Solving Strength route's latest PvE issues: Mask of Momus

[BiologLOL]

Solving Strength route's latest PvE issues

[THIS SUGGESTION WAS DEEMED A FAILURE, AND A FOLLOW-UP HAS BEEN MADE] This idea once sprouted into a PvE-only tool for each stat route, but we couldn’t find any reasonable enough argument as to why the other three stats need it. The idea was scrapped, and this is what remained. Strength route is having issues in PvE. Fighting Styles are a fun combat option. Close-ranged and quick, they got great variety in their techniques and are noteworthy in PvP. However, almost all their skills are u…

I attempted this suggestion before, and the ideas brought up here were talked about in a separate game discussion topic, linked in the suggestion itself. I also thoroughly explained the entire point of the suggestion, the reasoning and the arguments related, so I will not be going over it again.

The original idea was a two-part: either give Strength players the Tidestone Harpoons tool, a ranged projectile that can be thrown to deal damage, but does nothing to players, or give bosses that are for any reason too dangerous to fight up close moves that won’t have such issue for their duration.

@UraMthe

tidestone tridents do sound cool but i dont like the fact that i will have to use something else than my own hands

@Based_Trixie

I think tridents would be better fit for weapons than strength

@SZ778

I agree that strength needs some changes. It is a class that fundamentally goes against AO’s PVE gameplay of “blast spam & kite away”. However, I don’t really agree with your solutions: 1) changing bosses to suit one radically different playstyle doesn’t make sense, especially since a lot of the bosses you mentioned are quite well designed imo 2) Tridents diminish the identity of the strength class because it essentially reduces strength to just another mage (we see this already with spirit), which harms the “melee fantasy” of the class.

@Keiko

most of the bosses are well designed around magic, sadly i dont think many of the testers ever thought to use berserker against bosses like allanon that have mile wide aoes that can kill you in seconds and fly to unreachable heights (especially without minmaxed builds or very little techniques outside of the base a couple rares since you realistically wouldnt have that much at that point in progression) or something like ormolu where if you arent distancing yourself then you’re also going to die in seconds.

@anon42560734

what if instead of adding an obtuse bandaid solution the game was actually designed with fighting styles in mind

or what if story bosses had different movesets depending on if you’re a berserker/cqc class

@SZ778

preserving the melee fantasy of the strength class is of the utmost importance

@SZ778

But, we can still help them out in other areas, such as fighting Allanon & dragons, we just have to make it work while keeping strength’s melee focused identity

@SZ778

there needs to be more incentive to strength classes engaging in melee combat. Currently, the risk to reward ratio is just off: you’re risking your life fighting melee for what, less damage than the mage sitting across the screen? Somehow, we need to achieve 3 very important things: 1) allow strength classes to closer the gap against mobile enemies 2) enhance their survivability at close range 3) reward them for not only being, but staying at melee range.

@SZ778

strength currently doesn’t really fulfill the melee fantasy that well. You’d pick berserker imagining yourself as some “anime martial arts master”, but then you realize you are less mobile than pretty much every other class in the game, and most of your attacks are super clunky. That just sucks, so I believe strength should be given the most combat mobility of all stats.

From the discussion, key points emerged that defined this follow-up. Strength must: 1) Retain its melee identity. 2) Be more rewarded for staying in close range of foes that are obviously much better to keep away from. 3) Have better mobility. 4) Increase its survivability. 5) Have some sort of way to combat unapproachable foes. 6) Not be given any sort of a weapon.

Thats a whole bunch of confusing requirements. How can they be combined? Well…

@hanmbi

Trust

Either that or give berserkers vicious mockery because speech (and thus insults) is also made by your body, which berserkers rely on

---

Strength route-exclusive tool: Mask of Momus.

Hearing his name for the first time? Yeah, me too. I just searched up “ancient greek god of mockery”, and this is who I found. But, he’ll do just fine.

