Oxlazr
06-13-2017, 02:34 AM
http://i.imgur.com/7XPGr1R.png
Above image for reference. This is my no-death/no-group/no-trade character, leveling to 40 took a few evenings. For context, I was planning on posting a feedback thread once I hit 50 or if I died, but as it stands I feel like I can comfortably hit 50 with minimal risk of dying, and I'm not likely to pick up any more relevant feedback during that time, so I'm going to do that.. some other time, and just go ahead and post this feedback now.
Rabbit Specific
Let's start with a rundown of the abilities:
Rabbit Scratch
There isn't much to say about this. The modifiers it has are.. underwhelming, but so is the ability itself. It's about as standard as any spammable combat refresher ability goes. I don't think it needs any changes, but it's not exactly noteworthy.
Thump
This deals.. decent damage, though it's certainly subpar damage. What makes this skill interesting is its effects - however, none of the effects are particularly useful. The built in movement slow doesn't seem to do a lot - monsters that flee still cause the same amount of issues they normally would, and most any other enemy won't be moving around enough for a 25% movement reduction to be noticeable.
That said, I'd imagine it's fantastically useful for PvP, but I don't think bunnies will ever see their way into the competitive PvP environment that PG is (not) cultivating.
The modifiers I've seen/used for it are equally underwhelming. Knockback is mildly useful in niche situations, but when you've clearly won a fight it's a hindrance and a modifier I'd rather avoid. Taking bonus damage from Cold Attacks is very specific in purpose, and (at level 40) a 6% increase is somewhat trivial - especially if you've got to go into melee range to enable that effect.
The crushing damage is relevant, and I'll come back to this, but Bun-Fu Kick is definitely the better option.
Overall, Thump doesn't have enough impact for a Core Attack.
Bun-Fu Kick
This skill, on the other hand, is fantastic. It deals a large amount of initial damage, and the delayed damage is tremendous. It scales with a lot of modifiers - and most of them seem to float around the 36% mark, with other modifiers increasing the flat delayed damage by a fixed amount. Coupled with the base damage increases of a helmet/necklace, this skill scales unreasonably well.
Combine this skill with a modifier available to Hare Dash (to be discussed), and we've a fantastic little combo that does both reliable and large amounts of damage.
I wouldn't say this skill is overpowered, rather it's in exactly the right spot.
Rabbit's Foot
My current rank provides 20% melee evasion, that's fair-decent for a group buff, honestly. Rabbit cooldowns work well; you can easily weave this move into your regular rotation for a useful buff. Initial ranks seemed underwhelming, but I definitely envision this move to be a good one.
It's probably worth mentioning that while it technically affects everyone in the group, it's mostly the tank that'll benefit from the effect, so I don't feel it's drastically overpowered in any capacity.
That said, it's modifiers basically suck. Burst Evasion is nice, but it's unreliable at the rates you're provided. 2-4% bonus experience gain is trivial, and, at max level, completely irrelevant.
For example, you could double the effects of the modifiers for this ability, and you'd still be iffy about using them.
I personally think the bonus experience factor is nice, but may be better suited to a passive aura for rabbits rather than an activated effect; it's a wasted modifier slot and will nearly always be cycled off as soon as possible.
Hare Dash
Useful utility spell that helps you both engage and disengage - the modifier that increases your next crushing attack by X is fantastic, as you can charge into battle and perform a Bun-Fu Kick for pretty decent damage; it's a lot of fun, but certainly not overpowered.
Play Dead
Game breaking bug aside (which I reported, and replaced as soon as I could), it's a pretty good move to have, especially given the circumstances under which I was playing.
One suggestion though - when you stand back up and the enemies are passive, you can attack one and any other enemies affected will continue to ignore you; it may be better that they see their friend being attacked by the no-longer-dead bunny and help them.
I won't discuss the modifiers as right now they're broken - with one exception: The bonus Nice Attack damage on Play Dead seems to defy the ability's purpose.
