ESF: Illusion Nerf

[Seren]

This seems like a backhanded nerf to what is arguably one of the lesser ESF treats for mages from the get-go.

I think it's credulous to say 'oh just use shadow conjuration if u want damage dealing illusions :^)'. Not only are they good for naught but being a knockdown bot, but they don't last very long, at that. Buffing them is really a non-factor because it doesn't improve their usefulness, and you're better off just using an elemental in almost every single circumstance, barring perhaps fighting something with 0 discipline that can be abused by the knockdown spam. I say this as someone who has tried time and time again to make this spell useful, but I just can't find a way to do it past content designed for levels ~14-15.

I don't think that summoning a clone that does nothing but speak and walk is at all representative of someone who is meant to have mastered the art of illusion. We have multiple spells like phantasm killer and weird which are illusions with the inherent intent of immediately killing someone.

I think that rebuilds should be given to people with this feat on account of me knowing a couple of druids, and some other niche builds that used this as a core piece of their kit. I thought it was a unique and interesting take on say, a druid shadowdancer, or a disciple of Fenmarel who uses unconventional trickery to achieve their ends. These builds now lose an integral part of their charm on classes who are already pretty feat starved.

The only saving grace, which I hardly consider a counterpoint, however, is that I do think it's a great RP tool. Myself, Mac and a few other illusionists have done some great roleplay with our clones, but it's still damn hard to justify burning three feats for. I would argue in almost every situation, you'd be better off with any other ESF if you want to do the same thing that the high-end illusion spells can do.

You want P Killer or Weird? Finger of Death or Wail are arguably better with ESF necro because you get the summons on top of it. (If you're good, too bad I guess. You're just mechanically worse in every way, even more-so after this nerf.)

Divination gets Power Word Kill, and scry, and the scry alert.

Evocation gets the obvious nukes.

Conjuration is pretty stock-standard.

Abjuration is a must-have for wizards, on top of that you get your anti scry anti-TP cookie.

Transmutation is something that not a lot of casters take into epics, but the GSF is one of the most useful in the game for the practical fellow.

Looking at all of this in comparison to your unlimited color spray (that stops being relevant as soon as you hit epics anyways bc its a circle 1 and the DC is like ~30 even with ESF) and a clone that does absolutely nothing but serve as a neat RP trick, we're starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for substance. One could argue that the project image is a really good tool; I would agree with you, but for feat-starved classes like sorc and druid, still makes it hard to justify burning 2-3 feats to commit to the focus.

[Gouge Away]

If it is now just an RP tool I think we could go the distance with it. Why only copy yourself or an NPC you touch? Make it so you can make an illusion of almost any creature in the game from scratch.

Why even stop at creatures? Make it so you can create temporary illusionary fixtures too!

And again, make it so you get more than one use a day. A one minute cooldown or heck, just keep creating illusions as long as you have components.

As an RP tool I think it would be fantastic for an illusionist to be able to tell a story.. And pull up a few different creatures while telling it.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I feel like there's a systemic issue with conversations in spells constantly shifting back to 'dealing damage.' I think part of that stems from the prevalence of +uni saves, div dips, and general build knowledge that "save or die" spells aren't viable (or fun). But counteracting that with everything needing to do damage is like just a band-aid solution.

I also think its problematic that one of the core features of spellcasters (the esf cookies) is now being given to mundanes. Sure, its cool now hybrid classes get a chance - but it also erodes the mechanical identity of other classes. Is this class homogenization?

Spellcasters really have taken a beating lately, but this is the ebb and flow of the server usually. I do think it'd be great to really take a look at spell schools, spell focuses, infinicasting, and epic spells. There's stuff now that has become so mandatory there's hardly any choice, there's stuff that's underpowered, there stuff that just needs to be modernized.

[Tathkar Eisgrim]

If it is now just an RP tool I think we could go the distance with it. Why only copy yourself or an NPC you touch? Make it so you can make an illusion of almost any creature in the game from scratch.

Why even stop at creatures? Make it so you can create temporary illusionary fixtures too!

And again, make it so you get more than one use a day. A one minute cooldown or heck, just keep creating illusions as long as you have components.

As an RP tool I think it would be fantastic for an illusionist to be able to tell a story.. And pull up a few different creatures while telling it.

That is a good RP concept for Illusion I must admit.

I dunno. I'm just not convinced a change has to be binary, going from "1" to "0". Why not make an incremental change and test that first?

[Rico_scorpion]

Xerah,

Here's an unsollicitated opinion, i'm probably adding white noise but hey, i'm giving it a shot.

