Xurré
01-14-2008, 08:06 AM
There has been a fair amount of speculation lately that Mythic might not be doing the Witch Elf justice in their implementation of the class, that she’ll play more like a rogue without stealth (and without much in the way of clothes) than like the frenzied zealot, the walking blender of death, that she is.
Whether this will be true or not I cannot say, and neither can anyone else (who can talk about it here). So instead of speculating on that I’ll instead tell you how I think the class should function, trying to keep in mind what little we know so far.
The basis of this is the Maibd’s Dance of Death. The idea here is combining agility, movement and swordplay, weaving together a ballet of destruction around the target. The Witch Elf would be ever moving, her hands never standing still to deal deadly wounds to the enemy, never quite making it obvious where she’s moving next. And as her frenzy, her bloodlust, builds so does the beat of the dance and the deadliness of her strikes, giving her to ever more daring, and possibly dangerous, moves.
I’ve broken the following into sections each looking at various aspects of this lethal lambada.
Death of a Thousand Cuts
Most classes seem to do damage with the philosophy “the harder you hit it, the quicker it dies”. But the Witch Elf, I feel, should be different. Each of the Witch Elf’s attacks should only do relatively minor damage, but these attacks should be very quick and very quickly follow one another, making the above for them “the more you hit it, the quicker it dies”.
Her swords should be in constant movement. Any time that she’s holding them still in one place is a moment she’s not using them to attack and thus a moment wasted. If ever the players find themselves unable to attack because all the attacks they have are still recharging or such then the attacks aren’t fast enough; there should never be a moment, as long as she’s still standing, when she’s unable to attack at least with something. And there should equally never be a moment where a player is encouraged to forego attacking in favour of waiting for another attack (if players hold off attacking with an ability they have available because they want to use another ability that’s still recharging and using the first means they won’t be able to use the second even after it recharged then something has failed in the design).
Similarly, abilities that become available with higher levels of frenzy should prefer to increase speed, increase the number of attacks over providing single heavy-hitting attacks. For instance, give them abilities which they can use in between others or give them a single ability which attacks several times real quick (the end effect will be the same of having one ability which does a large amount of damage, but the flavour is changed; I’d much rather see five numbers around “100” float above the enemy than one number around “500”).
The Witch Elf should mesmerize her enemies with the whirling of her blades and the speed of her attacks. Thus, dealing death by a thousand small cuts instead of a few large ones.
Waltz of the Witch
It is, however, not just the hands of the Witch which continue to move, the Witch herself should also continually on the move, running circles around her opponent as she stabs them, latterly from all sides. I’d want the Order players to swear “stand still you cursed witch!”
One way in which to do this is through the positional attacks. One way to encourage this behaviour in the player is by making it so that when employing a straight-up positional attack then you can’t use any positional attacks from that direction again until you’ve made a positional attack from another direction. This way you’d stab an enemy from the front and then have to flit quickly to their side to stab them there (being able to stab them from the front again when they turn or continue on to their back). This is somewhat tricky in that Witches need to be able to move quickly enough around enemies before they have a chance to react and turn (so this is assuming no auto-facing), but note that it’s only positional attacks and she’d also always have numerous non-positional attacks.
Another way is to give the Witch Elf attacks which reposition her around the enemy. Attack them while standing in front of them, but actually turn to their side and stab them there (staying there and not returning to their front; this isn’t just a fancy animation, it’s supposed to actually re-position them). This would also be great in conjunction with the positional attacks mentioned above. And if you have one for clockwise and one for counter-clockwise (both, perhaps, which have the same startup animation) then you’d be able to easily confuse the enemy.
Boiling Blood
Frenzy, too, should tie into making the witch seem continually moving, continually busy. Not only should higher frenzy unlock abilities that do more damage and such, but frenzy itself should tie in to the Witch’s lightning quick attacks. Perhaps the higher the frenzy the quicker the attack rate, making her more deadly even without using her abilities, and perhaps frenzy could also make the Witch move faster, quicker to reach new victims and able to spin circles around the enemy all the quicker (allowing her to get in more positional attacks and such).
