Marthe
Member
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This week's release had a ton of stuff in it, and I haven't had the chance to fully unpack it all. That said, everything in it is really cool, and I've got some initial thoughts about a lot of the stuff. The Epoch changes were well deserved. UWE was heavily over-performing for how easy and risk-free it was to use, and I think the changes here are a pretty interesting way to bring it into line. It's still pretty early, so I can't say for sure how the stacking debuffs does in practice, but I think it was a good idea. I do agree with Sol that the stun vulnerability feels iffy, not because UWE doesn't deserve to be nerfed, but because the RNG aspect is often unpleasant. As far as CDE goes, while I was never a big CDE player, I appreciate that it was also buffed into line with the other artifact variants. From initial viewings of how people have been doing with it, it seems pretty strong now. I'm not sure how I feel about the new Dragonbyte Epoch. Its art is lovely, of course. Dove's art never disappoints, and the color customization on this one is quite interesting. I've already seen some impressive fashion creations - I'd go as far as to say that I think this is the prettiest Epoch so far. Its current, first-day mechanics leave me with some mixed feelings, though. It suffers from the old CDE problem of using all its resources and then sitting around for a long time being effectively half a class, since Epoch CDs and effects are balanced around double turns. Not every Epoch has to be great at bossing, of course, but the downtime feels bad to play. Trying to boost with single turns is aggravating, for instance. However, taking into the perspective that it's meant to be more of a questing Epoch, this is less of a concern - I'm more worried about the problems Epoch has always had when trying to quest. Its animations are long, especially for the skills that would be relevant when running through quests, like the multi (which repeats for each enemy) or Gunburst (which just has a very long animation, though it is a pretty one). While I'm loathe to compare every questing class to Chaosweaver, the current double turn start with Overdrive's existence does feel a bit like Chw's EGambit start, except it costs significantly more mana to kill mobs and takes significantly longer. I'm unsure of the Epoch shell's viability in questing on a general basis, considering the base class is inherently a setup nuker. The other thing that feels strange to me is the fact that the extra turns are on the Final. It feels like the class wants to set up a quick burst Final, but it's just not possible to stack up all your buffs/debuffs and get a full powered Final without taking a lot of single turns to finagle your momentum. I'm also not quite sure what you're meant to do with the double turns after Final (where you probably have -25 boost after the Overdrive.) All in all, it feels odd to play and its identity is disjointed. However, I'm sure that over the testing cycle, it will become a fun and viable class. I feel like the Bonus change and the Direct Hit change may be related, but even if they're not, they're a similar topic, so I'll talk about them together. I greatly appreciate the Direct Hit change, because in most cases the mechanic largely didn't matter, except on things like Reaver and Drahr'Dolaas where you could just lose a coinflip and the fight through no fault of your own. The global Bonus change (though it's not working yet, I'll talk about the impacts if the numbers are applied properly) feels iffy to me. I don't agree with Astral's thoughts on Direct Hit, but I do agree with him about the Bonus. Classes and fights were balanced around the previous amount of Bonus, and the amount of additional Bonus a lot of monsters got is quite a lot. This depowers many blinds, some to the point of uselessness (Paladin's -25, for instance, does nothing when everything gets 30 or so more base Bonus). It also affects lower value shields, though not to the same extent. I think that this bugfix would have a large impact on the overall balance of fights and classes, which I'm not certain was the intention, especially since it would hit the already weaker classes disproportionately. (For instance, Pirate's blinds and its extra damage when the enemy has <0 Bonus would suddenly become much worse, but something like KAA with its 255 MPM shield wouldn't care.) Weapon specials - I might be in the minority, but I don't have a particular opinion on the Ice Scythe change. For me, at least, it's now more convenient in some ways and less convenient in others, though I do believe that it is an overall buff. I'm glad for the Blade of Destiny change, which is a good step towards lessening Ice's dominance as an element. In the same vein, I want to like the new monthly weapon special, which does the same as the newly changed BoD but for Wind, but I can't help but worry about unique and useful weapon specials going rare. I hope this is the start of a trend that provides similar options as Ice has for a suite of other elements. Aesthetically, the monthly items are quite pretty, though they're definitely not my style. (I bought them all, of course.) Oh, and from what I've seen of the EXP curve from last week, I definitely agree that the new stepwise 3x is better. Thank you to Verlyrus and Dove for an excellent release! Edit: Just realized I totally forgot to talk about the new Inn challenge. In my defense, it's almost 3 AM. I'll post my thoughts on that tomorrow.
< Message edited by Marthe -- 2/6/2021 5:47:54 >
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