Nexus Clash

Hoi denizens of the nexus, I thought I make thread to put out my complaints about my favorite class corruptor or was my favorite till recently I've grown rather tired of fighting about it and trying to force myself to enjoy it but all dah nerfs of other things like the mew chanting system has basically made the 60 cp [skills] Draining field basically useless along with the gems being cheaper to charge (2 ap to charge is still is ver??) but also now makes mana biting any thing that is not a t3 gem (really hard to find just 1) pretty much a waste of ap (unless your desperate for like 2 mp) since biting a fully charged common dart spell will give you 10 mp at best and also the aura affinity being nerfed to counter nexus champion adaptability also nerfed corrupters chant eating along with it so they also took a hit when that happened ....plus a lot corruptors become corruptors is to steal pets but that means getting melee tree for accuracy for those skills but other then pet steal and cut cord the only other melee skill is the razor wing for 9 slash for 60 cp and taint skill which do 13 damage which all adds up to a 150 cp total that you'd be wasting when you can get a a sledge an do 9 damage but with a slightly lower accuracy of 60 which honestly is very???(it just feels so useless at that point in my opinion at least).....on top of dat the corrupter is pretty much left with one general limited class choices like either get spells + hex of nullity and sapping (agony hex is only 20 percent chance of bypassing all defense which I'm not wasting 60 cp on) if you want to be able to fight things with a soak or do decent damage for a t3 class cuz a melee only corruptor just so horribly weak so only choice on corruptor is spell user so very lack in variety besides spell type..... also corruptor have no defense when it comes to stealing pets especially from a pack of 10 or more without insta dying or you'd have to over prep like taking potions and healing items to get close or heavy rely on wasps to act as a temp pet wall so you could steal the desired pet without dying and trying to get pets that are in that are not feral running around in stygia or elysium (ivory pet an't steal able which is disheartening) like pseudoforts or a afk pm outside one is difficult even more ones with a lot of experience... like said I know their plenty of stuff being worked on by dev/admins and I appreciate and love all the work you all been doing and you all probably know dis struggle with corruptor been going on but figured I put it out there incase ver

Without having my corruptor up and running, but having greatly enjoyed mine in B4, I did also want to point out the enchanting nerf and major reduction in manabiting MP generation are direct attacks on my playstyle, and I take these changes completely personally. Please fix immediately, thank you.

Patchwork fix for manabiting:
Pattern weave some GGEs (and learn GGE, I guess) and keep them charged for when it's go time
30 MP per charge, pretty good
Full agree with melee being necessary for a signature ability, though i've been able to slap together a makeshift build that will allow me to steal pets with a LOT of preptime. Definitely far from optimal
No comment on draining field, never had it, it always felt like a gimmick grief ability to me

As a broad-ranging commentary on an entire class (rather than a single suggestion to change a single mechanic) this is more of a Mechanics thread so I'm towing it over there.

I'm releasing Remy for now, but as a long-time B4 Corr player and having gotten a few Corr levels in B5, I've refined my thoughts a bit more:

As far as I've understood it, the Corruptor's core mechanics were counter-enchantment and high utility MP-generation, with pet-stealing being an iconic, though somewhat incidental mechanic. I'll be organizing my thoughts along those lines for easier reference:

Draining Field, Manabiter and the B4-B5 Enchantment/MP Economy
Counter-enchantment play seemed central to the class' B4 iteration:

-Draining field was the class' main built-in deterrence, and a bit of a meta one, given that it forced opponents to fight sub-optimally instead of relying on the chontweapon meta.
-Manabiter, especially in the face of extremely expensive combat spells, made Corr a viable combat-caster class. Alternatively, all that manabiting could fuel pet-stealing/rejuvenating to make the Corr a serviceable off-PM.
-Manabiter also made Corr a resource-sink for evil factions, since they could use up trash-gems and trash-potions.

These mechanics also meant Corr could be a very meta-pain-to-kill class, both in soft-blocking chontweapons (and gaining affinity against chont-attacks), but also meant a Corr with heavy logistics support could effectively permanently keep manabite-bonus soaks and affinities up by monching chontclothes, which would also provide MP to cast defensive spells and/or maintain pets.