Mask of Momus is a tool the player is able to find outside Poseidon’s temple after they got their first awakening as a Strength hybrid/Berserker. The design of the mask is better left to be decided on by those who know Greek mythology better than me.

Hold “F” to express dissatisfaction

To use the mask, it has to be selected on the hotbar or in a pouch slot, functioning basically exactly like a fighting style with only one move: Vicious Mockery. The keybind for that technique is the same that your normal fighting styles’ first ability’s, which most often is Q.

By using the ability, the player will emit speech-imitating mumbling and fire a “projectile”. This transparent orb flies like a thrown polearm, with the similar hitbox, and must be landed on a non-player enemy. If landed, it won’t do any damage, but it will give the Strength user who fired it a Mockery Stack. Vicious Mockery has a recharge of a Crash technique.

Mockery Stacks give the user various buffs, but must be upheld by continuously landing Vicious Mockery. All stacks will expire after a bit longer than twice the move’s cooldown, so if you miss one, you still have one last chance to land another before losing your progress. There can be a maximum of 4 stacks, and gaining another, or a stack past 4, will refresh the expire timer. How long the stacks have left until expiring is shown as a meter below the effect’s icon, which appears under your HP bar, like other effects.

1 stack: The target will prioritise the Strength user, if in a fight against multiple foes. If multiple players are inflicting Vicious Mockery, the target won’t change their priority until the first player either dies or leaves the battle. Several bosses that are dangerous to fight in melee range will close the distance with the user and keep it for as long as the stacks are active, as well as stop using moves that would kill a player in such close range in seconds, or have those moves deal reduced damage. Dragons won’t fly as high and have their melee abilities weakened, Krakens will bring their tentacles close enough to be punched, Allanon won’t airstall anymore and will lose his 2000 damage grab and the massive self-explosion…

@BiologLOL

Enemies and/or bosses that rely on projectile spam, or are otherwise extremely dangerous to approach will receive downtime periods in their movesets, or abilities that are safe to wait out close to them.

The list is: adolescent+ dragons, krakens (+ Omen), Lord Elius, Allanon, Ormolu, King Caesar, Rear Admiral Amelia.

Alternatively, entirely new movesets can be made for these bosses. The main purpose of this is to let the Strength user fight these enemies at their only available range while not instantly dying upon bringing a full-grown dragon into sneezing distance from themselves.

2 stacks: Accuracy of the afflicted enemies decreases, as long as their target is the user.

3 stacks: The user’s energy/stamina recovery, Haste and Agility is boosted. The effects would roughly be equivalent to having Energy Recharge III/Energizing III effect and cooldowns/movement speed being reduced/increased by 10%.

4 stacks: The user gains lifesteal, the same as the innate one Spirit possesses. A mask that gives you vampiric powers? Huh…

With this tool, Strength still fuctions as melee-only route in PvP and PvE, but now it has a way to play the game with the recent additions in the “bosses” category. I’ll mention it again - this tool does nothing against players. The PvP side of Strength is left intact. The aim required to continuously land what is essentially thrown polearms is rewarded with buffs that will prolond their survival in such harsh conditions. So, what does the community think about this? Should the fighters be taught swearing and trolling?

[YourAverageStruggler]

@BiologLOL

A mask that gives you vampiric powers?

Maybe it can be upgraded with a jewel?

[hanmbi]

Beserker cast Vicious Mockery!
“Yo mama so ugly even Zeus wouldn’t want her.”
It was super effective!
The enemy fucking died!
You win!

—

Anyways insert obligatory majora’s mask reference

[vorf]

i dont play berserker and have no idea how bad the class is but i see a lot of white so i approve

[Waping]

i have zero hope but this is very funny
also i love dnd wish i could play :c

[BiologLOL]

Berserkers don’t need Ultimate Art: Crash!

Berserkers need Ultimate Art: Your Mom!

