Feedback talk:User/Widowmaker/Blood Magic Skill Changes

The problem with bloodline has never been the amount of damage or the fact that it heals. In relation to curses/death line, blood does pitiful damage. The problem has always been that it's possible to take a team with several blood skills (or a whole bar of blood skills that we have in the current meta) in order to spam damage that can't be protted. There's a really easy way to fix bloodspike:make the skills deal prottable damage and cause a health gain equivalent to the damage dealth. You can even make the damage armor ignoring and buff the heck out of it. If you make bloodspike prottable, it's instantly put on the same tier as any other casterspike: no longer an issue.--TahiriVeila 21:16, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I know, I was saying that it's useful because it deals damage and heals, but not necessarily overpowered, and that it's the spiking capabilities that are the problem. Obviously, changing the mechanics of life stealing would fix this but my aim here is more to suggest a Blood Magic with more utility, 'cos right now it consists of various boring life stealing skills and a bunch of generally bad ones, with only a couple of useful things (e.g. Strip Enchantment) in there at all. Widowmaker 23:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm liking the ideas, a lot of details to support them too. For Ravenous Gaze, how is it to be fueled by Masochism, is it from another health-sacrificing skil?

I think the Enfeebling Blood idea is also good, it does fit the theme, but I like Insidious Parasite as is in the Curses Line since I use it quite often.

Dark Pact doesn't have a big use, but I'm seeing it as the old version of Vampiric Spirit. If your Dark Pact idea is implemented, something like this could be run for, I don't know, RA?:

Touch of Agony

Blood of the Aggressor

Dark Pact

Dark Aura

Signet of Lost Souls

Masochism

Optional

Resurrection Signet

12+1+1 Blood Magic, 8+1 Soul Reaping, and 10 Death Magic. Maybe Disrupting Dagger in the Optional Slot, or even an Elite skill of some sort and maybe with Wallow's Bite instead of Blood of the Aggressor but that's just how I see the Dark Pact change even with your ideas behind to support it's change. The idea is from an Archived PvXWiki build that was rated Great. Than 02:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The thing with Masochism and Ravenous Gaze is just that a player could use saccing skills like Touch of Agony to lower his/her health down to 66% while getting lots of energy, which they could then use for spamming RG, obviously I don't know how that would work it was just an idea for how RG might become viable. As for Dark Pact, I was just trying to think of a new, more interesting function for it, since the current one is kinda boring as well as being really bad. Widowmaker 11:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Morphy's Magic Opinion

Since I like commenting on balance walls of text, I decided to make a comment on yours too.

• Life Transfer: The fact that you use Lingering Curse as a skill to balance this skill around already says enough. Lingering Curse is a dumb, broken, overpowered skill and this skill is even worse. -8 degen in nearby range with 2/3 upkeepability? That's far too powerful for one skill.
• Offering of Blood: The difference is barely noticeable. Won't see any more use.
• Ravenous Gaze: A conditional 40 life steal. You suggest a pathetically weak skill, I would say even worse than the current version. 1/2 cast time is also a mechanic that isn't in use for Spells. You need a very good reason to change that and you don't.
• Enfeebling Blood: Weakness is a Curses thing, don't break inter-attribute relations. There are better ways to give Blood Magic utility.
• Insidious Parasite: I have no objections against this change although it would probably be best to just give this skill a proper rework. It's kind of lame.
• Barbed Signet: Looks okay, I would prefer to give this skill something more utilious but it's definitely not a bad suggestion.
• Dark Pact: Uhm, why? Are you supposed to maintain it on multiple people to get a refund for your sacrifices or something? Actively trying to benefit from this skill will only result in gimmicky builds. Also looks like a skill that will promote Hex-stacking. I don't like the suggestion in the slightest.
• Demonic Flesh: I would rather rework the skill. The end effect is also extremely random.

