Wyrm Master Imp Suggestion

[Lychwood]

[RaelCleap]

[kiwimage]

There's more to balance than just are ghouls better than hounds.
(Though I'd say they are. Ghouls are awesome.) But you have to compare classes overall.

A big drawback for Liches is no travel skill. And SM isn't really good in a faction that is slow on the healing. #HealTheLich #UnlivesMatter
Mr Scavvy is my lich. Keeping that many ghouls is currently a full time job. There is no ap to spare for anything else.
I wasn't hunting. You where just near a leyline I was wanting to tap for much needed mp.

And in this combat I was an active PM against an inactive player. I stepped in, stepped away, judged the situation, checked pets for AP/HP/MP, figured I had the numbers (and saw corpses I could raise) and stepped back for the kill. PMs aren't invincible. I'd not expect Mr Scavvy to survive 24hrs outside of the stronghold. Especially just standing about outside. Also you had no mundane armour so the ghouls did full 10 slashing to you.

As for xp gain.
My lich is gaining xp slower than my seraph and much much slower than conduit. Conduit has more than double the xp.
But in the end I suppose that too is some kind of balance. Pet Masters can rack up pretty good kill stats. And be instadeath to a lot of characters.

All that said ghouls are awesome at pet-pet combat. I generally back my lich against any WM or LS. Vampiric attack keeps the ghouls in the fight for longer.

Removing the self healing from ghouls would neuter them against judgemasters.
At the moment 1:1 ghoul vs judgemaster. The judgemaster wins.
As it is I feel comfortable taking on a LS with 1.5 ghouls to judgemasters.
Which is about what I tend to encounter. My ghoul horde tends to have the necessary edge in numbers. And regardless I carry lots of MP pots just in case. And attacking is easier than defending. There have been times I've figured it's a no go. Meh. Move on.

Remove the self healing and it'd be much harder. It's a really unnecessary nerf.

I haven't played a WM yet but having played both Lightspeaker and Lich. I'd say at the moment they at least are both balanced with respect to one and other. Neither needs changing.

Most of last breath my LS had a comparable if not superior horde to my lich. LS horde was stable and very easy to maintain.~12J+1W+4S. Could pump them up and leave them for days. And it was self sustained. No relying on other players. Lich horde strength was all over the place. 7-20+ghouls. And I had to log in all the time. Mostly due to having to do most of it by myself. SM is no fun if you have to do the healing too.

[SkullFace]

Give the default 30 CP Imp the Impish Mischief abilities and remove that ability from the WM tree. Keep Interpose Thrall as 60 CP child skill. Add another 60 CP child skill called Explosive Mischief (each Imp death results in Explosive Murder effect (numbers toned up or down as appropriate) and death of WM causes all Imps to explode simultaneously). Job done.
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Cheers,

Skull Face

[RaelCleap]

[Sac]

A little late to this conversation but here goes...

I had the full Imp tree in B3 and did not even consider it as an option for B3.5.

My plan was to raid with half a dozen or so imps (in addition to wyrm and hounds) and they would do nice things like damage armour, steal MP so I could rejuvenate wounded pets and kill anyone that went invisible. They would also keep me alive a lot longer on SH defence. Great in theory, terrible in practice.

1. Their hit-rate is so shit 2/3 of their MP is burnt on misses

2. If they do hit they do such poor damage the target barely notices

3. Their hit-rate combined with the 0-4 MP theft (which the RNG seems to like leaning toward the 0 end of) adds up to not even enough MP stolen from a SH full of targets to rejuv one hound.

4. If they do ever find anyone invisible point 1 + point 2 above combine to result in the invisible person still being alive after a fistful of imps have despawned due to running out of MP.

5. With such low HP they can be one-shotted by anyone who can do some decent damage (e.g.- gun wiz or VW). Therefore on defence using Interpose Thrall they are worth 1 AP per imp. So even if you want to go bat-shit-crazy and summon as many imps as you can for defence (sayyyyy 15-20 after a bit of DHing) you've only cost a raid that many more AP.... and in doing so cost your faction a semi-reasonable pet-shield because you don't have any hounds up.

So the upshot of my experience with imps is they either burn through their MP with sweet-feck-all return for the investment or are such an insignificant speed-bump for a raid to overcome that they barely notice they're there anyway.

How to fix them???

Something along the lines of:
- slightly increased to-hit
- 2-4 MP stealing bracket
- maybe instead of armour degradation, apply -soak (actually, if this was the case, leave the to-hit as it is)
- something to make Interpose actually useful, although I'm not sure increased HPs is the answer
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