Stone Form. Need Player Input

[Skwiz]

Havent read every post but.. what about stealth archery dismounts..

Being on foot already -10 SSI isnt big deal for dismount archer, +DI for higher damage dismounts, Immunity to the few things that can reveal you.. Bleed Poison Strangle..

If it works like it prolly will.. most dismounters will be running around as a statue..

 

[Anakena]

Nope. In my experience at least, life leech on weapons isn't reliable enough for healing, and confidence isn't enough either without parry. With -2 FC, you ain't gonna be using close wounds either. And, they said that chiv needs to not be a 60 point skill anymore, I think :/

Anyway, the ability or inability to solo boss is a good way to see if it is or not overpowered in PvM. I am pretty sure people will try (increased resists means you have less need of leeching and more damage means you leech more, so it will be worth the try).

 

[FishinFool]

I envision this as a purely defensive spell, massive hp/mana regen.

Something along the lines of becoming immobile and as one approaches 120 skill taking less and less damage (over and above the resist cap) - where even the strongest attack would only carry 1 or 2 pts of damage - cannot be targeted by spells good or bad. Anyone trying to attack you would degrade their weapon.

Doing anything including talking, backpack manipulation, object handles, all names, ect - breaks the spell. Any time a creature would normally try to target you for an attack has a scalable 10-30% chance to break the spell. Should be stricken with the equivalent of 'dark nights' in terms of sight.

Also, this could be seen as a barbaric action by other civilized gargoyles and could chip away at those influence points you need for artificing.. don't know how that system works so I don't know if this would be effective.

Would be even better if the effects could be terrain dependant, significant cool down timer... maybe 5-10 minutes.

As the post below this says "defensive form like this shouldn't allow margin for uberquipment to fix its shortcomings" is true.

It doesn't matter how many negative modifiers you put on this, it can be overcome with the right equipment.

 

[Traveller]

-10% Swing Speed Increase
-2 Faster Casting

Oh, I forgot this. I think that a seriously defensive form like this shouldn't allow margin for uberquipment to fix its shortcomings. A good suit might have enough FC and SSI to still bring SSI and FC to the cap, despite the reductions. Therefore, I suggest that the maluses should be applied to SSI and FC caps as well, so that even with uber items is impossible to be on par with non-stoned (rolleyes chars.

 

[Violence]

I do not want to hijack this but a definite question is how badly do the Devs want to remove Poisoning from the game?

Every second ability all over UO, and every second item or Form, is anti Poisons..

How about you nerf Pots, EP and reconsider how and on what Poisoning works and introduce a couple more Poison Types and then we can talk YET ANOTHER Form that negates Poisons!!?

And yes this has EVERYTHING to do with feedback regarding Stone Form to be honest.

 

[Sarphus]

I can see a problem here. If you want to remove curses and stuff you just go into stone form, leave it, and you have removed all the stuff without bothering with healing, anatomy, magery, spirit speak, chiv, whatever... Also no talisman or spell will help you against this (ab)use of the skill.

I think that the form might protect you from the afflictions (after all it's clearly a strong defensive spell), but not remove them if you change into it AFTER you have been hit by them. In this way people who want to use its bonuses have to choose between changing into it BEFORE the fight starts, or not using it.

As a comparison consider the ninjitsu unicorn form. It grants protection from many poisons, but only if you morph into it BEFORE you are hit from poison. If you morph into it after you have been poisoned it won't cure you. If this is by design or a bug I don't know, but keep it in mind when designing the spell.

I don't think anyone would use stone form to do that. Going into stone form takes you off your mount and forces you to walk speed. Removing curses with Cleansing Winds (another Mysticism spell just 2 ranks higher) would let you stay mounted and would heal + cure you on top of removing your curses.

Even if people would do that, I think the "no mount" and "force walk" restrictions balance out that aspect of the ability.

 

[Ni-]

If Fertile Dirt will be a consumable reagent, will the weight of it be reduced to that of other reagents? I know not many people at all will actually use them because of LRC, but the question still stands.

Note: I don't PvP

A pair of crosshealing stoners might seem near unkillable, but would they be able to kill anyone? I just can't see them chasing anyone else down.

The only gimplate I forsee is the dismount/stealth/tamer. Currently they already need to be on foot and need not worry too much about speed, for the most part.

