Suggestion Upcoming Dragoon Change Suggestion

[Reverend_Creeper]

In light of upcoming balance changes I took notice of the fact that Dragoon will have jump nerfed as well as left click damage, armor, and the removal of superjump, and I propose another solution to fix dragoon while allowing it to still be as mobile. With the removal of superjump I heard that Kainzo is replacing it with a new combat skill, which I have a proposal for.

The Proposed Skill

The skill would be an instant cast target attack similar to lunge in the way that you would lunge at the target, but instead of a horizontal lunge it would be a vertical(and somewhat horizontal) lunge that can only be used right after using the skill Jump(maybe a second keypress on whatever the skill jump is bound to making the skills one and the same) that does damage based on how much higher you are than your opponent with a reasonable scale. Lag may make targetting during a jump very difficult so making it a different type of skill... maybe a lockon skill similar to AimedShot that activates after using jump instead of drawing and shooting a bow or some other method as an alternative. The attack should do pretty heavy damage(I'm thinking 100-150 dmg + 2-5 dmg per block above the enemy and armor piercing capabilities because let's face it, spears should pierce armor and there is only one armor piercing dragoon skill that kinda sucks), have a long cooldown(50-80 seconds), high stamina cost (all skills besides piercing strike cost 300+ stamina, jump costs 400 and I think that the skill should cost another 250-400, 300+ would prevent immediate sprinting after use and 250 would allow sprinting while still crippling stamina pool greatly), and also increase the cooldown of jump by 2-3x(maybe more). The skill would obviously need a distance limit which should probably be 10-20 blocks(pretty sure skill range accounts for height as well as horizontal distance).

The Reason it Could Work

The reason that this wouldn't be overpowered is relatively simple, with the high stamina cost it leaves the Dragoon unable to use skills(has to rely on left click which is being nerfed), the longer jump cooldown prevents the dragoon from running and waiting for stamina to regen to simply jump away, and due to the fact of its extreme stamina cost would be impossible to use unless at a near full stamina pool. It would make the dragoon choose between running or cutting off its escape and going all in, meaning that dragoons wouldn't have the choice to run after using it. To be honest without the huge stamina drain and the increased jump cooldown the skill would be majorly overpowered due to the range and armor piercing damage it provides, but with those factors as well as the fact that it may be hard to aim mid jump, as well as more discussion on how to balance it I believe it could be a viable and very interesting skill. It also promotes surprise ganks from high structures and a higher agility stat to allow for higher jumps and lower left click damage. This would be Dragoon's double edged sword. It allows the dragoon to chase enemies like it's supposed to be able to do, but at the cost of lower mobility and huge stamina drain. There could even be lore behind the increased jump cooldown stating that the skill puts great strain on the dragoons legs increasing the cooldown on jump a 14-21 second cooldown on jump would prevent a dragoon from jumping out of a fight for a long while, and with the upcoming nerfs I think it would even the playing field.

Final Thoughts

This was written at 4am and obviously not incredibly well thought out so it is subject to a lot of change, but I think that this could be an interesting new addition to Dragoon. Without their ability to kite due to the decreased range of their skills Impale and Spear, I feel that dragoons attacks simply don't have the range or feel of a spear that they should have as other skills from other melee classes have very similar range to them. I realize this may be a coding nightmare or even impossible due to how the heromod was coded, but if possible I think it could start a change making skills linkable allowing more of a flow in combat. This skill is also based off of the Dragoon ability in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance where jump is a damaging skill rather than a mobility skill.

 

[Dsawemd]

I think community consensus is that we support a mouse-over skill that increases Dragoon's offensive sticking power but does not increase their already impressive Defensive (edit: Running Away) skills. Hereafter called "Lunge" skill.

The vertical block distance is genius, Dragoons can retain their fabled control of steep terrain. The warm-up coupled with it makes this a cool combo skill, but it needs to be able to land after casting Jump to stay in skill range as well as gain height.

My current understanding of this skill is that it would be used for Maximum Damage as such: /skill Lunge... Warm-up begins, almost done... /skill Jump...In mid-air... Goonie Uses Lunge!
Whereas for maximum sticking power, you would imagine that Jump and Lunge would be used consecutively rather than concurrently.

Good skill, I voted yes to the "Lets discuss it further".

A note: Spears do not always pierce armor, if possible it would be great complex play along with your Vertical scaling to see a 100% armor piercing if you are 4+ blocks above the target, losing 25% per block lower than that, until it has 0% armor piercing if it is used while the Dragoon is at the same elevation or lower than the target.

 

[Ultanian]

Now couldn't this do mega damage if the dragoon jumped off a high building?

 

[Reverend_Creeper]

Now couldn't this do mega damage if the dragoon jumped off a high building?

