For awhile now the the Illuminati (and the Institute, less so) have suffered from a shiny New Things syndrome; to many, they appear to have become Celestines++ and Nihilists++ with their passive afflicting, healing and hindering potential. It's no secret where the bananas are here; healer researchers are nearly impregnable one on one, any Illuminati will invariably be responsible for thousands of broken, priceless mirrors via badluck and snafu, completely killing a person's offense. I've felt since its proposal that the Illuminati special report did not go far enough in cutting back the class's strengths. At the same time, though, I did not want to outright nerf the class into the dust; rather, I wanted to make the temporary insanity mechanic more viable without relying on overpowered balance/eq loss stacking. After the Aeromancy/Pyromancy report fiasco, neither side was going to allow wholesale nerfs. It was a total envoy war. Having thought about it for awhile, and having experience on both sides of the fence (and with the implementation of the reports) I've come up with a few ideas that could (maybe) help reasonably balance out the Illuminati, and potentially help a few other things along the way.

I'll break this up by skillset, providing justifications on each change; and towards the end I'll make a separate bullet-point list post entirely summarizing everything, since that's what admin like reading instead of the usual walls of text. So, here goes:

Transmology

AUTOMATA – Greatly increase the health of all the Transmology automata. As it stands, many of the summoned entities will die in 2 hits, tops. Applies to ribbachi, hekoskeri, morrible, sludgeworm, spix and homunculus.

HEKOSKERI – Reduce the balance/equilibrium loss bonus to 25-50% (versus current 100%). Extend duration to 15s. Additional effect: when sluggish, 'movement speed' (rooms a person may walk before receiving the hasty message) is forced to 1 regardless of other modifiers. Can be cured by focus spirit.

Additional: Remove the present effect where, if a hekoskeri is set to follow you (the victim), it will fire on each of your room movements.

Justification: The first thing that needs to happen is throwing this ridiculous stacked balance loss mechanic out the window. Ectoplasm is all any guild will ever need if they want to accomplish balance/eq disruption. Especially when it's 1 power and built in to your primary skillset with a ridiculous amount of synergy.

SLUDGEWORM – Rework the mucous affliction. Lower balance loss on failed movement, remove the balance loss stacking from repeated failed movements, change the cleanse cure to Calamus. While afflicted with mucous, salve-based curatives have a 10-25% chance of failing. Change rate of attack from 12s to 10s.

Justification: Stacking afflictions that take 4s of equilibrium to cure (nevermind 8seconds if you're sluggish. Or 12+ if you're sluggish AND confused. ) is really overpowered. Changing the cure to an herb affliction will help the Illuminati build insanity in a reasonable way, and provides added synergy with the mediocre Pyromancer demesne.

HOMUNCULUS

I remember sending Kalin a Homunculus proposal very similar to this one, but the current incarnation is way too overpowered. I'd rather it be worked to the following:

Remove Badluck and Greywhispers casting options. Alternatively, add a matching power cost but set the balance recovery to 15 seconds. (Right now, homunculus balance is 10s for badluck/greywhispers and 4s for bite, functioning mechanically identical to beast balance, with no power costs attached anywhere.)
Add new options depending on tertiary:
For Hexes users: HOMONCULUS ETCH , ORDER HOMUNCULUS HEX WITH . You may etch up to 5 hexes on the palms of your homunculus, flinging them one at a time on a 8 second homunculus balance. (Could consume magic ink if needed)
For Astrology users: HOMUNCULUS CHANNEL RAY AT . On a 10 second homunculus balance, the homunculus may channel either a nativity ray (based on the victim's nativity array) or a planetary ray (based on the present alignment of the stars).
For Tarot users: HOMUNCULUS FLING AT . The Illuminati may give tarot cards to their homunculus to fling, unaffected by Enigma, Fool, Warriors or World card buffs. On a 10 second homunculus balance, it may fling the indicated card at a person.
IMPORTANT NOTE: THESE SKILLS ONLY WORK IF THE USER IS IN THE SAME ROOM AS THEIR HOMUNCULUS. (No doppleganger lust repeats from Achaea and all that.)

Justification: The addition of the homunculus and its bite provide a solid, sustainable pressure to the temporary insanity mechanic. If we do away with badluck's excessive balance loss entirely, and downgrade the entire balance/eq loss-based fighting style, there's more viability and options to be had by tying the tertiaries more intimately into the overall fighting style. Right now, it's just too easy.

