Web / Dissolve Rewrite.

The web spell has been rewriten and has many changes. Before I get into the details I want to reflect on the state of Aard in general for a while. Somewhere along the line we (I) got reluctant to make these kinds of changes because of the effect it *might* have. I don’t think Aard has been well served by that over the last couple of years so we need to just forge ahead, make our mistakes, fix as necessary and if someone gets upset in the meantime then we’ll just have to hope we can win them around in the long run.

You’re going to see a lot of subclass changes over the next few months, hopefully you like most of them but chances are pretty good you won’t like *all* of them.

The main difference is that web now works like curse of sloth – rather than a flag it is a percentage. Each time you try to perform an action that checks for web, the chance for it to be blocked is your web percentage. There is a 1 second lag when web blocks you – otherwise you could just spam flee 8 times
a second.

The other big change is that web can be cast again (stacked) to increase the effect. When Dissolve doesn’t remove web, it will still lower the percentage some in most cases.

Other important changes with web are:

• Web cast on self will be easier to land and have a higher percentage. Keep that in mind when comparing dissolve percent. Unless there is a big stat difference the web% from another player will be lower.
• Web can no longer be used from an object. Changes to put a different spell on clan items that have web will be free of charge.
• Dissolve used from a potion is far less effective than cast. It will also add the same amount of lag as if it had been cast rather than used from a potion.
• Level difference has far less importance then before.
• Saves no longer have any impact on web, neither does strength. Int is more important on both sides (attacker and target). The constitution stat does still help a little with resisting web but it’s importance is far less than it was.
• There is now also a web check on entering a portal and because of that the duration of the web spell itself is lower.
• The stats of the caster are stored internally on the spell affect. Dissolve will be more or less effective based on the stats of the caster relative to the strength of the web effect. When stacking onto a web effect already set, the higher of original caster or person doing the stacking will be used.
• The max you can be webbed by someone other than yourself is 90%.

There is quite a lot of new code behind the scenes on these. I fully expect to have to change / redo some of this as we learn in a live MUD situation.