Bobbity

I still want more perspectives on this (for a decent sample size alone, if not for purposes of information) but this already seems very well-rounded. Thoughts for now: I definitely vibe with the idea of defensive play (defensive aggression? O_o ) for dealers. Well, it's obvious; dealers don't have any real mobility skills besides Canoneer's Panic right now, whereas Scouts are full-on high-ms, combat steroided, stealthy and evasive. That and the notion of technological improvement naturally lends itself to the idea of longer range of attack, defensive structures and artillery summons / pseudo-summon constructs. I dislike how summons are right now since they're very linear: input skill point, spend mana (and zulie?), activate. I'd rather we have some pseudocrafting process where heavy artillery cannons or defensive 'structures' are being constructed on-site. Like the supercharged cannon @DoubleRose mentioned (a railgun?). Preferably, this process should be interruptible through stunning or killing the crafter. If not, that it be a lengthy process of either crafting from mats or assembly on-site. At the same time, the construct could be damaged and require repair. This could be one opportunity for the power of money to shine through. Of course, this isn't a mechanic we have in the game right now, but one I hope could be implemented eventually. In the meantime, I reckon we could fake this. 'Bonfire'-like constructs as mentioned before with powerful range-delimited defensive auras. Shield emitters linked to a shield core; every piece crafted and assembled on-site - once on-line they provide massive, renewable but exhaustible damage prevention. Or something, I dunno. Regarding Bourg summons; they don't seem hardcore enough to me right now. I feel like they need comprehensive revision. Am I the only one that feels they're lackluster? Dealer efficacy for clan wars requires reliable info to counter their specific enemy. That stands in direct conflict with the idea of freely available skill resets, though. I think I've mentioned before how paying somebody to be a mole in an enemy clan could be a workable strat, but only if the info is timeous, reliable and actionable. I laughed at the idea of an IPO. It made me think of share price tickers/chyrons and offering paid internships to poor lowbies. Then the lowbies show up for work and find out they signed up for a clan war. "Right, here's your armor, here's your sword, go go GO!" "B-but this is wood-" "There are lots of people who'd kill for this job, kid, NOW GO!" At the same time, I feel that people would complain about the advantage rich clans would bring into what 'should be' a fair PvP match. O_o Fair? The xbow scout could derive their attack bonuses more from their weapons than their skill tree. That, or the skill tree would require a lot more investment to achieve full penetration with flat numbers. Right, let's hear from some more people while I chew on this cud.

Hi, guys. I'm here to ask for your in-depth answers on what a dealer is both on and off the field. Also, what is a dealer in contrast to a scout? How do they differ? How should they differ? So: combat-wise and in terms of farming and crafting, what is the concept of a dealer and the concept of a scout? When I think Dealer, I think 'screw the rules, I have money'. Winning with the power of pure capitalism, exploitation and piracy. I think: machines, an army of machines guns - lots of guns cannons crafting armor in a cave from a box of scraps When I think guns and cannons, I also think unrelenting bombardment of heavy artillery unparalleled precision in sniping. defensive structures, fortresses My concept of a scout involves the following: Stealth Long-ranged attack Infrequent attacks Trick shots unparalleled precision in sniping Very strong normal attack and skill attack power Can charge attacks for greater damage Hard to lock down / slippery cool, calm and collected So, there's an inevitable overlap that troubles me. Don't scouts also focus on critical precision of their sniping? Isn't every Scout a Legolas-wannabe? Also, do scouts get to learn fletching skills? If not, are we really going to leave ALL the crafting to the dealers? Considering how easy it is to craft arrows, I feel this needlessly removes an empowering ability from a class that has no good earlygame AOEs (no Rain of Arrows or Tornado Shot skills). I feel like we should double-down on the aspects of capitalism, crafting things other than equippable weapons, heavy artillery, mass-production and mass-deployment for Dealers and go hard on Sniping for Scouts. Yes, it'll mean removing Sniping from Dealers but I feel like we can make up for this in other ways later. I'll make a suggestion based on this idea once I check the feedback for this post. This question was prompted by the unreasonably large overlap between the classes as well as @Rebus's ammo suggestion. I feel it's unhealthy for unrelated classes to be so similar. Let me know what you think in the comments section. Also, check out my socials for merch and click the bell icon to stay up to date on my latest content.

