Shattered Kingdoms

Having recently returned to SK after quite some time away. Ive noticed that some high level abilities have a habit of creating poor RP and appear in their current incarnation to be more useful for grieving than compelling game play. Three things I am going to bring up here are Final strike, voodoo and energy drain.

Recently Final strike was used by a light aura to kill other light auras players in a light aura city, before I expect the player deleted their character. There was some loose RP reason behind this but really just seems like a player doing it because they can. Now Final Strike can be used for amazing RP however you can probably count the instances on a single hand. It seems to lend itself to grieving before someone deletes their chars more often than not from my historical experience. This is the number one reason why I feel Final Strike needs to be look at. Two other points death is a revolving door in SK and most gear isnt hard to regather so logically casting this spell hurts the caster more than it hurts those it is cast on. Also seems kind of lame that the most ultimate power a sorceror learns for any reasonable long term char will never be used. A mass room petrification seems like a much more playable ability (with drawbacks to the caster).

Voodoo having not become completely familiar with it in its current form. I strongly dislike this spell because it makes people not want to be on the game unless they have friends to counter it. A player not wanting to log in is a player who isnt going to be logged in. There are a few simple ways to guard yourself against voodoo however most of these ways limit your interaction with other people. Also this ability is devastating to lowbies and next to useless vs GMs who have prep. These are the reasons I think Voodoo needs a significant change. I would rather Voodoo become an over time effect with increased damage but effect is not a single hit a ticking effect. The backlash effect would change based on the length of time voodoo was channeled. Well the spell is channeled maledictions could be casted through the voodoo. This would enable a lot of interesting tactics with the spell. A poke voodoo would give victims a chance to respond to the attack seek help possibly walking into an ambush. Well letting the shaman join the fight shortly after cast it. Where a prolonged voodoo would give a chance for survival and a counter attack. This would encouraging the use of voodoo as a "chase them down" kind of spell. That would create RP/interaction vs how it is now. It feels like the old summon wars people use to have before auto summon.

Energy drain, I have not seen it in its current form vs players. Energy drain takes away players XP when last I faced it I know it had a timer on the XP drain on the ability to stop abuse of a mass spamming of this spell. Looking on this I feel it is a good balance of high power vs abuse reduction. I mention this because I feel its actually an abuse-able power that has been balanced for the betterment of the game.

Yeah, edrain is that thing that keeps you from throwing yourself at a necro and thinking you have nothing to lose. Strictly speaking, it is also a terrible spell for PvP besides the fact that it scares the person you are casting it on.

You know whats a real crappy high lvl ability?

Aura of Negation.

Final strike is one of those abilities I will never use personally. I wouldn't mind if it was replaced.

Edrain isn't worth casting (IMO) due to the casting time.

MR protects against voodoo now I think.

I like your ideas though with voodoo being a damage over time and FS being a mass petrify.

Smoochy read that FStrike log in the quote thread.

That was lame...

Not sure whats with Energy Drain. But considering a lot of the spells Shaman lack? Might want to make three or so useful spells to replace Voodoo.

Shaman's are hardly lacking in spells.

Shamans don't need anything new unless you're going to take away something they have (namely, voodoo).

I'm personally in the take-it-or-leave-it crowd with voodoo, I just think it would be better to replace it with a scrying spell of some kind instead. Give the target the same message and "vision" that they get when voodoo'd, but let the shaman see where the object of their spell is with the same constraints as voodoo currently has (i.e., no-magic room nullifies, etc). Make it cost all of the shaman's pe and me just like voodoo does, but remove the inability to move thing.

That way, it's still an effective tool against hoarding (which Dulrik has said it's supposed to be) and is in fact a more effective tool against hoarding since sorx, the class most likely to hoard in the first place, can enchant their own MR to negate voodoo as it stands now. It also provides a greater utility to the class without making them overpowered with a new one-shot-kill weapon. If you only know where your target is, you still have to go there and defeat them face to face, which carries the obvious risks.

I like Voodoo the way it is.

I wouldn't mind voodoo being replaced with a scry spell, specially if it took care of a certain item that there's only one or two of that does the same thing without to much of a problem, don't think it takes to much to use the item but I could be wrong, I've never used it only heard about complaints.