All in all, none of your changes really make the skills more interesting or balanced. If you try to balance skills you have to ask yourself, would I use this? Would this be fun to play? If you can make a balanced skill bar with your changed skills then you've already done most of the work. Unfortunately enough, I think it's still impossible to make a viable, balanced skill bar with any of the skills you suggested. Dark Morphon 13:15, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

OK some fair points, here's what I was thinking:

• Life Transfer: I'm not balancing this against LC, LC still has the very powerful -20% healing and has a much longer duration/recharge ratio, meaning it can be spread much more easily, albiet with better energy. In mentioning LC I was just saying that a slightly better LT might occupy much the same position as an LC, but with Blood Magic skills instead of Curses ones (for example, if you wanted to use Mark of Subversion for spikes in a pressure-spike team). All I've done is lower the duration slightly and the recharge a bit more.
• Offering of Blood: Even the 5% is an improvement, maybe the sac could be dropped even further to 12% but like I said it's a bit of a niche skill atm. Really it could use a rework but I didn't want to be too radical with it.
• Ravenous Gaze: The 40 life steal isn't conditional. Admittedly my version's still not brilliant but it's an improvement over the current one imo. Also many spells have 1/2 or lower cast times (e.g. OoB).
• Dark Pact: This is just meant to be a way to mitigate some sacrifice damage and do a little damage too, and something which is a little more useful than the current version (though that's not hard tbh). Obviously I don't know if the duration/recharge etc would cause hex-stacking problems, but given this rewards sacrificing it would probably only find place in a hexway either in a large team build or if using sacrificing hexes, of which there aren't that many (or at least not necessarily the ones you would want to take). Admittedly you might get Touch of Agony + Dark Pact gimmicks but I don't think they would be overpowered.
• Demonic Flesh: This is currently a pretty bad skill. I would rather rework it too but I decided to try and keep in the theme. The end effect is just a dervish-like thing which probably has no reason to be there, I just thought it might be interesting when I wrote it since there aren't any other necro skills like that, though I guess a D/N might be able to make use of this better than a nec.

Enfeebling Blood and Insidious Parasite are things which could or couldn't be moved without killing the game either way, but Blood Magic has significantly less skills than Curses which really limits your choice. Moving these would let a blood magic nec occupy a similar role to a curses one (like I said, e.g. Lingering + Insidious + Enfeebling is not much different from many current curses builds, but you could take some blood magic optionals). Widowmaker 11:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

• Life Transfer: You have also increased the range to nearby which is very important. I would suggest reworking this skill as it's, to be honest, broken. Hex-pressure doesn't work. It's simply impossible to make it revolve around skill, which is about the most important quality a skill can have. If you look closely, the only times when Hexes WERE balanced were when they were used actively. Domination Magic (with the exception of Backfire, Empathy and Visions of Regret) and Water Magic show how it can work.
• Offering of Blood: To be very honest, I like this skill as it is. Exchanging health for energy is interesting.
• Ravenous Gaze: Well, the recharge is. Would you spend your Elite Skill on a 5 energy, 4 recharge, 40 life steal? I definitely wouldn't. There are far more interesting options. 1/2 cast times on Spells don't exist. Only 1/4 and 3/4 do.
• Dark Pact: Yes, well, reducing sacrifice in any way kind of begs you to use sacrifice Spells doesn't it? Still, even without doing so this skill pays for itself. Spamming it on recharge would result in -3 degen on 2 opponents of choice and 35ish random damage every 4 seconds. That's decent pressure at the very least and coupled with Life Transfer it becomes pretty damn strong, actually. Note that this doesn't take any skill whatsoever, which is a very bad sign. You have to look at how a skill will be used if it is going to be used. This skill will be used as a skill-less cover Hex. That alone should tell you enough (rework time!).
• Demonic Flesh: And a D/N making use of this is good exactly how? Really, I don't see any interesting play coming from a skill like this. It doesn't shift the game in any way, just makes the user harder to spike. Boring skill is boring.

You kind of spotted the problem with your changes yourself here. The current Curses role isn't a good one. Making Blood Magic identical to it isn't going to make the game any better, quite the contrary. If you really want to go that way, let's try to make a skill bar with your skills:

Life Transfer

Faintheartedness

Dark Pact

Foul Feast

Plague Sending

Strip Enchantment

Resurrection Signet

Blank

Now, as you can see, you can pretty much spam each one of these skills (Strip Enchantment is the only exception, you use that on spikes) on recharge. Plague Sending synergizes with Dark Pact, dealing 40 random damage to two of your opponents on which you used Dark Pact to cover and gaining 80 free health, completely covering the sacrifice cost. There is no thought involved in this build, you just spam stuff and pressure your opponents. Sounds like fun to you? Dark Morphon 15:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree to a certain extent, since you do have to be mindful of maintaining Dark Pact on people and the fact the if it gets removed (which it likely will if used as a cover), your sacrificing starts to become dangerous. I also agree that Curses isn't the best line ever in terms of what we want for this game and that making Blood Magic like another version of it isn't ideal, but you've gotta be mindful of the fact that Curses is used, and Blood Magic (outside of Bloodspike etc) isn't. Partially this is because of overpowered Curses hexes like Lingering Curse, but it's also partly because Curses has more utility - it can shut down melee, for example - and doesn't consist of 40 skills of which only a couple are actually useful in general play.