I won't assume that anything's permanent at this point. I still don't feel that the devs have moved us from the old meta as yet, so this is still something we can brainstorm. My view is, choice is king. We need a neutral position in the cleric/muse skill tree so that those who want to enslave their clerics can do so, and those who want more active play can enjoy that too. They just need to spend the skill points and/or spend the time doing quests that enable their choice. Buffbot/healbot shouldn't simply be the default. HOWEVER, there has to be a price more than just skill points / opportunity cost. Anyway, stackable party buffs (and warlock-type curses) are something we haven't explored yet. We've had stackable proc-based self-buffs like Wand Weaving / Cleric's Intensity and its analogues in other classes, though. Let's keep brainstorming this into deeper detail.

Sorry, are these physical cards that can interact with the game via QR codes and whatnot or simply ingame cards?

trang is here?! Hmm...

@Clown I'm confused. Why would the shield replace the use of heals? This seems supplementary to me. And yes, some mana-rich clerics are really really hard to take down without being ganked, focused and burst down - and in the event of this occurring, it means the cleric has basically off-tanked so the party's main DPS remains unharmed. A glorious death, I'd say. The heals also don't take as much mana in lategame as you think.

This sounds OP for arena PvP... O_o It's a really good concept, though! Thanks for posting!

Welcome back Raid, I remember you a bit as well. Looking forward to PvP against you later.

I like it. More differentiation is good. I'll add more when I'm not tired.

I wonder what the knock-on effects of just 'freely' unlocking skills would be...

Direction and positioning is a bit tricky for ROSE right now. I'd be interested to see something like this when it's doable. Any reasons why this is a bad idea, though? Balance-wise, etc.

Assuming Hebarn even has creative power, anything that's an avatar of a god would be stronger than us Visitors and have our powers too.

> implies characters are consumable. I don't gear up my speardancer with the assumption her spear will be 'used up' next week. Hm. Combat stats, you say? @DRAGŴN you know what else gives combat stats? Gems. Runes (whenever that's brought back into play). Refining. Reinforcing, endowing, hardening, darkening, enchanting. This prestige thing sounds like it needs a lot of work before it could be implemented as a whole. Parts could work, though.

I remember you, Austin. Welcome back!

I haven't seen OP respond thus far. @Zeror I'd be interested to know why you want crowd control skills (especially snares and slows) to be shared among both Muse 2nd classes. I don't remember such a thing having been done ever. The closest instance was the Terror Knight / Dread Knight skills of Artisan and Bourg. Wouldn't that dilute the purpose of each class? Even a bourg has to sacrifice advanced crafting to ascend in the way of DPS. (Honestly, we should improve the AOE attack of bourgs; just their normal launcher attack should deliver a 1.5-2m area effect.) Additionally, almost (?) every class has some sort of DEF down skill, simply applied differently. If someone with access to the current/last NA version's skill tree could set up access to a little skill planner site like this or this it'd be much appreciated. I remember we used to have so many resources developed and offered up by passionate community members. I miss that. Anyway, on topic. Curses are a decent match for clerics and mages, so I understand wanting to share them among both Muse classes. We could apply them differently, though. The problem is mages already have the equivalent of basic curses. Anything more advanced than that is heading towards Path of Exile territory and impacts how we see and play the game as a whole. Curses on clerics could be passive or consume mana 'passively' per use. I'll explain with a prototype: Curse: Untouchable "The path of the cleric is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil." Toggleable. Autocast. Slows attacking enemies for 4 seconds by 70/90/110/130/150 of their attack speed and 40% of their move speed. Enemies within 2 meters of the attackers are slowed by 30% instead. Curse: Hand of Fate "Mouths have they but speak not, eyes have they, but they see not." Toggleable. Autocast. Enemy units within 20 meters of the cleric are afflicted with loss of accuracy and 10/15/30/45/60% chance to fail at casting spells, suffering a moment of silence and taking 100% of their mana spent as damage. Chance to silence decreases with level of devotion. Consumes 1% devotion per second. Curse: Straight Path "The righteousness of the blameless makes their paths straight, but the wicked are brought down by their own wickedness." Toggleable. Autocast. Deals 0.8/1/1.2/1.4/1.6/1.8/2x damage received to all attackers, consuming 1/1.5/2/2.5/3% devotion per attack. Increases move speed by 40% for 4 seconds on damage taken. (In the above examples a slightly different casting resource than mana is posited, namely devotion, with a number of mechanics assumed to increase and affect it. I might make a suggestion based on this later.) So, the above are only technically curses - they're effectively autocast passives using a different resource than mana. Mages freely use mana for elemental magic but have poor ability at healing. It only makes sense that mana is most potent in the hands of a cleric. However, to avoid clerics being OP tanks/offtanks the skills shown above use a more finite resource that cannot be refilled with blue pots.

