Speaking as PVP player, I do not think Lightning Storm should do building damage. Lightning Storm reagent (Leather Pouch) is much more farmable than even a single god token and requires no real risk to cast.
I think Lightning Storm is an interesting spell that could have anti-infantry PVP applications and also PVE applications. It shouldn’t be a random budget way to raid. Currently farming a single Leather Pouch allows you to apply roughly 3 areas of 20 explosives (100k damage) at random to an enemy base of 3x3 to 5x5 area (or a vault). 1 Leather Pouch = 60 DP, I don’t think that is balanced or fair at all.
EDIT because some folks keep defending LS…
Refer to these posts where I provide actual footage and screenshots:
I think FC wants bases to be more easily raidable and less defensible. All the changes they have made in the past 3 or 4 releases have shown this trend to be their intension.
I’m OK with it myself. It changes the dynamics of PvP but not by all that much - and again, it’s within the trending direction. I’m absolutely 100% sure they consciously considered whether or not the spell should damage buildings as they were developing it. So, like, this wasn’t an accidental or unintended consequence.
I think we just have to learn to play the game they are creating - if we wish to play on officials.
As mentioned in other posts and elsewhere the ease of which the lightning damages structures is going to reinforce the PVP build method of hunkering down in perma structures like keyhole, watcher, crevice, etc.,…
This begs the question yet again about building in these areas as players are being adminwiped for simply building in these places… perhaps before people gnash their teeth suspend your disbelief of lack of adherence to ToC and pretend that is happening.
While I’m not suggesting necessarily that it be removed or reduced, work still needs to be done regarding ToC, education, Zendesk and administration.
I feel it is going to get worse especially with new players coming.
Prefab structures like these actually don’t block Lightning Storm procs. Unfortunately the addition of ice bridge and bat flight spells has whittled the number of “good” prefab structures to build in to maybe 30 max in the whole game. Everyone else has to do a wide base design or a “Rats Nest” design where they have tens of vaults with hallways connecting them. Either way Lightning Storm makes all bases very vulnerable to easy raiding or griefing by a naked sorcerer running around with a few pouches. It’s all a bit nuts to make raiding even easier with how cheap explosives are.
Actually, they dont really care about raiding. Been dormant meta way of raiding for 4+years. No new “raid weapons”, the new authority follower buff vs guarding, not addressing archer bugged ai, not addressing offline, removing building techniques to slow offlining, etc also show not even in consideration when mapping out new mechanics.
this is my thinking as well. this spell is incredibly easy to farm and cast with no real need for a base setup and farm circuit required to craft 60 explosives. it will be way too easy for random nakeds to grief any base they want. base builder enjoyers only get punished unless they build massive ceiling honeycombs that can withstand hours of lightning storms
Yes, while the storm can be countered, you have to be online to do so.
if you are offline, then your base can blow up in seconds if you are unluky.
i don’t think the storm should do any structure damage at all.
raiding is incredibly more easier now with all these tools to raid.
meanwhile if you wanna defend you will probably get banned for having a base, thing is unplayable atm.
Funcom needs to invest in some pvp inclined changes. What is the point of lightning storm doing raid damage that improves pve? You can’t raid in pve or pve-c, so they made the very real decision of “yeah it should do this level of damage in pvp servers, that’s fine”.
I have gazillions of screenshots but only one footage needs to be shown, here I show a 5x5x5 base build then cast a storm on it. A single bolt takes out most of the base. Check out 2:35 Twitch
Lightning Storm doesn’t seem to care about how many blocks you have in your base, it can and will target foundation blocks at random and can blow everything up.
Some other screenshots here of some testing: 10x10 foundation after a single storm:
That sounds like a major issue and a balance mistake. Do they want LS to replace Avatars or something? At least you can bubble against Avatars. No such luck against Lighting Storm (LS) and why do we need another OP raiding tool anyway. Who asked for one really?
I do want to be clear that there is a counter to this, its the Darkness spell, however this has some issues.
Currently with bombs, if you are away from base and see a layer being killed in Event Log, you know some base is being raided and you can run to it to defend. You have time to react to these things, multiplied by how many layers of honeycomb you have until they reach your respawn point.
Vs Lightning Storm, you will not have that opportunity. You need to cast the Darkness spell right away. If its a larger clan raiding you and they have a token sorcerer, congratulations you are gimped at 20% corruption trying to fight vs greater numbers with less hp/stam while trying to counter every storm with a Darkness spell. Even then, a lucky lightning storm bolt can kill your bed or central storage before you get the Darkness spell off.
I don’t think anyone wants to babysit their base the entire raid timer at 20% corruption. It’s not realistic.
So is not an effective counter it seems. Again, Attackers do not need buffs against defenders. Defenders especially against offline need more defensive abilities and structures and yes maybe buffs to existing ones within reason. Lighting storm is just one more nail in the coffin of a balanced A vs D .
Let this also be known and yes this is a game, etc, etc, etc, however, historically (again etc, etc, etc) defense had the advantage if planned out correctly (water and food usually) against attackers as they had a form of controllable terrain (structures) and usually some sort of high ground to fire (bows, cannons, etc) from and better battlefield sight. We currently at least on officials are not allowed to build to that scale (banning).
Lighting Storm needs to be more expensive and more taxing to the caster as well as some form of static defense in case of offlining to be balanced. If this doesn’t happen avatars will become obsolete completely when compared to the surgical foundation targeting damage it seems to exhibit currently (hoping for a patch correction of this).
I am agreeing with you btw just so we are clear I just wanted to add some more to the point.
The problem with this is I already don’t play on officials due to unbanned hackers and cheaters. I exclusively play on community servers that disable avatars/gods. The issue I’m now dealing with is all of these servers are wiping but none of them are planning to ban the spell, because there is so little feedback on it. I feel like I’m the only person testing this spell and trying to get this information out there…
It reads to me like the “them” in that sentence is referring to the private server operators.
So seems like a legitimate request I suppose. Are spells or their affects alterable in the server settings? Just looked and it’s interesting. There’s no new server settings to do with anything about sorcery. I wonder if that will be addressed in 3.1? I think it’s a good ask now that I understand it tho.
The more customizable the game the more server diversity is possible.
All of them are learned to a feat slot, so technically bannable via “BlacklistedFeats” option in ServerSettings.ini file. The issue is if server admins don’t ban it before people learn it, people have the feat forever and can clown on everyone else until the server wipes.
