[TM v1.1] Dancer Praetorian: Buffs and Changes.

[Venuska1117]

Requesting Testmerge for that dodge stat.

Spotted issues or want to give feedback?

click this link: https://discord.com/channels/150315577943130112/1464087612796174501

About the pull request

This PR buff dancer strain for praetorian, it aims at making strain better but still require some level of skill to be lethal and to not die.

Document: https://hackmd.io/@YLxQa9NUQ-e6H5YHujbzoA/SkYyDT7DZx

Re-open PR: #9273
(stale bot closed previous one)

Explain why it's good for the game

Everyone who played old dancer would agree that it was very bad, as oppressive type of strain that had high damage in mind, was eventually nerfed to state where it would be choosed once in a blue moon, long cooldowns on abilities, very bad penality on misses (1.5s on sprite click miss was diabolical choice), and not very effective movement set, yes it made you fast and pass trough enemies but it didn't save you from damage, just made you more exposed to them comparing to other strains having just "jump" ability.

This PR aims to keep its core mechanic of high damage, fragile strain by enhancing its existing skills, reduced miss penality on sprite clicks to reward skillfull gameplay but still slightly punish for mindless button spamming on target, movement ability get its own enhancement that allows it to dodge every X bullet, it fits in theme and its reasonable choice for ability that doesn't make you "jump" to tile, meaning you are still exposed to bullets and still take damage, but its reduced to some degree to make dancer depend on it more.

Changes Tracker:

Changes: [v0.1]

- passive ability to dodge of 18% - more health regeneration on weeds (1.35 multiplier) - increased range of impale by 1 tile. - dodge ability increases dodge by +20% up to 38%.

Changes: [v0.2]

- reduces abilities miss cooldown from 1.5s to 0.8s

Changes: [v0.3]

- Added 2 new stats to status panel, now you have displayed dodge_chance stat as %, and how long you have time left for dodge ability to expire. - Replaces tailstab with new type called "Harpoon Tail", if attacked on DISARM intent, instead of dealing normal tailstab damage it will switch to blunt tail, it will always deal 8 damage that bypasses armor, cooldown reduced to 40% when using this mode. - Changes Dodge Ability function, now dodge ability time is 10 seconds, ability now behaves similar to lurker invisibility, the longer you use it the longer cooldown you get, activation and diactivation of dodge now show balloon alerts. - Reduced amount of recovery players receive from phermones, now you can only receive max to "strong" tier phermones recovery value, very strong and above are limited to "strong" tier healing speed.

Changes: [v0.4]

- Dancer gains another passive, when slashing target with melee attack, it gains +3% dodge chance per slash, can slash max 3 times for +9% dodge chance increase, all slash stacks decay after 6s. - Dancer dodge ability cooldown got increased, instead of 1s dodge = 1s cooldown, now its 1s dodge = 2s cooldown to prevent dodge spamming. - Added 2 new stats to status panel, Slash Dodge Stacks and Slash Dodge Remaining.

Changes: [v0.5]

- Changed "blunt" tail attack text to match its use (Mist suggestion) - Decreased impale and tail trip abilities miss delay from 0.8 to 0.7s - Added "Harpoon Tail Intent" to give a hint and information to player on what it does. - Dodge Ability usage time is decreased from 10s to 7s

Changes: [v0.666] (thwomper request)

- Killing target by any means will spread yellow markers to nearby enemies in range of 5 tiles from dying person, targets with yellow markers hit by dancer abilities decrease their cooldowns to 1s, yellow marks only last for 5 seconds.

Changes: [v0.667]

- put cap on frenzy phermones, now you cannot benefit from frenzy strenght above "normal"

Changes: [v0.7]

- Decreased blunt tailstab cooldown from 4s to 3s. - Changed dodge_chance mechanic, now instead of having % chance, now you have guaranteed dodge every X bullet fired at you, for passive its every 6th bullet and with dodge active is every 3rd bullet. (gives more consistency than inconsistency) - Slashing targets now decreases cooldown on your dodge ability instead of increasing dodge_chance. - Dancer no longer benefit from frenzy phermones, this change was made to make people get better muscle memory. - Reduced cooldown reduction from 1s to 0s, now hitting yellow marks set your cooldown to 0s, allowing for instant use.