The Menagerie is a good idea - but what use is it? You've stated that rewards should be cosmetic at best. I feel this is an insufficient draw for the greater playerbase to disrupt the linearity of the current meta. Path of Exile's Menagerie allows for beastcrafting. More crafting options known only to the crafter, very much unlike the usual crafting results. On the other hand, some players are sweaty tryhards and others are casual chatters parked (and making out) in their CGs. If all you have is a pokedex and a cute little Park Of Your Own then few of the casuals and only the completionists among both these groups would find that appealing, whereas beastcrafting options would imbalance the game in favor of the tryhards. This is a step in the right direction and we should think of more stuff like this, though.

But muh gunpowder... Seriously though, the fewer reasons for crafting stuff with gunpowder, the weaker each use case becomes and the more rigid the meta. I definitely feel there's a place for free and infinite ammo, just not sure the time has come. EDIT: On the other hand, removing ammo crafting frees up a few skill points...

That's all good and I support that but have we actually come to a proper conclusion regarding the ammo slots UI suggestion Rebus proposed?

Very true; we'll have many options soon enough and should think more out of the box. I dunno how this would affect my 'summons as mounts' idea, though. Imagine if muses had a class advantage of 'free' mounts just by investing in their summon skill subtrees. Would the playerbase cry?

This is all confusing to me, tbh. In the normal way of things on NA, one could hotkey a mount and have quick access to mount it. Very easy. A PAT like a cart or CG was activated through its corresponding Ride skill which could be hotkeyed as well (requiring of course for the PAT to actually be assembled in the PAT window). It's only when we try to fuse the concepts of PAT, mount and summon that things would get tricky. Hmm. As HB said, currently, putting mounts in the PAT tab might force them to operate under the rules of PAT vehicles, needing a Ride skill for activation.

@WondertjeHB is correct that we had them in Consumables and not the PAT tab (Personal Automated Transport) but that doesn't feel right to me anymore. Especially if we give Dealers craftable summons that have removable/equippable parts. Where do they go? PAT tab? Inventory tab? PAT is meant for (mechanical or thaumomechanical) transport vehicles but mini-CG summons wouldn't be ridden. Well, until they are, at which point I guess they're just PAT, but at that point what's the difference between a mini-CG and an actual CG? And how would you summon it to fight instead of ride? Do you now need another CG skill? If we had a tab just for summons we could integrate the breeding idea, growing these mounts from egg/capsule form to their max evolution as a few of us have talked about on here before. It'd be a more interesting interface detailing your mount combat stats and other stats seen in gacha monster games. I reckon it'd help beastmastery a lot, give clerics and hawkers a nice edge during midgame and lategame. Good suggestion, though.

Can't be sure, of course, but a lot of things will remain as is for now. I expect there'll be a good bit more pruning once the entire mess of code can be simplified with tools and better design.

