First off, I think all classes could use more skills to allow them to diverge from their archetypes as there is still a definate sense of 'sameness' to almost all classes. For the Dirge, here are some things I'd like to see: 1) A skill that uses health instead of power. This could be an attack that does high damage but deals damage to the bard, or a spell that boosts power/health of another at the cost of health to the dirge. (I'd say boosts power to the dirge at the cost of health, but that might tread on the mages a little bit.) I think this goes in line with Dirges getting health taps -- since in a group you are rarely ever damaged, it'd be nice to be able to effectively combine health taps with other skills to help the group out. 2) Replace the Rez spell which is basically useless since clerics can give a rez item. I'd like to see a summon-corpse or summon-shard line to replace it. 3) Selos. Probably enough said on the subject, I just don't see why Selos was taken away when there are already counter-measures to prevent kiting. 4) Illusion:Skeleton. Just because we are Dirges -- be nice to get that death like feel to us. Doesn't even have to do anything special.
Some good thoughts there, but taking away rez would cause me to rip my hair out - that's basically the clincher of why I chose dirge in the first place. The summoned priest item only allows you to rez a priest btw (it was bugged before to allow you to rez anyone). The ability to sneak down to a corpse and rez it then escape is amazingly powerful - I would hate to lose that ability~ Yeah, per your suggestion I could summon it, he could hit revive and then run back to zone in to get corpse, but what happens when your cleric forgets to give you a rez bubble and dies and you and the rest of the non-rezzing group are sitting right on his corpse in the dungeon crawl that took you 45 minutes to work your way down. Summoning it there wouldn't help too much. Just hope they dont die right under mobs so you have time to regroup or escape after the rez :smileywink: The summon corpse idea is quite interesting, but I think it would be a reduction of value compared to our rez ability. As an additional ability, of course I would take it ! The summon shard ability would be at least minorly useful - I have yet to die in a place I can't sneak into to get my shard - though I know they exist, particularly with scout mobs seeing through sneak at lower levels than regular mobs. At the worst it would be a time saver, which isnt a bad thing.
Rez was actually one of the reasons I started looking into the class too. Not the reason I chose it, but it was the initial reason why I started leaning towards Dirge over Troubadore. And you bring up a good point, there is some use for the spell. But it is extremely limited. If you have a cleric in the party it becomes pretty useless as you could sneak down and rez the cleric with the stone. This limits it to a use for when you are grouped with no cleric -- and we all know that the higher we get the less possiblities we get to duo mobs deep in dungeons. Perhaps 'replace' is too strong a word. Instead, add an ability that makes up for the fact that a rez spell in our list is much less useful/powerful than was (probably) initially envisioned by the dev team for the class.
Bah, I hate not being able to edit a post when I think of something else or forget to say something. I was thinking of the summon shard more as an ability we'd use to help other people recover their shards (since we don't get a group stealth option). I've never had a problem with my own shard recovery -- heck, even if the mobs nearby could see through stealth we can always run in, grab shard, escape away. I was thinking more in terms of the poor crusader that lost his shard deep in runnyeye and doesn't have a way to get to it.
