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[Zealot] Remove "Mark of Remaking" from the Mark system

Structured balance proposals should be posted here. Posts in this section will be taken into account during class balance reviews.
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[Zealot] Remove "Mark of Remaking" from the Mark system

Post#1 » Thu Feb 24, 2022 11:19 pm

Overview

This proposal is mostly a quality-of-life change for "Mark of Remaking", but will also technically come with a small buff to how Zealot marks interact with it. The exact same proposal also applies to the Rune Priest versions of the abilities listed. To make this proposal clearer I will just refer to everything using the Zealot's ability names. The Rune Priest versions are identical in all but name.

I and all Zealots and all Rune Priests are tired of accidentally removing our very important self-resurrection buff by overwriting it with a crappy Mark/Rune and having to wait 10 minutes to undo this mistake. Please save us from ourselves.

What are "Marks"?

Marks are abilities that the Zealot can cast on allies in their group. The Mark provides some form of stat buff and some form of additional effect - typically in the form of a granted ability. A Zealot can only give a player one Mark, and group members cannot be affected by multiple copies of the same Mark (i.e. if there were two Zealots in the group trying to use the same Mark on the same person). Zealots can give the same Mark to multiple group members.

There are 4 Mark abilities. Three of the Marks work in similar ways, and one - Mark of Remaking - works differently and does not fit into the Mark system. The three standard Marks are listed below. Each of these three Marks follow a pattern: buff stats and provide a granted ability that deals damage in a way that matches the Path that the Mark belongs to.
  • Mark of Daemonic Fury - Path of Alchemy (instant path)
    Passive buff: Increases the ballistic skill, intelligence and strength of the marked player for 60 minutes.
    Granted ability: A 100ft range direct damage magical attack on a 60 second cooldown.
    Cooldown: None.
  • Mark of the Spell Destroyer - Path of Witchcraft (long-duration path)
    Passive buff: Increases the initiative and intelligence of the marked player for 60 minutes.
    Granted ability: A 100ft DoT magical attack on a 60 second cooldown.
    Cooldown: None.
  • Mark of the Vortex - Path of Dark Rites (AOE path)
    Passive buff: Increases the corporeal, elemental and spiritual resistances of the marked player for 60 minutes.
    Granted ability: A 30ft-radius point-blank AoE DoT magical attack on a 60 second cooldown.
    Cooldown: None.
The fourth Mark - Mark of Remaking - does not fit in with this pattern. Note that the description below is how the ability is supposed to work. There are a few bugs with it currently which to my knowledge have lasted as long as the ability has existed in Return of Reckoning. Unlike the other three Marks which can be cast on the whole party quickly due to having no cooldown, Mark of Remaking has a 10 minute cooldown so the resurrection effect can only be on one player at a time (although due to the bugs above the entire party can be affected if recast on different people over an hour). In addition, it does not provide a granted ability like the other the Marks. It seems forced into the Mark system which causes two issues:
  1. It prevents the Zealot from also granting one of the three Marks to the player affected by Mark of Remaking (usually the Zealot itself), and
  2. If you accidentally use another Mark on a player with Mark of Remaking, you have now lost the self-resurrection for likely 10 minutes or so as Mark of Remaking has a 10 minute cooldown from when first cast. Conversely, if you accidentally replace one of the other Marks then you can fix the mistake instantly as the other Marks do not have a cooldown.
#1 is trivial. #2 IS ONE OF THE MOST INFURIATING THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN TO A ZEALOT. SO INFURIATING THAT I HAVE RESORTED TO USING BOLD, UNDERLINE AND ALL CAPS.

How easy is it to accidentally overwrite Mark of Remaking?