[hanmbi]

@Waping

also i love dnd wish i could play :c

Me too bud, me too

[daniel29ioy]

The concept is good, but the obtainment is flawed. Post awakening is a bit late, when many people will struggle with earlier bosses eg Calvus. The location also doesn’t match the lore, he ridiculed major gods and was cast from heaven (Olympus), but his mask is found at the temple of a major god, on Mt Olympus? I feel it could be better worked into the story at an earlier point, but I dont have a specific idea. To keep it strength only, it can still work on having a proportionally high strength stat investment
Side note: I dont think you need to quote series of messages from other topics to justify your suggestions, it just add a lot of bloat that makes it harder to find what you are talking about. Eg the dark sea QOL suggestion, forumers know these problems exist without each point being prefaced with a complaint about said problem.

[BiologLOL]

@daniel29ioy

Post awakening is a bit late

Prior to it, the player still has the other routes’ abilities to use. Even if they invested all into Strength, Blast and Spirit Blast are still free.

@daniel29ioy

The location also doesn’t match the lore

Lore - yes, but it has to be some place, easily accessible right after the awakening. Can just say that Momus put the mask there as a lil bit of trolling against Poseidon.

@daniel29ioy

on Mt Olympus?

Othrys.

@daniel29ioy

To keep it strength only, it can still work on having a proportionally high strength stat investment

Nah, to keep it strength only, it will appear in your inventory only if you’re Strength. Stat reset and it’ll be gone. It will return if you reinvest into Strength again at some point, though.

@daniel29ioy

I dont think you need to quote series of messages from other topics to justify your suggestions

These are opinions the community gave me, the literally main reason I am making game discussion topics before suggestions is to get these.

@daniel29ioy

Eg the dark sea QOL suggestion, forumers know these problems exist without each point being prefaced with a complaint about said problem

Thats the problem. We know they exist, but how do we fix them? Most don’t think past that, they just know that they don’t like this feature, they don’t bother thinking about a proper, non-flawed way of fixing it. A game discussion topic can find us a solution.

[daniel29ioy]

@BiologLOL

Prior to it, the player still has the other routes’ abilities to use. Even if they invested all into Strength, Blast and Spirit Blast are still free.

They will be worse without tiers, and having the tool earlier will prevent confusion from suddenly switching. Plus, strength users shouldnt have to rely on other paths to complete content, even if they arent awakened. Why add a tool to assist strength users, and then tell them that they should just use other pathways until theyre halfway through the story?

@BiologLOL

Lore - yes, but it has to be some place

Well, not exactly. It would be better to be handed it as part of the story, so players know it exists rather than potentially missing it. Same problem as relics, obtainment should be explicit rather than wiki reliant. Otherwise, many players will just continue without knowing about it until they’ve past many of crucial points where it would have been needed.

@BiologLOL

These are opinions the community gave me, the literally main reason I am making game discussion topics before suggestions is to get these.

@BiologLOL

Thats the problem. We know they exist, but how do we fix them? Most don’t think past that, they just know that they don’t like this feature, they don’t bother thinking about a proper, non-flawed way of fixing it. A game discussion topic can find us a solution.

I didnt say that a game discussion topic or finding solutions was bad? The problem is that you put so much of past topics in new ones, theyre basically combined. People don’t need a debrief of other discussions to have an opinion on a new idea, and if this doesn’t qualify as a new idea it shouldn’t be it’s own topic. Many of your suggestions could easily be cut in half without losing anything, and “After past discussions in the topics linked below, this is what I came up with” holds as much meaning as 40 quotes of said discussions. If people won’t visit those links, they won’t read the quotes either.

[SZ778]

@BiologLOL

Several bosses that are dangerous to fight in melee range will close the distance with the user and keep it for as long as the stacks are active, as well as stop using moves that would kill a player in such close range in seconds, or have those moves deal reduced damage.