Changes: [v0.8]

- Added another subtype of dancer tag, the gray colored tag, this tag was created to show and prevent targets from spreading yellow tags. - Targets now spread yellow tags when they die or get attacked when UNCONSCIOUS. - UNCONSCIOUS targets don't spread tags for 17 SECONDS and apply gray tag to indicate cooldown. - After dancer spread yellow tags, there is 7 SECONDS delay between spreading. - Observers now gain new hud option called "Xeno Effects HUD" so they can see what xenos see (like tags or markers) - Renamed some stuff requested by Mist. - Decreased Dodge afterimage count from 4 to 3 images. - Removed "ignore_aura" on frenzy, dancers can again benefit from frenzy aura speed. - Added new status "Yellow Tag Spread Delay". - Changed Status "Dodge" info.

Changes: [v0.85] (fix patch)

- Fixes Dodge time to actually be 7s instead of 10s. - Increased cooldown between marks spreading from crit person from 17s to 20s. - Removed Visual of gray marks, concept stays. - Updated dancer strain description.

Changes: [v0.9]

- Slashing Yellow Marks now removes cooldown on both impale and tail trip. - Marks Icons are changed to be more visible.

Changes: [v1.0]

- Changed condition for yellow marks spreading, now yellow marks only spread from dancer player to nearby targets, and they will only spread when you put target into critical condition by attacking them (health under 0, -100 is death). - Killing targets don't spread yellow tags anymore. - Changed description of strain to match changes.

Changes: [v1.1] (probably final change)

- Updated strain description. - Added message warning for targets affected by yellow marks and dancer itself.

Videos of afterimages from: #7714

Click HERE to see Videos

Final Version:

2024-12-02.13-32-55.mp4

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BELOW FOR ADMINS:
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VV "Color" change support:

2024-12-18.02-53-06.mp4

Custom .dmi Sprite support:

2024-12-18.03-06-58.mp4

Changelog

🆑 Venuska1117
balance: Improved Dancer strain.
balance: Decresed Imaple and Tail Trip "miss" cooldowns from 1.5s to 0.7s.
balance: Increased Tail Trip range from 1 tile to 2 tiles.
balance: Dodge ability active time is reduced from 10s to 7s, in exchange ability now behaves similar to lurker invisibility, 1s used is 2s cooldown, can be deactivated at any time.
balance: Dancer get passive "dodge_threshold" ability , dancer can avoid 1 every 6th projectile, when "Dodge" ability is active it increases to 1 every 3rd projectile.
add: New "dodge_threshold" system, this system makes you avoid projectiles, you cannot avoid following: sniper ammo, rockets, explosives, melee and Fire.
add: New "Yellow Tags" system, have same usage as red variant of marks but to trigger yellow marks you need to drive target to critical condition (health under 0)
add: Slashing "Yellow Tags" now resets cooldown of both Impale and Tail Trip abilities, if you use ability on target instead of slashing, you will reset that specific ability cooldown.
add: New "Tail Harpoon" ability for Dancer, new tailstab that changes depending on intent, on DISARM intent it will cause 8 AP damage to targeted limb, its usage cooldown is 3 seconds.
add: Dancer now have recovery multiplier of 1.35 but their phermone gains cannot be higher than "strong" tier.
add: Dodge now have new "afterimage" effect, its purely visual addition to indicate if dodge ability is active.
add: Spectators now gain new HUD option called "Xeno Effects HUD", this hud allows you to see effects that are exclusive to Xeno players.
/:cl:

[TechingTheMoves]

Dancer needs a rework, considering how it's a high risk strain with little reward. You can get the same rewards (or better) with less skill if you just play ravager or vanguard.

Hope this gets testmerged, because practically no one uses dancer.

[cmss13-ci]

This PR has been inactive for long enough to be automatically marked as stale. This means it is at risk of being auto closed in ~ 7 days, please address any outstanding review items and ensure your PR is finished, if these are all true and you are auto-staled anyway, you need to actively ask maintainers if your PR will be merged. Once you have done any of the previous actions then you should request a maintainer remove the stale label on your PR, to reset the stale timer. If you feel no maintainer will respond in that time, you may wish to close this PR youself, while you seek maintainer comment, as you will then be able to reopen the PR yourself

[Drulikar]

stale exempt until reviewed and tested.