balancing awakenings

[juventas]

So I'm a pretty forward-looking guy, and even if we don't have awakenings, I imagine we will have them in a reasonable amount of time (a half year?). I have been looking over all the classes and, like most, have noted a great discrepancy between the usefullness of the awakenings. My question is: do they ever get balanced in DnF?

Here's my impression of the awakenings, even though I don't know much about them:

Blade master
Iron strike (decreases defense with a critical hit) - I imagine with the number of attacks a blade master delivers, it will proc quite frequently. I thought it was "meh" until I saw it can stack on one opponent.

Sword storm (omnislash, pretty much, multiple slashes across the screen) - seems to hit most everything on screen, decent damage. Pretty good I'd say. Only superarmored, but it seems hard to interrupt a blade master in the middle of all that.

Soul Bender
Fear of darkness (decreases attack speed and dark resistance) - sounds like a damn good debuff to me. Not bad for something you don't have to activate.

Ghost 7 Furious Blache (mires everyone in a large swamp, after a delay, summons a giant whale that belly flops on a large portion of the screen) - delay is annoying but I hear the damage is EPIC.

Berserker
Blood memory (increases bleed level and increases strength and accuracy for any bleeding enemies nearby) - smallish range, tiny accuracy and tiny increase in bleed level makes me think "not worth it."

Extreme overkill (build up a meter with a few attacks, when bar is full, slam the ground in front, causing a huge geyser of flame) - charges up quickly with multiple mobs, comes out with a slight delay, juggles smaller enemies in the air. Seems pretty good.

Asura
Mind's eye (increases evasion on counterattack) - my grasp of counterattack mechanics is poor, but this seems like a crappy passive to me.

Wave eye (debuffs everyone's attack speed and accuracy, makes normal attacks into magic and casts special attacks at the end of a normal combo) - seems badass but the 60 sec duration is a bit of a turn-off.

Nen master
Scattering nen flower (creates a shield that protects against one attack, once gone, buffs user with int, cast and move speed. Will automatically regenerate after a certain time) - buff certainly seems useful. Protection against one attack? Seems situational in terms of usefulness.

Nen flower (summons 5 large flowers that bloom over time and when fed with light attacks, then explode, damage dependent on how far they have bloomed) - It only takes one or two specials to charge them up and it does a lot of damage. They can be destroyed by enemies and may take a while to bloom by themselves, so enemies can walk out of range.

Striker
Stampede (increases strength for next few attacks after dashing. 1 str per 10 px of dashing) - seems useful for the amount of dashing you'll do.

World's greatest low kick (stomp knocks all enemies down, charges up and vacuums all enemies into one area before delivering a powerful attack to the center of the vacuum) - only superarmored, enemies can attack you while charging. Damage is pretty high, apparently, if you are geared well.

Brawler
Deadly blood (chance to poison the enemy when hit, increases damage of all poison skills) - decent if only for the poison buff. Useless if you're not utilizing poison, obviously.

Poison mist (poison cloud makes all brawlers invisible and poisons enemies, can detonate cloud at end for major damage) - seems pretty useful. Damage is good supposedly.

Grappler
Grab mastery (increase evasion and hit rate when performing most grab skills) - seems pretty vital. There's nothing more frustrating than whiffing a grab.

Gigantic typhoon (grabs a target and spins around to create whirlwind that vacuums nearby enemies into it. Final slam at the end) - nice AoE attack and you can move around in the middle of it. Unclear about invincibility or super armor, but probably difficult to hit a grappler in the middle of this attack.

Ranger
Sudden death (at the end of a normal combo, or with certain ranger skills, there is a chance to cause insta-gib) - skills like this usually only work against enemies you have no problems with in the first place. Just speaking from experience with other games.

Scud genocide (starts a mobile barrage of bullets along with close range circumferential attacks at times, ends with an aerial spray of bullets that hits everything) - damage seems mediocre.

Mechanic
Final will (summons a robot to buff you and your robots if health drops below 25%. Also heals up until 25%, then disappears) - seems like an okay skill, more for the buff than the heal. Its use is limited due to disappearing once your health recovers.