While "taking you guys for fools" is clearly unacceptable and in very poor taste, that's to be expected when you:

- Make radical changes. Here you erased the complete battle utility of an epic boon. In a game about battles. And for some, even destroyed flavor-concepts that revolved around it to have identity.
- Make an unmotivated radical change. The fact that you have your reasons, legitimate or not, there's no doubt about it, but any politician can have the best reasons in the world to apply a new law, if he deploys no pedagogy whatsoever to explain it to the people, the only thing he will get is resistance to change and riots. Without going into this fancy comparison territory, taking the time to explain things to players when something radical occurs, even if only for an obscure subfeat, is paramount into federating your playerbase. You don't do it, you don't federate anything. Blizzard entertainment didn't justify anything in their changes for years, after alienating a good chunk of their playerbase on Diablo 3, they started adding 3 to 5 liners below controversial changes in the changelogs to explain their motivation behind it. It really went a long way into making gamedev-players relationship, healthier. Since then, a lot of companies have taken an habit of adding comments to changelogs when they know they're taking toys away/upsetting the meta. Arelith might not be developped by pros (and that's okay/what we love about it, make no mistake), the playerbase-devs relationship still follows the same behavioural rules, and the cure is the same too: pedagogy.

Here you basically take away, sometimes the whole flavor of some builds that were not even gamebreaking (to my knowledge, can be wrong). People should respect you, your team, and people should believe in you and yet I don't feel that's fair either to act surprised or just counterfingerpoint the community for being a**holes. Players are passionate, players have opinions, players are involved, and oftentimes, players are indeed a**holes... i'm a pro dev too, i hate that too, i understand how you feel, i swear i had some dark moments due to players behaviour, and to this day i'm very critical of gamers and how they are entitled/treat hardworking gamedevs. And still IF no pedagogy is done when you destroy player-concepts and do very severe nerfs to an ability, i'm not sure what you expect as a reaction.

Blind trust/love is not a thing anymore between players and gamedevs, that's the rules of the game, and Arelith changelogs should adapt to that truth. Be federating to disminish negative reactions and adress concerns. I know there's the whole "arelith is not a democracy" thing, good, that's a good thing. Yet Arelith cannot be developped in a vaccuum without trying to federate people around its dev team and their choices.

Anyway, that being said, you have my support Xerah (for what it's worth! not much), and your team, and Irongron. Even if i lost a toon to that decision that i still don't quite understand hehehehehe

[Orian_666]

I think the no damage thing is fine, if that's the vision the team has for it then so be it, it's not exactly the end of the world and the ability is still ( as it always has been) a fun and diverse RP tool.

One thing I would suggest though now that it's been made "ethereal" to an extent, having no physical form so it can walk through stuff, is to also grant it high Concealment (the same as the summoned Shades, for example) to reflect this change. Sure it'll do no damage and that's fine, but if it has no physical form then Macey Mc. Smashings shouldn't be able to just swing their massive war hammer and destroy it immediately. *Maybe even some DR/DI too to further reflect the fact that it has no physical form.

This also does at least grant it /some/ use in PvE as a distraction if needs be, to escape or reposition, without being OP and being able to kill things for you.

[Nevrus]

I feel like feedback around how best development could communicate its changes and intentions to the playerbase would be worthy of its own (heavily moderated) thread, because it does seem to be a consistent matter that we don't understand 'why' a change was made until seven posts into a feedback thread where everyone expresses confusion as to why the change was made and the developer explains their rationale.

I work in game development and I understand both sides on the issue myself.

All that being said, this thread is about the specific ESF change, not the patch notes culture and formatting, and getting it more off-topic will not help the core discussion, so I'll return to that core discussion.

Cloning with a feat and creating a perfect copy with perfect parity to the caster was probably never a good idea. I can't personally speak as to the functionality of how it worked before this change, as I have never used it, but I can see why taking away its viability as a combat support summon was done; in certain hands it has the potential to be way better than every other summon if used correctly.

Now, it sounds like this has never actually been a problem, as I've never even heard it mentioned as part of the meta prior to this, other than as a meme build. I can see why people who built around this to get sub-par results because it looks cool would find the change annoying.

What I will say is that in its current iteration it does not have parity in terms of utility with the other options available as ESF perks. While it can allow some creative bait-and-switching in very controlled circumstances, it doesn't have the short notice instant utility of rescuing someone from the clutches of doom with Yoink, finding where a hostile force is moving with Scry, rapidly exfiltrating a dungeon or hostile territory with Portal Creation, or blocking any of those with abjurative warding.

It's just neat, and neat is usually not worth investment; it's a mechanical trap.

How would I personally make it more than just "Neat" without becoming a combat-dominating wild card?