But another thing I would consider doing would be to make it so that the longer you stand in one place, the less you move around, the quicker frenzy depletes again. This is based on the idea that frenzy is a bar instead of a set of points, which I’m not sure of at all (though points have to disappear sometime too so one could decrease the time that takes). This would encourage players to keep moving even if they don’t succeed in getting positional attacks in.
Death from Above
I don’t have a problem with jumping at all and think, in fact, that it can serve to enhance the image of the Witch Elf being constantly on the move and a ball of manic fury. I can almost see those complaints people have with WoW PvP of people always jumping all over the place as working in favour of the Witch Elf as an exaggeration of her manic behaviour. Even outside of combat jumping could be faster than running (though perhaps depleting stamina or such) to encourage players jumping around.
Inside combat it could be used as a way again to change position. I could see jumps to the side of the enemy or even jumps over them, turning around to attack them in the back. Make them fast enough and combine them with the positional attacks above and the enemy will never really know where the next attack is coming from even in a one-on-one fight. Of course you should only be able to use this in melee combat and not be able to use it as a quick way to bypass tanks, though I can see melee classes needing some ability to be able to deal with tanks too.
Of course jumps would also be used to get into combat. As I understand it every melee damage class has ways to close the gap between them and their target, and for the Witch Elf that’s leaping at them with daggers drawn. I can even see such jump charges as doing extra damage on the first hit, though it’d probably be better to have some demoralizing effect on the enemy (I’d like Witch Elves to stay away from the high-damage single hits). I can also see such an ability that can only be used when in melee with a target other than the one you’re jumping to; sort of a way to deal with multiple targets at once or when changing priorities mid-fight (or even when escaping from one target in favour of another, like jumping away from the tank to get to the ranged class). Might leave a slight stun on the one you’re leaving (as I imagine launching yourself off of their face) and could be a neat way to jump from enemy to enemy to quickly bridge a gap to the target you’re after.
Then there are things like Agile Escape. Personally I’d probably rename that and put a few conditions on it. For one, an ability like that should only be usable from melee. And I can also see it giving you some sort of self-taunt; where for a short period every target except the one you leapt away from you’d do less damage to. I’m sure players will still use it to escape, but from the Witch Elf’s view it’d be more of a way to play with the enemy; jump out of their reach before jumping in for another attack. If timed right this could be used to avoid heavy blows for example (“Oh, I can see him playing the ‘squash witch like a tiny bug’ animation, better clear this space for a moment”).
It’s Only a Flesh Wound
The army book has a two-paragraph story about a guy who’s counting his blessings since he got away from a Witch Elf with only a single small scratch. Of course the Witch used blades coated with the Black Lotus poison and the fool human died a slow, agonizing death.
Of course in the game too the Witch Elf should have access to poison with it allowing for all kinds of poisons with a variety of debilitating effects and damage-over-time. In this I’d much rather see a continuous stream of ‘1’s than the occasional blip of “20” or so over the enemy’s head. I want it to literally inverse-rain damage numbers over their head, even if those numbers are all pretty small (together they’d add up though). Let other classes have the big, single numbers and give Witches the insane amount of small ones.
However, I also feel that the Witch should be spending her time attacking and not applying poison to her weapons. As such I think the single coating of poison which stays on the blade, stays in effect, until another one is applied is much preferable over the poison which only affects the next attack or such. There would be no reason for a Witch to not use poisoned attacks and as such in the latter case she’d almost spend more time coating her weapons than sticking it them in the fleshy parts of her dance partner. Though I can also see one-off “poison attacks”, where the coating and the stabbing are one, abstracting away from applying the coating really. This seems a bit of a cop-out as it’d make poison little more than a normal attack with a negative status effect (as opposed to a gameplay mechanic), but it’d work.
Overall, poison should be a way to make the Witch Elf more deadly, another means for making up for her not having any real big hits (and instead a number of small ones). And it’d be a way to affect the enemy with something other than damage (making them slower, making their attacks weaker, making them miss more often, acids perhaps for eating through their armor value, etc).