Carrot Power
I don't have a lot to say about this. I was using psychology, and I did not need the healing this spell provided. Having an ability rely on a consumable isn't great, though I do appreciate you can trade other vegetables for snacks which seem to count as a carrot.
This ability just wasn't relevant to my build, so I can't comment on its usefulness. I'd compare it to "Chew Cud", though, and in this case I feel like the cost to use it may be too high to ever justify a place on your action bars.
Long Ear
Again, I didn't get much use from this. I do like the intention, though; a bunny should be able to slide into places unknown, but the design is obviously to avoid combat, but it occupies a slot on your combat bar - for this reason, any modifiers it gets are always going to be irrelevant on your primary gear set. The most common mod, as I recall, was projectile evasion - again, this is too niche a modifier for too niche a skill to ever be more than reroll fodder.
Additionally, the 10 second duration and 30 second cooldown really limits how practical this ability can be.
Snow Hare Mode
Didn't really get a chance to use this (wasn't going to risk Kur until I'm ready - and this involves finding thousands of pieces of Raw Meat for Spot to unlock basic camp fires) - anyway, it's pretty clear what the purpose of it is.
I've two minor problems with the ability's design:
1) Low level ranks of this ability don't need to exist. You're not likely to encounter the cold mechanic until level 30, but there seems to be versions of this ability available well before that.
2) It lasts 5 minutes with a 1 second cooldown - this seems frivolous. It should at least last 30 minutes, with that 1 second cooldown, but ideally, this effect should just be a passive effect for rabbits given... well, the ability is basically an activated passive effect that you click once every 5 minutes in the cold; it just seems like ability clutter.
Conclusions: Overall, rabbit is better than others seem to give it credit for. It's pretty good, one of the easier classes I've leveled, with lots of utility which makes avoiding death surprisingly easy. I think Thump could be redesigned, and Rabbit's Foot tweaked; all other abilities seem to be in a good spot (though overall, there's a lack of ability options - given that it was just created recently this is understandable, though).
Strangely enough, though, I think it may be too powerful, considering you're playing a rabbit, one wouldn't expect to be such an efficient killing machine - even the skill's description seems to indicate that. As it stands, it's much more viable than I believe it should be (though this is a personal remark).
Other Notes regarding Rabbits:
1) Cinnamon is a bit reluctant to trade; even at the lowest tier of garden vegetables, cabbage, (he?) won't trade even at close friends (I think I was at that rank, anyway). Given Carrots require 50 gardening, I don't think there's any viable way for a new player to ever utilise Carrot Power.
2) Having a bunny-specific modifier that increases movement speed out of combat again feels like a dead roll; it would be nice if this were another passive bunny effect from leveling; having a set of gear purely for movement bonuses isn't particularly fun.
Some Scattered Suggestions
1) I apologise in advance if this is wrong, as I recently learned you can get first-aid from Norbert, but I wonder if there's any animal-friendly way to level up endurance - currently, you need both lumber (or an excessive amount of a specific gem, obsidian), to gain sufficient favour with a an NPC who won't talk to animals to trade a resource you can't get as an animal to unlock endurance requirements. Please tell me if there's an alternative, because as it stands this just plain sucks for anyone who wants to play an animal full-time.
--> For reference, Ravana gear requires 60 endurance.
2) Totemic Infusion is meant to be newbie friendly, as I understand, but I think both the precursors to unlock it and level it are way too.. restrictive.
Leveling Specific Feedback:
So just a rough outline of where I went to level:
1-15 - Outside the crypt.
10-20 - South Serbule Kill-Quests.
20-30 - Etibule Kill-Quests.
30-33 - Goblin Dungeon Entrance
33-40 - Wintercourt Fae, Sunvale Ruins.
40-50 - Will probably just farm WC Fae.
I think there's a serious content gap in the level 20 - 30 range, also, levels 10-15 are too fast while levels 15-20 seem to be too slow. 20-30 is okay, but there's currently no alternatives to the Goblin Dungeon in terms of level 30 gear (that I could find) - playing solo, you're basically confined to the entrance of the goblin dungeon trying to scrape together what kills you can to find level 30 equipment to use.