Common scenarios are:
  1. Have the ally currently affected by Mark of Remaking targeted and then accidentally fat-finger the shortcut for a different Mark ability.
  2. Have the ally currently affected by Mark of Remaking targeted and then accidentally click on the icon for a different Mark ability.
  3. When trying to buff the party, try to target an ally that is just out of range so the target fails and keeps the original target, and then without realising you have the wrong target you apply what you think is a new Mark to the new target but instead you just wiped off Mark of Remaking from the previous target.
Usually it happens when #3 occurs, which happens any time the Zealot has to try and buff multiple people quickly (joining scenario, warband parties reorganised, etc). Typically, the Zealot has given itself Mark of Remaking, then tries to Mark someone else but the targeting request fails and the Zealot ends up removing Mark of Remaking from themselves.

INFURIATING.

The Proposal

The proposal is to remove Mark of Remaking from the Mark system and just rename it "Remaking". This means that a group member can be affected by "Remaking" and one of the three Mark buffs from the same Zealot which is a slight buff. Seeing how over complicated Mark of Remaking currently is - providing two different buffs on two different timers - I propose simplifying it and also making official the behaviour it has had on ROR where the ability to self-resurrect lasts for an hour (it's a blessing so it can always be removed), but with mitigations added to prevent abuse.

The new Remaking ability would be:
  • Remaking - no Path (Path unchanged)
    Range: 100ft (unchanged)
    Type: Blessing (unchanged)
    Cooldown: 10 minutes (unchanged)

    The targeted group member is blessed for 60 minutes, allowing them to resurrect themselves if they die during this time. Once triggered, this blessing will automatically expire. If a player is affected by multiple Remaking blessings, then they will all expire at once when the player dies. You can only bless one ally with Remaking at any one time. If you attempt to bless another ally then your Remaking blessing is removed from the previous ally.
Remaking cannot be accidentally removed by Marks, it no longer has a toughness buff tied to it, it no longer has two different buffs on different timers, and it no longer pretends to be a Mark ability even though it has very little in common with the three primary Marks. It can still only be cast on group members (implementation note: the Remaking blessing also needs to be removed if the blessed player is no longer in the same group as the Zealot), and the restriction that each Zealot can only have one active Remaking blessing fixes the loophole that allows the whole party to be slowly blessed with the self-resurrect effect.

Allowing multiple Remaking blessings from different Zealots on the same group member provides some defence against the blessing being removed by the enemy (two blessings that need to be severed), and also means that the Zealots are not risking having their Remaking blessing replace another Zealot's Remaking blessing. ALL of the Remaking blessings will expire if one triggers so there's no risk of multiple Zealots giving the same player multiple Remaking blessings in advance to let them chain-resurrect themselves.

**Where did the Toughness buff go?

The final part of the proposal is adding the toughness buff that was part of Mark of Remaking to Mark of the Spell Destroyer, meaning Mark of the Spell Destroyer now buffs initiative, toughness and willpower. I propose this as:
  1. It means the three "real" Marks now all buff 3 stats each.
  2. Mark of the Spell Destroyer is more of a defensive Mark.
  3. The toughness buff is only about 80 at max rank so is not that strong compared to the best potions, tank buffs, etc.
  4. Most importantly: 3 x 3 (thee Marks buffing three stats) = 9, the number of Tzeentch.
Alternative Ideas

Assuming Mark of Remaking is no longer a Mark and just becomes Remaking, the main alternative idea to the one proposed above would be to limit it to a 10 minute duration with a 10 minute cooldown. This automatically prevents one Zealot from trying to bless multiple players over the course of an hour so would simplify the implementation. It also matches how long the resurrection lasted on live and was supposed to last on ROR. However, the one hour blessing has been a thing on ROR since forever and the duration of the blessing has not been an issue. Personally I believe keeping it at one hour on the reworked Remaking would cause less friction and confusion if implemented, and it seems counter-productive to try and apply very old ability rules to an ability that is being intentionally altered to be a new ROR version.

The other issue is the toughness buff. I don't see much harm in adding 80 toughness to Mark of the Spell Destroyer, especially as the buff is in the ability stacking group.
Zomega: RR8x Zealot

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