disciplines

[ganthornx]

would it really be imbalancing if they made the "muscles bulge" line of disciplines like 10minute reuse at 65?

[Ainmer]

Make Defensive, Evasive, Agressive and Precise all have 0 refresh time. Giving a tank the ability to choose a "stance" would give us a lot more flexibility and quite honestly, would make being a warrior a whole lot more fun. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of playing a warrior on raids, let me tell you now it is about the most tedius experience in Everquest unless you happen to be tanking.

Is it really game unbalancing for a tank to be able to be permanently defensive/evasive? Not really. In my own guild's experiences we single tank almost every mob in PoP, because the pain/difficulty/risk of tank switching is worse than to just single tank the mob. In addition to this, most PoP mobs last 5-10 minutes anyway. Does tanking a mob after disc wears out require any more "skill" whatsoever? No. So how does it unbalance the game? It doesn't.

Is it really game unbalancing for a tank to be permanently Precise/Aggressive? Not really. Our dps gets a boost but we're still below the main melee damage dealers even with these discs active.

[Ameraves Loyalheart]

Hey, why dont you go ahead and add in some discs for us Paladins that actually do something. Holyforge is the only one I EVER us and that is really nothing more than a bit of eyecandy. Gotta love that one hour refresh on that one though.

[FuckYou]

If yer going to make defensive have a 0 reuse time, why not just up warrior mitigation and forget the whole thing.

The concept of reuse times is good: you have to think about what you are doing, what is coming up, and /disc when appropriate. However the reuse times (for pretty much all classes) are whacked.

And what the fuck is up with /disc resistant? They double required resists for high end encounters and leave a ultra-short duration disc that adds 10 resists the way it is. What a total waste.

Don't get me started on fearless either.

[TucosHoe]

Originally posted by FuckYou

Don't get me started on fearless either.

Hey I used fearless once on a gorenair raid, playing tuco's warrior at level 51... oh wait, I was STILL feared the whole time.

[Mesk]

i hope with EQ2 they ditch the whole "discipline" idea totally and go with the power-bar thing (or something like it) they use on EQOA; atleast this gives warriors some variety.

ever been your guilds 4th tank, have to keep defensive available (and have people screaming at you if you so much as *think* of using another disc) but never actually get to tank a fucking decent mob in 5 months coz the other 3 are so damned good?

welcome to my world.

[Kage Nomad]

Disciplines would be cool as shit and add some real interest to pure melee characters if they were more akin to fighting styles as compared to short burst tricks. All three melee should have appropriate versions of disciplines along the aggressive / defensive concept, and they should all simply be toggled, with appropriate tradeoffs. Some could retain reuse times as appropriate.

Examples .. kick on resistance disc for a SIGNIFICANT Boost in resists in return for a reduction in hitpoints while it is in use.

Give Rogues something that enhances backstab but evade does not operate while it is in use. (prevent it from being turned off for a certain duration after activation or something)

Monks could activate a toggled stonestance but would be unable to take any sort of offensive actions (ala DA) while in use.

etc etc etc .. I'm sure there are alot more inventive ideas than that. Disciplines could have been a very cool path for the developers to broaden the fun or at least thought level of a pure melee player, it's a shame they were and remain so ill thought out and neglected.

If nothing else advancement to 65 should have at least reduced reuse times or increased durations on the current disciplines. It's pretty pathetic that 90% of all disciplines in the game are never activated, ever.

[Samus Aran]

0 reuse time on evasive? Yeah, that makes sense...

[Cantatus]

I think it'd make the melee classes a lot more dynamic and fun if they could change their fighting stances every so often. Right now melee and hybrids get a handful of disciplines they can use for like 10seconds that have an hour reuse time. A lot of the disciplines aren't even worth using since they prevent you from using something more useful later.

These shouldn't be hugely overpowering stances like making weapon shield last 5 minutes, but they should be effective enough to be worth using.

Some examples:
Warrior:
Stance of Distraction: Increases your ability to taunt a mob, but lowers your defensive ability. - Duration 20secs, reuse 2mins.
Stance of the Bear: Increases your damage output, but lowers your ability to hold aggro. - Duration 25secs, reuse 3mins.
Stance of Shielding: Allows you to take 10% of the damage of any member of your group. - Duration 15secs, reuse 5mins.
Stance of the Mammoth: Increases your defenses, but lowers your damage output. - Duration 20secs, reuse 4mins.

Monk:
Stance of the Snake: Increases your avoidance skill, but prevents you from using Feign Death for 1min. - Duration 20secs, reuse 2mins.
Wu's Stance: Increases your attack speed, but lowers your defenses. - Duration 15secs, reuse 4mins.
Stance of the Lizard: Increases your regeneration, but prevents you from using mend. - Duration 1min, reuse 4mins.
Stance of the Stone Fist: Increases your damage output, but also increases your aggro. - Duration 25secs, reuse 4mins.