I'm hoping South Serbule's update will address this, but I figured I'd mention it.
Once you can kill Winter Fae, their equipment is just ridiculous. You can use the white items right away, which have a tremendous amount of armour - coupled with modifiers at level 40, I don't see any problem for hardcore players leveling 40-50, hell, even 60, with this equipment (again, see screenshot - look at all that armour).
At the very least I think the white wintercourt armour should at least have an endurance requirement of 40 on it.
However, speaking of level requirements, it might be useful for items to instead roll a level range rather than having a set requirement (i.e. level 30 equipment can be used from levels 25-30 instead); right now, you're usually hoarding equipment to use as soon as you hit a particular level, and when you do, there's a huge powerspike in your character, rather than a progressive one.
If you can just farm Wintercourt gear, why would you bother with things like Yeti Cave and Kur Tower? The hardcore tag in this instance is a very small price to pay for such a tremendous amount of easily obtained "armour" (as in, it has a lot of armour).
As a side note, South Serb no longer lags (FPS) for me.
More Scattered and Less Relevant Ideas & Suggestions:
Rabbit Specific:
- Metabolism should be lower for smaller animals.
- Bunnies should have access to a jumping skill, that levels when you jump.
- Rabbits should have a larger emphasis on foraging.
- Per above, rabbits should move quicker out of combat passively, and grant bonus experience to nearby players passively.
- Reduced aggro radius could also be a passive effect.
- Bunnies could stand to be a lot weaker in combat and more of a challenge/joke build; they're far too good right now!
- Animal-specific diets should have more emphasis.
--> Hell, bunnies should forgo cash all together and trade entirely in carrots.
- Bunnies could be more restricted in what they can do given their smaller size.
- Bunnies could fit into the entrance to the Mushroom cave.
- Bunnies should not cause enemies to "call for help" (if they can't defeat a rabbit, there's no hope for them).
- Play Dead should reduce rage (killing rabbits is very soothing, after all).
- Play Dead should rarely give dying experience.
- Rabbits should not be able to use psychology (especially Cause Terror).
Animal Specific
- Move Animal Town out of Sunvale; it's not a good place for players to gather and collaborate, and the camp isn't accessible to lower level players very easily, but contains a lot of fun and flavour for animal players. I think it'd be better placed in South Serbule.
- Per above, animal diets would make playing an animal a little less mundane, especially if they don't need to rely on gourmand or humanoid foods for fighting.
- Animals could use a bit more variety in terms of "life-skills" and features to break up the leveling process. I'd probably say one unique to each animal form, then a couple that all animals can do. At the moment, it's just murder & repeat, plus you can't craft or interact with half the game because reasons.
- Per the above, I'm still hoping to see animals detached from the economy and instead deal in things like grass and carrots, especially when it comes to leveling new skills; having to make friends with various humanoids to make enough cash to train abilities is kinda.. eh, that's the sort of thing I'd personally like to get away from on my animal-characters.
- I'm personally against allowing access to community storage for animal players, as it's basically another incentive to constantly decurse to unlock additional storage slots.
Other Suggestions
- South Serbule could use a Marna-like shop.
- Inherent Vulnerability should be utilised; I figure it will be when it comes to Fae and such, but I'd still like if various animal forms were innately weaker/stronger against certain damage types, much like the enemies you face.
- For the future, having a "lootable gravestone" for permanent death characters would be pretty, um, soul-crushingly fun?
- Sunvale's brightness during the day could really be toned back; it's lovely at night, but at day, it's almost blinding.
- An option to automatically use ctrl+4 if you hit 4 when your normal 4 is on cooldown, for example, would be a handy little feature.
Bugs
- There's that major bug I won't mention here.
- There's also the minor bug: Long-Ear's icon is incorrect.
