Curse

Shadowmere · Dec 05, 2008, 10:26 PM // 22:26

Suggested change:

Sacrifice cost: 10% | Energy Cost: 15 | Casting time: 1s | Recharge: 30s
Description: All but target minion dies, for 20 seconds that minion has +5-12-18 health regeneration and deals +5-17-25 damage. If that minion is elite it also moves and attacks 20% faster.

Explanation:
Back in september Order of Undeath was changed to a very similar functionality to this, while it made the elite viable in pvp and offered new ways ot use minions it greatly upset the PvE community as Order of Undeath is one of the most useful elite skills for a PvE Minion Master. And so the change was quickly reverted.

This suggested change would bring back what was intended with that change to Order of Undeath and also make both Verata's Sacrifice and the elite minion Flesh Golem more appealing and useful in all areas of play.

As it stands both of these skills are sub-par with the current Verata's Sacrifice being outclassed by Blood of the master and other forms of minion healing.

Additionally the Flesh Golem while a very strong minion in it's own right suffers from a slow attack rate and more effective elites for most uses of minions. (Order of Undeath is better for causing damage with minions, Aura of the Lich is better for maintaining a minion wall, and Jagged Bones is more useful for Minion Bombing)

The change to Order of Undeath in september while upsetting for many at first actually proved to be a unique way to use minions, by buffing one single minion instead of a large number of them. In a sense this went against the standard strength in numbers philosophy of most minion tactics but it proved very useful as the buffed minion often had more damage buffs stacked on it creating a very potent damage dealer. The proposed change to Verata's Sacrifice here would both make the skill more useful but also play well with the Felsh Golem as you're always limited to one Flesh Golem anyways.

For refrence here's the consice description of Order of Undeath during it's change.

Quote:

All but one of your minions die. If that minion is non-Elite, it deals +5..30 more damage, has +5..20 Health regeneration, and attacks 33% faster (20 seconds).

Also the current description of verata's sacrifice
[Verata's Sacrifice]

The change to Order of Undeath in september while upsetting for many at first actually proved to be a unique way to use minions, by buffing one single minion instead of a large number of them. In a sense this went against the standard strength in numbers philosophy of most minion tactics but it proved very useful as the buffed minion often had more damage buffs stacked on it creating a very potent damage dealer. The proposed change to Verata's Sacrifice here would both make the skill more useful but also play well with the Felsh Golem as you're always limited to one Flesh Golem anyways.

Edit: Added target minion clause to the description.

Owik Gall · Dec 05, 2008, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Put Target minion on the description so that way the one you want is spared. Otherwise, I think this would be a good skill. Well, it'll be fun at least.

Luminarus · Dec 05, 2008, 10:50 PM // 22:50

If this was left as unelite it would be overpowered. The change to OOU was bad because OOU is used otherwise... however changing a non elite is a worse idea imo. Jagged bonus up 2 or 3 minions, veratas sacrificice, u still have 2 -4 minions, depending on number of jagged bones minions, and the target, which is now as powerful, if not more powerful then a flesh golem. Also, do you qualify jagged minions as elite?

Konig Des Todes · Dec 06, 2008, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Add the "target minion" like Owik said, and that before death all enchantments are stripped from non-target minions. This will prevent using Verata's Sacrifice for auto-minion bombing *via Jagged Bones and Death Nova*.

And that way it can still be used with a Flesh Golem.

Do this, then I /sign

Miss Eisei · Dec 06, 2008, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Dont make having minions even more useless >__>
That skill is supposed to keep the minions alive, not kill all (but one)
Give me unlimited minions to while you're at it , @_@
Sorry but retarded idea

credit · Dec 06, 2008, 04:42 AM // 04:42

Jagged Bones

Shadowmere · Dec 06, 2008, 06:21 AM // 06:21

The target thing should be in the description (that's how it would work and how OoU worked when they changed it) And yeah, stripping enchants would be a good way to disqualify jagged bones. However depending on how the skill mechanics worked it may not be a problem (since the jagged horrors from JB are created after the purge of non target minions).

And the idea is to buff Flesh Golem essentially by creating a non-elite buff for it and thus a niche use of the thing. As far as losing Sacrifice's current functionality...have you ever seen a MM actually use that skill? It has both a high cost (high sac and energy), a long cast time, and heals via regen, a rather poor way to heal a minion as any regen is going to be offset by their current degen. Additionally if you've got more than 3 minions it has a 60 second recharge pretty piss poor for 10 seconds of minion regen.

the only decent aspect the skill has is that it removes conditions from your minions which unless you're facing a LOT of blinding surge spammers conditions on minions shouldn't be an issue.

This change is pretty much to take 1 mediorcre elite and one poor minion healing skill and make them both useful if only for niche purposes.

Konig Des Todes · Dec 06, 2008, 07:28 AM // 07:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miss Eisei

Dont make having minions even more useless >__>
That skill is supposed to keep the minions alive, not kill all (but one)
Give me unlimited minions to while you're at it , @_@
Sorry but retarded idea

I think you fail to see how Verata's Sacrifice in it's current form is VERY underpowered. 10 second duration, 60 second recharge. Blood of the Master and Feast for the Dead are much better and you would be a fool (or having very few minions) to bring Verata's Sacrifice.

Verata's Sacrifice is already based with having few minions, so why not have it for only having one minion?

Quote:

Originally Posted by credit

Jagged Bones

Constructive Post

Note: Read before posting. Jagged Bones was brought up already.

Sjeng · Dec 06, 2008, 04:08 PM // 16:08

people like to +1.

anyway my opinion: /notsigned. I like to give all my minions regenerating health, not kill em all in one blow.

MithranArkanere · Dec 06, 2008, 07:23 PM // 19:23

What you want is another skill.
There is no need to change an existing one.

It won't harm to add another skill. In Prophecies, professions have skills as follows:
Warrior Warrior 24
Ranger Ranger 25
Monk Monk 26
Necromancer Necromancer 27
Mesmer Mesmer 23
Elementalist Elementalist 29

Si it would make perfect sense to add skills so all of them get 30.
One of them could be the one you want.

You could call it...

"Verata's Channeling" for example.

MithranArkanere · Dec 06, 2008, 07:26 PM // 19:26

What you want is another skill.
There is no need to change an existing one that actually works and it's used.

But what won't harm is to add another skill.
Normal Prophecies skills are distributed as follows:
Warrior : 24
Ranger : 25
Monk : 26
Necromancer : 27
Mesmer : 23
Elementalist : 29

But in the other campaigns, core professions have the exact same number of skills. And the numbers are always 'round' numbers (Ending in 5 or 0)

So it would make perfect sense to add skills so all of them get 30.
One of them could be the one you want.
You could call it...
"Verata's Channeling" for example.