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Hello all.
Ive just got back into playing Ryzom recently after being away a while and found out all my old characters got wiped out from a server merge. Ive played many MMORPGs over 14 years and dont remember characters wipes simply from a server merge....and it was a free account so I guess Im out of luck. So, I started a new character and was trying to remember the game a bit. And one thing that quickly came back to my memory, was how incredibly useless the crowd control spells are in Ryzom. Root and Fear both, are completely useless, and a total waste of sap when it comes to killing mobs or doing what they are suppose to do...keep the mob off you. The only thing I can see that is slightly usefull is casting fear...not to actually move the mob away from you like a fear spell should, but to get a little bit of defensive magic experience in addition to your normal offensive magic after you go ahead and kill the mob normally. This can help if you are soloing and want to increase defensive magic a bit but its still inferior to just healing in a group....which brings us back to CC spells in Ryzom being basically completely useless. The root and fear spells have such a ridiculously short duration, they are not worth casting in the first place. Im still on Silan, and maybe they get better at higher levels?? If not, there is really very little reason if any to even have them on your hotbar. Am I doing something wrong, or are CC spells bascially useless in this game?!? Im sure some old Ryzom players might flame me a bit, but unless you can prove the title of this post wrong then dont bother, its just a fact of the game. Thanks for any help on this.

Krell

You're not totally wrong about them beeing useless but there are a few things that might make them seem even more so.

1. they are useless if you're solo (except for fear which might be able to get the mob far away before the link breaks)
2. they need to establish a link - but with low level the chance of establishing one is not very high
3. if the link is established you can not do any other actions (move, cast a second spell, use a melee attack) or it will break

Especially the 3rd point is what makes these spells so hard to use.

You are mostly correct and the situation doesnt improove at higher levels with the exception of weapon enchants, and then they can become very usefull for pvp and the occasional use in pve. Other wise they just arent that usefull.

a few years ago affliction had to be rebalanced because they appeared to be too strong for pvp. With that patch the uses of affliction in pve were mostly eliminated. Only a few uses in pve remain. To my knowledge it is impossible (=lots of work) to make a spell work differently for mobs and players in ryzom.

Anyway, to use affliction in pve it must be at a good level, close to or above the level of the mob.

Examples of the limited use of afflictions:

- Make a stun enchant if you want to go kill yelks on silan (and your weapon features sap load). Stun it just before last hit. It will not gas. This is useful on mainland if a large team needs to kill a yelk. If they dont, they'll get a big gas cloud just inside their lines and everyone has to flee the gassed area.
- Make a madness enchant to help you with evil critters like kirosta or the other dominant mobs.

- Use Stun on voraxes, a mob that uses area effect fear (afflictions done by mobs tend to hold for a long time).
- Use combined madness+elemental spells, available at lvl 100, to reduce incoming damage when you are fighting very strong mobs in a team of 3 or more. It will add some time to react for your healer.

there are a few more, but those depend on timing and circumstances.

Ehm. I two-man q260 nameds often. By using afflictions. I might be doing it wrong, but it seems to work good so far. Killing those big torbaks get way easier with a bit of madness in the mix.

I can't imagine multiple vorax' without madness either. I have great fun fearing herbivores into packs of carnivores and then running by while it's being eaten. Root and stun are just brilliant if you have a group of mages and dont want that nasty thing nibbling you all up in seconds. Fear is great for keeping kinchers away.

Slow attack and slow move are bloody useless in combat, but great for seducing girls on the dancefloor.

Basically, you won't have fun leveling afflictions. It isn't elemental. They are effing brilliant though. Easily my two favourite masters.

Btw you can get your toons back... if you had them on subscription just send an email to support@ryzom.com and I'm sure you can get them back...

Gkr

Welcome back, Krell :-)

Even at an early stage I witnessed a team using Root to good effect.  One player stood off and used Root as soon as the target came in range.  The others in the team then piled in with offense spells, in no danger at all.  As the Root spell wore off the player backed off and recast.

It can take a bit of practice to use these spells well, but with a team a lot of things suddenly make more sense.

team up with others
we used to kill 270 bosses with ele and fear and root
yelkoo great example of prime root boss which can be killed without a tank.

Thanks everyone for all the replies :)
Well it definately sounds as though CC in Ryzom needs some serious work hehe. As far as making it so the spells behave differently for PVE vs PVP its easy to do most MMORPGs do this its very common. The main issue I see is the duration of the root and fear spells is so incredibly short, its just not worth casting. Other then bad CC spells, this is a neat old game with a very good community. Thanks again for all the info, take care!

Krell

I am confused by one thing, Krell.  "Crowd control"??  None of the afflictions affect more than one mob, nor were they ever intended to.  I'm having a hard time understanding your use of that term.

