Shattered Kingdoms

Voodoo is broken and needs to be changed. To go ahead and answer what some are going to say, yes, I am posting this because it happened to me, but that doesn't change the validity of the argument.

The reasons for changing voodoo:
1) With a little application of the who list, it can be used with zero risk. Just check and see if any allies of the person who you're trying to kill are online, then see if you can snag an instant kill and grab their loot. Good game.

2) It has no nearly unlimited range. (Except for what, targets flying over water? That isn't a limitation on range.)

3) It is very capable of killing a warlock/sorc/bard. Priests get prot/sanc, (Which should be up 24/7 if they've angered shamans and aren't traveling with friends) and no other classes have low enough HP to fall to a "typical" voodoo. I might be wrong on that, it might have more killing power than I think.



No spell should be able to completely destroy days' worth of playing (getting a nice suit) or instantly kill anyone from infinite range with zero risk to the caster. I propose the following changes:
A) Put a percentage damage cap on voodoo, based on the target's max HP. Say, 70%, and no voodoo, even with a spirit doll, can do more than 70% damage to a target. Using a spirit doll can optionally raise the damage cap to something more like 70% or 90%.

B) Make spirit dolls, instead of increasing damage, add more debuffs to the character and/or raise the level of the debuffs. Or maybe just decrease the amount of damage added.

C) Decrease the base damage of voodoo and add more powerful side effects, something similar to SD, perhaps.

D) Make voodoo's damage spread across HP/ME and PE. Doesn't seem like a great idea, but it does allow for more tactical use of the spell.

E) I cannot stress this enough, because it already should be put into the game. MAKE VOODOO UNABLE TO BE CAST ON THE SAME TARGET TWICE. Similar to Edrain, have an affect that disallows voodoo being cast on the same target twice in the same 6-hour IC period.


To go ahead and debunk some of the most common counter-arguments:
I) "It's been like this forever, there's no reason to change it now."
That's because there have been no successful shamans in the past oh... forever. At least, not ones that used voodoo.

II) "Having the prospect of being instantly killed is cool!"
Not really. Having days of gametime turned into nothing because you were killed at 100% hp with shield up is not cool at all.

III) "Voodoo isn't very powerful unless he has a spirit doll of you. Either don't die, or kill the shaman."
The reasoning behind this is that because you A) Died and (probably) got jlooted, it should be easier to kill you next time in ADDITION to the fact that you have to gather another suit of armor. Killing the shaman also is not viable because that means you'll have to either hide or log off whenever you don't have any allies online (Something which happens a lot as a lightie.)



Thoughts or comments?

FYI, a shaman with a doll, and the proper eq, probably has a decent chance of voodoo killing a fighter.

As I've been saying since I played my first shaman, the class would be perfectly fine, if voodoo is removed. Though considering nobody plays them WITH Voodoo, I would have to say give them third attack and e-damage, though that would possibly make them the best class in the game by miles.

I'd rather see voodoo removed or replaced completely than changed into anything you've suggested.

Hvy armor clerics make better tanks than a shaman. I don't know with the advent of dragonscale on whether or not a light armor cleric with MV is greater than a shaman defenses.

Omfg, you are officially an idiot, sorry.

[url=http://[REDACTED].com/index.php?topic=1869.0]No other class in the game could even come close to doing this.[/url]

Sorry if I don't believe you, as in ever. If Gilgon or someone else with more experience in testing says otherwise. With all other spells equal Ada > lgt armor + SA.

Man, that must explain all the logs I've seen over the years of heavy armor priests owning people in melee...Wait a second, I have never ever seen such a log. >_>

I mean seriously Muktar, do you even play SK? I don't think it'd be possible for anyone to play and then say they think a Heavy Armor Priest is a better tank than a shaman, lol. Jeez, a Paladin is a better tank than a Priest, and a shaman is infinitely better at tanking than a Paladin. Jesus.

All you people are going to regret asking IMMs to twink anything.

A cloth-wearing person can die with a single cleave or backstab, anyone and everything can be destroyed with final strike, a necro can die with one BoG, and a pally can die with one FoD. Voodoo should have some consequences for using like FS does (perhaps the spirits end the final life and destroy the things of the caster as well if performed successfully), but it shouldn't be removed or changed in the way you're suggesting.

-edit-

Okay, I think I might agree with Pyras on the no-voodoo-twice-within-six-hours thing.

You're right on those counts, but for every caster class there are countermeasures against the insta-kill moves. Against backstab there's Mirror image, stone skin (Except for special-type daggers, which I personally feel is messed up), not being in the back row, and keeping your pulse racing.

Against cleave you can get the hellion's pulse racing, MI/SS, or not be in the front two rows.

If anyone gets 1-shotted with FoD they're just bad. The fact that you included that in your list of 1-shot kills makes me doubt that you have any idea what you're talking about.

Necros also cannot die in one BoG. Even delf necros take two BoGs and to be honest, that's what MR/MI is for

All of these countermeasures have drawbacks, of course. Putting yourself in the back row to avoid cleaves leaves you open to backstabs, putting MR on your gear to avoid BoG's leaves you more open to physical damage and makes self-affecting spells harder, overloading your EQ with fort to avoid getting FoD'ed puts your will save a little lower (maybe) and the like.

However, the only countermeasures for voodoo are prot/sanc/shield. That, and quaffing SA, which makes you immune, but seriously, you can't spam quaff SA just because some shaman -might- be voodooing you in the next 3 minutes, so that doesn't even count as a countermeasure. Considering that only pallies/hellions/shamans(?)/priests have access to prot/sanc with any sort of regularity, I don't think that voodoo should be able to instantly kill anything at 100% health. It isn't the fact that there's not enough drawback to voodoo (I personally think the drawback is fine) it's that the actual damage itself is overpowered.

I purposefully left out the option to remove voodoo because I've learned that things don't really get removed in this game. I'm proposing a tweak that I think will A) not take too much time to code and B) will be favored by most of the playerbase.

Uh, voodoo would be absolutely worthless if it was coded to "not be able to kill people" so it might as well be removed if that happens.

Voodoo needs to be completely revamped. My idea is some sort of a in-room single target like super malediction. Have it cast every malediction shamans get, at the target...but have it require the shaman to have a doll of the target on their person(not held, that'd be stupid).