Curse

Dahl · Jan 15, 2007, 06:07 AM // 06:07

I have picked various names for this class. The Hunter, the Hawker, or the Vanator, which is latin for Hunter.

The Hawker uses a Bow, the same kinds of bows as the Ranger does, so if you have an old storm bow laying around uncustomized, you can give it to your hawker right away.

Basically the big thing about this class is its hawk. The hawk does not take up a space on your bar, and acts differently than the ranger's beast skills. Keep reading ahead and you'll see that this is in fact not a copycat profession.

Hawk Mastery - pretty obvious, this raises hawk mastery, meaning your hawk will deal more damage, have stronger attacks, and have higher health and possibly armor.

Gazes - Your hawk gazes at opponents, lowering their defence, attack, gives them degen, and maybe other negative effects. This would be considered a new type of attack, a Gaze. They act like very short temporary hexes but can't be removed with hex removals. Like negative weapon spells almost. Many of the skills would include features like "Your hawk deals +xx..xx damage for its next 5 attacks" or "For 3..5 seconds, all hawks deal +xx..xx damage" or "Target foe affected by this gaze suffers from -5 health degeneration for 4..10 seconds. This Gaze is reapplied each time your hawk uses ( a certain attack skill ).

Agility (PRIMARY attribute)- For each rank in Agility, your Hunter/Hawker/Venator has a 1.3% chance to evade attacks. Skills related to Agility also become stronger with higher Agility.

Now here's the kicker that truly makes this profession stand out....

Marksmanship - Higher damage, crit rate, and stronger attack skills the higher the marksmanship. Doesn't this seem a little too similar to something? That's because not only is this the same attribute as the ranger's marksmanship, they're shared effects. For example, if you were to take H/R, your marksmanship is combined, so you can use both ranger and hawker bow attacks. Let's say you took a H, and you put 13 in Marksmanship. Then you changed your secondary to R, so you were a H/R, the 13 marks would affect both professions' marks, so your ranger bow attacks have 13 marks and your hawker bow attacks have 13 marks.

On the other hand, you could go R/H and use expertise which, although will not work on things like Gazes, will however work on Hawk and bow attack skills from the Hawker profession.

Remember, the skills will be indeed different from the Ranger. In fact, I may even come up with a skill where you can change your view to the hawk and fly around and attack manually with him, although I will stick to anets standards and you will not be able to fly up or down, you would still move the way a human would move, except probably faster. The hawks will not be able to fly past the aggro bubble, but only as far as the radar (heal party/extinguish range). Hawks may not enter towns, so as not to assist runners.

I will add more to this when I come up with it.

Also, please keep in mind that I only chose 4 attributes. One more can be added which may yet turn this in a whole new direction. The combinations for this are insane since you can share with the ranger.

The way I see it, anet just comes out with new professions every time, and it's just the same thing. There are no surprises. This takes everything in a whole new bold direction. It will certainly make a HUGE twist in pvp and make things more interesting.

ALSO, I would like to point out that the examples of skills I gave were just examples simply for understanding the theory behind that attribute. I would like to get AWAY from the traditional skills that are simimlar to this. Perhaps new conditions could be introduced or maybe a gaze that makes an opposing player lose control of their character and act like a henchman for your team for a short period of time but only 1 of these spells can be in effect in a radar range (heal party/extinguish range), and perhaps the character who used the gaze becomes frozen and cannot move or attack in that duration. So it leaves them open to attacks, and they would lose their Agility bonuses. Therefore in a gvg, a couple of hawkers can't just run in and nab the monks or warriors and win instantly, it would leave the hawker completely open to attacks. Perhaps it could be easily interruptable?

In terms of looks... not too sure yet, I'll keep ya posted.

Helcaraxe · Jan 15, 2007, 07:58 AM // 07:58

looks like a ranger
smells like a ranger
I think it is a ranger...

only slightly more... unbalanced

Dahl · Jan 15, 2007, 09:22 AM // 09:22

You're completely missing the point of this profession. The focus here isn't on the hawk, it's on the fact that you can fuse an attribute with another profession. This means exponentially more possibilities, and huge twists in both pvp and pve. This can also give ideas for other fusions of professions. Maybe a profession where it has its own primary attribute, but its 4 average attributes could be something like Water Magic, Curses, Domination Magic, and Channeling Magic. It's the idea of being able to combine professions' attributes that you should be looking at here, not this profession in itself. You miss the point entirely.

Read the whole thing please.

KiyoshiKyokai · Jan 15, 2007, 09:22 AM // 09:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helcaraxe

looks like a ranger
smells like a ranger
I think it is a ranger...

only slightly more... unbalanced

You can't deny the ranger similarities, but there is some good novelty here.

I think you could make this into a good concept with a little tweaking. However, it's not perfect at the moment. A few things for you to consider at your discretion:

- If marksmanship were the Hawker's class weapon skill, why give them any bow attacks at all? Just add their attacks to the ranger cannon, and if people want to wield a bow, they can subclass ranger. Then you can give the hawker their own new weapon.

- At 16 Agility, you have almost a 40% chance to evade attacks. This is just short of having a permanent Aegis on your character. This is extremely broken.

My thought would be to make the hawk itself their weapon, and they can command it to attack at a distance. This would be mechanically similar to a bow or wand, but flavorwise much more interesting.

Part of any good class is its weapon. Because my ritualist can, for example, sub dervish just for the sake of wielding a scythe, that class has value beyond its actual skills. Consider that if you don't give them an original weapon, they lose alot of individuality and subclassing options.

"Gazes" don't really do it for me, but then again, I don't think weapon spells make much sense either. They're all either just spells, enchantments, or hexes in my mind. Giving them a new name just means mesmers won't be as effective against you.

Dahl · Jan 15, 2007, 10:03 AM // 10:03

Sorry, I don't know where my mind was, the evade was supposed to be 1.3% per rank. And the reasoning for the "gaze" was simply the fact that I wanted hexes that were unremovable, nothing more than that. However the main reason I used the word gaze over anything else is the mentality of the enemy.

For example, when you're a monk in a gvg, and you see an axe and hammer warrior coming at you, you know they're full of adrenaline, and you know you're in for a rough ride.

This is why I chose a "gaze" over any other sort of non removable hex. If you see a hawk, or multiple hawks coming at you with their eyes glowing, you know you're gonna be messed up somehow and there's no way to stop it, it will make a person panic. This also applies in pve when an enemy hawker sends a hawk at you.

There is a reason I gave both professions the same attribute, but seperate bow skills. Both ranger and hawker have to be able to function as a standalone class, as well as together. Having 2 pools of skills in 1 attribute is what makes this original.

A big reason I went for the evade attribute though was to make some ugly skills more useful, such as griffon/leviathan sweep. It gives skills that are seemingly completely useless beyond a balance update a chance.