- Oct 17, 2016
- 101
- 53
Hi all!
So as one of the few or maybe only full charisma player out there. I wanted to make some suggestions in regards to dragons in order to make them a bit more viable and more like combat partners instead of buff mounts.with healing wind.
So here is a list of things I would suggest. Its going to be a bit of unorganized rant. So I will just bold the main points.
Note that this is just my overall thoughts and opinion on what I think could be done or looked into. Not saying any of this will even be possible nor do I want people to get upset since they think dragons are powerful enough already.
Update dragon damage cap:
Not sure how this is done but it seems like they have a soft cap when it comes to dragon damage. Once they get past 15k phys or magic dmg it tapers off a bit. They do get decent boosts from adrenaline surge and oracle buffs even when over the 15k however. Some dragons tend to scale better than others. Eastern dragons tend to be the most well off of any dragon class when it comes to overall damage output compared to any other dragon class. I am not just talking about cyclone assault as well. I remember when we had the skill overhaul that dragons got a 20% boost in war vs players. They did not do anything for pve however. I know several dragons types have got nerfed due to arena. This seems to also affect how well they do in pve. They also had an overall 30% decrease in impact damage during the 102 days. Most of these had been listed off in EU patch notes if you wanted to dig and find them as well.
Update dragon gear: Update Stats/sets/let us transfer stats/ add toughness
Dragon gear helps some since main stats are boosted by charisma. However the stats you can put on them stop at base 1 giving you 98 of a single stat if maxed at 108. Player gear has upwards of things like Con 4 and 5 adding upwards of 600 con if you max the stat out. We have stones that add lesser versions of these stats but even they cant be used on dragon gear. On top of this you cannot transfer stats from one piece to another. When an item drops you get what you get. You cant use the stones on any dragon armor over lvl 90 since after that we got better versions of the stat. Dragons also have no natural toughness stat and max a dragon can get at this time is 400 if you farm the 90 purp set. This is nothing now a days due to players having upwards of 60-90% crit chance with super high crit power. Most people with toughness can really stack it up on gear and bonuses from sets.
Give dragons spirit shield or some sort of stagger resist:
I remember when MT was all the rage since he had stagger resist he also had a godly cyclone till that god reduced. I raised one up and it was a great dragon since it could actually hit stuff in both pve and pvp. He could not be staggered unless by a skill meant to stagger knock up/down an enemy. As of now more than 2 mobs could perma stagger a dragon if the hits line up. From time to time a skill might be able to go off. As for pvp any class other than ranger can almost hold down left or right click and have the dragon be helpless. This is why I swapped from oracle to guardian. The damage buff i got from oracle didn't help my dragons much if at all by 105 so i went with a more defensive option. Still helps a little bit for the slight time hes immune to stagger.
Update dragon AI:
This one would be hard. If anything give them the same AI they have in the arena. Arena dragons tend to be more aggressive versions of their pve counterparts. They tend to hit faster and use skills more often. They also tend to adjust more if they cant hit something. In pve its sad to see a dragon freeze in place when its normal attacks are just out of reach and have them sit for 20 seconds for their next long range skill refreshes and then sits again. That or have a dragon hit past a mob not doing any damage. You can see this best with a dragon atking the training dummies in sanc. They run up to it and tend not to be able to hit it again till you draw them back and get them in range that you need them to. The jumper dragons like paragons and razorspines also have a mid range leap that is super slow and rarely hits anything. Just anything to make them less derpy.
Update the evolution system:
They have up to 5 stars to unlock stuff but only came out with up to 2 star worth of dragon evolution skills. Would be nice to have cross training for evo skills. I would love to have all my dragons with tree of life from the bird evo. Would be nice for my bird to get the cyclone assault buff windriders have. Or have a phys damage dragon have the stat steal windriders have. Maybe even have more than 3 evo slots. Heck incorporate the other suggestions with this one so that the more evolved your dragon is the better it gets.
Let dragon companion buffs affect the dragon to:
So when they announced the dragon companion buff i was pretty pumped. I got a great bonus on my paragon with STR and FERO with the dragon being a ancient that I had owned already. I took it out and saw the buffs on me but not the dragon. I was bummed when I noticed that the buff I got didn't affect my dragon in any way. Made it even more apparent that dragons had been down the buff mount road.
Let base damage go by dragons highest damage stat:
Since str dragons tend not to be able to live very long due to junky heals I always ended up starting out with a bird or windrider. One of the first problems I found was that you have to waste 3 dragon skill slots in order for their base strike sweep and impact hits to be based off magic damage instead of physical. You needed elemental impact, sweep, and strike in order to just let them do normal attacks at a half way decent dmg. This also made it hard to justify going with a magic based ironhide, eastern, or hydra.
Make a uniform heal system:
Each class of dragon tends to heal at different % of life left. I did not mind it at first most dragons tend to use reflux at about 60-70% hp and wind at 50-60%. Iornhides still use reflux at a more normal rate and tend only to use healing wind or the other big burst heal at under 30% hp. Normally by that time its too late. I have not tested when some of the lesser used dragons like aquas use them but as of now its more of a Ironhide problem.