So instead of buffing the player, you propose making the enemies dumber? I don’t think thats the best way to solve the issue. If bosses aren’t going to use short range moves or have those moves do little damage, then you remove the risk of staying at close range, and every fight just becomes super boring - go in, deal damage + face tank the boss, get out. Plus, imagine fighting bosses with a group, the Berserker’s role would become a “support” that constantly debuffs the boss. That doesn’t go well with the character fantasy imo. But you do bring up a very tricky point about the melee playstyle: getting one shot before you get to do anything.

@BiologLOL

stop using moves that would kill a player in such close range in seconds, or have those moves deal reduced damage

Yep, Allanon has his 2k grab, dragons have their 4k nuke. But the reason they are problematic is because those abilities have poor visual indicators. We can look at the other side: Caesar has his big sword, but you see it coming, so its fine. If changes are made to Allanon where he perform a windup before his grab, and if we make the indicators for the dragon nuke appear like 3 seconds earlier, they should be fine.

Moreover, we can solve the “one shot problem” by giving strength more survivability options. Unconditional damage reduction can work, but its boring. I-frames and similar timing-based mechanics come to mind as a more interactive solution. Similarly, adding VERY POTENT mobility options would allow strength users to dodge in and out of dangerous situations, while giving tons of agency to the player (Consider Acumen). But this also ensures that if they mess up by not utilizing their survivability options well, they get punished and are forced to tank a lot of damage.

Just some thoughts. I’m also trying work through some more detailed ideas.

[BiologLOL]

@daniel29ioy

strength users shouldnt have to rely on other paths to complete content, even if they arent awakened. Why add a tool to assist strength users, and then tell them that they should just use other pathways until theyre halfway through the story?

It isn’t halfway, it is just the beginning of the storyline. Besides, during that time, most haven’t yet decided what to choose, it is only after the awakening that the player accepts they’re going Strength route, and only then they’ll need the tool. During those earlier levels, even the lower tier Blasts and Spirit Blasts will be enough, you aren’t fighting enemies that you can’t handle with Strength alone yet.

@daniel29ioy

It would be better to be handed it as part of the story

Well, a side quest can pop up that will just simply tell you to pick up the mask at the temple, but a whole separate chunk of the main storyline for one route out of four is too much.

@daniel29ioy

you put so much of past topics in new ones, theyre basically combined.

If I was a participant of a game discussion topic for someone else’s suggestion and gave my opinions related to the idea, but the suggestion creator wouldn’t mention me later, I’d be dissatisfied by that. It feels like disrespect, therefore I don’t treat others this way. If you argued and expressed your thoughts, you’re worthy of appearing in the final topic.

[BiologLOL]

@SZ778

So instead of buffing the player, you propose making the enemies dumber?

First, I make enemies dumber, and after that, I buff the player. The main priority is to get them closer to you, the rest is secondary, thats why the aggro is the first stack of the effect.

@SZ778

the Berserker’s role would become a “support” that constantly debuffs the boss

Eh, thats an unfortunate side effect I can’t really do much about, aside from just not reducing the boss’ capabilities to severity, and keeping them threatening. The bosses had to be designed with Strength in mind from the start for this issue to not be present.

@SZ778

If changes are made to Allanon where he perform a windup before his grab, and if we make the indicators for the dragon nuke appear like 3 seconds earlier, they should be fine.

Agree, but this is a different suggestion, so I couldn’t mention it here.

@SZ778

Moreover, we can solve the “one shot problem” by giving strength more survivability options. Unconditional damage reduction can work, but its boring. I-frames and similar timing-based mechanics come to mind as a more interactive solution

I-frames? Hm… Can’t think of how to bring those into the kit. Giving too many of those to a fighter would just make them overpowered.

[SZ778]

@BiologLOL

First, I make enemies dumber, and after that, I buff the player. The main priority is to get them closer to you, the rest is secondary, thats why the aggro is the first stack of the effect.