Spoon Full of Sugar
Then there are the ‘elixirs’ (still “blood laced with drugs” for me :p). I think these too should serve to make the Witch Elf faster, make her more mobile, and make her more deadly without directly increasing her damage. Where her poison is debufs her elixirs are bufs (where of course elixirs have drawbacks too to make the choice more meaningful). I can even see elixirs with non-combat effects such as those that let her see better in the dark or stay underwater longer (provided there’s underwater swimming, which I am to understand there is not).
Primarily I‘d like to see elixirs which speed up the rate of her attacks by decreasing the recharge time, decreasing the time between attacks, speeding up the speed of attacks, etc. I’d like to see elixirs that increase her movement speed, the speed of her jumps, etc. I’d like to see elixirs which increase the speed at which her frenzy builds (again I prefer a frenzy bar over frenzy points since it gives you more flexibility), decrease the frenzy cost of abilities, or increase the time it takes for frenzy to fade.
I’m not certain about elixirs which give you a straight-up increase to your damage since that just seems decidedly boring. I’m particularly not sure about ones you can only use out of combat since I’d think the charge leaps would already be for that. I can however see some particularly potent elixirs you can only use out of combat so that you have to decide ahead of time whether you want that buff in battle or not. In fact, I’d almost say that if most elixirs only work outside of battle (and remain until you’re out of battle again) then you have to decide ahead of time what you’ll need most, possibly using the escape leap to get out again and pick another elixir.
Conclusion
All-in-all I think what I’ve described above would allow Witch Elves to pick-and-choose their targets, give them the rogue-ish positional attacks and ‘sneak’ attacks (not from invisibility but because you’re closing the distance quickly and thus surprising them). Once in battle they’d be a flurry of poisonous blades, encouraged to stay constantly on the move and constantly catching their enemy off-guard. Someone who fights a Witch Elf will have to work to keep her in front of them. And either way it’ll be impossible to miss a Witch Elf in action; just look for the most amount of movement on the battlefield. ;)
So is there any point to this? I doubt that Mythic’ll change Witch Elves to work anywhere near what I describe above if they aren’t already fairly close. But perhaps they’ll read this, agree, and tweak some abilities to be closer to this. Perhaps it’ll give them some ideas for other abilities (like the attacks which also move you around your enemy).
At the very least though it might give some hope that what they’ve released so far could work and still maintain the flavour of the Witch Elf.
- Xurré
Whether this will be true or not I cannot say, and neither can anyone else (who can talk about it here). So instead of speculating on that I’ll instead tell you how I think the class should function, trying to keep in mind what little we know so far.
The basis of this is the Maibd’s Dance of Death. The idea here is combining agility, movement and swordplay, weaving together a ballet of destruction around the target. The Witch Elf would be ever moving, her hands never standing still to deal deadly wounds to the enemy, never quite making it obvious where she’s moving next. And as her frenzy, her bloodlust, builds so does the beat of the dance and the deadliness of her strikes, giving her to ever more daring, and possibly dangerous, moves.
I’ve broken the following into sections each looking at various aspects of this lethal lambada.
Death of a Thousand Cuts
Most classes seem to do damage with the philosophy “the harder you hit it, the quicker it dies”. But the Witch Elf, I feel, should be different. Each of the Witch Elf’s attacks should only do relatively minor damage, but these attacks should be very quick and very quickly follow one another, making the above for them “the more you hit it, the quicker it dies”.
Her swords should be in constant movement. Any time that she’s holding them still in one place is a moment she’s not using them to attack and thus a moment wasted. If ever the players find themselves unable to attack because all the attacks they have are still recharging or such then the attacks aren’t fast enough; there should never be a moment, as long as she’s still standing, when she’s unable to attack at least with something. And there should equally never be a moment where a player is encouraged to forego attacking in favour of waiting for another attack (if players hold off attacking with an ability they have available because they want to use another ability that’s still recharging and using the first means they won’t be able to use the second even after it recharged then something has failed in the design).
Similarly, abilities that become available with higher levels of frenzy should prefer to increase speed, increase the number of attacks over providing single heavy-hitting attacks. For instance, give them abilities which they can use in between others or give them a single ability which attacks several times real quick (the end effect will be the same of having one ability which does a large amount of damage, but the flavour is changed; I’d much rather see five numbers around “100” float above the enemy than one number around “500”).