Give it a one-off offensive ability that ends the clone, so that if you can successfully get people to believe in it and close on it, you can punish them. Let's say you can make it explode into a Weird. That would be cool as heck, essentially act as a single additional ninth-level spell, and give illusionists some power to fake people out. When in dire straits, acting like you're an illusion that could potentially kill everyone could sure get you out of jams.

Is that OP? Would that make you illusionists happy if it were implemented? It certainly wouldn't benefit gnomish weaponmaster loremasters because their DC would still be trash.

[Drowboy]

LOVE making it explode into a weird or similar effect. Love, love, love that.

[ReverentBlade]

Let me possess it like a familiar so I can be the wizard behind a curtain a million areas away.

[godhand-]

i'm just throwing it out there, as someone who has made a ESF illusion druid, the clone is crap. utter crap. don't try and argue about those "poor people who now need rebuilds like druids" because honestly if you have ever tried it you would know its garbage.

The above statement goes doubly if not triply so for battleclerics and other similiar builds. Battleclerics get their power from the windup like divinepower/might/favor/shield - which the clone doesn't get, meaning its instantly missing out on 10ab and even more AC. All they lose out on, is an (average at its best) second summon to fight along side their elemental.

[Anomandaris]

There's an approved suggestion to enhance the ESF illusion ability.

"The create Illusion function from the ESF is underwhelming if you’re playing a mage. You’ve got a mage illusion trying melee without any of the buffs. Aside from some rp value it’s basically worthless. If you played a battlecleric or something melee oriented it’s way better, but it’d be great if this added some value to a Caster mage. Let it retain caster buffs, cast spells, actually look identical to serve as a real distraction carnifax, have it guard caster, retain more benefits from use with shape change etc. Any or all of these would lead me towards considering taking it on a caster build."

Irongron:
"Approved for adding some more functionality to the illusion."

So is this still a thing? If so, it may be adjusted again soon to make it more useful for mages and/or RP.

[Gouge Away]

i'm just throwing it out there, as someone who has made a ESF illusion druid, the clone is crap. utter crap. don't try and argue about those "poor people who now need rebuilds like druids" because honestly if you have ever tried it you would know its garbage.

It was decidedly not crap on an archer cleric, but I'm not going to argue for relevels since that always seemed like a fringe benefit that could disappear.

I am going to argue for vastly expanding what you can do with it in an RP setting... If illusions are now intangible and harmless I think there should be almost no limit as to what you can create for shenanigans sake.

[TimeAdept]

The illusion was either useless or hilariously powerful with no inbetween.

I mostly made thsis post because I wanted to say that infinite color spray definitely never stops being useful.

[garrbear758]

The illusion was either useless or hilariously powerful with no inbetween.

This is pretty accurate. Its something that we were looking at changing before loremaster existed, but loremaster just accelerated our timeline.

I do like a lot of the ideas posted here for giving it something else in return, and we can look at options for that.

I also agree that we've been pretty bad about communicating why we nerf things until halfway down a thread here or on discord, and I can try to be better about including those explanations in the update notes.

[AstralUniverse]

As someone who doesnt normally expects any transparency around here, and with the discussion about the interaction between loremaster and the clone, I cant say I'm surprised at all and I dont think the staff should apologize for anything.. but..
I think that simply pointing out that this nerf is not related to the Loremaster class would greatly diminish the drama.

And since we're talking about the clone, I do agree that making the clone more deceptive to spot who-is-who in combat would be really nice. Making the clone mimic VFX (regardless of what wards are on the clone, it will just mimic the VFX of the illusionist as it is) and casting animations would be absolutely awesome, and if it is possible to make it shoot 'fake' projectiles of offensive spells to not 'give itself up' as the animation ends then even better.

[the grim yeeter]

Smells like whack-a-mole to me.

Loremaster not a great class, kind of boring.
Give loremaster epic mage abilities.
Oh no, the epic mage abilities would be on mundanes!
Nerf the epic mage abilities.

Or, you could, like, give loremaster something else. There's a lot of good ideas in that thread that aren't slapping mage powers on them.

100% this.

And this isn't the first time (one of) the dev(s) is/are so seemingly desperately set on a (bad) idea, such that they're changing/nerfing other things in an attempt to "make it work anyway".

[dark-wolf223]

Gonna jump on the bandwagon here and say that I am really not okay with these changes..
I understand some issue regarding Loremaster etc..
But I think that locking the ESF Illusion feat (as before) to a character with 21+ caster levels would be more appropriate then nerfing the ability to the ground in fear future builds will abuse it.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that by nerfing this so hard, so many existing characters are going to be ruined, so that a NEW class for NEW characters can be more easily justified..