Why not just add more gap-closers to let the player get to the bosses? The game shouldn’t play itself. A big part of being melee is how you approach ranged enemies before you unleash your attacks on them. Currently, Berserkers have Blitz, Crash, Rushdown (which doesn’t work against bosses), Selino & Breathtaker (which are too slow), and maybe Jab (but it bounces you back so it doesn’t really count?). This is just not enough. We need something like Sword Step, except more potent.

@BiologLOL

I-frames? Hm… Can’t think of how to bring those into the kit. Giving too many of those to a fighter would just make them overpowered.

Depends on how you execute it. You just need to ensure that players can’t chain them too much. Or if i-frames are a bit too much for some abilities, you could always nerf it to like 75% damage reduction. Regardless, timing-based gameplay is still far better than just face tanking with unconditional damage reduction. Instance based damage reduction (such as a “spellshield” that reduces the first instance of damage by 50% and then disappears afterwards) might be a good middleground solution to the “one shot problem”.

[BiologLOL]

@SZ778

Why not just add more gap-closers to let the player get to the bosses?

Alright, what will happen if we give Strength this and make them fight a full-grown dragon, a kraken and Allanon? They will get close to a dragon, maybe even do a hit, but it’ll immediately reposition. Allanon will either flee or cause a self-explosion or a 2000 dmg grab. And getting close to a kraken’s tentacle will swiftly kill the player. But instead, those Strength players can now invalidate their weakness in PvP by shadow-stepping behind mages’ backs.

@SZ778

timing-based gameplay is still far better than just face tanking with unconditional damage reduction

Vetex was also promoting timing-based gameplay in his recent reply about parrying dragons. The community had a clear answer. AO is not yet built to rely on timing.

[2how_nim]

sounds cool- nvm

another stackslop suggestion omgggg

[BiologLOL]

@2how_nim

stackslop

Stackslop? Do people really love these? This one’s my first one. Well, good to know that I need to avoid it.

[SZ778]

@BiologLOL

They will get close to a dragon, maybe even do a hit, but it’ll immediately reposition. Allanon will either flee or cause a self-explosion or a 2000 dmg grab. And getting close to a kraken’s tentacle will swiftly kill the player. But instead, those Strength players can now invalidate their weakness in PvP by shadow-stepping behind mages’ backs.

Even as a mage, you need to wait for dragons to do their flame attack on the ground. No one is aiming at dragons while they’re flying. Same for berserker, you’d wait for dragons to spit fire then you gap-closer and unload on them from the side.

If Berserkers get air movement (like a Path equivalent) then you could realistically chase down Allanon. You can also parry or i-frame the grab/explosion.

For krakens you’d have to use ship cannons or cannon fist. Never said they were well designed to begin with. Alternatively, you could just remove the water damage, but fighting krakens was never fun for any class.

Lastly, I thought we’re not considering PVP in this suggestion. There’s no reason to let a minority of players hold back good suggestions.

@BiologLOL

Vetex was also promoting timing-based gameplay in his recent reply about parrying dragons. The community had a clear answer. AO is not yet built to rely on timing.

I was not aware of this. Is there more context? I don’t see why people would ever prefer face-tanking and just rolling over their keyboard. Timing-based gameplay isn’t my favorite either, but its the best we can make do given AO’s combat mechanics.

[BiologLOL]

@SZ778

Same for berserker, you’d wait for dragons to spit fire then you gap-closer and unload on them from the side.

You do not need the mask to do that.

@SZ778

You can also parry or i-frame the grab/explosion.

Vetex says that too.

@SZ778

For krakens you’d have to use ship cannons or cannon fist. Never said they were well designed to begin with. Alternatively, you could just remove the water damage, but fighting krakens was never fun for any class.

Krakens are a whole separate issue.

@SZ778

Lastly, I thought we’re not considering PVP in this suggestion. There’s no reason to let a minority of players hold back good suggestions.

And we aren’t. I just brought it up, since what you propose is a technique, not a tool, techniques can’t be pve-restricted.

[BiologLOL]

@SZ778

Is there more context?

Buried under hundreds of messages in the patch notes discussion topic, sorry