Since we have the current problem of Merkabah not being very effective and Kabbalist being a lot weaker in term of damage capabilities compared to Plague Doctor (which is undesirable by the developers if they still work according to their statement released on the developers blog on the 30th of December 2016), I’ve got a proposal that has both gameplay value and historical backup to support its implementation into TOS.
This would be to introduce a new attribute for Merkabah, “Merkabah:Scythed Chariot” or “Merkabah:Additional Scythes” or whatever you want to name it.
First of all, Scythed Chariots are around for at least as long as the 5th century BC in the Persian army. They also are mentioned in the Bible (Josua 17:16,18:
The people of Joseph replied, “The hill country is not enough for us, and all the Canaanites who live in the plain have chariots fitted with iron, both those in Beth Shan and its settlements and those in the Valley of Jezreel.”
Judges 1:19 :
The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.
), so they were not unbeknownst to the Jews (which are the base for the Class Kabbalist), so having the knowledge & technology would nicely fit the overall image of the Kabbalist.
The 2nd aspect that it would strenghen is the image of being a chariot.
Chariots are usually military vehicles, and Jahwe is also god of militaristic expansion[read Josua for reference], which bridges nicely the points of being both a military and divine vehicle that is used for both offensive and defensive means in TOS.
In the following I’d like to talk about what the attribute would do/how it works, but first I’d like to talk about Merkabahs combat&damage capabilities.
Merkabah in general has the major flaw that the chariots are very very fragile at Class Circle 1, with a long standby time before they start moving while “taunting” monsters around them.
This makes the skill pretty hard to execute at Class Circle 1.
On top of that, the chariots only deal damage when coming in contact with the enemy once (unless you pull them in and out of the effective AoE) and when they explode after reaching their destination.
Class Circle 2 fixes the durability problem with an attribute, and adds 2 defensive attributes which make use of the decreased movement speed attribute also introduced at C2. However, using this attribute makes the damage delivery speed really slow.
So, seeing that Circle 2 fixed the flaws of Circle 1, Circle 3 should introduce an attribute to fix the flaw of Circle 2, that is the slow movement speed = low damage per second problem.
To do this, we use our history backed-up scythes on the chariots to deal continuous damage while the chariots slowly advance on the battlefield (as the developers themselves stated that is was unnatural that the chariots moved through the enemies without dealing damage, it’s best to improve this feature as it’s already approved and implemented by the developers themselves).
All the new C3 attribute has to do is change the on-contact AoE damage that triggers only once to a continuous AoE damage around the chariots that hits the surrounding enemies every 0,3 seconds or 0,5 seconds. It doesn’t even require any visual alterations (i.e. just changes of the code).
The damage should stay the same (100% matk) so that the skill has a suitable damage potential without losing its general theme (i.e. a long, straight-lined skill with the best damage capabilities if the enemy is moved alongside the chariots till the point of destination where the chariots explode) or having to readjust the base damage (which would only cause benefits for C1 Kabbalists, i.e. all builds with Kabbalist as a filler Class).