Gaebolg punch (one time giant robot punch) - I hear the damage is buffed considerably in later patches. Otherwise, it is unappealing in both a visual and usefulness sense.

Spitfire
Dual flicker (faster bullets, chance of firing additional bullet) - makes it harder to avoid bullets in PvP, I imagine. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually increase attack speed, but the chance of proc'ing an extra fire bullet is always handy.

Black rose forces (four female gunners follow you around and fire when you are stationary. Super armor status. Can call for a massive burst of gunfire, which dismisses the group afterwards) - damage gets buffed in later patches. Otherwise seems like a crappy skill.

Launcher
Spectral eye search (shows position of enemies off-screen, decreases evasion rate) - useful only for the evasion rate debuff. The debuff is tiny, though.

Satellite beam (summons a vertical beam that follows enemies around) - good for the stun lock, but it doesn't beat out superarmor, and the damage is mediocre. In later patches, damage is buffed, but the duration is shorter. This seems like a godawful skill, especially if the duration is decreased, as I imagine the hitstun is useful for groups of enemies.

To be continued...

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[juventas]

Elementalist
Elemental focus (chance of reducing resistance to an element when hit with that element) - seems pretty useful, especially for multihit skills like void.

Astral storm (crystals fall from the sky in rapid succession and explode after a few seconds. There is a final explosion at the end) - does good damage and hits many enemies. Seems to work on bosses pretty well too.

Summoner
Spirit bond (increases duration of summons, decreases cast time of summon spells) - I feel like it will only save some mana in the end. I guess it could be useful for some of your heavier hitting summons that you don't want to recast or have long cool-downs. Other than that, I don't like it. Just how much faster does a summoner have to cast, anyway? Could be helpful in PvP.

Conqueror Kasijas (demon that knocks things down on summon and disappears in a flurry of blades that hits ~20 times. Strength of summon is unknown, though his attacks seem to be wide and far-reaching) - really kind of dependent on how strong the summon is, and I have even less of a clue of this than the other awakenings.

Battle Mage
Battle grove (increases strength based on the length of your combo) - decent passive, as strength bonus appears to be fairly large. Unfortunately, its usefulness in PvP is limited by the fact that you won't be getting huge combos, which are required for the really good strength buffs.

Teana transformation (transformation into a juggernaut of death with wide, long attacks and huge chasers. Changes all her attacks) - looks like an awesome buff skill. Teana has some huge reach.

Witch
Lucky feeling (increases chance of success or sleeper success for the next 5-15 seconds after a sleeper success) - not a bad skill, but the duration is short, and it doesn't activate very often. Seems like there are better skills to have, especially with the SP crunch witches have.

Fusion Craft (builds a florae pad that holds enemies in place and then does tick damage for several seconds with pumpkin land runners and frosty junk spin. Final cat paw punch does the majority of damage) - by all reports, pretty decent damage; the problem is the final cat punch takes a long time to come out, and the florae pad has questionable ability to hold enemies in place for the final bang.

Crusader
Aura of Faith (small range buff for multiple stats) - could be a pretty good skill. The 300 px range is a little lacking, though, for a support buff.

Apocalypse (summons a ball of healing, buffing energy that later turns into a disco ball of laser death in a circular area. Final explosion at the end) - seems like a useful skill, although if you are casting for damage only, it will take quite a while to come out.

Monk
Dry out (allows skill canceling like the striker skill "muscle shift," decreases cool down of skills and mp useage) - apparently it mimics a non-awakening skill that strikers have but also has the aforementioned benefits. The cool down decrease makes this skill pretty nice (depending on how much of a reduction there is).

Big bang punch (a series of large punches that must be timed for maximum damage) - from videos, it does a lot of damage. If your timing is bad, it might not be such a good skill

Exorcist
Divergence (charges up a buff depending how long you are in superarmor state) - by reports, the buff is pretty poor, and charging up the skill is highly dependent on using superarmor abilities. This latter part doesn't become easy until the priest patch when the normal xxx combo is superarmored.