With those in mind, B5 Corr suffers greatly from the chont rework. Since chontweapons are no longer the meta, draining field has become functionally worthless as a deterrence. The chont-nerf also means there's a much smaller pool of friendly enchanters to get logistical support from in the best of times, and even then, affinity soaks have also been nerfed. Altogether, these reworks remove my personal B4 playstyle (though this doesn't necessarily mean the class as a whole has lost its niche).

The last incidental piece here, Corr's role as a garbage disposal and resource sink to drive logistics players' engagement also falls off since B5 introduces new (well-balanced and implemented) ways to utilize trash-gems and trash-pots. Again, a hit to B4 Corr's niche, but good for the game as a whole.

Corr Survivability

I touched on this a bit in the last section: B4 Corr was squishy-but-spicy, given that it generally lacked strong soaks or auras, but deterred enchanted weapons-users, which, by the end of B4, was just about everybody. Corr's big niche was as a resource sink - both in taking a lot of friendly resources to power and also requiring a lot of enemy resources to counter.

Since draining field has lost its functionality as a deterrence in B5, Corr did get murder wasps as a pet-themed off-aura. I started calculating the numbers on total wasp summons, hits and damage done since I bought the skill, but noticed that a lot of the misses came from when I had two characters hiding in the same pseudohold, which means that part of the data is tainted. I might re-run the figures later, but purely anecdotally, as a defender, murder wasps feel like they do very little damage to incoming attackers compared to my other aura-wielders. As an attacker, hitting Corrs is great because you get free pet kills/xp by milking their wasps. As a whole, this feels like a poor defensive tool at best, and one that actively helps your attackers at worst.

On that note, B4 (petsteal) Corr deaths were rougher to recover from than other classes, given that, unlike regular PMs, stealing pets was a much bigger time and resource investment if you didn't have friendly PMs to borrow from. (And even if you did, it still required a bit of coordination). Compared to other evil-casters, Corr is almost entirely defenseless in its native kit, and this problem is worse in B5 given evil survivability. Corr also has no mechanics to soften deathblows, compared to Archon (Word of Recall makes suicide missions a core feature of the class). This, though, might just be a special bit for Archons, rather than a specific Corr weakness. B4 Spellwiz, at least doesn't rely on equipment that could get damaged, though a petsteal Corr should also be a tainted bond Corr anyway, and a hex Corr is in the same boat as a Spellwiz.

Corr-ollary A: Early B5 Evil Survivability Meta

This is just a general gripe, and maybe a bit unwarranted, given that evil v evil, I feel, should always be encouraged and is part of both the core Nexus lore and gameplay loop. That said, without strongholds, evil has had an awful time with survivability so far in B5. Even evil pseudoholds are subject to constant raids (from evils), given that you can't glyph against it and have functionally no defense other than social ostracization (which, IC and OOC, is not and should not be a deterrence to feral evils).

That said, as of today, here're the (angel/demons) K/D figures for the characters I've run since the beginning of this breath:
Evil (Combat): 16 angels killed, 31 demons killed, 83 deaths
Evil (Logistics): 1 angel killed, 1 demon killed, 71 deaths
Good (Logistics): 0 angels killed, 0 demons killed, 13 deaths
Evil (Remy!): 9 angels killed, 10 demons killed, 20 deaths
Neutral (Logistics): 0 angels killed, 0 demons killed, 18 deaths
Neutral (Combat): 11 angels killed, 8 demons killed, 19 deaths

Not a huge dataset, and a couple idiosyncrasies, but my evil characters, aside from Remy, who I've judiciously guarded against death since B4, have notably been getting the short-end of it. Point of personal pride: Remy had a total of 25 deaths in B4, which I played from July of 2020. In less than two months of B5, I've nearly hit that same figure. I recognize it's a very personal metric to determine my own fun by, but it is a little grating to have a specific character's playstyle so completely nerfed.

Pets and the B5 Corr Niche

It's been mentioned before, but pet-stealing is the iconic Corr skill, and as of now, it's completely broken. Cut the Silver Cord results in the NC tab getting disconnected and upon return, the pet you attacked completely disappears from your message log. I haven't tested it more times to see if you get any xp gain or stats for the kill, but regardless, it's a pretty bad bug. Corrupted Loyalty, which I have not bought this breath, I have heard has similar issues.

That also said, though, with pets being a bit buggy so far in B5, and the lack of SHes for evils to borrow friendly pets from, the skill seems to have no role for the time being.

