Experimental/Risky Class Abilities

[StrayFox]

Remember when you summoned a infernal and sometimes you couldn't control it and it would attack everyone? Why can't we have more awesome abilities like that? Where the abilities have a huge benefit, but its a risky and may cause more trouble than good.

Would love a Pack Form for druid where you turn into a wolf for a limited time, but you have a chance to be hostile and lose control of your character. If, however, you successfully control the form you get a huge damage boost for a limited time.

( For those who don't know about the pack form - http://wowpedia.org/Pack_Form - its basically where Worgen originated. )

Or something like Arcane Bomb, where you toss a bomb of arcane which does a great amount of AoE damage but if you don't choose where you want it to go in, lets say... the next 3 seconds, It will explode on you and knock down half your life.

Or something for shaman where you call to the earth to use a powerful ability (Such as summon a storm of elements) but there is a chance you get frozen in diamond for 10 seconds, much like Muradin in Old Ironforge.

I mean in lore there are tons of abilities that are banned or are extremely risky, I'd love fun little abilities like that in WoD that bring consequences.

[Daetur]

The problem with abilities like that is that something with too high a risk will never be used in PvE or PvP, because it's not worth the roll of the dice. The Pack Form, for example, would be Big DPS Boost? Or Wipe the Raid? it would never be worth using.

If it has an effect on throughout or output, it needs to be balanced around, and then you have the issue of "Did it work? No? Then I'm gibbed for the rest of the fight and my raid is screwed." or "Did it work? Now this fight/phase is significantly easier than intended."

[StrayFox]

The problem with abilities like that is that something with too high a risk will never be used in PvE or PvP, because it's not worth the roll of the dice. The Pack Form, for example, would be Big DPS Boost? Or Wipe the Raid? it would never be worth using.

If it has an effect on throughout or output, it needs to be balanced around, and then you have the issue of "Did it work? No? Then I'm gibbed for the rest of the fight and my raid is screwed." or "Did it work? Now this fight/phase is significantly easier than intended."

If you are the last one alive and the raid is about to wipe, all options are available. Also questing would be fun with abilities like that. Now I do agree with you that there should be some kind of balance, though how Blizzard could implement some of these abilities without breaking lore, is beyond me. Unless the mold it and say people have figured out how to control the pack form or something...

I think the fun and risky abilities would be awesome to use, though the amount of people that would abuse it (Warlocks summoning infernals in stormwind... eh...) would out way the fun they could provide.

[Larynx]

If you are the last one alive and the raid is about to wipe, all options are available. Also questing would be fun with abilities like that. Now I do agree with you that there should be some kind of balance, though how Blizzard could implement some of these abilities without breaking lore, is beyond me. Unless the mold it and say people have figured out how to control the pack form or something...

I think the fun and risky abilities would be awesome to use, though the amount of people that would abuse it (Warlocks summoning infernals in stormwind... eh...) would out way the fun they could provide.

What he said, "If it has an effect on throughout or output, it needs to be balanced around, and then you have the issue of "Did it work? No? Then I'm gibbed for the rest of the fight and my raid is screwed." or "Did it work? Now this fight/phase is significantly easier than intended.""

remains true.

If an ability is not reliable, it is a poorly designed ability. Simple as that. That's why things like having a 10% chance on sap to be removed from Stealth, Cloak of shadows being only 90% reliable, or a random chance for a CC to break every second were removed from the game. Funny how all of those are faults of being based on RNG.

Class flavor abilities like sacrificing party members for a Doomguard, Divine Intervention, or Eye of the Beast are however better abilities to consider. They are fun, with little impact on actual numbers.

[Raeph]

In the case of say summoning an uncontrollable minion, like your example of the Infernal, the issue is mainly cost to benefit.

In world PvE or PvP cost is against one person to benefit of that one person.

In BGs or Arenas it is cost against allies in your area to the benefit of that group in your area.

In instanced PvE however it is cost against your group/raid with the potential benefit of that group or raid.

In solo or pvp it can be balanced around, to some degree. In raids and dungeons though, especially fights, if the ability has the chance of wiping the raid, even if only 1% chance then it will most likely be saved as a last resort to prevent 1% wipe, or if you are down to 1-2 people alive and you just go for broke and hope you kill the boss.

If it is an ability that threatens all the allies in a group or raid then then benefit will have to be enough that recovery is possible if you lose a certain portion of the raid due to the risk involved.

Say just for numbers sake: Boss has 30,000,000 hp, does 150,000 dps, and has periodic spikes in the 250,000 dps range every 30 seconds (160k average raid dps). Your raid of 10 can do 100,000 dps, and 180,000 hps . Boss will die in 5 mins. If you use X risky ability, which has a chance to kill a random person in the raid, it will need to either make sure that it can make up in the loss of that person, if healer, tank or dps. Say 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps. Getting rid of the tanks entirely, you still would need to either make up for 1/5 of raid dps, or 1/3 of your raid healing, in one ability.

I doubt we'll see a spell that is workable that risks the success of a fight that could potentially double your DPS or HPS, just to make such a risk worth it.

[deviantcultist]

Mind control applying on everything and have it utilize more of the core abilities of the NPC/Player. Risky part? Make it usable on friendly targets.

[MoanaLisa]

Players who play the game seriously are risk averse especially when playing with other people.

Taking risks is pretty much the opposite of optimization and efficiency. I understand what you're after but after everyone gave ideas like this a try very few would actually use them. The downsides are too steep.

Risk aversion is a very big deal in this game.

[deviantcultist]

optimization and efficiency

No offense, but those two words tend to make me forget that I'm playing a game.

[Altimus]

Reminds me of the Rocket Boost being able to backfire during raids. Even that small chance (although it seemed to be 90% at the time) that you get launched into the air, and you wipe the raid means you can NEVER use rocket boosts.

Now they can't fail during raid bosses.

[Selah]

It's a fun idea, but Blizz wouldn't put those kind of abilities in the game for two reasons, first one is ability bloat is already out of hand and adding these would just make that much more to manage. The second reason is that everyone doing any kind of group content would never use these abilities just because they add to much activity to the raid/bg to manage, eventually it would get to the point to where if you used that ability during a raid or a RBG you would be immediately kicked.

So the only real use for these abilities would be outside in the world or solo content, and even then some people wouldn't use them.

It's a shame though because that would be a lot of fun.

[Deleted]

They can be disabled in both Raids and rated PVP.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

The thing is, risk = rng.

There's a good outcome (you don't lose control of the druid) and the bad outcome (you lose control and wipe the raid).

You have no control over what happens, and if you roll the bad outcome then you're probably either kicked from the group, kicked from the guild, or told to never use that ability again.

- - - Updated - - -

They can be disabled in both Raids and rated PVP.

Then there is no reason to have these abilities, as the vast majority of endgame are those two things.

[Deleted]

The same reason to have most of the MoP consumables and/or rare mobs items.