"RIP my beloved character. These changes have put you in the bin, to make room for a new trend.. You will sorely be missed."

[Frailman]

What build was killed by this?

I'm not a master of the meta by any means, but what build actually effectively used the ESF: Illusion and was unfairly killed by this?
This is not a gotcha, I just want some concrete examples rather than "so many existing characters"

[the grim yeeter]

None, really. So from a mechanical point of view, 21+ CL esf: illu characters shouldn't be given a rebuild.

Mechanically, the esf: clone was mostly garbage because only non-gish 21+ CL characters could access it. The esf: clone became strong when gish builds with a loremaster dip could suddenly take it. And instead of solving that problem, the clone simply got made more worthless than it already was, affecting all characters with the esf: illu feat instead of just the gish loremaster dips.

It's not so much this specific example of the clone being made absolutely mechanically worthless that is the problem, as it is the quite typical way of introducing new things to the server that is. That is, implementing an entirely new class in an apparent abundance of excitement, and then nerfing already existing abilities because they are OP on (a mere 3-level dip) of that class, instead of adjusting the newly added class itself. It's like adding new code with mislabelled/misordered function variables to an existing script, and then instead of adjusting the new code, editing all the functions to match the new code and everything else existing that it calls from. It is extremely inefficient, creates more work, creates domino problems and, in many cases, adds to the convolution of Arelith's mechanics that has increasingly become such an issue in the past years.

It should also be said that one way of reducing the likelihood of facing abovementioned problems everytime a new class is created, is to actually add a new class that isn't just a plethora of already existing class abilities shoved into one big pot.

[Jagel]

^^ yeeter-dude the DEVs gave an explantion that gave an explanation already no need to reintroduce a take that’s been directly called out as inappropriate form.

I am not a moderator but seriously, it’s not hard to voice your concerns in a constructive way. Makes gathering the useful bits much easier.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I don't understand the complaints. If the illusion was garbage for a mage anyways, as has been argued by some of the people saying this change is bad, why is this not the perfect solution? The thing still exists for RP purposes, warrior classes can't use it as a super charged summon...seems like a win win to me.

[Liareth]

The illusion is an RP tool by design, not a combat one. (Edit: I spoke with Peppermint who created the spell and clarified that the illusion was meant to do a little bit of damage to preserve the illusion, but not to be a primary damage dealer. I misremembered the details as it was many years ago, which speaks more to my later point about players not understanding the thought process behind a design). The addition of Loremaster and the potential synergies it opened expedited a fix to bring the spell in line with its original design goals. Better to plug a hole that shouldn't have been there in the first place than to spend time and effort rethinking a design on its account. The game of "whack-a-mole" is a thing that has happened before, but isn't what's going on here IMO.

We shouldn't expect players to understand the (undocumented and known only through word of mouth) thought process behind a developer's design before they make a character. Illusions have been capable of doing damage in some circumstances for a long time. From a player's perspective, basing a character build around the illusion's offensive capability is fair game. After all, there is little difference between a long-term bug that is known by the developers yet remains broken and a poorly implemented feature to a player.

If a player was a mad enough lad to build around the illusion's damage output - which I understand several players were - then they are left now with a crippled character. It isn't fair to break a character's build without compensation, no matter how garbage our collective opinion has decided the build is. Ergo, players who relied on their illusion's wrecking power should receive a rebuild. It's too burdensome to distinguish between those players and other illusionists, so best to give everyone with the ESF a rebuild.

Many people have already explained why they feel illusion collision should return, so I won't comment on that aspect of the update.

It would be cool to see the illusion's capabilities expanded - maybe -guarding you in a simiar vein to the SD's shadow while offering some utility in combat scenarios as well.

[Nobs]

Personaly would love it if we could possess the clone like a familiar as that would help so mutch with moving it around and speaking through it.

[Irongron]

Personaly would love it if we could possess the clone like a familiar as that would help so mutch with moving it around and speaking through it.

That remains very much my own wish also.

Given how some have built around this I think it almost certain rebuilds will be offered, but I first want to be absolutely certain it will not change further.

[SkipiusEsq]

Personaly would love it if we could possess the clone like a familiar as that would help so mutch with moving it around and speaking through it.

I would also really love this as it would open up a lot for RP. It would be even better if you could chose some options for the clone. For example, would be nice if a surface elf could make an illusion of a drow to interact in the UD. Or a goblin making a dwarf to go to Brog. It could have some type of "spot" check or whatever to break the illusion, with ranks in divination increasing the chance to 'see through' the illusion.