Paradigmatics

Ruh roh, the nitty gritty!

BADLUCK – Oh balls where do I start. Short of removing this entire skill from the game, there's several potential options:

Decrease the chance to fire from 33% down to 10-25%. Decrease power cost to compensate.
Reduce the balance loss duration as a result of a failed action.
Lower the chance for badluck to fire on psionic actions and dual-wielding warrior attacks. (Regardless of what happens, I feel this is a must.)
If badluck triggers as a result of a focus-related action (body, mind or spirit), the player receives a small amount of temporary insanity.

EDIT:
Better idea, thanks to Esano:

o Remove balance loss aspect.
o Being afflicted with Badluck causes Focus Mind to fail (no balance loss, just loss of mana + focus balance without a cure) at a 33% chance.
o Lower power cost.

Justification: Personally, I feel that the timewarp and temporary insanity mechanics are a refreshing change (aside for the willpower draining issues, but that's for another time). It beats the sudden, burst-based kills that have dominated the wiccan and guardian archetypes since the start of the game. The balance-stacking niche that the Illuminati have capitalized on needs to go, though. That's always been Nihilist territory (and required considerably more skill to pull off) and I figure it should stay that way. Temporary insanity is the intended kill mechanic, they have plenty of methods to accomplish it with, and several approaches to take to the end goal.

GREYWHISPERS – Currently, this fires every 6 seconds, causing temp. insanity and potentially mental afflictions. Change the rate of fire to either 8 or 10 seconds; do not expand the spell's already excessively long (90 seconds) duration.

Justification: It fires far too quickly and is extremely long-lasting compared to similar skills (consider rainbowpattern and phantom as a comparison). Similar change may have to be made to Time Echoes, the Aeonics replica.

REALITY – Fix so that the skill does not fling enemies into nexi or supermob rooms.

Justification: Bugs derp.

SNAFU – Rework skill:

Roomwide effect for 5 power.
Deals a small amount of temporary insanity to enemies in the room along with a mental affliction on an 8 second tick/timer.
Give it a chance to deal a second, different mental affliction as well, the chance increasing with the magnitude of the victim's temporary insanity.
Make duration identical to ColourMaelstrom's (Glamours).

Justification: Roomwide uncurable badluck = bad. We can establish this by common sense.

Reworking it into a form like this retains its power and helps Gaudiguch with group insanity-based kills, which revelations and truename already help with considerably, while retaining the area threat aspect.

ILLUMINATE – Decrease power cost to 6 or 7 power.

Justification: Methods to reach the peak of temporary insanity are very power-intensive, as Illuminati lack the constant pressure of spun rubies to assist with building timewarp. A decrease in their instakill's power cost may be justified.

(I'm aware of how bad Timequake is, but that's out of the scope of these suggestions and it's presently being envoyed into something less terrible.)

BULLET POINT VERSION:

(This was really pretty in my word processor, but forum software sucks so it's considerably less pretty.)

TRANSMOLOGY

• Increase the health of all summoned/fleshcrafted transmology entities, including homunculi.
• HEKOSKERI
  o Reduce the balance/equilibrium loss bonus to 25-50% (versus current 100%).
  o Extend duration to 15s.
  o Additional effect: when sluggish, 'movement speed' (rooms a person may walk before receiving the hasty message) is forced to 1 regardless of other modifiers.
  o Can be cured by focus spirit.
• SLUDGEWORM – Rework the mucous affliction.
  o Lower balance loss on failed movement.
  o Remove the balance loss stacking from repeated failed movements.
  o Change the cleanse cure to Calamus.
  o While afflicted with mucous, salve-based curatives have a 10-25% chance of failing.
  o Change rate of attack from 12s to 10s.
• HOMONCULUS – Rework
  o Remove Badluck and Greywhispers casting options. Alternatively, add a matching power cost but set the balance recovery to 15 seconds. (Right now, homunculus balance is 10s for badluck/greywhispers and 4s for bite, functioning mechanically identical to beast balance, with no power costs attached anywhere.)
  