Update dragon skills:
I know we have new untested skills that have never been released. Maybe let some of them out after some testing. As of now dragons had 1 skill update that added a nice variety of more flashy skills but most of them had been underpar compared to the older ones so most do not get used as often unless its a buff for the player. As of now the only dragon skill that hits more than once is cyclone assault unless its a combo evo skill. It would be nice if those flashy skills got a bit of an upgrade as well.
On a side note for this.. please remove the long cast time of obliterating impact for birds. It takes several seconds for it to fly up and do the dive attack. Every other dragon that uses it just jumps forward a little bit to use. Yeah it looks cool and on birds it has a super strong base dmg. Fabled ancients have the same base damage with hunting assault. It only takes a second for them to use it and it has a 7 second cool down compared to obliterating impacts 25. Phantoms have flaming assult that is strong as well. It also has a low cast time and I think a 14 second cool down.
Uniform dragon shards with dragon skills:
Dragons tend to be all over the place with the skills that get affected by other types of damage like nat or dsd. Dragons skills in general seems to be random. A physical skill might end up with a elemental bonus and another phis skill might end up with dsd. Natural damage does not affect dragon heals like it does with player heals. So it seems like they end its not worth it to shard a dragon up since its hard to find a half way decent line up of skills that all benefit from one or two damage types.
Let us use more than one dragon:
This is a long shot and prob would get booed by most of the population. I would really love a dragon team. When the arena first came out they advertised it as 3 on 3 battles. I was so pumped and started planning out my tank/healer/dps line up to fight together vs another team. When it got installed it is what it is now. 1v1 with swaps.
End Notes:
I know the first thing people will bring up if this all comes into play is how overpowered the dragons might get. Of course its going to need to be balanced. Now charisma maxes its boost at 200% dragon stats and a 50 + minute summon time. As of now being full charisma will get you about 120-150% with a 32 minute summon time with a underlvled dragon. Note this is all based on gear stats. We could maybe balance charisma with a debuff that lowers your overall damage based on how much you have or how much you had put into the stats with your lvl stat points. I mean if your going to incorporate charisma into the build you really do want to focus on the dragons. On another note everyone dragons would be getting buffed as well so its not like anyone build really looses out unless they only use a buff dragon without any normal skills on it.
Another way to maybe adjust it is to have more stats you can place per lvl. Someone that puts 600 points into str or Intel will have much larger damage pools compared to mine.
Ill add more when I think of things. I just wanted to get it down to see if anything could be easily done without having to take too much time or effort. I know most people would rather get a new map or 108 orange sets rather than buffing the dragons.
So as one of the few or maybe only full charisma player out there. I wanted to make some suggestions in regards to dragons in order to make them a bit more viable and more like combat partners instead of buff mounts.with healing wind.
So here is a list of things I would suggest. Its going to be a bit of unorganized rant. So I will just bold the main points.
Note that this is just my overall thoughts and opinion on what I think could be done or looked into. Not saying any of this will even be possible nor do I want people to get upset since they think dragons are powerful enough already.
Update dragon damage cap:
Not sure how this is done but it seems like they have a soft cap when it comes to dragon damage. Once they get past 15k phys or magic dmg it tapers off a bit. They do get decent boosts from adrenaline surge and oracle buffs even when over the 15k however. Some dragons tend to scale better than others. Eastern dragons tend to be the most well off of any dragon class when it comes to overall damage output compared to any other dragon class. I am not just talking about cyclone assault as well. I remember when we had the skill overhaul that dragons got a 20% boost in war vs players. They did not do anything for pve however. I know several dragons types have got nerfed due to arena. This seems to also affect how well they do in pve. They also had an overall 30% decrease in impact damage during the 102 days. Most of these had been listed off in EU patch notes if you wanted to dig and find them as well.
Update dragon gear: Update Stats/sets/let us transfer stats/ add toughness
Dragon gear helps some since main stats are boosted by charisma. However the stats you can put on them stop at base 1 giving you 98 of a single stat if maxed at 108. Player gear has upwards of things like Con 4 and 5 adding upwards of 600 con if you max the stat out. We have stones that add lesser versions of these stats but even they cant be used on dragon gear. On top of this you cannot transfer stats from one piece to another. When an item drops you get what you get. You cant use the stones on any dragon armor over lvl 90 since after that we got better versions of the stat. Dragons also have no natural toughness stat and max a dragon can get at this time is 400 if you farm the 90 purp set. This is nothing now a days due to players having upwards of 60-90% crit chance with super high crit power. Most people with toughness can really stack it up on gear and bonuses from sets.
Give dragons spirit shield or some sort of stagger resist:
I remember when MT was all the rage since he had stagger resist he also had a godly cyclone till that god reduced. I raised one up and it was a great dragon since it could actually hit stuff in both pve and pvp. He could not be staggered unless by a skill meant to stagger knock up/down an enemy. As of now more than 2 mobs could perma stagger a dragon if the hits line up. From time to time a skill might be able to go off. As for pvp any class other than ranger can almost hold down left or right click and have the dragon be helpless. This is why I swapped from oracle to guardian. The damage buff i got from oracle didn't help my dragons much if at all by 105 so i went with a more defensive option. Still helps a little bit for the slight time hes immune to stagger.