The Witch Elf should mesmerize her enemies with the whirling of her blades and the speed of her attacks. Thus, dealing death by a thousand small cuts instead of a few large ones.
Waltz of the Witch
It is, however, not just the hands of the Witch which continue to move, the Witch herself should also continually on the move, running circles around her opponent as she stabs them, latterly from all sides. I’d want the Order players to swear “stand still you cursed witch!”
One way in which to do this is through the positional attacks. One way to encourage this behaviour in the player is by making it so that when employing a straight-up positional attack then you can’t use any positional attacks from that direction again until you’ve made a positional attack from another direction. This way you’d stab an enemy from the front and then have to flit quickly to their side to stab them there (being able to stab them from the front again when they turn or continue on to their back). This is somewhat tricky in that Witches need to be able to move quickly enough around enemies before they have a chance to react and turn (so this is assuming no auto-facing), but note that it’s only positional attacks and she’d also always have numerous non-positional attacks.
Another way is to give the Witch Elf attacks which reposition her around the enemy. Attack them while standing in front of them, but actually turn to their side and stab them there (staying there and not returning to their front; this isn’t just a fancy animation, it’s supposed to actually re-position them). This would also be great in conjunction with the positional attacks mentioned above. And if you have one for clockwise and one for counter-clockwise (both, perhaps, which have the same startup animation) then you’d be able to easily confuse the enemy.
Boiling Blood
Frenzy, too, should tie into making the witch seem continually moving, continually busy. Not only should higher frenzy unlock abilities that do more damage and such, but frenzy itself should tie in to the Witch’s lightning quick attacks. Perhaps the higher the frenzy the quicker the attack rate, making her more deadly even without using her abilities, and perhaps frenzy could also make the Witch move faster, quicker to reach new victims and able to spin circles around the enemy all the quicker (allowing her to get in more positional attacks and such).
But another thing I would consider doing would be to make it so that the longer you stand in one place, the less you move around, the quicker frenzy depletes again. This is based on the idea that frenzy is a bar instead of a set of points, which I’m not sure of at all (though points have to disappear sometime too so one could decrease the time that takes). This would encourage players to keep moving even if they don’t succeed in getting positional attacks in.
Death from Above
I don’t have a problem with jumping at all and think, in fact, that it can serve to enhance the image of the Witch Elf being constantly on the move and a ball of manic fury. I can almost see those complaints people have with WoW PvP of people always jumping all over the place as working in favour of the Witch Elf as an exaggeration of her manic behaviour. Even outside of combat jumping could be faster than running (though perhaps depleting stamina or such) to encourage players jumping around.
Inside combat it could be used as a way again to change position. I could see jumps to the side of the enemy or even jumps over them, turning around to attack them in the back. Make them fast enough and combine them with the positional attacks above and the enemy will never really know where the next attack is coming from even in a one-on-one fight. Of course you should only be able to use this in melee combat and not be able to use it as a quick way to bypass tanks, though I can see melee classes needing some ability to be able to deal with tanks too.
Of course jumps would also be used to get into combat. As I understand it every melee damage class has ways to close the gap between them and their target, and for the Witch Elf that’s leaping at them with daggers drawn. I can even see such jump charges as doing extra damage on the first hit, though it’d probably be better to have some demoralizing effect on the enemy (I’d like Witch Elves to stay away from the high-damage single hits). I can also see such an ability that can only be used when in melee with a target other than the one you’re jumping to; sort of a way to deal with multiple targets at once or when changing priorities mid-fight (or even when escaping from one target in favour of another, like jumping away from the tank to get to the ranged class). Might leave a slight stun on the one you’re leaving (as I imagine launching yourself off of their face) and could be a neat way to jump from enemy to enemy to quickly bridge a gap to the target you’re after.
Then there are things like Agile Escape. Personally I’d probably rename that and put a few conditions on it. For one, an ability like that should only be usable from melee. And I can also see it giving you some sort of self-taunt; where for a short period every target except the one you leapt away from you’d do less damage to. I’m sure players will still use it to escape, but from the Witch Elf’s view it’d be more of a way to play with the enemy; jump out of their reach before jumping in for another attack. If timed right this could be used to avoid heavy blows for example (“Oh, I can see him playing the ‘squash witch like a tiny bug’ animation, better clear this space for a moment”).