  Add new options depending on tertiary:
  o For Hexes users: HOMONCULUS ETCH , ORDER HOMUNCULUS HEX WITH . You may etch up to 5 hexes on the palms of your homunculus, flinging them one at a time on a 8 second homunculus balance. (Could consume magic ink if needed)
  o For Astrology users: HOMUNCULUS CHANNEL RAY AT . On a 10 second homunculus balance, the homunculus may channel either a nativity ray (based on the victim's nativity array) or a planetary ray (based on the present alignment of the stars).
  o For Tarot users: HOMUNCULUS FLING AT . The Illuminati may give tarot cards to their homunculus to fling, unaffected by Enigma, Fool, Warriors or World card buffs. On a 10 second homunculus balance, it may fling the indicated card at a person.
  o IMPORTANT NOTE: THESE SKILLS ONLY WORK IF THE USER IS IN THE SAME ROOM AS THEIR HOMUNCULUS. (No doppleganger lust repeats from Achaea and all that.)

PARADIGMATICS

• BADLUCK
  o Short of removing this entire skill from the game, there's several potential options:
  o Decrease the chance to fire from 33% down to 10-25%. Decrease power cost to compensate.
  o Reduce the balance loss duration as a result of a failed action.
  o Remove the balance loss stacking as a result of failed actions.
  o Lower the chance for badluck to fire on psionic actions and dual-wielding warrior attacks. (Regardless of what happens, I feel this is a must-have change, as it disproportionately cripples these classes.)
  o If badluck triggers as a result of a focus-related action (body, mind or spirit), the player receives a small amount of temporary insanity.
  
  Better idea, thanks to Esano:
  
  o Remove balance loss aspect.
  o Being afflicted with Badluck causes Focus Mind to fail (no balance loss, just loss of mana + focus balance without a cure) at a 33% chance.
  o Lower power cost.
  
• GREYWHISPERS
  o Change the rate of fire to either every 8 or 10 seconds; do not expand the spell's already excessively long (90 seconds) duration.
• REALITY
  o Bugfix so that the skill does not fling enemies into nexi or supermob rooms.
  o Consider slightly lowering the chance of flinging when in Supermob rooms. (May be unnecessary)
• SNAFU – Rework skill:
  o Roomwide effect for 5 power.
  o Deals a small amount of temporary insanity to enemies in the room along with a mental affliction on an 8 second tick/timer.
  o Give it a chance to deal a second, different mental affliction as well, the chance increasing with the magnitude of the victim's temporary insanity.
  o Make duration identical to ColourMaelstrom's (Glamours).
  o Shielding prevents a player from being struck by it.
• ILLUMINATE
  o Decrease power cost to 6 or 7 power.

I fully support fixing the Illuminati as I do not want them reproducing.

Wow, lots of ideas there!

I agree that there is too much synergy in an Illuminati's means of causing and exacerbating balance loss. If all your suggestions above were implemented you run the risk of changing so much that you introduce new problems.

I'd suggest two changes. Allow enough time after each one to evaluate what further steps need to be taken to balance the class.

1. Alter the order of mucous / ectoplasm curing.

As things currently stand, if you have mucous and ectoplasm, you will cleanse the mucous first. With balance loss coming from attacking, cleansing, focussing, writhing (tarot) and epilepsy/scabes (hexes/astrology) curing ectoplasm is a high priority. It is easy for an illuminati to use ecto just after a sludgeworm tick to require two balance/eq cures before being able to attack again. A sludgeworm hits every 10 (?) seconds and even with a 1p cost, ectoplasm is very cost efficient for this much disruption to an opponent's offence.

If ectoplasm cures before mucous, I think things become more balanced. If you get ecto'd you can cleanse once, thus the eq you spend cleansing is roughly equal to the eq the illuminati spends ectoplasming. If you have mucous you can choose to cure it immediately for the eq/bal cost of the cleanse, or you can ignore it and continue your offence with the tradeoff that it will be harder for you to leave the room when you need to.


2. Evaluate whether badluck needs to fire on non-focus actions.

I think it's pretty clear that badluck is meant to be a disincentive to using focus mind. This allows the illuminati to build mental affs and insanity. The penalty for focussing with badluck does need to be strong enough to dissuade someone from standing there focussing away all their insanity.

I believe the current imbalance with badluck arises from this penalty being imposed for any action that uses bal, eq, psi or focus balance. This makes it difficult to properly cure (using def/diag/rub cleanse/power cures/pentagram/focus body/focus spirit) and nigh impossible to mount a credible offence.

