Love for Halidon, please. (in General)

OK, so I know this isn't one of the issues that so massively affects each and every CBer that they feel compelled to post about it, but hear me out nonetheless.

The Jigorokano familiar gets Endurance and UC.

The Fire Familiar and Steel Familiar fire in both ranged and melee without any special penalty - IE they both do just what they ought to in both stages. They fire off their respective DD no problem.

The Ice Familiar only fires in melee - but hey, it's using Cone of Cold. Massive damage. Additionally, all DD familiars can be boosted with the AoF, creating even more massive damage.



However, the poor Halidon is being left on its face. It was created by Jonathan seemingly out of nowhere, with the capability of using physical damage in ranged and a cool battle cry, and then it got nothing more.

Unfortunately, this familiar suffers from a fatal flaw - the MASSIVE melee penalties that accompany a bow. 60% of my Halidon's DX, no matter how much I pump it, disappears when it enters melee rounds and starts firing only every other round.

Essentially, what this does to the Halidon is to turn it into a 5-round familiar. All the other familiars are capable of doing their job without being penalized for it.


I would like to suggest Point Blank Shot for the Halidon - essentially, it doesn't suffer the usual mad DX reduction in melee. It would still, of course, fire every other round as a bow user....but it would still be USEFUL as a familiar with this skill.

I do not see this as unreasonable, given the evidence I have typed out above. Please, Jonathan? Hal is so unloved...

i second that emotion

PBS FTW!

How about combining the Hal and JKF.

Just make it a tank familiar.

Archery in missile rounds and UC in melee. With some endurance thrown in.

Why do we really need one for melee and one for missile?

The Hal has too little PTH to hit decent evasion anyway. My TOE as a HAL was missing everyone in missile that mattered (read: High evasions).

yep, brilliant idea that, Ranger, i'll second that; only, if Jon wants to seriously put it into practice, there'll need to be some rethink coz the JKF is a previous supporter item, while the Hal spawns quite regularly in auctions.

Maybe add one more to rent's idea: HAL's tattoo N/W translate directly into it's ranged weapon's x with the same upgrade curve of elven long bow. Then it can do a bit more damage whenever it hits :)

That would be outrageously powerful, seeing how tattoo NW appears to grow exponentially.

From what I read in change log, all tattoos who was previously super unpopular, will always become outrageously overpowered after a change. RoBF is the greatest and nearest example. So why not HAL this time?

Next up: RoS grants 150% of its level to the entire team's EDs.

Eh, it is true that Hal does not have the biggest damage ever, but it is good enough that with the help of Junctioned BGs I have no problem with it.

The Hal/Junction bug, btw...is it still there? I've not let mine Junction fall below 1.00 for fear of it...

The Hal's bow's net worth is already based on it's level, and it works seemingly like a Compound bow (hence the loosely linear damage increase according to OB's recent trackings)... Combining the 2 would be alright, but it would also make for a lot of skills on a single familiar :P

And junction was made to work against physical familiars. 'tis the true reason we have penalty to Hal level for incomplete junctioning, and the Jiggy can't junction anything properly without screwing up the works... :P

I think all the buffing Hal would need then is for its weapon to be based off of the Elven Longbow instead of Compound bow. Compound bow is completely useless and outdated after all. The upgrade curve for pth is more expensive than an ELB, the x portion costs more to upgrade than an ELB, the base damage is lower, and archery works at 100% for ELB and only 90% for comp.

Then more importantly fix up junction for both Hal and JKF. As it is Hal gives negatives when junction is under 1.00 and junctioning AoL onto JKF gives a lot of good and happy sever errors which then turn into a 10 minute banning. Also JKF gets no bonus to UC from any equip junctioning, whereas Hal still gets the bonus from BG.

It has got the left overs of just about everything. I feel for the Hal.

nope.... just basing hal's bow off the mage seeker is good enough

"nope.... just basing hal's bow off the mage seeker is good enough"

If it was based off the Mageseeker, it would target mages first, no? :P

I feel for the Hal, but it's one of the few "tanks" left that can even hope to stand up to even a relatively small EC ~_^

"I think all the buffing Hal would need then is for its weapon to be based off of the Elven Longbow instead of Compound bow. Compound bow is completely useless and outdated after all. The upgrade curve for pth is more expensive than an ELB, the x portion costs more to upgrade than an ELB, the base damage is lower, and archery works at 100% for ELB and only 90% for comp. "

As I said, I'm fine with the damage myself...this are all niceties really to me. The only large issue I have is that my familiar -ONLY- is at full strength for 5 rounds, and then it is cut in HALF.

It's actually cut into 5 even slices, and then you're allowed to have two of them... :P

On second thought, you only fire every other round, so let me get another one of those slices back from ya ^_^

I say we turn it into 5 slices again

I agree.

Did it work?

Doesn't seem like it :P

"Next up: RoS grants 150% of its level to the entire team's EDs."

Woohoo! I win!

Bump

Never been a better time to bump this up, since Jon's started the changemonth off with a bang!

another way to make hal better would be to cancel the melee penalties...

then no one should use a jig ?

endurance evasion and the rest of the stuff... ?

Jig would still be supporter, endurance, evasion via UC, boostable evasion via GH and AoF, and hitting every round.