1
One of the things I had promised when we launched was Homunculus S. Next Monday Maintenanance, I'll fulfill this promise.
That said, it took quite a bit of effort to balance it for our MaxLvl 255 server. First, I had to decide: How do I want Homunculus to be played in the game?
I never liked the AvRO2 style homunculus. The only usefulness you could get out of it was Lif's walkspeed, or abuse Vanilmirth's bolts. I wanted Homunculi to be more sturdy, to live longer, and to have more than a single usefulness. The obvious step towards that was to increase their HP/SP, and to make sure that they had enough HIT that their physical hits wouldn't be useless. It turned out more or less like this:
Eleanor:
Eleanor might as well not be there. She's the coolest Homunculus S out of all 5, but none of her skills work properly(or at all). The only reason to pick her would be for the sake of having cute catgirl homunculus chasing you. Truly a shame, considering that her ATK is the highest among all.
She is playable if you opt to use a Filir as a starting Homunculus. Moonlight spam should deal overwhelming consistent high damage, but personally I believe Genetics will choose the other Homunculi over her.
Bayeri:
The highlights of the unicorn companion are definetely its crowd control and defensive potentials. Stahl Horn is a long range pushback skill which will make it very hard for characters to get within melee range of you, if played correctly. Alternatively, Stein Wand will save you if you fail to keep your distance.
Dieter:
Non ranged attackers will think twice before attacking Dieter. He will dish out huge damage should he be attacked carelessly. Pyroclastic helps with the ATK based skills, while Granite Armor will help when stacking reductions. The most useful skill, Volcanic Ash, had to be disabled, because it was too strong and didn't accept cooldowns/delays. I intend to repair this issue as soon as possible.
Eira:
While definitely the weakest Homunculus, she boasts the best skills among Homunculus S: Silence Breeze. In a fast paced server like our own, the ability to force-silence someone(even at the cost of your own silence) is likely one of the best abilities you can have. A Genetic with an Eira is capable of shutting down a player, but will require someone else's help in order to actually kill them. A must have for MvP parties.
Sera:
The highly of this homunculus is the ability to bind. With the restrictions on the Genetic traps, Needle of Paralysis becomes an alternative for keeping players on their place. Other than this, Summon Legion is capable of filling up the enemy's screen, blinding them to your movements and actions, and making it hard to click your character.
Those are just the new abilities. They can be coupled with one of the original 4 homunculi skills(and their respective stats strengths) to achieve specific objectives. For instance, creating a Dieter from an Amistr will cause it to have higher HP than if you were to make it from a Filir, though the Filir-based would have higher ATK.
Regardless of which combination you pick, it is fact that Genetic's offensive and defensive power will ride sharply because of this new content. To counter this, we'll be adding restriction on how often you may Ressurect your Homunculus to 10 minutes between uses. That means that if your Homunculus dies while the cooldown is active, you will not be able to bring it back until the timer expires.
Additionally, Event GMs may wish to add restrictions to Homunculus use during events, but that discussion if for the future. For now, I am curious in what useful, creative ways players will learn to use those new pets.
This is all for now. I hope you players enjoy your new content.
That said, it took quite a bit of effort to balance it for our MaxLvl 255 server. First, I had to decide: How do I want Homunculus to be played in the game?
I never liked the AvRO2 style homunculus. The only usefulness you could get out of it was Lif's walkspeed, or abuse Vanilmirth's bolts. I wanted Homunculi to be more sturdy, to live longer, and to have more than a single usefulness. The obvious step towards that was to increase their HP/SP, and to make sure that they had enough HIT that their physical hits wouldn't be useless. It turned out more or less like this:
Eleanor:
Eleanor might as well not be there. She's the coolest Homunculus S out of all 5, but none of her skills work properly(or at all). The only reason to pick her would be for the sake of having cute catgirl homunculus chasing you. Truly a shame, considering that her ATK is the highest among all.
She is playable if you opt to use a Filir as a starting Homunculus. Moonlight spam should deal overwhelming consistent high damage, but personally I believe Genetics will choose the other Homunculi over her.
Bayeri:
The highlights of the unicorn companion are definetely its crowd control and defensive potentials. Stahl Horn is a long range pushback skill which will make it very hard for characters to get within melee range of you, if played correctly. Alternatively, Stein Wand will save you if you fail to keep your distance.
Dieter:
Non ranged attackers will think twice before attacking Dieter. He will dish out huge damage should he be attacked carelessly. Pyroclastic helps with the ATK based skills, while Granite Armor will help when stacking reductions. The most useful skill, Volcanic Ash, had to be disabled, because it was too strong and didn't accept cooldowns/delays. I intend to repair this issue as soon as possible.
Eira:
While definitely the weakest Homunculus, she boasts the best skills among Homunculus S: Silence Breeze. In a fast paced server like our own, the ability to force-silence someone(even at the cost of your own silence) is likely one of the best abilities you can have. A Genetic with an Eira is capable of shutting down a player, but will require someone else's help in order to actually kill them. A must have for MvP parties.
Sera:
The highly of this homunculus is the ability to bind. With the restrictions on the Genetic traps, Needle of Paralysis becomes an alternative for keeping players on their place. Other than this, Summon Legion is capable of filling up the enemy's screen, blinding them to your movements and actions, and making it hard to click your character.
Those are just the new abilities. They can be coupled with one of the original 4 homunculi skills(and their respective stats strengths) to achieve specific objectives. For instance, creating a Dieter from an Amistr will cause it to have higher HP than if you were to make it from a Filir, though the Filir-based would have higher ATK.
Regardless of which combination you pick, it is fact that Genetic's offensive and defensive power will ride sharply because of this new content. To counter this, we'll be adding restriction on how often you may Ressurect your Homunculus to 10 minutes between uses. That means that if your Homunculus dies while the cooldown is active, you will not be able to bring it back until the timer expires.
Additionally, Event GMs may wish to add restrictions to Homunculus use during events, but that discussion if for the future. For now, I am curious in what useful, creative ways players will learn to use those new pets.
This is all for now. I hope you players enjoy your new content.
