PVP: Everyone has all special attacks capped. They hit you with kizzers, alpha you with perks, then use every special attack, then hotswap, then use every other special attack. They're also all Atrox, every single one of them (except you), so they're literally 500% unkillable as they rip your entire two HP from your gasping near-corpse.
People complain about perk alpha strikes all the time. Some people say "l2p" (ie press exactly this button at exactly this time in exactly this order, every time), others reply that it's impossible for their class, others lament how straightforward it is for a given class to just press every button and win. It's clearly way too tricky in a lot of circumstances, and obviously extremely difficult to balance. People have to then worry about something being nerfed for PVP that nerfs their ability to PVE as FC changes values to try and make the system work.
Reaching back in time: We have items like Barrow Strength, Ring of Eternal Night, etc. Try and chain them like perks and you'll just get a lot of "please wait for your previous action to finish." They also lock a specific skill, so you have to decide what it is that you want to use more, the attack, the buff, or the debuff -- like grafts. You also can't attack while "casting" them.
Then, later, FC set up perks, in their own entirely different system, as if it was designed to fit in an entirely different game. FC should have done this right in the first place. Why aren't perk actions stored as items in a special inventory (where they can be put on a hotbar without being in the main inventory)? Why don't they lock a skill for n seconds (so they can be affected by Jobe skill-lock clusters and skill-lock values on symbiants) when used? Why don't they return "please wait for your previous action to finish" when you try to chain cast? (That last one would help in PVE, where I use a chain of perk attacks, like a spaz, on a mob that dies before I've finished casting -- you never know when you'll crit and waste a perk.)
I don't think it's too late to overhaul this. This means being selective when using perks. This means having to do it at a particular time instead of being able to do it all at once. This means reducing OPness without really nerfing anything for PVE, and doing it in a way that affects everyone more equally than shifting values around does; unintended consequences are minimized.
I do have to say that, while all of this would bring us closer to balance, there are still a few things that could use adjustment: I'd like to see the use/cast time on item-based specials decreased a little, and that AO's network stuff needs to be more responsive (on the client-side, use extra cores at least for network stuff?) so it's a little less of a button-mashing pain to use them. I'd also like to see the buff durations on old special items, like Barrow Strength, increased somewhat, so that the perks subscribers have don't put them 300 miles ahead of froobs, but 200, or 150... Maybe with those items being more compelling in general, even subscribers will consistently pursue them, increasing utilization of old RK content? Maybe a few such usable-buffs could be added to froob TL5 items so subscribers will run all that stuff too again?
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Originally Posted by Michizure
