Homunculus, Yay! or Nay!

[Alexander]

MY problems with homunculous stem more into pvp and woe than anything else. They do not bother me in the pvm aspects. I will now explain why :]

Okay first off with homunculous in pvp and woe they can follow those who are cloaking, this makes it extremely easy to then be sighted by a creator or alchy or anyone else with a sight/ruwatch/any other detecting ability.

I wouldn't worry about that unless ruwach / sight get switched back. As it is now, it'll be the same old sad story for people who cloak.

Secondly, the creature is formless and thus you will have to deal with in pvp and woe now a formless creature along with a demi human. In pvp this causes severe problems because they always do full dmg.

Penomena card. And one would assume most of them (except the magic) does neutral damage...

Alchemists already have Acid Demo...

added to them in pvp along with slim pitcher pitch,

and regular potion pitch, these allow the creator to deal massive dmg, heal any taken to him very easily. With the homunculous also dealing dmg in pvp that most classes simply cannot handle.

Well...Acid demo = 30 skill points. Aid condensed + potion pitch = 23 skill points. And homunc skill... they each have about 4 skills each, 5 ranks for each skill, except one of each's skill is only 1-3. 18 skill points, roughly. Plus summon 1. Plus store 1. Plus ressurect 1.

30+23+18+1+1+1 = 74. And that's without maxing potion research which would be vital if you intended to heal well and skipping on brewing skills (so you'd probably either want to reset skills for brewing or sacrafice to have more failure). You can't have *everything* in one build. And not everyone takes the same build either.

And don't forget, you can't spam these skills forever. They have a limit to how many times you can use them, and the amount of times you can use them takes a lot of long tedious hunting to be able to pull off. I myself, refuse to play my creator if there's not enough people around. I'd end up using supplies that took a week to hunt in 10 minutes.

I understand the game is about a team aspect, but in the ToH are we forbidding the homonculous because it is like gaining an extra player that is very deadly.

If anything, they'd need it. Even if they *were* a 99 creator...any monster without Vit will make for pathetic damage. And as an AD build, that's your only damage. And dear god think of the supplies.

Vanilmirth is the most powerful homunculous of them all, he is fast, deals a lot of dmg with his bolts, and has a very powerful final move. Fillir and Lif are absolutely terrible overall *fillir doesn't get enough life and Life doesn't really add much to what an alchemist already can do* and amistir is a wonderful tank.

Well hopefully all this is taken into thought when we implement homunculous. I would like homunculous to be on the server but I do not want them to cause inbalance in pvp and woe over it. If worse must come to worse a banning in pvp and woe should occur.

Asura, EDP, Martyrs reckoning, Stormgust, Full divest, ect ect. Why don't we ban them in PvP / WoE? they're all very powerful. We don't...because they're a part of the game. And part of what gives the class it's strength. And even then, it takes a certain build to pull them off properly. For instance, Asura with a full agi and little strength / int build would be...pathetic.

Personally, I think people are jumping way too far ahead on the "nerf and ban" wagon. I say take it as it is. We don't customize any other skills on the server (save for sight and ruwach, and that's a topic of discussion at the moment), why this one? My thoughts, is it might be because it's change. People are used to certain things. Knights have pierce. They have for years. Aco's get heal, that's been around forever. But this is something new to a class. And because it's not what everyone's been used to for so long, and it's a shift to make them stronger, it's seemingly sometimes perceived as overpowering. But is that because it's really overpowered? Or just more powerful then what we're used to.

I'll reserve my judgement after I've taken the time to get used to have homunc around. And despite my judgement, I hope we'll have them in full swing- and I for one, intend to live with it and pursue researching /discovering effective counter measures.

[Aaronock]

I've been on servers with homuncs this isn't anything new to me :]

Trust me demo spam and vanil bolts HURT, and you haveta choose then what to deal with, homunc or the creator? Acid Terror also is a good skill and breaks armor as is. You most likely will have more acid pots over bottle grenades *THANK GOD*

ALSO the homunc can be revived very quickly again with some health and a quick pot heal. I've dealt with this stuff, it's very obnoxious, more so than any other class in the game.

Also about homunculous skills, they get their own job levels, they will not be using up points from the creator job points to get their skills. I'm not annoyed by this so don't think I am complaining, but working out a build just a few moments ago, you can get potion pitch, homunc skills needed *ressurect one is all you need* You might be missing out on the chemical protections, but you can take them if you want. I worked out a build that worked it up to chemical protect armor, which is one of the best ones for a pvp creator. I could make other builds that won't let you create pots, but what is that to stop someone from making some sort of brewing alchy anyway? :]

Most other classes big moves have counters to them. Demo's counters in pvp and woe really is perfect dodge or low vit. But you do this and you haveta deal with a homunculous that can detect cloaking and all sorts of other problems *the targeting problem being my biggest one*

If they fix the targeting problem then I will consider homuncs more in pvp and woe as more fair, that's probably my biggest annoyance with them at this moment in time.

[Former-GM-Auron]

Perfect dodge doesn't work against skills and the counter for acid demo and all its relatives is pneuma and low vit for acid demo.

[Aaronock]

I know this is very weird but Acid Demo is somewhat stoppable by PD o_O

I have tested this with yoyo clips on, I noticed that when I was sage and used this on passerby creators in woe trying to dmg me I saw AD's miss. There was no pneuma near me. If you guys wanna test feel free. It's kinda nifty, and probably made it as a counter to AD so it's kinda cool.

[Former-GM-Auron]

I tested it a while back with way more perfect dodge than a player could have and acid demo hit me every time, maybe it changed since then which isn't impossible.

[Salvosa]

This is a really awesome thread. I learned more about homun here in 3 minutes than in months of looking around the net. It's surprising how little there is out there.

In the end, all I care about is getting the biggest, ugliest homun possible for my baby alchemist. Idk if chemists can get stage 2 homunculus, but the stage 1 ones can be pretty ugly anyway.

Reyli doesn't pvp anyway, so I dont really care how crappy anything but Vanilmirth is.

[GM-Pandora]

I find this site pretty helpful if you wanna get some informations on homunculus.

http://www.ragnainfo.net/wiki/index.php/Homunculus

[razoredge]

In response to the AD parts:

also don't forget if the damage output from the calculation results in a higher amount than the damage cap (if there is one: example - some servers have a 400k damage cap) then AD will miss all the time. Usually it's not just a matter of flee but instead increasing the amount of int you have. At least that's how it's played out from what I've seen.

As far as getting AD/Homunculus, that's dependant on your build. It's possible in a full kamikaze type battle build to have AD, Homun, and Potion pitches, but you lose out in other areas. It's possible, but the likely hood of people using such builds is completely up to the players most alchemists think it's ungodly not to have fp or at least some sort of chemical protection... So really it's just how you want to play your alchemist :p

[Salvosa]

*favorited* You pwn, panda.

Well, there is nothing here that says a baby alchemist can't have evolved homunculus so I'm gonna go ahead and assume that is the case.

[truthhurts]

i think it should be implemented, but nerfed so that there is no legal-botting and other things that give alchemists an unfair advantage