Blue dragon hammer (summons two glowing dragons that circle around the screen. He then jumps up and throws a large dragon spear on the ground, which explodes) - hits many enemies and has decent damage. Unfortunately, while the priest is on the ground charging up for the spear strike, he is extra vulnerable to being hit despite being in superarmor state. The pre-reqs also force you to choose skills you may not ever use again (unless you have a hybrid physical/magic exo?).

[Represented]

Black rose makes me facepalm.

[AlexX]

Doesn't Black Rose Squadron basically create 4 more potential targets for the AI to home in on? I imagine if nothing else they can be effective meatshields and cover fire (though I'd still avoid leveling the skill past 1... a utility skill if nothing else, as I can think of quite a few dungeons we have right now where it could really help).

[biglevo]

I think some of the poll options are a little misinformed. World's strongest low kick can do 200k+ damage with proper gear, and nen flowers takes roughly one skill to charge and does somewhere on the range of 200k as well. Compared to things like scud genocide which doesn't do much at all, they really are quite nice. Actually seeing the awakenings in action before making judgments about them helps.

EDIT: Also, the witch awakening passive is very good for witches. The extra success chance goes nuts in PvE.

[Ash]

analytical threads by people who are just guessing how things work

(insert complaints here)

[juventas]

Originally Posted by biglevo

I think some of the poll options are a little misinformed. World's strongest low kick can do 200k+ damage with proper gear, and nen flowers takes roughly one skill to charge and does somewhere on the range of 200k as well. Compared to things like scud genocide which doesn't do much at all, they really are quite nice. Actually seeing the awakenings in action before making judgments about them helps.

EDIT: Also, the witch awakening passive is very good for witches. The extra success chance goes nuts in PvE.

Poll was just to gauge if people agreed with me. I will remove it then (d'oh, can't remove the poll). Scud genocide was very close to making it on the list, actually, but it seemed somewhat effective on the youtube videos. Nen flower was an afterthought because I wanted 10 options .

Never seen world's strongest kick in effect, but it seems you are way too vulnerable during the whole thing, being stationary while enemies are free to peg you every which way. Obviously I haven't seen many videos of it (only one I found was Nexon's 2 second clip on the subclass promotional videos).

Witch's passive is mediocre to me, because the buff only occurs on a sleeper and lasts 5-6 seconds on a tier 2 spell. The 15 seconds on tier 3 is more useful, but you don't spam those quite as often. There was some question if the buff time was even extended by new sleepers or if it just stopped and had to be re-proc'ed. You also have to weigh if you want to spend 150 points on something that only procs on sleeper successes.

Originally Posted by Ash

(insert complaints here)

Whole point of this thread is to get input on how they do work, and which skills need to be balanced. I'll update the thread based on replies. Please feel free to add stuff.

[Shuusuke]

Skills that need to buffed:

(Every male gunner awakening)
Berserker Awakening
Witch Awakening

[Sumiyaka]

Just letting you know, the Monks passive skill allows them to cancel from one skill to another. Maybe thats what DFO wiki meant by 'Muscle Shift'?

[Dimglow]

The Exorcist Awakenings are:

Divergence (Passive): Gives you a bar that fills up for time spent in super armor status, and decreases if you go a certain amount of time without super armor. When the bar is charged you get a short term boost to strength and intelligence, then the bar empties and begins refilling again. Really only useful for physical exorcists. The amount of strength and int is unimpressive. Remember that after the priest patch Exorcists XXX attack has super armor in it.

Blue Dragon Hammer: Really long cast animation on the ground where you enter super armor and dragon spirits swarm around harming enemies. The Exorcist then jumps way in the air and throws a massive battering ram type object shaped like a dragon head towards the ground causing a huge explosion for big damage. Not very good at all as the time between activation and leaping is quite long, making the Exorcist take big damage and also there is no vacuum or stun really, so the explosion will miss many enemies on the screen. To make matters worse the unlock for it requires you spend points on both the physical and magical chakra, which can't stack, meaning you waste 90 sp on a skill you will likely never ever use to get it.