In addition, how long the effect lasts depends on your skill and the level of the creature that you are attempting to affect and also on the creature itself (some definitely throw off spells much more readily than others).  If you are at or above the creature's level, the link can be held for a quite long period (often more than enough time for your teammates to club it or nuke it into submission).  As with all actions, the actions of beginners are less effective than the actions of masters.

i agree, solo they are 110% useless, but i've found that even in a team, it's not much better, for those that have mastered these skills, i very much respect the insane amount of time it took (if it was after the pvp issue that is) still, if i whine about being forced to do pvp in Prime Roots because i don't like pvp, they don't change the pvp zones, so if some pvp players whined about the power of the spells, why did they get that changed? how hard is it to set them to pve ONLY, if we can tag up with a click, then blocking the spells shouldn't be a major issue either. make them pve only, or make the pvp players learn to pvp better vs these spells, as it stands now, i agree that they are useless for PvE 90% of the time (the other 10% means your in a large team and they're helpful, but not required or really needed)

side note: low lvl mob's (much lower then my skill) resist the spell 8 out of 10 casts (spend a few days trying it to see, that's the average after killing 100's if not 1000's of yubo.) and when it does "hit" the link is broken very fast, sometimes in a little as 1 second after the "hit" thus making them nearly useless.

to gain xp in a skill, you must use that skill with some success during the fight. let's say i'm master in all fight skills, both defensive and offensive magic (so heal and elem) and now i want to work my aff, i can't use any of my own skills to lvl up solo, because the second i use a melee or magic skill, i get NO xp for the skill i'm trying to lvl, so, that to me makes them useless, "they're only good at 250, and worthless the rest of the time" to quote a friend's comment about affi's.

i think the issue is that because pvp players complained it was to hard to play with them as they were, they got changed, but in doing so made them useless for anyone not already a master, and for players that wanted to use them in pve, don't bother because it will be your death if your solo.

i'm all ears to anyone that wants to chime in here, but i doubt you'll prove my point wrong, they change it for one group of players, thus hurting another group of players, that to me is NOT balanced by any standard. perhaps change is in the wind on this and will be fixed in such a way as to make pvp players happy (like disable the spells for pvp) and makes the pve players happy too (because the spells will be worth using if they do better then they do now.)

For your experiment... you might have picked the wrong affy spell for your target. Even at lower levels affy works quite fine for targets below your affy level. To make the link hold you need to cast spells one by one and see if you get a link.

But your idea about diabling affy for pvp is really a bad one. Affy makes things a lil interesting, the whole system would need rebalancing if they were removed (like nerfing heal). You should try pvp and you'll see.

Talk:

As Casy notes, the experiment of stun+yubo only shows the yubos are resistant to that spell; similarly, plants are resistant to rot, it's the same relationship. Try stun on timaris for a change, or root on plants (which is useless, but we're talking the efficiencty in establishing a link here). The spells work if you take the time to find the correct combination for the right context.

Not bragging but actual surprise on my part - I stunned / feared / made sleep and blinded more people yesterday at the OP yesterday than I cared to count after a while. I only have level ~170 or so in affies, so I suspect you don't nearly need a master to be *very* effective. And reaching level 200 in affies takes about the same time it would take to reach 200 in a melee branch while doing mediocre damage.

Slightly on a tangent and I'm sorry for that: if you're in a team that does fast damage, you can and should do madness on the offensive track. That obviously works if the mob dies before it gets a chance to hit itself and nerf your xp, while you have an easy time landing the spell.

if i may just say.... it seems to me that there is at least some agreement that for affliction spells, you are either level 250 or bust. meaning sure if you master it, they are GREAT! i have seen master affies do some amazing things but... lets be honest my level 107 or whatever it is right now, is not going to do very much

yes i "could" do some interesting things and i have already tried some of the listed suggestions, plus a really small level affy enchant is still enough to be a significant annoyance in a big battle, even if the link does not hold long it is really fun doing it :)

still

looks like i should just use 6k sap crystals master the affy and call it a day, instead of bothering to use it at a lower level for anything practical- if this is sort of the reality of things then the poster of this forum entry is justified in their thinking,

if it is 250 or bust (or mild entertainment but way weaker than 250) then some people should perhaps just not train the skill besides to get a few more skill points for their mage pool (mage pool is the smallest... so grinding up 50 affy levels will help you buy all your spells faster thats why i did it)


if you want to be a badass PK'er then sure master it, if you wanna have fun with your best mates then ignore it for the most part and get a few levels in here and there, dont expect it to save your life :P although watching corwin use madness enchant on vorkoo is just.... priceless

wait where is it.... HAHAHA corwin what did you do!?

Crowd control is a very old and well known term in MMORPGs that has been around for many years now, since bascially everquest 1. Crowd control basically is any type of spell or ability(normally referring to spells) that can halt the movement and or mez(mesmorize) or stun, the mob in question or mobs in question. It applies for single target and AoE(area of effect) and or targeted AoE. But for crowd control spells to be worth anything though, they not only need to hit the target fairly reliably, but more important have a decent length of duration. If you cast a CC spell on a mob, but either the spell breaks right away, or the duration is stupidly short....then the spell didnt hold the mob back long enough to even be worth casting. From what Ive seen as a lowbie player on Silan, with around 36 magic now I think, crowd control spells such as root and fear are basically so useless they are not worth the sap to cast. This is even casting higher version of those spells on very low level weak targets of all types....and still the root and fear spells only last barely one second. Not to mention that unlike about every other MMORPG Ive played in over 14yrs now, the CC spells here need to bascially be channeled...or establish a "link" in Ryzom terms. This completely cancels any usefulness of CC spells for a solo'er like me, and as mentioned by a few others they are not really effective any better in groups....with such a short duration. What good is it to stand there and root something but you cant do anything else?? It makes no sense as to why the devs designed spells like that for CC spells. Crowd control spells in this game, at least at lower levels, need SERIOUS fixing/adjusting....otherwise they are in fact useless as many other posters here have already agreed. Some have mentioned though that maybe with some work, CC spells DO get better at very high levels. Maybe there is a spark of hope for CC in this game. but Im about fed up with it not to bother at this point and just nuke things down. CC issues aside, the rest of the game is interesting, and unique, more so then MANY other modern day MMORPGs.