- Finally, if you level up Compassion to level 20, but haven't died, you won't unlock Dying as a skill; not sure if this is intentional.
tl;dr - rabbits r ok
Above image for reference. This is my no-death/no-group/no-trade character, leveling to 40 took a few evenings. For context, I was planning on posting a feedback thread once I hit 50 or if I died, but as it stands I feel like I can comfortably hit 50 with minimal risk of dying, and I'm not likely to pick up any more relevant feedback during that time, so I'm going to do that.. some other time, and just go ahead and post this feedback now.
Rabbit Specific
Let's start with a rundown of the abilities:
Rabbit Scratch
There isn't much to say about this. The modifiers it has are.. underwhelming, but so is the ability itself. It's about as standard as any spammable combat refresher ability goes. I don't think it needs any changes, but it's not exactly noteworthy.
Thump
This deals.. decent damage, though it's certainly subpar damage. What makes this skill interesting is its effects - however, none of the effects are particularly useful. The built in movement slow doesn't seem to do a lot - monsters that flee still cause the same amount of issues they normally would, and most any other enemy won't be moving around enough for a 25% movement reduction to be noticeable.
That said, I'd imagine it's fantastically useful for PvP, but I don't think bunnies will ever see their way into the competitive PvP environment that PG is (not) cultivating.
The modifiers I've seen/used for it are equally underwhelming. Knockback is mildly useful in niche situations, but when you've clearly won a fight it's a hindrance and a modifier I'd rather avoid. Taking bonus damage from Cold Attacks is very specific in purpose, and (at level 40) a 6% increase is somewhat trivial - especially if you've got to go into melee range to enable that effect.
The crushing damage is relevant, and I'll come back to this, but Bun-Fu Kick is definitely the better option.
Overall, Thump doesn't have enough impact for a Core Attack.
Bun-Fu Kick
This skill, on the other hand, is fantastic. It deals a large amount of initial damage, and the delayed damage is tremendous. It scales with a lot of modifiers - and most of them seem to float around the 36% mark, with other modifiers increasing the flat delayed damage by a fixed amount. Coupled with the base damage increases of a helmet/necklace, this skill scales unreasonably well.
Combine this skill with a modifier available to Hare Dash (to be discussed), and we've a fantastic little combo that does both reliable and large amounts of damage.
I wouldn't say this skill is overpowered, rather it's in exactly the right spot.
Rabbit's Foot
My current rank provides 20% melee evasion, that's fair-decent for a group buff, honestly. Rabbit cooldowns work well; you can easily weave this move into your regular rotation for a useful buff. Initial ranks seemed underwhelming, but I definitely envision this move to be a good one.
It's probably worth mentioning that while it technically affects everyone in the group, it's mostly the tank that'll benefit from the effect, so I don't feel it's drastically overpowered in any capacity.
That said, it's modifiers basically suck. Burst Evasion is nice, but it's unreliable at the rates you're provided. 2-4% bonus experience gain is trivial, and, at max level, completely irrelevant.
For example, you could double the effects of the modifiers for this ability, and you'd still be iffy about using them.
I personally think the bonus experience factor is nice, but may be better suited to a passive aura for rabbits rather than an activated effect; it's a wasted modifier slot and will nearly always be cycled off as soon as possible.
Hare Dash
Useful utility spell that helps you both engage and disengage - the modifier that increases your next crushing attack by X is fantastic, as you can charge into battle and perform a Bun-Fu Kick for pretty decent damage; it's a lot of fun, but certainly not overpowered.
Play Dead
Game breaking bug aside (which I reported, and replaced as soon as I could), it's a pretty good move to have, especially given the circumstances under which I was playing.
One suggestion though - when you stand back up and the enemies are passive, you can attack one and any other enemies affected will continue to ignore you; it may be better that they see their friend being attacked by the no-longer-dead bunny and help them.
I won't discuss the modifiers as right now they're broken - with one exception: The bonus Nice Attack damage on Play Dead seems to defy the ability's purpose.
