It was more like, give Illium something special that makes them standout that is not Benediction reskinned and makes sense for Illium - Bishop Benediction, Lynn Awaken, Kanna Domain, etc...
Otherwise it would be you are always happy to see an Illium, but never have a reason to go out of your way to search for an Illium in your party. Unless the party iframe becomes strong enough that it has that effect, kind of like how Paladin iframe is a key factor for Paladin (though, Paladin needs to be boosted up massively, not the long iframe, but everything else for party utility).
Flight really is the strongest mechanic you can have for bossing, but it would probably need a right-click to cancel buff mechanic too for party members. Right-click to cancel among the top right corner where the active buffs are.
Or just see if his party iframe with half the cooldown would create that exciting moment to why you want an Illium in the party.
Lara needs her areas way bigger and able to always have 100% uptime on the Manifestation skills. Both the increased range of movement of flight and constant access would help fix the Lara problem, the wind manifestation not always being active is where the problem is at because it can come up at any time which throws you off.
And for Lara no cooldown Manifestation skills allows for all 3 skills to be activated with a single active skill and it will just be based on what elemental dragon vein you are activating - exactly like how Absorb / Summon skills work.
(I really want them to do my River Manifestation rework where Lara can give herself and party members a 4-direction dash [double-tap directional key to use while in the area]. This would massively help her out for solo bossing and give her something special for party bossing in combination of flight - imagine upward dash into flight, or for flash jump classes can now have a dash to quickly dodge boss attacks, for Blaze Wizard + Lara combo, Blaze Wizard would finally be able to reposition while in the air.)
This is a continuation post to both make supports powerful and truly meaningful to the power levels they should be at, but also bring up a lot more classes to properly be classified as a support (as well as more new support jobs to be added to the game).
The game is healthy when there are a lot of supports for a deep pool for player playstyle variety and so that when forming party combinations it becomes a lot easier to find a support player. Strong supports will create a scenario where more people are able to boss that either cannot boss because it is too difficult for them or will not boss because the mechanics of the fight is too much for them, without the need to reduce the boss' difficulty for those that still seek a good challenge.
Illium historically and currently is one of the most overlooked jobs in the entire game, I don't know if most players even know he even exists.
Illium has an insane kit for bossing, great mobbing, and decent support, but he kind of just exists and does not really have a place in the game that others cannot both fulfill and do better than him. The other part to low playability is that people just do not gel well with his playstyle, this does not need to change, but we can make him a lot more desirable and exciting for party play which in turn gives more awareness of the job instead of being one of the forgotten.
So we are going to ramp up his support ability and give him even more tools and really give this job his well overdo lovings that he needs! Support Category: Healer-Protector
Lucent Brands:
System Change:
Party members are now always able to receive Lucent Brands no matter what instead of only during the Resonate Wings skill.
This was a weird condition that both does not need to be here and should have never been here. Let Illium be able to always assist the party and not conditionally assist the party!
Crystal Skill - Wings of Glory:
Modified:
While Illium is flying, all party members in the same map will also gain flight.
This would be both a very fun and exciting ability that sets Illium apart from all other jobs while being an unique support ability. All party members gain the same full movement speed flight that Illium receives and able to freely use most of their skills (things like jumping skills would be disabled in this state) while having the very strong movement state of being able to fly around!
This would need to be accompanied by a right-click to cancel buff mechanic for party members so that allies have a way to cancel the flight effect early if so desired.
Crystal Skill - Resonance:
Reworked and Buffed:
Toggle: Consume MP per second to create a beam of light between Illium and the Elder Crystal, healing for 20% HP per second and granting a stack of Lucent Brand for himself and struck party members.
To be clear, this no longer has a cooldown nor is linked to Crystal Charge in any way, shape, or form. This is simply an always on-demand toggle allowing Illium to always be able to heal party members at the cost of consuming MP every second while active.
Longinus Spear:
Modified:
In addition to what it already does, will now apply a buff to struck party members for 5 seconds allowing healing done from Crystal Skill - Resonance to ignore all anti-healing, does not apply to self.
Crystalline Bulwark:
Buffed:
Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds from 180 seconds.
Maybe if we cut the party invincibility skill's cooldown in half would be enough to make Illium finally desirable.
Crystalline Spirit:
Modified:
When party members are near a Crystalline Spirit, they take 5% less damage, including from attacks that deal % HP damage, up to 10% less damage when standing near two Crystalline Spirits.
Crystal Gate:
Modified and Slightly Adjusted:
Party members can now use the gates too to teleport between them.
Recharge time to use the gate again is applied to the character itself rather than to the gate itself.
Just a little bit of added cool utility Illium can provide. The gate usage cooldown being applied to the character rather than to the gate is both to prevent grief scenario, but most importantly to not decrease the play experience on the Illium player to what they are used to currently.
To start, this would need to be done with a huge Final Damage passive buff to Heroic Worlds because 1 problem with the original HP values of Reboot monsters is that we did not have the damage to properly kill the extremely tanky monsters.
