Shine sounds awesome now.

Lolmagicdmg

Soulless and Judgement are not faster than 8 seconds.. The time period on Souless is about 8.5 seconds, and on Judgement is 10 seconds.

Necroscream got love because I champion the rights of my homeboys and homegirls

It's not as good as I asked for, but that's because it was slightly less possible in that form. >.>

I thought the problem with deafness before was "you can remain completely immune to an entire class's primary skillset using a defense you can keep up indefinitely without any disadvantages for the cost of an herb, plus this makes you immune to the beneficial songs of your allies".

So now that sixth sense and true hearing have been separated... you can remain completely immune to an entire class's primary skillset using a defense you can keep up indefinitely without any disadvantages for the cost of an herb, plus this makes you immune to the beneficial songs of your allies.

(Captive Audience allows a minor exception to the last clause, as it has for a while now, but if blankchord cancels it, it only does so for the first round, so the exception is truly minor.)

What was the point of those disadvantages to deafness, if true hearing cancels them all out completely and indefinitely? Sounds like bits and pieces got plucked from envoy reports and put together in a way that renders them all fairly pointless.

Or am I missing something and there's some way in which this much-vaunted "change" does actually change anything for bards?

This is exactly what Visaeris believed would be best for buffing beneficial songs, and which I agreed with him about. See, there's actually a reason to not be deaf now in large group combat.

Music blocking 100% of bard skills isn't something we envoys can do anything about. "Deafness will alway block the entire Music skillset, excepting the skill Blanknote." is something the Admins told the Envoys, and then told the Envoys to work around and deal with and stop complaining about So, we have to come up with hackish solutions that make beneficial songs plausible and useful, or change every benefiical song into an offensive one. The former is far easier than the latter.

I know we're stuck with the idea that deafness will block all songs. My point is that this looks like someone took a solution that actually made sense (allow deafness to block Music at a price -- slowness and dizziness) and then, missing the point of why that was put in, allowed truehearing to completely nullify it, and thus, nullify the whole point of the updates.

It reminds me of other times when a complete package of changes was submitted by envoys and then was broken apart and only parts of it implemented, the result being that what was done makes no sense, since the recommendations only worked as a package. In this case, what got left out is "and while truehearing lets you hear while deaf, it doesn't eliminate the dizziness and slowness".

But it seems I'm missing something. Are bard beneficial songs good enough now that they're worth giving up perfect immunity to enemy bards for? Unless the buffs got cranked up substantially (which I didn't see mentioned), I don't see how that can be. (Except maybe if you know you have bards but the enemy doesn't.)

One step at a time. We're starting with downgrading deafness as a defence against non-bards. No, this change alone isn't enough, but it's a step in the right direction.

As a note, deafness used to protect (directly or indirectly) against: Transfix gem, Dazzle, Stag Bellow, Barghast, Nihilist Dominate, and the entire Music skillset. We've made it not defend against the first two anymore by splitting blind and deaf. In my opinion, the next step is to alter Bellow, Barghast, and Dominate, and then to work on making captive audience good enough to allow use of beneficial songs while defending against offensive ones in some balanced way.

Mammoths from snow valley and crystalline freaks from cave under observatory still gives deafness.

And i have to agree with Aesyra.
3 spheres now will almoust unbashable, they give deafness all the time!

And when neurosis will be changed back??

You cant bash on astral now if you do not have cicrlet!!

I'm a little confused on the deafness change too... ah well, nothing new for the Cantors? :'(

Two changes:

CaptiveAudience (or a new skill) should prevent people from voluntarily putting up deafness for a short period of time. If you're too captivated by a song to leave a room, you're probably too captivated to make yourself deaf.

Earwort should provide a temporary effect and use herb balance. Deafness should be a disadvantage against everything but bards, and having an herb give a way to permanently get rid of penalties while keeping the bonuses of deafness is bad for balance.

I made a record with 20 minutes to highly neurotic.

The neurosis stuff is a bug, it was supposed to be changed back a while ago.

I was told that the neurosis rate is fine the way it is and won't be changed back. Who am I to disagree?

I'm (sort of) fine if they decide to make it permanent, but at least inform the playerbase. As of right now, insanity is generated twice as fast as before the ascension event. My circlet actually just brings me back to normal insanity rates.

Even with the Circlet you can't bash.

I was considering purchasing a Circlet, but I've been wondering if it's really worth 600 credits just to go back to the insanity rate I had previous to the Ascension Event. Sure, it still halves it no matter what, but it just doesn't feel right to double something and halve it to get back to square one again.

Well, before the event, the Circlet was worth it.

Now I need to determine if insanity is really broken and they just haven't fixed it or if this is the way it's going to be. If this is the way it's going to be, I'm definatly trading in the Circlet. It's pointless now.

How about it Divine? Is insanity going to stay like this?

The insanity change sucks, pretty much takes away the last place I hunt. No way I'm paying 600 cr to get insanity gain to what it used to be. Doubling insanity and charging $200 for it to be back to normal kind of feels like a scam, especially for those who already bought the circlet for that price and now it isn't really worth it as much