Carrot Power
I don't have a lot to say about this. I was using psychology, and I did not need the healing this spell provided. Having an ability rely on a consumable isn't great, though I do appreciate you can trade other vegetables for snacks which seem to count as a carrot.
This ability just wasn't relevant to my build, so I can't comment on its usefulness. I'd compare it to "Chew Cud", though, and in this case I feel like the cost to use it may be too high to ever justify a place on your action bars.
Long Ear
Again, I didn't get much use from this. I do like the intention, though; a bunny should be able to slide into places unknown, but the design is obviously to avoid combat, but it occupies a slot on your combat bar - for this reason, any modifiers it gets are always going to be irrelevant on your primary gear set. The most common mod, as I recall, was projectile evasion - again, this is too niche a modifier for too niche a skill to ever be more than reroll fodder.
Additionally, the 10 second duration and 30 second cooldown really limits how practical this ability can be.
Snow Hare Mode
Didn't really get a chance to use this (wasn't going to risk Kur until I'm ready - and this involves finding thousands of pieces of Raw Meat for Spot to unlock basic camp fires) - anyway, it's pretty clear what the purpose of it is.
I've two minor problems with the ability's design:
1) Low level ranks of this ability don't need to exist. You're not likely to encounter the cold mechanic until level 30, but there seems to be versions of this ability available well before that.
2) It lasts 5 minutes with a 1 second cooldown - this seems frivolous. It should at least last 30 minutes, with that 1 second cooldown, but ideally, this effect should just be a passive effect for rabbits given... well, the ability is basically an activated passive effect that you click once every 5 minutes in the cold; it just seems like ability clutter.
Conclusions: Overall, rabbit is better than others seem to give it credit for. It's pretty good, one of the easier classes I've leveled, with lots of utility which makes avoiding death surprisingly easy. I think Thump could be redesigned, and Rabbit's Foot tweaked; all other abilities seem to be in a good spot (though overall, there's a lack of ability options - given that it was just created recently this is understandable, though).
Strangely enough, though, I think it may be too powerful, considering you're playing a rabbit, one wouldn't expect to be such an efficient killing machine - even the skill's description seems to indicate that. As it stands, it's much more viable than I believe it should be (though this is a personal remark).
Other Notes regarding Rabbits:
1) Cinnamon is a bit reluctant to trade; even at the lowest tier of garden vegetables, cabbage, (he?) won't trade even at close friends (I think I was at that rank, anyway). Given Carrots require 50 gardening, I don't think there's any viable way for a new player to ever utilise Carrot Power.
2) Having a bunny-specific modifier that increases movement speed out of combat again feels like a dead roll; it would be nice if this were another passive bunny effect from leveling; having a set of gear purely for movement bonuses isn't particularly fun.
Some Scattered Suggestions
1) I apologise in advance if this is wrong, as I recently learned you can get first-aid from Norbert, but I wonder if there's any animal-friendly way to level up endurance - currently, you need both lumber (or an excessive amount of a specific gem, obsidian), to gain sufficient favour with a an NPC who won't talk to animals to trade a resource you can't get as an animal to unlock endurance requirements. Please tell me if there's an alternative, because as it stands this just plain sucks for anyone who wants to play an animal full-time.
--> For reference, Ravana gear requires 60 endurance.
2) Totemic Infusion is meant to be newbie friendly, as I understand, but I think both the precursors to unlock it and level it are way too.. restrictive.
Leveling Specific Feedback:
So just a rough outline of where I went to level:
1-15 - Outside the crypt.
10-20 - South Serbule Kill-Quests.
20-30 - Etibule Kill-Quests.
30-33 - Goblin Dungeon Entrance
33-40 - Wintercourt Fae, Sunvale Ruins.
40-50 - Will probably just farm WC Fae.
I think there's a serious content gap in the level 20 - 30 range, also, levels 10-15 are too fast while levels 15-20 seem to be too slow. 20-30 is okay, but there's currently no alternatives to the Goblin Dungeon in terms of level 30 gear (that I could find) - playing solo, you're basically confined to the entrance of the goblin dungeon trying to scrape together what kills you can to find level 30 equipment to use.