If you change badluck to only fire on focus mind (and still cause balance loss when it does) illuminati continue to be able to build insanity as the fight progresses. If the opponent is only using herb balance, they will need to leave the room to clear up their insanity - and to do so they must run the gauntlet of illuminati hindering skills.

I'm confident that fixing these two core problems would go a long way to balancing Illuminati. I really think the concerns with snafu, newly nerfed hekoskeri etc just stem from the fundamental imbalances of bad luck and ecto/mucous.

Here are my preliminary testing results:

Homunculus:
My vitals boosted from
4674h, 4788m, 4524e to
5108h, 5266m, 4395e

Bite 4 secs
Badluck 8+ secs
Greywhispers 12+ secs

I could kill it in one cosmicfire. I tested it on my beast, my cosmicfire was 500 damage. That means my homunculus has less than 500 health.
On its death, I received . Forgot to check if that was all damage or partly due to loss of max health.

Peck:
120 damage
4 sec separate balance
Against Illuminated Dracnari with 51 48 robes

Sing:
10 secs at none
1 sec at slight
.02 sec at moderate
.02 sec at massive

Electric aura:
123 damage to undeffed human.

With regards to Furien's suggestions, I think that Kalin's last report on Badluck would be a good suggestion that addresses both the balance-loss issue as well as helping the insanity mechanic.

Also, I agree with the changing of Homunculus spells. While definitely powerful, it doesn't really make sense to me why the homunculi can cast paradigmatics spells. A suggestion would be instead be able to do fleshwork on the homunculi, which would affect what spells they can cast. Perhaps they can only hold one or a few transformation, otherwise they become too unstable and will unravel.

So, for example:
FlESHCALL MOUTH HOMUNCULUS would let you use the bite that we currently have
FLESHCALL AURA HOMUNCULUS gives your homunculus the ability to heal your health
and so on.

I like just about all these suggestions. Good work!

The times on Sing look way off, so I hope that's a miscalculation to be fixed. I think it should vary between ten seconds and one second, no more and no less.

Sing is less like wisp and more like a delayed beckon, ie stopped by walls/blockers/etc. In that respect, even a sub-second delay isn't that important: it can be permanently prevented by having two people blocking, or a barrier, or a wall (just watch for ignite!) etc. unlike wisp (where the only preventative in forest areas is shielding or moving during the 3s delay).

EDIT: I agree with these, and would like to draw special attention to homunculus badluck. It's on a 10s beast-like balance and takes no power. Shift Badluck takes 3p, which takes 25-30s to regenerate at trans discipline. So, yeah, problems. Same problem with greywhispers.

Only problem I might have with the replacement homunculi skills is the possibility for abuse, but that'd take a while to go into (one that comes to mind is the possibility for move/lust/move(orgbix?)/empress, even without ranged lust).

Very good suggestions, I pretty much agree with everything here. Now if only we had one for the institute....

It's alright, I believe monks were in the line first. Institute can queue up after.

Monks are "fine" we keep asking the admins and told it isn't necessary.

Until you can get that changed..........

I think the homunculus changes would be rather interesting though. Hexes could be amazingly useful with the new badluck idea.

Please note that the only means an Illuminati has to kill someone until they reach illuminate (Near trans paradigmatics) is damage kill. Removing the balance loss aspect is a big hit as it would be hard to build up afflictions to go for the damage kill.

I disagree. The removal of the balance loss mechanic would not make it any easier or harder to build up afflictions. Nor is a damage kill is your only alternative means: Illuminati have the best one-room containment potential in the game between Tarot rubble, flux, enthrall, tentacle block, empress and carcer, opening up tons of potential for Soulless, Jinx and Meteor-based kills. Tertiaries are there to help you. You're not going to kill anyone with cosmicfire or fleshform crush; it's simply not a viable tactic to begin with.

Will it be harder to hold someone down and have your group kill them? Sure. But as it stands, badluck generally guarantees the death of someone if the attacking group is focused and coordinated. It's too easy. Hekoskeri is a creative solution to remedy this loss; personally, I think Shrine Gravity effects are too powerful and would rather see them use a mechanic like the proposed Hekoskeri one (1 room move speed).

The enemy's balance and equilibrium has little to do with your affliction potential, beyond how they use those mechanics in a capacity to hinder your assaults. Overcoming these hindrances is what a system is for. If anything, your afflicting potential is improved with these changes, perhaps to an unreasonable degree.