I'm referring to opportunity cost and skill point cost. It doesn't really cost Dealers much to invest in the Mercenary subtree. Sometimes only 2-3 valuepoints is enough. At max investment with summon gauge gems the summons don't add much but they do offer some additional DPS. (They also look cool.) This max investment happens lategame, of course. Mercenary summons actually shine earlygame where their true value is tank/cannon fodder. At low levels, Dealers don't have the necessary gear to buff their HP, movespeed and DPS so these summons are great value for the skill points spent. They're the frontline while the dealer delivers DPS uninterrupted from the backline. (And sometimes they switch!) Also, currently very little crafting happens at low levels, to the point where there is no +CON crafting tool available until you get to Luna. Basically, it's a disconnect. Summoning Hunter and Warrior mercenaries has nothing to do with crafting. Yet the skill is visible ON THE CRAFTING PAGE. It implies that crafters, artisans are weak, that they sacrifice the ability to output damage by themselves to study the artisanal arts. I propose we integrate pet summoning into the crafting skills by having crafters craft their own summons. Let them pay for it in loot, sweat, blood and tears like they do everything else. Not just 'I put one point in Hunter and press button.' When I say 'Dealer-crafted summons' I'm talking about the following: stationary turrets made of guns or launchers, fed with ammo, firing bullets or shells mini-Castle Gear units that can melee and/or deal ranged attack (using modular design with swappable parts) landmines/proximity mines for that luring strat we all love True Sight of some sort - invisibility detection components that can be equipped onto other summons or planted directly onto the ground other stuff related to crafting, forging, storage etc. I'm starting to think we need a Summon tab next to the PAT tab. Can't use the PAT tab for mini-CG summons, after all. If Visitors could hire Hunters and Warriors for quests (with zulie!) then having these guys as 'summons' would work thematically, too. Cleric-wannabe muses especially could enjoy getting some help for their quest chains or just plain leveling at reduced rates just like a Dealer with Discount would. Can't believe it's a weekday and nobody needs petting. *sigh*

Why is it we always come up with weirdlogic solutions to simple problems? Let's see, so far we've got: infinite ammo make ammo free again make basic ammo free but higher-grade ammo craftable-only and really cool infinite ammo for auto-attacks but not for skills Let me add more so we don't lose sight of why we're worrying about ammo: make crafting ammo really cheap and easy make the ammo UI slots map to different types of ammo defined by the player, not dedicated arrow/bullet/shells slots Basically, the following: Make farming either gunpowder packets reliable and easy or establish a recipe (given to you when you get your first job) of gunpowder + cloth = gunpowder packets. Make knowing how to craft gunpowder packets not be a waste of skill points and time. This should be the build-up to many useful things we use to progress. (Reference here to my landmines and grenades suggestion) The UI now has to display different types of 'ammo' - bullets, shells, grenades, landmines. For bow/xbow users, this could be different types of arrows (ones with elemental affinities, explosive arrows etc.) Remember, it's about the UI display. I reckon we nudge crafters towards crafting ammo for the DPS and effects benefits by making it so much easier and a more profitable use of their time and skill points. If we take away the crutches of Hunter and Warrior summons and make everything about crafting (e.g. crafting a stationary turret, a mobile turret, mini-Castle Gear etc.) then the Dealer should have more skill points available to spend on crafting. This will hold true even for the Hawker and cross-bow Knight in a different way and to a lesser extent. I'm against Dealers getting anything for free; their whole class is about balance. 'Take what you want and pay for it.' Dealers always pay their debts, which is why they get to craft crazy stuff; they've earned that right. (I'll likely post another suggestion on this later.)

I don't remember them costing zero zulie back in the day and I doubt they'd cost that much on full release. However, that sounds like a decent idea if crafted ammo was the only other ammo-type, could apply effects (DEF DOWN, slow, DoT, elemental affinity etc.) and dealt significantly more damage. More bang for your buck, as it were. It's all about margins, you guys. Starter pack: free. Upgrade pack will cost ya. For those crying about free ammo, clerics have free ranged magical damage auto-attack.