That leaves just combat-casting as the sole Corr niche. The only issue is that the spell combat meta being retooled means the buff Corr got from having one of the best MP-generating kits is no longer a selling point. This drops Corr into the same weird position DH was in in B4 as a nicheless class. Of course, Archon (and Gunwiz) also seems to suffer from that in B5 so far, so it's more an entire role seems to no longer have a place in the meta, rather than Corr as a class specifically, but I was never super attached to my B4 Archon or Gunwiz.

tl;dr

-Corr's iconic ability is literally broken
-Corr's unique mechanics rely heavily on factional support, and current B5 meta does not yet support that style of play
-Corr's defensive abilities were reliant on a late B4 economy, and current B5 meta does not yet support that style of offensive play, leaving Corr largely defenseless (also wasps suck)
-Corr's unique mechanics are no longer special, since the meta-niches they filled in B4 have been smoothed out through generally better game design
-Corr, like other battlemages, have lost their niche in B5. There are specific reasons why, but this seems like a bigger design issue than a single class issue
-I joked about taking this personally last post, and as much as I joke, I recognize that many of my gripes are indeed based on my own personal niche I carved out with this class in B4. I recognize the game (and world) are living, breathing entities that continue to develop regardless of the niches I carve for myself and I am not entitled to have my personal preferences dictate policy for others. But still, my beautiful, immaculate K/D! Look how they massacred my girl!

Kael Corruptor in B3,3.5,4,5 now a mortal wandering the nexus.

The only redeeming factor of a Corruptor is that they can use spells.

Maybe Draining Field could benefit from the Archon -treatment and have other Corruptor skills boost it's effect. Having your status effects dispelled if the Corruptor had the appropriate Hex as well as Draining Field might be interesting. Or expanding Silver Cord / Corrupted Loyalty to activate also when pets struck and triggered the Draining Field (probably a separate roll with a lower percentage than 40%... that seems a bit OP for a zero-cost passive skill. An MP cost might be appropriate, but also passively draining 10 MP per proc runs counter to how active vs. passive generally works. It would definitely make petmasters check their targets, though.)

On the subject of Silver Cord and Corrupted Loyalty, they could be expanded to also include the petmaster itself as a valid target.

• Inflicts a long-duration (24 hour?) status which persists through death, similar to Mark of the Wendigo, that pre-rolls (with the same chances as the initial attack had hitting) the next summon he makes for cut cord/corrupt loyalty, which activate instantly the next time the affected pets are on the same tile with the Corruptor. Can be inflicted multiple times for multiple statuses, but only a maximum of 5 pets can be pre-corrupted (as per corrupted loyalty.)
• The status and whether a summoned pet is already pre-corrupted should be hidden from the PM, but the Corruptor should know where the pets are, if any. This way, the PM knows there is a chance some of their pets might be bad (by counting the attacks by the Corruptor), but the Corruptor can also play mindgames and move on to other PMs, thus revoking the statuses.
• The pre-corruption on the pets should probably last a lot longer than the 24 hours, but there obviously needs to be some limit to it. Wasting MP (or any resources) is not fun, but after the pet's status times out, the status should probably simply dissipate without effect. This forces the Corruptor to actively participate in it, instead of farming free XP and causing havoc inside safehouses once the pets turn or get banished. The status of the oldest pet should also dissipate if new pets become pre-corrupted which exceeds the 5 pre-corrupted limit.

Just imagine a petmaster that is both Wendigo'd and Corrupted. DH makes the PM walk out, the Corruptor does finger-guns on the pets, the pets change sides and tear him apart. Or a PM that was pre-corrupted enters a stronghold and some of his pets just turn on him at the sight of the Corruptor.

These are, uhh... strong, I think is the word I'm looking for, but you know, food for thought.

Yeah, I've been giving this a little thought too. Coin also said they were playing around with offensive-wasp strategies, and I remember in my logs that the best use-case for the wasps was when they were running interference for me when fighting other PMs.

This gives me some cursory thoughts on potential tweaks regarding improved offensive survivability for petsteal corrs:

The wasps certainly are not very good on defense, but are halfway decent on the offense. That said, they certainly aren't enough to help an otherwise very squishy corr comfortably steal pets from an unfriendly PM without some door dancing and very sweaty gameplay.

I was considering corr's Greater Desecration variable roll: insane amounts of phasing, which, while cool, are fairly situational when it procs. Instead, giving the corr the option to trigger a phasing status might be a good idea.