I've tweaked Life Transfer a bit so it's now less maintainable but more powerful (I've kept the AoE) meaning you have to chose when best to use it. OK, it's still essentially an AoE degen hex but it needs a bit more skill than LC, for example, to get the most out of it. Ravenous Gaze now has a 0.75¾ sec cast if that makes you happy. The problem with this skill is its current version is counter-intuitive. You have to drop below 50% health - a dangerous place to be, and one which shouldn't occur in any battle where you have a monk (except when you're losing, and having an elite just as a backup for such a situation is a poor use of one). The last thing you want on a skill is a condition and an action which makes it harder to fulfil that condition. It would be like if SF removed burning from people. I've upped the amount of steal a bit, but even without the conditional recharge it's dangerous for Bloodspike teams since you can easily use something like Vampiric Gaze and then follow up with this for its quick cast. Yes, my Demonic Flesh is perhaps a bit boring and maybe I'll think of something better later, but remember that the current version is significantly worse, just as the current Dark Pact is pretty much useless. Widowmaker 14:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, spamming Dark Pact on recharge isn't mindful in my book. The sacrifice cost is nothing the bar can't handle, even without the healing. If you're going to use Dark Pact randomly (as in, not on targets that already are affected by it), you won't really have to take removal into consideration as it recharges in 4 seconds anyway. Also, if the Monk removes Dark Pact, good job, you have wasted his time.

Curses' utility is roughly zero. It has anti-melee and that's it, really. Curses skill bars are currently spambuilds. I'd prefer not seeing Necromancers ran in PvP over them running the current Curses skill bars. Water Magic provides much more interesting play. Still, we're here to try our best and balance the game, right? In that case, making Blood Magic a copy of Curses is a horrible idea.

Life Transfer's function is broken. I suggest a rework. The problem with your Ravenous Gaze is not only that it's weak but also that the function is still pretty boring and nonsensical. IF you want to use this skill to full effect you still have to drop your health below a certain amount of %, meaning it has exactly the same problems as the current skill.

Concerning Demonic Flesh and your suggestions in general: If your suggestion still leaves the skill bad/broken, why bother at all? Blood Magic Hexway and skills that are still terrible aren't any better than Curses Hexway and possibly slightly less terrible skills. I really suggest you think about it again because none of your suggestions have a positive effect on the game. Dark Morphon 17:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

OK well I've changed RG to a slightly more boring, but probably more useful skill. The numbers might need some tweaking or whatever, but at least it would be usable - unlike now. Widowmaker 16:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Whatever man :P Dark Morphon 12:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

You have no idea how bad I would abuse Insidious Parasite if it was blood. Right now I have a Anti Magic melee build that eats its target up but stealing life from attacking and magic using both Insidious Parasite and Soul Leech. But in order for me to do this combo I need to spread my points a bit farther then I would normally like to. But if you give it to blood I can just go strait blood and laugh as my enemy curses my name as I steal all there life with out effort.--Yozuk 02:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Lol, using Blood Magic for something else than Bloodspike. Good joke. Soul Leech isn't even that good. :P Dark Morphon 16:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Those sorts of blood builds are not really as powerful as, say, Curses or Domination ones anyway, so I'm not that worried about buffing them. Also if Curses lost IP it wouldn't be such a bad thing tbh. 188.74.101.228 00:21, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Skill update

Some of your skills have been updated, please consider revamping your suggestions or removing the affected skills. -- FreedomBound 16:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I have done. Also, the addition of Weakness to some other Blood Magic skills makes the Enfeebling Blood move suggestion a little obselete, though I still think it should be done (and those other skills could always have their weakness changed to something else). Widowmaker 14:34, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Life Transfer

Noooo way, direct DPS should never have been introduced in the game to begin with, Life Steal DPS is even worse. The degen cap is there for a reason: it makes sure stuff can't stack into ridiculous amounts of degeneration damage. Direct DPS throws that balance out of the window. Morphy 13:22, 12 March 2010 (UTC)