4.0 Ideas

I think we shouldn't expect the design team to bring us any major changes at this point, until 4.0, so that being the case, what are some ideas that you have and want to see added to our existing skill sets?

I've been trying to imagine how they would add new abilities to DRK and what could possibly be squeezed in. I'd love to have a "Dread Spikes" ability which would probably be similar to WAR's Vengeance in practice. I also think some kind of AoE magic shield on the party, like "Dark Ward" or something would be nice.

PLD could get an AoE regen, similar to their 1.21 version of Divine Veil. WAR could get an ability that raises the Strength of all party members, similar to the FFXI Warcry ability. Clearly there could be balance issues that need to be sorted, but yeah.

I personally hope that we don't add to ability bloat, but that we get more traits that improve what we have already. For instance on DRK most of our cooldowns don't have an option to dark arts them, that could be added as an aoe upgrade with a trait, or something similar.

I too would like more Abilities, but not as many, maybe a Mix of Traits and Abilities?

T R A I T S(no reason to not have had these for HW) and abilities that work(no really if they don't synergize with other abilities with the job it came from the you can forget it) and bring unique utility to the job it's slapped on to and not just a reskinned ability the other jobs are getting.

Traits would be good, a lot of interesting ways they could take existing abilities. They're apparently reworking Parry so it might be interesting to see what happens with Raw Intuition and Dark Dance. Dunno what I'd like to see specifically, WAR is pretty tightly built so it's hard to really imagine what they could give it. Could really do without more abilities, though.

1. Much shorter cooldown on attacks used every parry/block. It's way too long in this game, compared to other MMO's anywhere where similar abilities never have a cd of more than 5-6 seconds or have certain abilities that automatically proc them or remove their cd under certain conditions.

2. Different stance for Drk.

3. An offensive damage dealing move for pld that requires MP.

I'd like more aspects of Paladin to focus on the shield.

- Shield Spikes, or a similar Aura, that deals damage back to the attacker based on the type of shield being used. Bucklers return a small amount of damage, while Towers return a larger amount. The idea being that a larger shield has more spikes, and the smaller shields would block more often thus the damage is evened out among all three. This would help PLDs slight lack of AoE when in large groups, and would provide a small amount of passive damage to compliment the Auto-Attack while in Shield Oath for a slightly higher MT damage output. --Edit: I just thought of it, but it could even be a Trait that modifies Shield Oath.

- An Aura that redirects the incoming negative energy of attacks that are blocked and produces a positive energy pulse to either provide a small AoE heal (like a Medica II tick) or a small-radius Damage-preventing Barrier, also based on what type of shield is being used. Keep in mind -- Sheltron. I get the Barrier would be pretty difficult to balance out, so I think the small heal would be better.

- More choice when it comes to shields to use. I'd personally use a Tower all day long, but we all know the only shields that exist in the game are Kites. (INB4, "bucklers" and "towers," take a look at any of the highest item level shields. They're all Kites. Thordan Ex Shield was almost cool, for a second, and Ravana almost hooked us up as well. Why'd we not follow through with this?)

They're all probably terrible ideas, but there they are.

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Originally Posted by Klamor

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About the different shield types, I'm going to vote for getting rid of the type distinction and just standardizing the shields across the board, especially if we're just going to use the highest ilevel one anyway since it seems like main stat trumps everything else.

not much room for new abilities anyway, unless they add some op (or situational) stuff on long CDs or even more DPS for our tanks.

they might have to re-check their new damage formula again since attack power increase per ilevel is higher for the DD than for the tanks, which will likely result in hate problems down the line again. though they can simply up the enmity generation of certain skills (or stances)

traits would be nice, especially for stuff like souleater hp absorbation. even now it's not really doing much when your hp pool is at 25k and you absorb 1500 hp... same for the useless hp absorbation part of storm's path or bloodbath

Before I even begin to consider new abilities for the Tanks I'd love to see them address the existing problems with the ones we already have, specifically with Drk (who mostly lacks OT utility) and Pld (don't even get me started on this one). I would love for the Dev team to sit down and hammer out a detailed and viable plan for addressing the current tank balance and create a solid foundation for them to build on. Then, and only then, am I okay with seeing additions.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath for this to actually happen. SE has all but admitted that they'll never do it. I don't think we've seen any meaningful tank adjustments since War got their overhaul waaaaaaaaaay back in 2.1. I'd love to know what happened to the individual who was responsible for that adjustment, because since then it's been nothing but bandage after flimsy bandage ...