I could see this spell used as the new sampire in PvM. A pair of crosshealing stoners tanking a Dark Father might be alot more viable(which may already happen).

 

[laurlo]

seems kinna balanced.. trade off dex for resistance... but would have to test it really to know.

 

[D'Amavir]

I was looking at stuff that could break Stone Form and noticed that Gargoyles get a racial ability called Berzerk.

The SA website says this about Berzerk.


My first question is what the details are for this special ability?
At what point can this ability activate?
Is it voluntary or automatic?
What kind of speed enhancements does it give? Swing Speed? Mobility?
What power enhancements does this give?
What Defense penalties does Berzerk give, and how do they work when a gargoyle is in stone form and becomes berzerk (assuming a stone form gargoyle can go berzerk)?



I didn't see anything in the human or elf abilities that looked like it would factor in here (well I guess human HPR does, but not much)

I like you. I am glad you are pushing them to look at more than just the skill itself and to see how different things can come into play to affect balance. That is what I was talking about before. There hasn't been enough of that. Hopefully this is a move in the right direction instead of just an anomaly.

 

[Sarphus]

Just a couple of thoughts (ideas) came to my mind on this stone form thing. What if you were able to choose which "solid stone" you could be in stone form? This could require mined granite or ore to be a regeant along with the fertle dirt,blood moss,and garlic. Want strong resistance to physical? Cast "Stone Form: Dull Copper". More resistance to fire? "Stone Form:Bronze"

Next idea. For those like myself that will be adding the mystic skill to a pure caster,for each of the different type of stone form,allow the magic in that class to do extra damage. "Stone Form:Bronze" would allow my caster to deal more damage with fire type spells. "Stone Form:Shadow Iron" would add damage to cold spells.

And I have to ask...stone form in other games has been known as a monk type skill/spell,so I ask you...allow those of us that would love to have a unarmed monk type character to do 'real' damage with our fists in this form.please?

Interesting idea. How would you see this working with LRC? If I had to guess whether it's likely a change like this would actually happen, I would say it's unlikely. Creating 8 different stone forms means that QA would have to test 8 forms instead of just 1. Also, code changes would need to be made to allow you to select which form you want to choose.

Looks cool.

Since you cannot be mounted, is it possible to add a damage reduction property like swampies?

Good point. I think it would be worth testing. One of the problems swampie dmg reduction creates is that people can be in vamp form while riding a swampie, so they are immune to poison 1-4 and they leech back health as they hit stuff.

Since this form has no life leech, swampie dmg reduction may not present problems here. All the devs would have to do to test that is build a Necro/Mystic/Dexer hybrid and test this form with a hard hitting, Fast HML weapon and the necro spell Curse Weapon.
I haven't run the numbers, so I can't say whether or not the property would be overpowered, but I have a feeling it would be ok. They should test this anyway, because raising resist caps by 5 each could potentially cause this problem. It's basically sampires 2.0

Anyway, the ability or inability to solo boss is a good way to see if it is or not overpowered in PvM. I am pretty sure people will try (increased resists means you have less need of leeching and more damage means you leech more, so it will be worth the try).

I agree

The only gimplate I forsee is the dismount/stealth/tamer. Currently they already need to be on foot and need not worry too much about speed, for the most part.

At first I was thinking "hmm... how do you fit imbuing and mysticism on a dismount/stealth/tamer", but I'm assuming you are only thinking about a template that puts maybe 64 Mysticism on the character.

If that's the case, I think your scenario makes a great case for why the immunities need to be scaled from 0% immunity at 0 Imbuing/Mysticism to 100% immunity at 120 Imbuing/Mysticism. I think a good equation to determine your chance to resist an effect would be (ImbuingSkill + MysticismSkill -40) / 2 (or something similar). Basically, I'm scaling the effectiveness, but putting more weight on higher skill values.

I like you. I am glad you are pushing them to look at more than just the skill itself and to see how different things can come into play to affect balance. That is what I was talking about before. There hasn't been enough of that. Hopefully this is a move in the right direction instead of just an anomaly.

Thanks. I'm just trying to find the problems now so they can be addressed early and SA doesn't break a bunch of stuff. I don't want to see SA go poorly and jeopardize my favorite pasttime. I've been playing this game over 11 yrs and it would be a bit of a lifestyle change for me if the game went away.