U80 Preview 1 - Mycella the Myconid Hireling

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Torc

Torc

Systems Developer
Mycella is a Myconid Druid who fights up close and personal with a Quarterstaff. This henchmen features a custom spore cloud spell that heals allies and damages enemies with piercing damage.

Mycella is level 11 in heroic and level 36 in Epics. You can find her contract in the Test Dojo.
 
S

SquireZed

Well-known member
For those curious, Mycella has the following features:

Heroic
271 HP, 905 SP
Spore aura- +4 to hit, +2 to will saves (may not stack with other bonuses)
Damage numbers in the high 30s with staff.
Hotbar:
1. True Seeing
2. Healing Spores (costs 40 sp, seems to be an AoE effect- looks 60 healing per tick before healing amp, ticks every couple seconds)
3. Cure Serious Wounds
4. Reincarnate

Legendary
2243 HP, 3270 SP
Spore aura- +8 to hit, +4 to will saves (may not stack with other bonuses)
Damage numbers slightly above 600 with staff.
Hotbar:
1. True Seeing
2. Healing Spores (costs 34 sp, 205 healing per tick minimum but saw a lot more high ticks, so either rather high spell crit rate or it's more variable than the heroic version)
3. Heal
4. Reincarnate

Those are all baseline numbers, no druid past lives, augment summoning, or ED bonuses. Didn't run through tests to see how "survivable" they are but I could see the heroic version running through SP a bit quickly because it wants to use fire seeds which is a major waste of SP given how often it just doesn't hit anything. I subtracted my healing amp (healing received divided by 100+hamp * 100) to get the healing number.

That said, the healing is pretty fast and is an AoE so it will be putting it on all melee friends hitting the same target, and it does have a damage over time component that... really didn't seem very good in legendary (around 350?). I think the heroic version of Mycella is definitely sufficient for healing, but I'm also a little worried that Mycella will zerg in, pull aggro, and die. Both versions of Mycella seem to have decent healing amp, so in theory they would be fine until they run out of SP, which will happen somewhat quickly in heroic based on the spell costs especially when the melee druid decides to spam fire seeds that don't even spawn in.

Spell selection is a bit disappointing. Rana 2.0 right after the expansion where we got Rana. Would like to see a different spell list beyond the unique myconid ability since the two of them sit right next to each other in level range. They literally have "true seeing, heal over time, healing spell, and reincarnate" so like... yeah, they basically have the same spells. The spore aura is nice, but I have a feeling the spore aura will end when Mycella inevitably dies. All soul stones are functionally identical, so Rana is probably the "better" hireling for survival reasons alone. Though those healing spores are pretty nice in heroic.

Spotted some typos in the Telepathic Spores description- coordinate misspelled as cordinate, permanent is misspelled as permenant, and the last phrase is grammatically odd.
Mycella is listed as male in game but Torc said Mycella is a she. Myconids are canonically sexless so it doesn't matter, but it is inconsistent.
Fire Seed still doesn't consistently proc, especially while in melee with a target. Putting it on a melee druid is a waste of SP.
 
Matuse

Matuse

Join Date: February 2006
The heroic version is very strong, able to take on a quest basically by herself on Elite or lower difficulty.

The legendary version dies in a heartbeat, and is basically a between fight hjealbot.
 
Drunken.dx

Drunken.dx

Tired sociopath
@Torc are there plans to add plat/As hires above lvl 30?
currently only hires above lvl 30 are Rana, Drossheart and Darling.

and looking how were hitting lvl 36 soon, hires are kinda lagging behind...

Yeah i know they're borked, but like Albereth was copy of Garret, adding another few like that but with higher level... (maybe copying then upping few of thew more popular plat hires)
 
Uska

Uska

Drum knight
why another druid? was hoping for maybe a cleric, artificer, or rogue especially a rogue between the frog and darling
 
NomadDog

NomadDog

DDO Hawaiian Style!
I busted Mycella out and did Heroic Elite Ettercap Incursion. My experience was maybe because it was a bit higher than other quests, it seemed like it struggled to maintain any spellpoints. It went through them pretty quickly. However, it didn't die during the quest. So, it definitely has a certain level of durability.
 
W

Wizard

Well-known member
Curious, why did you make another melee hireling before fixing melee hireling AI and survivability? As it is, Rana is the only healer hire that can survive the difficulties that are actually played most of the time (R1+) and not have her AI bug out all the time.
 
Ptalon

Ptalon

Well-known member
Wizard said:
Curious, why did you make another melee hireling before fixing melee hireling AI and survivability? As it is, Rana is the only healer hire that can survive the difficulties that are actually played most of the time (R1+) and not have her AI bug out all the time.
Click to expand...
Well, her AI does bug out.... mostly by trying to shoot through walls.

But she is definitely my favorite.
She doesn't stand on top of me.
Doesn't die often. (Because she is not standing on top of me.)
 
W

Wizard

Well-known member
Oh yeah the bow attack is bugged still.

At least her main abilities, the spells rarely bug out and heal the party and herself mostly consistently. So she can actually do her job in the party unlike most other hirelings.