Alternatively, consider LS' Faunabound and Keeper's Crook, which seem to be a fair parallel to corr's non-tank anti-PM niche. In both cases, 666 or 15 minutes are both far too many, but something like a shorter 5-10 minutes/ticks might be an idea.

Last thought is somehow tying these to Kiss of the Succubus, which is a great theme skill, but really situational at best. Using it to proc something like Faunabound when used against a PM could be cool (or if we want to go all out, turn it into a Feeding Fangs sort of skill where corr gets a special effect depending on the class kissed).

working theory for draining field atm is replacing 40% for drained status with 40% for a nullity-sapping effect (i.e. attempt to kill a status on attacker, even if not successful, apply drained)

that and clearly manabite/draining will need overrides for the tick-statuses they give for eating chonts, and of course draining should go back to outright destroying layers and not just 'turning them off', or at the very least if not that become outright immune to the element of the layer though probably still wouldn't be enough (when chont nerfs are buffs lol)

at any rate the lack of any defensive mechanic whatsoever vs pets + insistence on interacting ever-more dangerous pet designs in a hostile way isn't lost on me, but not super sure how to deal with that without it being something stupid like nw's mass passive stancing aoe

Nayru wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 6:13 pmat any rate the lack of any defensive mechanic whatsoever vs pets + insistence on interacting ever-more dangerous pet designs in a hostile way isn't lost on me, but not super sure how to deal with that without it being something stupid like nw's mass passive stancing aoe

The Voice That Cowers and Dark Face of Chaos were thematically extremely attractive skills, but in their old form definitely not the way to go. I think there is something that could be worked with, however.

The issue with using Silver Cord/Corrupted Loyalty offensively is, well, dying if you attempt it without a tank having all the aggro. Simplest way to bring back The Voice That Cowers, I feel, would be to copy over the Holy Champion Aspect of the Lion's effect (where pets will only act defensively against you) to a new 30 CP skill. Same as AOTL, spend 1 AP/5 MP for 5 minutes of The Voice That Cowers, refreshes for 1 MP every 5 minutes.

Add Dark Face of Chaos as a child skill of The Voice That Cowers, which upgrades TVTC to Dark Face of Chaos. Any pet that even attempts to attack you (so misses, too, so as to not anti-synergize with dodge) get their stance reset to aggressive-to-all (and refreshes their targeting, so the next attack would be at random. Petmaster couldn't lose morality. I feel in this instance if the pet turned on it's allies, the Corruptor should get XP for the damage.) This is obviously also a direct buff to Silver Cord / Corrupted Loyalty in particular, since even if you miss, you will provoke a retaliation, making sure this triggers. So the pet either gets dismissed, stolen, or you miss and DFOC makes the pet go berserk. Another option for the Corruptor would be to simply hit pets with regular attacks to get them to attack you to trigger this. This would bring the same flavor to the table as NW's DFOC did, but in a form that requires the Corruptor to invest itself.

One might ask, "what's the point of CTSC/TOCL, if a retaliation always triggers DFOC and causes them to go berserk and perhaps attack their allies?" Well,
1) an aggressive pet might still hit your allies
2) DFOC requires you to pay a tax in HP for it to work
3) you might actually want that pet for yourself.
4) it actually has anti-synergy with your own pets, since you might want a pet to attack you, but your pets would need to be set passive so they don't ruin the havoc from forcing a stance change to aggressive. (notes: this occured to me as I was typing this and I got mad at myself for promoting anti-synergy. I would actually prefer for pet-on-pet retaliations from attacks on you to not take place at all, if DFOC is also active, but I'm not sure how feasible an exception like that would be.)

These skills would let the Corruptor not implode against a petwall and require the Corruptor to invest itself on a pet-by-pet basis to do any stance shifting (instead of a lolpetwallnuke). Although I suppose if he lobbed a grenade he could do it against multiple pets, but he'd have to be pretty tanky to survive the attempt. In NW these were 60 CP and 90 CP children of CTSC, but I'm not sure if they couldn't just as well be a stand-alone skills for 30 CP (like aspect of the lion is) and 60 CP for DFOC. The Voice That Cowers could also be used to highlight the Corruptor's utility caster abilities by being able to be on scene, safe from pets, and tear down glyphs, forts, actives or whatever.