QCF Design Community

Yup. So then the strategy is change those three? But that means a rogue rework right?

Avatar's Symbol could probably be fixed by adding the exhaustion effect. Once you go berserk, no more passive mana regeneration until your health reaches full. Because this would leave it double-edged, you could then raise the berserk threshold so it's actually usable by non-CYDSTEPP'ers.

For Rogues, probably the best course of action is to make their attack bonus proportional to their current health, then find some ways to alleviate their survivability issues in other respects. This way a rogue with 1 HP wouldn't have any special attack bonus at all.

Not sure about BLUDTUPOWA, but I feel that if rogue and avatar's symbol were dealt with then there would be major CYDSTEPP issues and it could be reverted back to its alpha incarnation.

That would make sense. I've actually never used BLUDTUPOWA and CYDSTEPP together for some reason, so I have no idea how good that combo is...

Try it on a Warlord with Avatar's Symbol. You can actually regen fight with CYDSTEPP. You need to reveal 5 tiles per hit, which isn't very much when you consider the kind of damage you're hitting for.

That makes much more sense. I was thinking without the symbol, which is ineffective for all bosses (40 or so damage v 50 regen).

Having fine control over your current HP is critical to using Avatar's Symbol and CYDSTEPP in order to hit those specific thresholds spot on, hence why BLUDTUPOWA works so well with them. I'd agree this is more subtle without avatar's symbol there, but with it the combo goes nuts. Given that, I think if Avatar's Symbol caused exhaustion the combo would probably be fine.

Biggest issue with Avatar's Symbol is that it's only worthwhile for first strikes and death protection, which restricts it as a rogue and warlord-only item.

Anyways, the Devs might have unintentionally put in a solution. Berserk is now only 50% of damage for enemies, so why not for the symbol. Anyways, this item is too niche. I say remake it.

I can't say I agree with your point of view Darvin. I do agree that the Glyph is mostly unrepeatable on classes besides the Warlord, but I'd say it's a good thing for the following reasons:

- With high enough DMG (any Orc/Human/Halfling with conversions, Rogue w/wo conversions, Berserker -II-, anyone with a symbol, etc.) having a repeatable death protection on a glyph gives too much power for little to no investment. If you can survive one hit, an easily repeatable DP glyph gives +2X Phys damage out of nowhere to your DMG total for the boss fight just from having the glyph in your inventory and no other hassle whatsoever (besides paying 10/12 mana after the first time).

- Even if it's not repeatable, that is, if it's difficult to get more than one cydstep per fight, it just adds one more phys damage hit to a string of them that can easily include 2 from dodge/reflex porion prep (3X phys), a first strike finisher (2 glyphs, one with just 3 MP cost, rogue and assasin get one for free) (4X phys), badge of honor (you would have to find it and pay 18 gold) (5Xphys). And this means that with cydstep, getting 4 extra hits in, for a lot, is quite easy and requires little effort or investment, especially considering that it works best with conversion heavy strats, and the only thing it uses up besides mana is inventory space, and only for a while.

- A mid fight level up (or 2) can add at least one more "free" hit to that list. An orc/human/halfling assasin can easily get 2 mid-fight lvl-ups which means at least a couple more hits in, including the first strike one, and he can also exploit poison.

- Having a repeatable cydstepp, and then focusing heavily on it (besides Warlord) reduces all that effort to just scumming for the glyph AND it allows for all the extra non-MP costing ones. If a dungeon requires that much "freebie" hits - either something is wrong with that dungeon or whatever you're whacking at has big phys resists.

- I didn't factor in the fact that you can get at least one pair of potions off TT if you find him (you'd have to convert out though), and that you can recreate the effects of the old cydstepp for no mana investment to a degree with Taurog. I also didn't count Namtar's ward in there. Or Whoopaz.

- And old cydstep/blodtopowa wasn't even necessary for most stuff, the thing was quite powerfull as is. Having it be non repeatable might also reduce the need to have so many mana burn bosses around, which in turn would reduce the need to scum for Soul Orb just about everywhere, and that can only be good for the game (especially now that HALPMEH has been nerfed).

CONCLUSION: Just 2-3 free hits on the boss, with enough damage is a huge thing for quite a number of races/classes, having a glyph that gets them one more (plus one more for a mid fight lvl up) is quite fine in my opinion. Trying to allow other races to "take over" a tier 3 glyph, to be able to base their whole strategy on in leads to HALPMEH/Monks, and we all know what that looks like. Glyphs shouldn't be strategy cornerstones for classes that don't spawn with them, IMO.

PROBLEM: It HAS been nerfed, this much I agree with and needs a buff.

SOLUTION: Since it has been nerfed, how about reducing it's MP cost?

Currently, it is like a GETINDARE for first strikers. Except now it costs 10 mana. The problem with a cost reduction is it wold send JJ gnome warlords off the charts. They're already one of the best combos out there, and a cost reduction would completely break them.