I'm hoping South Serbule's update will address this, but I figured I'd mention it.
Once you can kill Winter Fae, their equipment is just ridiculous. You can use the white items right away, which have a tremendous amount of armour - coupled with modifiers at level 40, I don't see any problem for hardcore players leveling 40-50, hell, even 60, with this equipment (again, see screenshot - look at all that armour).
At the very least I think the white wintercourt armour should at least have an endurance requirement of 40 on it.
However, speaking of level requirements, it might be useful for items to instead roll a level range rather than having a set requirement (i.e. level 30 equipment can be used from levels 25-30 instead); right now, you're usually hoarding equipment to use as soon as you hit a particular level, and when you do, there's a huge powerspike in your character, rather than a progressive one.
If you can just farm Wintercourt gear, why would you bother with things like Yeti Cave and Kur Tower? The hardcore tag in this instance is a very small price to pay for such a tremendous amount of easily obtained "armour" (as in, it has a lot of armour).
As a side note, South Serb no longer lags (FPS) for me.
More Scattered and Less Relevant Ideas & Suggestions:
Rabbit Specific:
- Metabolism should be lower for smaller animals.
- Bunnies should have access to a jumping skill, that levels when you jump.
- Rabbits should have a larger emphasis on foraging.
- Per above, rabbits should move quicker out of combat passively, and grant bonus experience to nearby players passively.
- Reduced aggro radius could also be a passive effect.
- Bunnies could stand to be a lot weaker in combat and more of a challenge/joke build; they're far too good right now!
- Animal-specific diets should have more emphasis.
--> Hell, bunnies should forgo cash all together and trade entirely in carrots.
- Bunnies could be more restricted in what they can do given their smaller size.
- Bunnies could fit into the entrance to the Mushroom cave.
- Bunnies should not cause enemies to "call for help" (if they can't defeat a rabbit, there's no hope for them).
- Play Dead should reduce rage (killing rabbits is very soothing, after all).
- Play Dead should rarely give dying experience.
- Rabbits should not be able to use psychology (especially Cause Terror).
Animal Specific
- Move Animal Town out of Sunvale; it's not a good place for players to gather and collaborate, and the camp isn't accessible to lower level players very easily, but contains a lot of fun and flavour for animal players. I think it'd be better placed in South Serbule.
- Per above, animal diets would make playing an animal a little less mundane, especially if they don't need to rely on gourmand or humanoid foods for fighting.
- Animals could use a bit more variety in terms of "life-skills" and features to break up the leveling process. I'd probably say one unique to each animal form, then a couple that all animals can do. At the moment, it's just murder & repeat, plus you can't craft or interact with half the game because reasons.
- Per the above, I'm still hoping to see animals detached from the economy and instead deal in things like grass and carrots, especially when it comes to leveling new skills; having to make friends with various humanoids to make enough cash to train abilities is kinda.. eh, that's the sort of thing I'd personally like to get away from on my animal-characters.
- I'm personally against allowing access to community storage for animal players, as it's basically another incentive to constantly decurse to unlock additional storage slots.
Other Suggestions
- South Serbule could use a Marna-like shop.
- Inherent Vulnerability should be utilised; I figure it will be when it comes to Fae and such, but I'd still like if various animal forms were innately weaker/stronger against certain damage types, much like the enemies you face.
- For the future, having a "lootable gravestone" for permanent death characters would be pretty, um, soul-crushingly fun?
- Sunvale's brightness during the day could really be toned back; it's lovely at night, but at day, it's almost blinding.
- An option to automatically use ctrl+4 if you hit 4 when your normal 4 is on cooldown, for example, would be a handy little feature.
Bugs
- There's that major bug I won't mention here.
- There's also the minor bug: Long-Ear's icon is incorrect.
- Finally, if you level up Compassion to level 20, but haven't died, you won't unlock Dying as a skill; not sure if this is intentional.
tl;dr - rabbits r ok