spectral hand, and harm might fit an antipaladin's RP, but what is the point of casting a spell that does less damage than a normal hit? Poison is completely useless. Animate skeleton/zombie/ghoul would be a little more useful and fit the theme as well. Anti's can raise undead, paladins can destroy.
Lots of spells are "useless" once you get to a high level. . . they are there for assisting on leveling the character. Not everyone can dump an unholy on a lvl 1 anti and plevel to 50th. Perhaps a different variety of spells would be in order, but the 'power level' should remain the same.

5. Make unholy aura affect neutral as well. One step further... make unholy word affect neutrals too!

This makes absolutely no sense. These spell attacks those of _opposite_ alignment. Granted, much of the mud is evil so this puts Antis at a slight disadvantage. . . that is partially made up for via their ability to XP with full XP anywhere, while Pallies must kill evil mobs to level.

6. Guard. Antipaladins are lawful and honorable knights too.

Uhm, the "original" Anti-paladin is/was Chaotic Evil (hence, the "evil"). It has evolved and many people see it as Lawful evil now, but anyway. . .guard doesn't make sense for an evil character. I like someone else's idea of 'Swap" skill where the anti pushes one character into tank slot instead of another. That makes a bit more sense and would have fun game applications.

All that being said, I think Anti's do need some love. It all starts with balancing melee.

-Lost
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Postby Pril » Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:47 pm

Don't get me wrong siw i think Anti's should probably get something but let's get some stuff straight. Poison rocks, if you think it doesn't yer not using it right.

You want damage? remove unholy and wield twilight which pallies can't wield and get yer dam roll to over 100.

Not sure on lifetap because i don't play a paladin but i believe lifetap drains life from the mob into you which means it causes damage as well as healing you. Whereas lay hands only heals. They are different skills so they can't be compared.

They should imo get guard.

Pril
Siw
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Postby Siw » Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:18 pm

Waelos, not sure if you misread that, I said vampiric touch, not vampiric curse. As for the spells... even an antipaladin without an avenger would deal more damage with melee during the time it would take to cast spectral hand or pain touch (sorta like shillelagh). Harm is also.. umm.. not impressive =) In general its not likely an antipaladin would cast several of their spells, which is why I suggested reanalyzing their spell list.

Pril:
I've experimented with Twilight and Deathknell and I gotta say Deathknell is superior in damage. Twilight's proc is so brief and its rare that you'll triple proc to 100 damroll. Regardless, both are inferior to Ambram/Faith in almost every zone.

As for lifetap, at level 50 it seems to do about 270. That damage is minor to a mob with thousands and thousands of hit points, and won't aid the antipaladin nearly as much as a paladin's layhands would in a zone environment.
Waelos
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Postby Waelos » Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:45 pm

Well, the way Vampiric Touch works (I think) is that during its duration, every hit you make on a mob will transfer 1/2 your damage done to you has hps. Once you get over your max, you continue to 'fatten up' on hitpoints. The old vampires for necros did this, certain artifact weapons did this (oh, yes and there is a weapon in the game that does this too, but I'm afraid it isn't for any of us) and. . . thats it.

Even if it works like the spell where you cast it, hit once, and its done. . .then it has all sorts of potential for abuse. Just cast, smite lowbie mob 1, cast, smite lowbie mob 2, etc etc. until you have 40000 hps. Not a good thing.

I think Lifetap should vamp, absolutely. But giving that spell to a hitter would be pretty broken =(


Lost
Thilindel
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Postby Thilindel » Wed Jul 20, 2005 12:25 am

Vamp touch does up to 91 (highest my lvl 50 necro's received)

I am 1000% for this concept - convert cause light/serious/critic and harm into siphon type. Siphon Light would be Larloch's Minor Drain in essence.
So rather than cause x damage, reduce the damage by 50% and that 50% to AP.

So, respectively, Siphon's light/serious/critic, then instead of harm, it would be Siphon Touch but damage as followes:

Siphon light - vamps 5 from mob, gives 5 to AP
Siphon serious - vamps 10 from mob, give 10 to AP
Siphon critic - vamps 15 from mob, gives 15 to AP
Siphon Touch - vamps 40 from mob, giving 40 to AP
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Postby kiryan » Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:30 pm

have vamp touch (the ability) base at 50% of max hps (not including vit or embody) and do level/5*base damage (or whatever so that they are doing at least 1,500 damage). Another idea is make the base 10*damageroll (to encourage them to focus on damroll instead of hps like paladins do).