Update dragon AI:
This one would be hard. If anything give them the same AI they have in the arena. Arena dragons tend to be more aggressive versions of their pve counterparts. They tend to hit faster and use skills more often. They also tend to adjust more if they cant hit something. In pve its sad to see a dragon freeze in place when its normal attacks are just out of reach and have them sit for 20 seconds for their next long range skill refreshes and then sits again. That or have a dragon hit past a mob not doing any damage. You can see this best with a dragon atking the training dummies in sanc. They run up to it and tend not to be able to hit it again till you draw them back and get them in range that you need them to. The jumper dragons like paragons and razorspines also have a mid range leap that is super slow and rarely hits anything. Just anything to make them less derpy.
Update the evolution system:
They have up to 5 stars to unlock stuff but only came out with up to 2 star worth of dragon evolution skills. Would be nice to have cross training for evo skills. I would love to have all my dragons with tree of life from the bird evo. Would be nice for my bird to get the cyclone assault buff windriders have. Or have a phys damage dragon have the stat steal windriders have. Maybe even have more than 3 evo slots. Heck incorporate the other suggestions with this one so that the more evolved your dragon is the better it gets.
Let dragon companion buffs affect the dragon to:
So when they announced the dragon companion buff i was pretty pumped. I got a great bonus on my paragon with STR and FERO with the dragon being a ancient that I had owned already. I took it out and saw the buffs on me but not the dragon. I was bummed when I noticed that the buff I got didn't affect my dragon in any way. Made it even more apparent that dragons had been down the buff mount road.
Let base damage go by dragons highest damage stat:
Since str dragons tend not to be able to live very long due to junky heals I always ended up starting out with a bird or windrider. One of the first problems I found was that you have to waste 3 dragon skill slots in order for their base strike sweep and impact hits to be based off magic damage instead of physical. You needed elemental impact, sweep, and strike in order to just let them do normal attacks at a half way decent dmg. This also made it hard to justify going with a magic based ironhide, eastern, or hydra.
Make a uniform heal system:
Each class of dragon tends to heal at different % of life left. I did not mind it at first most dragons tend to use reflux at about 60-70% hp and wind at 50-60%. Iornhides still use reflux at a more normal rate and tend only to use healing wind or the other big burst heal at under 30% hp. Normally by that time its too late. I have not tested when some of the lesser used dragons like aquas use them but as of now its more of a Ironhide problem.
Update dragon skills:
I know we have new untested skills that have never been released. Maybe let some of them out after some testing. As of now dragons had 1 skill update that added a nice variety of more flashy skills but most of them had been underpar compared to the older ones so most do not get used as often unless its a buff for the player. As of now the only dragon skill that hits more than once is cyclone assault unless its a combo evo skill. It would be nice if those flashy skills got a bit of an upgrade as well.
On a side note for this.. please remove the long cast time of obliterating impact for birds. It takes several seconds for it to fly up and do the dive attack. Every other dragon that uses it just jumps forward a little bit to use. Yeah it looks cool and on birds it has a super strong base dmg. Fabled ancients have the same base damage with hunting assault. It only takes a second for them to use it and it has a 7 second cool down compared to obliterating impacts 25. Phantoms have flaming assult that is strong as well. It also has a low cast time and I think a 14 second cool down.
Uniform dragon shards with dragon skills:
Dragons tend to be all over the place with the skills that get affected by other types of damage like nat or dsd. Dragons skills in general seems to be random. A physical skill might end up with a elemental bonus and another phis skill might end up with dsd. Natural damage does not affect dragon heals like it does with player heals. So it seems like they end its not worth it to shard a dragon up since its hard to find a half way decent line up of skills that all benefit from one or two damage types.
Let us use more than one dragon:
This is a long shot and prob would get booed by most of the population. I would really love a dragon team. When the arena first came out they advertised it as 3 on 3 battles. I was so pumped and started planning out my tank/healer/dps line up to fight together vs another team. When it got installed it is what it is now. 1v1 with swaps.
End Notes:
I know the first thing people will bring up if this all comes into play is how overpowered the dragons might get. Of course its going to need to be balanced. Now charisma maxes its boost at 200% dragon stats and a 50 + minute summon time. As of now being full charisma will get you about 120-150% with a 32 minute summon time with a underlvled dragon. Note this is all based on gear stats. We could maybe balance charisma with a debuff that lowers your overall damage based on how much you have or how much you had put into the stats with your lvl stat points. I mean if your going to incorporate charisma into the build you really do want to focus on the dragons. On another note everyone dragons would be getting buffed as well so its not like anyone build really looses out unless they only use a buff dragon without any normal skills on it.
Another way to maybe adjust it is to have more stats you can place per lvl. Someone that puts 600 points into str or Intel will have much larger damage pools compared to mine.
Ill add more when I think of things. I just wanted to get it down to see if anything could be easily done without having to take too much time or effort. I know most people would rather get a new map or 108 orange sets rather than buffing the dragons.
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