Seeing as the shai class has access to the unique donkey mount I feel like it would be a good idea to make it sort of on par with the Tier 9 horses. My focus was to improve her viability as a lifeskiller as well as in group grinding. Here are a few ideas for what skills it could have access to and other details I think would fit.
Skill ideas:
ICON | SKILL NAME | EFFECT | LEARN % | ADDITIONAL INFO |
Fun Times |
Donkey regenerates health and stamina when parked. Passive +10% base donkey movement speed. |
100% | ||
On my way! | Instant acceleration for donkeys. | 90% | ||
True Friend | Donkey sacrifices his vitality to save shai from death. Shai heals for 50% of donkey's max HP. Donkey's health drops to 1 HP. |
15% |
Cooldown: 30 minutes Can toggle on/off |
|
Donkey's Blessing |
+35% item drop amount (stacks with lootscroll). +10% movement speed. |
5% | AOE around the donkey When affected player uses damage skills health is restored with every "hit" |
|
More things! | Each time you perform gathering there is a 15% chance to obtain +35% more resources. | 5% |
Fun times is focused on making the donkey more viable for traveling long distances by making him a little faster. 10% is a fair amount seeing as donkeys are not affected by riding crops. There is also the standard dream horse regen as part of it.
On my way! acts as another boost to travel speed.
True Friend acts as a very interesting mechanic in my opinion. It gives a reason to adding extra HP to your donkey whilst allowing shai to stay alive for a little longer to help out her team or when fighting stronger mobs. The heal amount being based on Donkey's max HP prevents this skill being spammed as you have to recover your donkey beforehand or it will only heal you for 0.5 HP. The cooldown also balances it out a little.
Donkey's Blessing is my attempt at making the group grind spots more viable as well as boosting up shai's trash numbers seeing as she doesn't perform quite as well as other classes.
Having a shai with an awakened donkey in your group will mean 35% extra trash loot per hour, therefore making group pve a lot better when it comes to money making. The health per hit is supposed to act as an extra healing shai can do for her teammates. Currently she is outperformed in the healing department by other classes, so I think this would help her become more impactful.
More things! is a skill targeted specifically at gathering. It sort of acts as a second hedgehod. I believe that shai was built to be a lifeskill class of sorts so I think this boost would suit her class nicely.
With the skills out of the way I'd like to talk about some other possible details:
First of all, I don't think it's wise to add multiple types of dream donkeys with separate abilities. This wouldn't make sense as the shai population will always be smaller than the sum of all the other classes who cannot use the unique donkeys. Instead I would suggest making a few different skins for the donkey so we can pick and choose. Also a possibility to change the mane color and other details would be nice.
For awakening materials I would suggest them being either a very low gathering drop or an alchemy side product. This would provide additional money to the people who still bother with alchemy as currently there is not much money to be made there.
Awakening could also be a custom requirement of sorts such as having to collect a full krogdalo set for your donkey before you can awaken it. It would definitely take ages but the buff skills seem pretty significant so its a good investment.
That would be all from me, let me know what you think and whether you agree with shai's donkey having an awakening.
I definitely think this is great.
There are some interesting ideas here. I believe the skills would need some tweaking here and there for balance purposes of course (PA developers job), but I like them! You've put a lot of work into this.
Just curious, many of the skills are initially learnt to less than 100% and many of them seem to activate when out of the saddle. What mechanisms do you envisage would be in place to help the shai level these up?
One skill I would add for fun is enabling the donkey to be a two-seater, but just for shai (and maybe tamer). That would be cute :). Maybe another would be a skill that increases the donkey carry capacity. There are so many options, but I believe there is certainly capacity in-game for such a feature.
Just curious, many of the skills are initially learnt to less than 100% and many of them seem to activate when out of the saddle. What mechanisms do you envisage would be in place to help the shai level these up?
The ideal way would be to reset donkey's level back to 0 when awakening (just like normal horses) and then have him learn those skills throughout the 15 levels. You could obviously guarantee them with skill exchange coupons as Fun Times could be used in the same way Courser's Spirit is used currently.
One skill I would add for fun is enabling the donkey to be a two-seater, but just for shai (and maybe tamer). That would be cute :).
OMG yes! I would love to see shai roleplaying a taxi with twoseater :D
Access to it? Thought it was a temp april fools thing.
But this sounds fun
Yeah, donkeys got some pegasus skills on april fools but I personally don't think that suits them. We should have more supportive skills, donkeys were never designed to travel the fastest so flying wouldn't make sense
many of them seem to activate when out of the saddle.
Donkey's Blessing and More Things! would be a buff applied to you when in the saddle. Donkey's Blessing being AOE and More Things! would only apply to shai, so it's not too op.
True Friend however would act outside the saddle and be more like a passive added to your class of sorts. It would automatically decrease donkey health and heal shai. I'm sure PA can figure it out :D