That would give them some offensive that is visible and at the same time allow them to get to 150% base hps giving them a certain advantage in leading charges on particularly difficult fights.

----

The spell ideas suggested I'm not so keen on... In combat your melee does more damage than any spell in your repertoire even IF you could afford to be casting offensive it would be pointless. If you want hybrid to rely upon and use their spells they have to be much more powerful than current. I'd even suggest invoker quality areas in hybrid's 10th circle (like meteorswarm). Being hybrid they can only cast 2 per fight, and the melee area damage niche doesn't exist (technically giving melee, area spells wouldn't create the niche but it would establish there place in area damage).
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Postby Botef » Fri Jul 22, 2005 1:04 am

Waelos wrote:
Even if it works like the spell where you cast it, hit once, and its done. . .then it has all sorts of potential for abuse. Just cast, smite lowbie mob 1, cast, smite lowbie mob 2, etc etc. until you have 40000 hps. Not a good thing.


Lost


Just a side note, from my experience it is near impossible to go over 1500 HPs (without vit) by using vamp-like spells (Vamp Touch, Curse, Energy Drain).

Since Energy Drain is invocation I played with it a lot with my Necromancer to notch Spellcast Invocation....Basically just casting it on mobs over and over leeching HPs.

I found that after about 1300 the rate at which your over-max HPs declines increases, so much so that the amount you gain each spell is lower than what is lost in the time it takes to cast them and then remem after exhausting your circle. This makes it rather impossible to abuse to the degree your suggesting...Its not worth the effort required to get that additional 300-400 hps when they drop back down in a matter of rounds.

In otherwords, the rate at which HPs drop per tick is higher when your HPs are above 1200-1300ish making it impossible to exceed a certain point by abusing a spell like that.

I for one think giving any melee class the ability to vamp over their max HPs is a bad idea less it be the effect of a spell cast by a mage or equipment. However some kind of spell that allows them to heal to their max hps 'faster' through combat I'd be more open to. I don't really think Anti-Paladins need any work, but since I don't play one I'll leave that argument to those who do.
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Postby Eilorn » Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:18 am

One thing I'd like to see them get is faerie fire in 3rd circle. That'd help a lot. Beyond that, blind (and sometimes poison) is(are) the only thing(s) worth the time to cast and mem. (Blind and poison are so hard to get to land, that sometimes they were not worthwhile casting.)

Eilorn.
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Postby Yasden » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:01 pm

Eilorn wrote:One thing I'd like to see them get is faerie fire in 3rd circle. That'd help a lot. Beyond that, blind (and sometimes poison) is(are) the only thing(s) worth the time to cast and mem. (Blind and poison are so hard to get to land, that sometimes they were not worthwhile casting.)

Eilorn.


You're crazy. Armor, bless, dark wrath are excellent zoning spells, not only for AC, but for a nice -ss (-8 total between bless/wrath at 50th) and a significant hit/dam bonus (2/3 for bless/wrath combined at 50th).

Unholy aura is nice if you're fighting good aligned mobs, otherwise I don't ever bother using it. Tazrik's is fun to play with if you're not doing anything serious.

My anti also carries dispel magics to help with silenced casters. I also use curse a lot in big caster fights too. I only use blinds if I'm soloing exp, or we really need a certain mob blind in a zone.

Anti's don't really "need" anything, unless you want to point out the fact that paladins received guard while anti's didn't receive anything at all. It would be nice to have the same skill or something similar.

Lifetap could use some addressing to be brought up to par with layhands. I don't think increasing the hps taken from the mob would be ok, maybe just increasing the # of times per day it can be used to 2 or 3, since it only does about 300 hps, versus an unlimited amount for layhands.

Remounting should not be an option unless you are *not* tanking, and even if you are engaged it should have a lag associated with it simply because of the effort the player has to make to get back on while fighting something.

Ultimately, the real issue is that guard needs to be addressed for balance issues.
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