#Make the ancient spellbook a bit more interesting

25 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sullen frost
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Nobody uses shadow spells (unless it's leviathan or sire).
Nobody uses smoke spells.
Only blood (healing) and ice (freezing) are useful for PvM, but only ice is used in PvP.
The others could be tweaked to make them a bit more viable for PvP instead of just sitting there collecting dust.

For example:

Nex's special attacks

Choke: Drains two prayer points per every two ticks, and drains stats based on the player's highest attack bonus. Smoke barrage in addition to poison could have a stat draining effect, the duration/amount drained can be reduced by wearing a facemask. The stat drain effect wouldn't stack if multiple people use the spell on a single target. There could also be a smoke inhalation effect that puts a cloud over the target's face that deals damage over a few ticks which cannot be mitigated by drinking an antipoison, only reduced by wearing a facemask.

Embrace Darkness: The chamber will be darkened drastically. The closer players are to Nex, the darker the room will be. If players stand next to Nex for too long, they will take constant damage from the pure shadow. Shadow Barrage or Blitz in addition to stat drain could have a similar effect of darkening the players screen and doing unavoidable incremental damage while the effect is active and the closer the target is to the player, the amount of damage taken reducing as the target moves away.

Shadow Smash: Deadly shadows will appear under every player. Players have three ticks to move out of their way before they erupt and deal up to 50 damage. Shadow Barrage or Shadow Blitz could have a chance of opening up a black hole beneath the target which deals twice the amount of damage if the target doesn't move away in time (e.g. you could freeze them in place with ice barrage/blitz then Shadow Blitz them).

I'm sure there's so many other forgotten spells out there but that's all I can fit in one post. Thanks for reading.

lavish pier
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While I admit Smoke and Shadow spells both suck, it's mainly because of their lower damage bonuses that makes them so ass to use. I'd be more for buffing the damage bonuses to make them equivalent to the highest tier Ancient Spell you've unlocked (similar to the Standard Spellbook). Changing the special abilities of these spells wouldn't help the Ancient Spellbook; it would just make each spell difficult to choose from and put people on the fence for what to use. Also, Shadow Spells do technically have a purpose; but really only at Leviathan.

torpid zodiac
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ancients tiering is all over the place. Ignoring the fact that each element doesn't "level up" similarly to how the elemental spells do, the AoE spells somehow deal more damage than the focused, single target ones do.

Why not have blitz do the same damage as barrage, especially considering it hits 8 less targets? Blitz/'rush would gain 4 damage when the higher tier is unlocked

robust pendant
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I feel like these spells really should be delegated to more of a niche. I think itd be cool if u use these spells for maybe defense drain or a bleed effect but I dont want to see them outclass eye/shadow

#

ice barrage/blood barrage are insane for specific things but id say in general main benefit of barrage is the aoe dmg it provides which is pretty strong in the current meta

past osprey
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If smoke barrage did a small amount of burn damage instead of poison, I think it would see some niche uses. So many bosses and NPCs, including players, are immune to poison which just makes that interesting effect of smoke sceptre virtually unusable anywhere.

For shadow barrage I think can be useful in some PvM situations, for it to be worth using in PvP I'd like to see the defence reduction last for 10 seconds or something, where brew or restore would be unable to boost defence right back up the next second

odd echo
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Tbh switching the damage caps for blitz/barrage and rush/burst, and also implementing the elemental spellbook rework (with max being based on lvl tier, not spell-specific) would very much make sense to me. Doubt there will be a majority in favour of "nerfing" the barrage though...

ornate geyser
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I use smoke spells for barraging because freezing npc is hella annoying and blood spells cost too many blood runes

sullen frost
# lavish pier While I admit Smoke and Shadow spells both suck, it's mainly because of their lo...

You're right about damage being one of the main issues, however the entire spellbook and its requirements would have to be reworked for each barrage type to be equivalent to ice. If smoke barrage does the same amount of damage as ice you would use it over everything else the moment you unlock it until you really need to level more to unlock the ability to freeze or recover health, especially if it's the cheapest one to use. That's why I think it's best for the abilities to be tweaked since they're not only weak but useless lol, most things in the game are immune or can easily get rid of poison and you can just drink a restore when your stats get drained. I don't think it's a bad idea to do because then they would eventually find a use somewhere, and people would have much more variety (different classes like in other mmos) instead of using only that one OP spell to do everything. Like, one of my favourite spells in this game is flames of zamorak, being able to reduce the target's magic level sounds a bit trivial at first but when you think of the fact that a player's magic defence is based off of how high their magic level is it actually makes the spell broken since youre essentially making any magic spell more accurate on the target each time you fire one off, but because it doesn't do much damage, doesn't reduce magic that much and its need for a zamorakian staff it's rarely used over the more heavy hitting fire surge in every case, unless you're low level pure pking in 2015.

vestal viper
lavish pier
lavish pier
# sullen frost You're right about damage being one of the main issues, however the entire spell...

Well no, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say here. Smoke Rush would start at 13 the moment you unlock it, then would go up to 14 if you unlock Shadow Rush, then 15 with Blood Rush, and would cap at 16 with Ice Rush. Ancient Magicks would work the exact same as the Standard Spellbook, but with possibly some buffs to the Single Target spells (Rush and Blitz) so that way they're actually more reliable options than simply using the highest level spell (which is Multi Target, and currently does more damage than its counterparts).

lavish pier
sullen frost
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I'd actually love to see the normal spells get reworked too, like water spells could make people suffocate by drowning, Earth could stun, fire could burn and air could push you around like Kree'Arra's gust attack

lone wolf
torpid zodiac
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...and people still wouldn't use them, since tridents are just objectively cheaper, stronger, and scale better. Ancients is still viable because the potential to hit 9x targets. No one is going to consider using a 5 tick spell that hits 30 when a 4t trident can hit 32. You're using ancients to do one of two things: freeze or heal

sweet idol
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another way to add some interest would be to add special utility to SPECIFIC monsters to each spell. like the smoke spell causing dragons to cough when they try to use dragonfire, acting like a layer of dragonfire protection, or dealing more damage to harpi-bug swarms. idk, just add some minor utility that makes them more viable outside the bursting. players might choose to go ancient spell-book to fight dragons or other specific slayer monsters.

torpid zodiac
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We have two. Strength reducing attacks don't matter whatsoever since overheads grant 100% immunity against anything but bosses (and bosses are functionally immune to the strength reducing effect)

Furthermore, the effects from these spells (when they might actually be affected, see Levi, Sire) are just flat- out bugged and don't work. You don't even get the defense reduction when you stun these two with their own mechanic

#

Find me a monster, that is vulnerable to poison, that also heals, where the smoke quartz could potentially be useful. I'll wait

sullen frost
lavish pier
lavish pier
# sullen frost I'd actually love to see the normal spells get reworked too, like water spells c...

Call me crazy, but I think the Water and Air both sound like they could be pretty strong; possibly even too strong. I'm not saying I don't like it, and I know they're just examples. However, if it's at all what I'm imagining, it'll have to be HEAVILY scaled down so that way players can't take advantage of it too much. Otherwise, I could just imagine something like a boss or player getting trapped, stunned, and spec-stacked all at once.

sullen frost
lavish pier