The distance limit on the skill would prevent it from mega damage and it's a skill I recently came up with so the damage values as well as many other values(stamina, CD, etc) are subject to change. With the values I outlined the absolute maximum damage you could do would be 200-250 true damage which would be extremely hard to get since you can't use the skill without using it in conjunction with jump, and you can't leave the range of your opponent or you will be unable to use the skill. The point of it is to use it while chasing someone or to initiate a fight. If someone is running away from you and happens to go down a mountain that you were chasing them on you could jump and use the skill as a finisher move of some kind doing pretty huge damage, or if you get the jump on someone you can use it to start the fight by positioning yourself in a higher place to deal some pretty good damage. The downside of this skill would be the difficulty of using it mid combat with another melee character. It does however, give dragoons a chance to fight casters much more efficiently since casters can kite you to death(no silence CC or anything besides a slow that has meh range and an interrupt that has shit range, Lunar Lance works well if you aren't being CC bursted into the ground and mana regenerative skills such as replenish or using a emerald negates it anyway). Sure dragoons can use jump to catch up to a caster but a smart caster will simply throw a enderpearl or blink away depending on what class they are. Wizards also have the amazing ability to root you then chuck an enderpearl then blink to get even further then run until they are out of combat and spam enderpearls(CD shorter out of combat) to get away. Similarly a beguiler can CC the shit outta you and throw an enderpearl to gain some distance and run until out of combat, and the other casters i'm sure could get away. The point of the skill is to make it a situational heavy damage attack that leaves the dragoon vulnerable and relatively immobile after use(can't use jump for like 3x the normal CD of 7-8 seconds and has incredibly low stamina preventing skill use).

Edit - Sorry for the needlessly long posts
TL;DR it has enough downsides to prevent it from being OP/Overused

 

[malikdanab]

This is basically how tremor used to work....can we have it back

 

[Reverend_Creeper]

This is basically how tremor used to work....can we have it back

How do you mean? I never played dragoon before Haven so it would be nice to hear how it previously worked.

 

[malikdanab]

How do you mean? I never played dragoon before Haven so it would be nice to hear how it previously worked.

How it worked was you would activate the skill and the next time you would receive "fall damage" it would create an AOE on impact. This would deal damage based on how far you fell and knock back players.

 

[Reverend_Creeper]

How it worked was you would activate the skill and the next time you would receive "fall damage" it would create an AOE on impact. This would deal damage based on how far you fell and knock back players.

My idea is a bit different though as in it doesn't have any knockback and is targetted/lockon/warmup(not sure if targeted would work and warmup may be a pain to time most Ideal would prob be lockon and skill activates a second or half a second after you use jump) although that does make a lot more sense in terms of how tremor works

 

[JupiterRome]

Give goon layhands @ lvl 60 gg I fixed life

 

[Kimsgrim]

I suggested something like this weeks ago and got shit on. GG

 

[Reverend_Creeper]

I suggested this months ago in a post

I suggested something like this weeks ago and got shit on. GG

I suggested something like this on November 28th 2013 and no one responded to it. I think that this particular post was explained more thoroughly than the quote from my post below.

also your skill was a horizontal dash move that stunned, mine is an aerial attack that is more vertical than horizontal cuz that's what goons do(or should do).

"An interesting thing would be to make jump have 2 parts to the skill. For instance the jump would be normal on the first key press of jump, but when in midair if you target an enemy and press the keybind again it acts like a lunge within a certain distance. The lunge part of it would have a 250 stamina use so that the total of it is 650 stamina, which allows you to chase down enemies like a dragoon should be able to but also doesn't give them the chance to spam skills. The reason for this is that jump kinda fucks up a lot if you lag at all, and a targeted lunge that only works when jumping and for an extremely high stamina cost seems like it wouldn't be unfair if it lets the dragoon keep the chase going. The lunge would obviously have a distance limit and the CD would have an extension(which wouldn't matter because you shouldn't really ever jump with less than 750 stamina when chasing)" -Me

edit- clarified and stuff

 

[mikehk]

hmm, damage based on fall distance is strange, give it a damage cap of like 150+2.2 per agi.
all the servers ive played on that had heroes, there was always one jumping class, it had jump, superjump, and deathfromabove. deathfromabove is a skill that dealt damage based on fall damage you take. superjump would apply safefall, so you're safe, but anyone else would take like 50 blocks of fall damage...
i know its not the same skill at all, but just sayin it gets ridiculous if there is no cap.

 

[Reverend_Creeper]

hmm, damage based on fall distance is strange, give it a damage cap of like 150+2.2 per agi.
all the servers ive played on that had heroes, there was always one jumping class, it had jump, superjump, and deathfromabove. deathfromabove is a skill that dealt damage based on fall damage you take. superjump would apply safefall, so you're safe, but anyone else would take like 50 blocks of fall damage...
i know its not the same skill at all, but just sayin it gets ridiculous if there is no cap.

What do you mean no cap? There is a distance limit on the skill meaning it won't work from a height higher than whatever the distance limit is(I said 15-20 or something). The reason I proposed this skill was not for it to simply be an interesting new skill but as also a balance added to dragoon. Remember, the skill increases the cooldown of jump meaning Dragoon's mobility is severely limited, it also has to be used in conjunction with jump meaning you are going to have a very low stamina pool after use. I also stated that the damage values are up for debate, so they won't necessarily be overpowered the values I showed were just examples pretty much. To be honest the way you described the skills from other servers makes it sound a lot more OP than my version with 50 blocks of fall damage AOE, another thing would be that when someone notices you using the skill(bard for example) they could use a safefall skill(DropTheBass) to negate the damage making it useless against certain classes.