Discalimer: These are all my opinions that I have reached in the time I've had to play with them. Others likely have had more time, and more experience with them! Some of my suggested ideas may not be balanced, I just don't like calling out problems without proposing at least some kind of solution! Overall I love most of these abilities, they are fun!
- Binding Tendril-An ability with several effects mostly CC so far as I can tell. When it hits the hands, arm, or torso, it applies a bound affect, which stops an enemy from being able to attack you. When hitting the leg, it pulls them to the ground. When hitting the neck, it chokes them and I believe does some variation of energy damage over time, though I could be mistaken, I've not yet been able to use the choke effect for several seconds.
- Pros:
Amusing to yoink enemies to the ground.
When used on enemies with injured legs, grounding them can be extremely debilitating.
Has inherit rerolls means the ability is very effective with stance dancing.
Against players who have to manually input commands like stand, the grounding effect can be pretty good.
- Cons(many of these are more like personal gripes, this ability is fun, just not always useful):
Very inconsistent, sometimes the bound effect lasts for a decent time, allowing you to reposition. But a lot of them time, it seems to end before you can even finish roundtime, leaving you in a worse position than you started.
Grounding affect inflicts (almost) no roundtime. This means that at least against npcs, it's useless unless they're leg is already fairly wounded. They will be up and attacking you before your roundtime is over which leaves you at a disadvantage.
Struggling to break the bound affect gives seemingly 1-2 seconds of roundtime most the time, this leads to a lot of spam when they struggle to break, and makes it very difficult to stance dance them as they won't experience much if any roundtime.
- Ideas:
Grounding-Against NPCs only, make the grounding affect inflict at least some roundtime(preferably enough time so they won't stance dance you when you suceessfully cast but are put into roundtime), or even stun/stagger/unbalance them in the way that dirtkick does. This would make it a decent CC. Other than that, it works pretty well.
Choke-Can't comment much on this, haven't had it happen much. Will update when I get more research on it done.
Bound-Add a minimum timer for bound against NPCs, at least 5-6 seconds so they can't immediately stance dance you when you succeed( I keep saying against NPCs as I feel they have an innert advantage over players in that players need to manual type inputs like stand/struggle.) Add a slightly larger roundtime to struggling. Not enough to give negative rerolls, but enough to take away positive ones. This will also super reduce the spam. I would also like to see the ability for enemies to perform things like feints removed, and things like dirt kick slightly impeded. When bound, you should not be able to feint, or do any offensive ability involving hands.
- Pros:
Opinion that is not really relavent:I prefered the ability pre offensive rerolls when there was no cooldown. It let you sometimes refresh bound, which was a bit more useful.
- Essence Leech-An ability that has a 3x offensive reroll, and can do a moderate amount of damage.
- Pros:
This ability can be a very good one when you're still using one channel. It will regain at a maximum of 50 energy against a target, and can do a fair 25 points of damage on a good roll.
High reroll means it's a good chance of hitting.
Doesn't take energy to cast.
- Cons:
Less useful if you're using more than one channel as your fatigue will quickly outpace all but the 50+ energy casts, and even then it's only minorly useful.
Can sometimes put you into roundtime for a negliable amount of energy( I feel this is pretty balanced as is. The ability is really good a lot of the time)
- Ideas:
I've really only got one suggestion for this ability, and that's for every channel of sorcery you've got, add a higher maximum gain. If you use more than one channel this ability will not sustain you enough to be worth the roundtime per cast. OR make the cooldown and roundtime per cast shorter for each open channel of sorcery.
- Pros:
- Echoing Whisper-An ability that allows you to take a blood sample, to communicate with someone from a long range.
- Pros:
Allows for organized private long ranged 2 way communication.
Assuming you can label vials, you could in theory have several of each named vials, which would make it very convenient. Sorcerer's speedial list anyone?
Cheap to use/cast, only requiring a vial and needle.
Vials are reusable, but you don't clean them, you unsanitary freak.
Blood never coagulates. Because magics
- Cons:
Each vial only gives you a couple of casts, and the duration is quite short. Better drain your friend completely if you want to have a long far away conversation!
People will think you're creepy wanting to prick them with needles, and really, can you blame them?
Friends not included.
Don't mix up your blood vials. You'll never be able to resort them.
- Ideas:
Let us empty the blood from vials.
Let blood spoil, we shouldn't be able to keep it forever. Perhaps a week at max?
Let us use these blood vials for occult rituals later!
- Pros:
- Shadow Cloak-An ability that has got a few nifty uses, it shrouds your identiy. Makes you look really spooky. Decreases roundtime for hiding in dark rooms, and supposedly increases your stealth roll in dark areas(I can't confirm or deny this having no ability to see my stealth roll).
- Pros:
Great Synergy with Shadow orb, and the Muffle and blur glyphs.
Disguises you.
You can finally dress like a phantom for octum.
Can easily obtain a reasonable duration.
Able to be dismiss early.
- Cons:
They will not let you into town with it active.
Octum Charmseeking bag not included.
Also Nether claws and Katars not included.
- Ideas:
Let us use this in town only during the month of Octum as a replacement for a charm seeking outfit.
- Pros:
- Shadow Orb-Basically a reverse Disco Ball. Darkens the room and looks creepy as hell.
- Pros:
Can be used to increase stealth capabilities.
Boosts usefulness of shadow cloak and stealthy glyphs.
- Cons:
Disco has not been invented yet.
Cannot be dismissed early(Nor should it be)
If used in a dark room, you will not be able to see anything.
- Ideas:
This ability really seems fine as is to me.
- Pros:
- Sorcerous Channeling-The primary ability that allows you to learn sorcery and channel. I don't really feel a pro/con list applies here. So I will instead skip straight to the ideas.
- Ideas:
Increase the minimum damage when using several channels. I don't mind there being an overlap, but unlike clok, there is no channeling skill, meaning more than one channel is super draining.
Allow the number of channels to affect offensive spell abilites, eg making essence leech/transfer more potent, and making binding tendril last longer.
When in really high levels of sorcery, allow basic channeling and raw casting without a focus, but only 1 channel.
Let sorcery factor into the offensive formula for raw casts/spells?(this could affect the balance in a bad way towards the higher end. I understand and acknowledge that. Sorcerers are not a combat class, even if they are the most offensive of the scholar branches. But it would be nice for the more scholarly among us who don't level up ranged combat to still have a fighting chance against your average infested.)
- Ideas:
- Soul Detection-Kind of sort of like the mummer ability to sense stealthed folk. It could be useful. Don't really know much about it, as I haven't been able to test it much. Will edit this at a later date with the pros and cons.
- Essence transfer-Ditto^