I hope there'll be a hireling fix / balance patch, so more hires become useful.
 
Urklore

Urklore

Well-known member
Torc said:
Mycella is a Myconid Druid who fights up close and personal with a Quarterstaff. This henchmen features a custom spore cloud spell that heals allies and damages enemies with piercing damage.

Mycella is level 11 in heroic and level 36 in Epics. You can find her contract in the Test Dojo.
Click to expand...
We love our plant-based allies! More plant cosmetics!
 
I

Ivor

Active member
Since we already have Rana that has True Seeing as a spell, can we possibly get that one changed for this new hireling? Especially since for druid True Seeing is a 7th level spell that they don't get access to until level 13 (this hireling is only level 11). Maybe change it to Freedom of Movement?
 
r8chel

r8chel

Well-known member
SquireZed said:
For those curious, Mycella has the following features:

Heroic
271 HP, 905 SP
Spore aura- +4 to hit, +2 to will saves (may not stack with other bonuses)
Damage numbers in the high 30s with staff.
Hotbar:
1. True Seeing
2. Healing Spores (costs 40 sp, seems to be an AoE effect- looks 60 healing per tick before healing amp, ticks every couple seconds)
3. Cure Serious Wounds
4. Reincarnate

Legendary
2243 HP, 3270 SP
Spore aura- +8 to hit, +4 to will saves (may not stack with other bonuses)
Damage numbers slightly above 600 with staff.
Hotbar:
1. True Seeing
2. Healing Spores (costs 34 sp, 205 healing per tick minimum but saw a lot more high ticks, so either rather high spell crit rate or it's more variable than the heroic version)
3. Heal
4. Reincarnate

Those are all baseline numbers, no druid past lives, augment summoning, or ED bonuses. Didn't run through tests to see how "survivable" they are but I could see the heroic version running through SP a bit quickly because it wants to use fire seeds which is a major waste of SP given how often it just doesn't hit anything. I subtracted my healing amp (healing received divided by 100+hamp * 100) to get the healing number.

That said, the healing is pretty fast and is an AoE so it will be putting it on all melee friends hitting the same target, and it does have a damage over time component that... really didn't seem very good in legendary (around 350?). I think the heroic version of Mycella is definitely sufficient for healing, but I'm also a little worried that Mycella will zerg in, pull aggro, and die. Both versions of Mycella seem to have decent healing amp, so in theory they would be fine until they run out of SP, which will happen somewhat quickly in heroic based on the spell costs especially when the melee druid decides to spam fire seeds that don't even spawn in.

Spell selection is a bit disappointing. Rana 2.0 right after the expansion where we got Rana. Would like to see a different spell list beyond the unique myconid ability since the two of them sit right next to each other in level range. They literally have "true seeing, heal over time, healing spell, and reincarnate" so like... yeah, they basically have the same spells. The spore aura is nice, but I have a feeling the spore aura will end when Mycella inevitably dies. All soul stones are functionally identical, so Rana is probably the "better" hireling for survival reasons alone. Though those healing spores are pretty nice in heroic.

Spotted some typos in the Telepathic Spores description- coordinate misspelled as cordinate, permanent is misspelled as permenant, and the last phrase is grammatically odd.
Mycella is listed as male in game but Torc said Mycella is a she. Myconids are canonically sexless so it doesn't matter, but it is inconsistent.
Fire Seed still doesn't consistently proc, especially while in melee with a target. Putting it on a melee druid is a waste of SP.
Click to expand...
I found I had to shrine this hireling every chance I got. Whether on defend or attack the myconid goes through spellpoints very fast!
 
Smokewolf

Smokewolf

Frequently banned member.
Torc said:
Mycella is a Myconid Druid who fights up close and personal with a Quarterstaff. This henchmen features a custom spore cloud spell that heals allies and damages enemies with piercing damage.

Mycella is level 11 in heroic and level 36 in Epics. You can find her contract in the Test Dojo.
Click to expand...
Would suggest that the Epic version be a signifigantly tanker. Otherwise its only use will be as a rez-bot.
 
S

SquireZed

Well-known member
tsotate said:
So a level 11 hireling that literally does less damage than Byron, the level one barb hire?
Click to expand...
With it's weapon, yes, though it was largely doing damage with the spore AoE DoT and fire seeds (when it proc'ed). Fire seeds was a bad investment because it would run up, start bonking an enemy, cast the spell which would fizzle most of the projectiles, then keep bonking after wasting 15 SP to do damage that a player caster would put to shame handily. I'd like to see that removed to save SP since its spore AoE spends a lot of SP with a short duration (about 10 seconds, off the top of my head I can't remember if it was 10, 12, or 15 seconds). The spore AoE is also a heal over time on allies and a pretty good one, so I wouldn't hold bad damage against it since healing hirelings are for healing, not DPS, but it only gets about a dozen uses and it gets used aggressively for offense as well where it does relatively little and puts it on cooldown. At least it *usually* includes itself in the AoE.
 
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