The game was way more fun with the monsters having way more HP and EXP, and then fighting monsters near your level than way above it. I am also asking for the original HP scaling the monsters once had and not the reduced HP value that happened years later. Again this needs to be accompanied with a huge Heroic Worlds' Final Damage passive buff or the monsters will end up being unkillable, especially when you reach Grandis area monsters.
The other thing is the character to monster level final damage formula to be partially reverted as such:
~ Character levels 1-199 will be the same to how Reboot had it.
~ Character levels 200 and above will be the same to how it is currently since the Arcane River begins a linear path forward and so that characters can still properly do bosses without worrying about their level as much.
Why do this?
1: Because it created a more enjoyable mobbing experience at all levels, but especially created a better new player experience for levels 1-200 with making every map equally viable to each other allowing the player to explore and create their own journey (story).
2: Because with Interactive Worlds getting easy access to Frenzy Totem spawn, there will be a massive difference in leveling speeds between Interactive and Heroic.
The greatly increased EXP that Reboot monsters had will make it where Heroic Worlds can level at a good pace while offering a completely different and unique experience to how Interactive Worlds players are training.
Most importantly, increase EXP gain without one world type being better than the other, and instead just offers an unique and different experience to each other. One has the abundance of weak monsters while the other has a few super powerful monsters that gives a lot better rewards per monster kill. Separate note for Final Damage passive buff for Heroic Worlds:
Something along the lines of:
~ Final Damage changed to +1% every 2 levels, no level limit (for whenever a level cap increase happens). This is similar to how it used to be, but Final Damage instead of Damage%.
~ Add on a base of +10% Final Damage at level 1. This is mostly important for new players and new players are important for long term game growth.
~ Add on every 50 levels, gain an additional +5% Final Damage, all the way to level 300. As the monsters exponentially get tankier and tankier, this will help keep the monsters killable.
~ All of this will be additive on itself for clarity, i.e. level 250 will grant a total of 160% increased Final Damage.
~ This Final Damage value, even at level 300, is still under shooting how much damage end game Interactive Worlds players can have. Better to undershoot now so we never need to nerf it later. If more damage is ever needed in the future to clear future bosses, either the passive can be buffed further or can come up with another more creative solution, keeping in mind of always keeping Interactive and Heroic Worlds distinct and different to each other.
If you can somehow make the system work with the same cubes and work out in an intuitive way, then that would be better than just adding in bonus potentials. I cannot see a world where this just does not add an unnecessary annoyance, but it would be better than adding in bonus cubes.
Expanding on the familiar badges to work more like equipment has no additional learnings than just learning about potentials in the first place or learning about the familiar system. The only learnings here is knowing that the familiar badges have different potential lines than all of the other equipment, at least the familiar badges are all in a different place making it more intuitive.
I don't really like familiars and legion artifact being in the game, but we stuck with them now so make the best out of them.
Legion Artifact has the benefit of at least being a simple system and 99% passive progression so it is not that bad, but keep adding things that are 99% passive and not 100% passive adds up over time and creates an over design bloat still. There is a lot worse you can do than Legion Artifact.
Familiars however is a mess of a system that needs a rework. Though the concept of capturing monsters to summon alongside and fight with you is cool, this has a pokemon aspect to it and can be done in a much better way, while being very unique and different to pokemon.
Been playing Maple Soul Hero on MapleStory Worlds and an aspect to that is you have up to 6 weapons equipped which are actually summons that fight for you, taking a page from this into a Familiar System rework could be cool.
~ Like taking familiars, reducing the potential down to 1, and can have 6 of them out at a time - where the type of monster that it is will have a special "active" skill it uses (it is fully passive for the user) alongside 1 line of potential you can tier up and roll for (or keep 2 lines, but the second line is utility-based only) - allowing for more creative skills for the familiars and have "team-building" combination by the player.
~ With that, familiar badges could be removed outright. Instead you just have a familiar codex to flip through the pages and equip the familiars that you "captured" to build your team, with familiar cards to tier up and roll their potential lines in the same way cubes work - Mystical, Hard, Solid, Glowing, and Bright Cards - or only one (two, the other will do the same thing, but be more expensive and can choose between current or new potential) card can roll for lines.
- While gathering the same card and using other consumable cards will give that familiar exp - when it levels up its "active" skill will get stronger and at key levels will rank up for better potential lines, until it reaches Legendary Rank, but can still level up more until it reaches its level cap.
For damage output for Heroic, the best solution is just to buff and/or change into a straight buff for the Heroic World Passive.
This post was actually to introduce more fun and creative utility lines more than anything, and not actually be like bonus potentials, but rather the Heroic World's version of bonus potentials. Updated the post with examples towards the direction I was thinking of.
For more damage, they should only buff the final damage passive. This is the simplest and easiest thing to do, and has the most control for balancing the game since you know exactly how much more damage everyone will do, making it impossible for anyone to get out of line.
Heroic Worlds and Interactive Worlds should be different to each other.