Well, if we go with Placeus' proposal for badluck, the affliction protection is maintained since focus mind can play a rather significant role in mitigating any hidden mental affs. Outside of that, there are already a number of very powerful abilities in trasmology that are relatively low in the skillset to help hinder a target significantly while going for a damage kill, so really that's not too big of an issue compared to the imbalance that the current incarnation of badluck provides, just a matter of really learning what each skill does and how best to take full advantage of it really.

Yes they can keep them in the room. But again you are talking about skills that are way up in skillsets as a means to kill... Soulless... meteor.. If you are a midbie fighter you have no means to kill other than damage.

That's no less true for any guild, and is an unavoidable fact of the game itself. People do not kill through simple damage regardless of class; they need all their skills at their disposal. We do not balance around midbies.

Well, lets note that Toadcurse -is- a trans skill. So you're better off here! This isn't a valid complaint.

Yep.

Also, I approve of most of these suggestions. I also would approve of the Institute being weighed in on, as fair is fair.

In my opinion, since both special reports made it so both guilds need additional tweaking, they need to be done simultaneously. It's not very fair to "nerf" (aka balance) one side and then leave the other one broken for who knows how long. Release fixes just like they released the special reports.

The problem with this is, there's nobody left to defend the illuminati. They'll just be goose-stepped into the trash compactor, like pyros before them. (While saying, "look how thoughtful and balanced we're being, I'm sure.)

Meanwhile, if you suggest that, perhaps the concept of a "we're the damage kill guardians" is a horrible idea, in terms of group combat (how many times have "damage knights" been made non viable now?), you'll get a slew of people explaining how fair it is. (Its tempting to go researcher- not because I'd be an "omg combatant", but because, of the things I CAN do, I can demonstrate an outlier rather well.)

Or bring up the fact that the consesus for knights stuck fighting a researcher is "don't, 'cause you'll never stick anything ever", that maybe, just maybe, there's an issue there.

Gaudi in general has nobody left to actively defend it- in terms of the game world, of the mechanics of it.

Honestly, I'd say the admin should consider resetting pyros to their pre-nerf state, and saying "ok, we're starting from the top, with all the new skillsets".

But, even that is a failing proposition, because all the fighters between the two have crammed into Hallifax.

I certainly don't have the energy to do more than point out the absurdity of this whole exercise. But, to the admin?

Remember the Aero/pyro report- and how it demonstrates that you can't trust the envoy system not to be an utter fraud.

I don't mean to be a buzzkill to your whole platform about how Gaudiguch is disadvantaged in the envoy system, but this is not just an envoy system issue. It is a problem on multiple levels - the environment, the people in charge (gods and mortals), and etc. Guilds have gone for weeks or even a month or so without an envoy, there is still nobody in the Pyromancers that is a combatant that is an envoy - hell, there is no envoy appointed in the Templars or Illuminati. You can't just blame envoys for the current state that Gaudiguch is in. Do you honestly have to ask, after having a front row seat for nearing a year now, why all the PKers actually went to Hallifax instead of remaining willingly in Gaudiguch?


Don't take this to mean I do not agree that the envoy process is a sham and honestly prone to stalemates and a 'rich get richer, poor get poorer' trap (because I do, and I value your opinions on that). However, the Great PyroAero Debacle is done and passed. The milk is spilled - and while it sure does smell bad after sitting there on the table with nobody to clean it up for nearing nine? months now.. well, it has no actual bearing on fixing problems in other classes. The Illuminati and the Institute both have debilitating flaws that either harm the combat environment (badluck, balestone - hell, this special report gave both some tricks that are honestly not going to fly well with the other four orgs) or themselves. There needs to be another set of changes to smooth over the things granted.

EDIT:

My response on the topic of Institute balance - I believe that Damage Guardian is a completely sound concept and should never have been tampered with. However, I believe that damage should be achievable only after an optimal setup - a setup that, while NEVER impossible, should never be a breeze. The nature of the beast of Harmonics is that it possesses a great deal of defense that is passive - that is what it lends itself toward. Did you know that an emerald wand or crystaltool actually makes the emerald crystal trigger twice on a very high chance? I would willingly give up or change some of my defensive crystals to be offensive without having to rely on Beastmastery.