It’s Only a Flesh Wound
The army book has a two-paragraph story about a guy who’s counting his blessings since he got away from a Witch Elf with only a single small scratch. Of course the Witch used blades coated with the Black Lotus poison and the fool human died a slow, agonizing death.
Of course in the game too the Witch Elf should have access to poison with it allowing for all kinds of poisons with a variety of debilitating effects and damage-over-time. In this I’d much rather see a continuous stream of ‘1’s than the occasional blip of “20” or so over the enemy’s head. I want it to literally inverse-rain damage numbers over their head, even if those numbers are all pretty small (together they’d add up though). Let other classes have the big, single numbers and give Witches the insane amount of small ones.
However, I also feel that the Witch should be spending her time attacking and not applying poison to her weapons. As such I think the single coating of poison which stays on the blade, stays in effect, until another one is applied is much preferable over the poison which only affects the next attack or such. There would be no reason for a Witch to not use poisoned attacks and as such in the latter case she’d almost spend more time coating her weapons than sticking it them in the fleshy parts of her dance partner. Though I can also see one-off “poison attacks”, where the coating and the stabbing are one, abstracting away from applying the coating really. This seems a bit of a cop-out as it’d make poison little more than a normal attack with a negative status effect (as opposed to a gameplay mechanic), but it’d work.
Overall, poison should be a way to make the Witch Elf more deadly, another means for making up for her not having any real big hits (and instead a number of small ones). And it’d be a way to affect the enemy with something other than damage (making them slower, making their attacks weaker, making them miss more often, acids perhaps for eating through their armor value, etc).
Spoon Full of Sugar
Then there are the ‘elixirs’ (still “blood laced with drugs” for me :p). I think these too should serve to make the Witch Elf faster, make her more mobile, and make her more deadly without directly increasing her damage. Where her poison is debufs her elixirs are bufs (where of course elixirs have drawbacks too to make the choice more meaningful). I can even see elixirs with non-combat effects such as those that let her see better in the dark or stay underwater longer (provided there’s underwater swimming, which I am to understand there is not).
Primarily I‘d like to see elixirs which speed up the rate of her attacks by decreasing the recharge time, decreasing the time between attacks, speeding up the speed of attacks, etc. I’d like to see elixirs that increase her movement speed, the speed of her jumps, etc. I’d like to see elixirs which increase the speed at which her frenzy builds (again I prefer a frenzy bar over frenzy points since it gives you more flexibility), decrease the frenzy cost of abilities, or increase the time it takes for frenzy to fade.
I’m not certain about elixirs which give you a straight-up increase to your damage since that just seems decidedly boring. I’m particularly not sure about ones you can only use out of combat since I’d think the charge leaps would already be for that. I can however see some particularly potent elixirs you can only use out of combat so that you have to decide ahead of time whether you want that buff in battle or not. In fact, I’d almost say that if most elixirs only work outside of battle (and remain until you’re out of battle again) then you have to decide ahead of time what you’ll need most, possibly using the escape leap to get out again and pick another elixir.
Conclusion
All-in-all I think what I’ve described above would allow Witch Elves to pick-and-choose their targets, give them the rogue-ish positional attacks and ‘sneak’ attacks (not from invisibility but because you’re closing the distance quickly and thus surprising them). Once in battle they’d be a flurry of poisonous blades, encouraged to stay constantly on the move and constantly catching their enemy off-guard. Someone who fights a Witch Elf will have to work to keep her in front of them. And either way it’ll be impossible to miss a Witch Elf in action; just look for the most amount of movement on the battlefield. ;)
So is there any point to this? I doubt that Mythic’ll change Witch Elves to work anywhere near what I describe above if they aren’t already fairly close. But perhaps they’ll read this, agree, and tweak some abilities to be closer to this. Perhaps it’ll give them some ideas for other abilities (like the attacks which also move you around your enemy).
At the very least though it might give some hope that what they’ve released so far could work and still maintain the flavour of the Witch Elf.
- Xurré