Bard
Stance of Remembrance: Increases the duration of all songs, but decreases the benefit from using instruments. - Duration 30secs, reuse 4mins.
Ayonae's Stance: Increases the benefit instruments provide, but lowers your defenses. - Duration 25secs, reuse 5mins.

Rogue:
Stance of the Berserker: Decreases the reuse time on backstab, but decreases your attack speed. Duration 1min, reuse 5mins.

Ranger:
Stance of Protection: Increases your defenses, but lowers your archery dmg for 5mins. Duration 2mins, reuse 8mins.

All of the stances would be on independant timers so you could switch from one to the other, but you'd have to wait 30secs before switching.

[Coraniz]

At this stage of the game I honestly dont think it would be unbalancing for "muscle bulge" discs to last 1 minute with a 10 minute reuse, or something similar.

[SkandaThornwhistler]

All you need to do is add offensive and defensive stance to every melee in the game.

Offensive - boosts damage by x%, decreases mitigation/avoidance by y%, increases aggro generation by z%

Defensive - boosts mitigation/avoidance by x%, lowers damage by y%, decreases aggro generation by z%

both toggleable off/on without refresh, toggling acts like a spell, can be interrupted, takes oh 5-8 seconds to "cast".

Go ahead and add class specific aa's that modify the above stances for each class.. knights get defensive upgrades that makes defensive stance more akin to the warriors disc for an example.

[Cybsled]

Heh...

Stance of the Snake: Increases your avoidance skill, but prevents you from using Feign Death for 1min. - Duration 20secs, reuse 2mins

How about increases your avoidance a great bit, but reduces your mitigation even more? No monk would EVER sacrifice the use of FD ever, making it unused.

Using the original monk disciplines, I would do the following changes

Stonestance: The monk "DA" idea was a good one. Make Stonestance last far longer, but make the monk unable to attack during its duration. This would greatly enhance our pulling.

Thunderkick: Get rid of the disc completely, make it innate on the monk like inate crits for other classes.

Whirlwind: Turn it into a discipline that increases our chance to riposte by a certain percent AND makes us more likely to avoid incoming ripostes from mobs. Eating ripostes in POP basically killed dual wield for monks.

Voiddance: A furthering of the monk "da" idea. Increase the length its activated, but dont allow the monk to attack during its duration. The reuse shouldnt be an hour, but it shouldnt be so short as to make this preferable to stonestance. Maybe 20min reuse? Would keep it primarily used for emergencies and super hard pulls.

Innerflame: Increase our base damage 4x (like inner does already), but make it last about 3-4x as long. As a downside, have our defensive (mitigation/avoidance) be lowered durings its activation. Make the reuse shorter...maybe 13min?

Hundredfists: Automatically boost the monk to the maximum haste allowed and greatly increases the chance to actually score a hit on the mob. Make the duration last 2x longer (currently its 15sec), and lower the reuse to the same as revamped IF, 13minutes.

Silent Fist: Without dragon punch AA, make it next dragon punch hit will interupt a caster. Reuse 3minutes. With dragon punch AA, make it next dragon punch landed will interupt a caster, reuse 1 minute. Interupt CASTED spells only, not ability based AEs.

Ashenhand: I would revamp it so a connected eagle strike will do in damage exactly 2x what your current ATK rating is. So for example, a monk with 1600 attack will do 3200 dmg. Gives some value to having high attack even with the cap Reuse would most definately have to be lower then it currently is. 25minutes?

I feel those changes in regards to disciplines would best serve the monk class. There are NO major defensive changes outside the 2 that dont let you attack, thus making them used for non-tanking purposes. Whirlwind would mostly help to solve the riposte issues in pop, which most pure melee would like. Silent fist would give us a little bit of utility in the situations where it is usable. The rest all help increase the monk's damage output in pop situations and elsewhere.

[Aldarion_Shard]

theres a simplr solution

all discs need to be on sperate timers. no othr coding needed. retain the current "only one disc may be in use at a time".

[Parum]

ever been your guilds 4th tank, have to keep defensive available (and have people screaming at you if you so much as *think* of using another disc) but never actually get to tank a fucking decent mob in 5 months coz the other 3 are so damned good?

Go to VT. All our warriors and a few paladins got the opportunity to tank whatever the wanted. We had shamans tanking some nameds (that pansy one, can't remember the name, Thall something I think).

[Rani]

Or another way:

Have two timers, one for offensive type disciplines and one for defensive. (Sort of like how flying kick blanks out kick, but not stone stance)

Of course nobody should be allowed to be in perma /defensive mode, or be able to switch directly from /defensive to /evasive.

But it should be possible to switch directly from /disc aggressive to /disc defensive and vice versa.