1) Whenever you think something is too good or too unbeatable, or even if you just think a certain combo can't stand up to another certain combo, the best way to find out if and why you're wrong is to play whatever you think is on the strong side of that imbalance seriously.

Even if you have to play something you'd otherwise never play to do it, you'll keep the knowledge of how to beat that thing for all successive characters.

2) Whenever I read logs I'm struck that y'all prep a lot more than I usually do. Or more than, say, Twist does, for that matter.

Something that might be helpful would be an official "Daevryn said it" forum outside of the gameplay forum. I find that a lot of times I have to do time-consuming searches to prove that you said something (or sometimes didn't say something). A separate forum would be a boon to facilitate game knowledge and mitigate the internet info effect. A recent example: I was debating with a friend over whether or not serpent strike counted metal vulns (we already know it doesn't count elemental damage). I *think* Twist answered on it, but the post didn't have a huge number of views and the debate will likely come up again sometime in the future. Another example is when you offhandedly mentioned that fluid deceptions legacy makes building up striking charges a lot tougher, but it's never something I hear in STSF arguments.

To make the process of which posts to include easiest on you, someone could cut and paste a link to the original thread with the subject simply stating what's being answered, then submit for approval. No additional posting allowed, so minimal effort on imm part to moderate.

>1) Whenever you think something is too good or too
>unbeatable, or even if you just think a certain combo can't
>stand up to another certain combo, the best way to find out if
>and why you're wrong is to play whatever you think is on the
>strong side of that imbalance seriously.
>
>Even if you have to play something you'd otherwise never play
>to do it, you'll keep the knowledge of how to beat that thing
>for all successive characters.

Maybe. It may also be that the allegedly unbeatable class is only unbeatable when played in a certain way, and you may not be the sort of player who can (or is willing to) play that way.

For instance let's say I'm unhappy that whenever my assassin runs at a thief I either 1) get jacked and stolen from or 2) thief misses the jack then immediately flees and runs away.

So I roll a thief and end up playing aggressively, running at people and trying to attack them, and not being unwilling to take some chances against people I match up semi-poorly against. Consequently I end up dying, and my gear probably never gets to the point it would have if I'd been more conservative. Does my experience playing this thief really speak to my assassin's complaint about specific thieves? Not really. Mainly because played-by-me thief doesn't necessarily behave the same way as played-by-someone-else thief.

Sometimes when people complain about a combo being "unbeatable" what they really mean is "nigh-unbeatable by what I happen to be playing at this very moment.". And, in some cases, they may be pretty close to correct.

Also, player skill matters. Maybe a certain combo is "nigh unbeatable" when played by someone skilled, but that's not the case when it's played by a more mediocre player. If I'm a mediocre player, then putting myself in that guy's shoes may not actually teach me anything. Even if I end up dying a lot, it may be in situations where the more-skilled guy would be very unlikely to suffer the same fate.

STSF never cared about WIS more than INT. In fact, for a long time (including the gnome warrior era, I believe) it didn't care about WIS at all.

I've been seeing that one pop up now and again and I end up swearing at my monitor because someone is wrong on the internet.

Aside, we know now you read QHCF at least enough to come here and drop the proverbial bitch slap.

I will say this. At one point, you did change striking slightly, because I remember a dwarf warrior (played by SnS Esq, if I remember correctly) blocking me and Jaguab from fleeing after like 6 or 7 combat rounds. I specifically remember Skiltore (Jaguab) saying that the monk that taught that must have been crazy, and then his next char was a gnome STSF char :)

So either you toned it down enough that IT seemed like you changed the WIS aspect of it (which is probably what happened, just toned down the amount in which you accumulate charges...so a class with low int and non-tanky isn't going to get hardly any use from it), or...something else. I just know that freaking dwarf warrior used to drive me crazy with STSF :(

>Aside, we know now you read QHCF at least enough to come here
>and drop the proverbial bitch slap.

I don't always, but sometimes I do.

And, hey, I try to correct your misconceptions here and there to keep everyone more on an even keel of understanding how the game works or has worked.

>I will say this. At one point, you did change striking
>slightly, because I remember a dwarf warrior (played by SnS
>Esq, if I remember correctly) blocking me and Jaguab from
>fleeing after like 6 or 7 combat rounds. I specifically
>remember Skiltore (Jaguab) saying that the monk that taught
>that must have been crazy, and then his next char was a gnome
>STSF char :)

Well, keep in mind that it's always had a chance to learn something each round; if you were a bit lucky with even a medium mental stats character you could be cutting people off at the third or fourth round. Just like you tend to remember the time deathblow went off four times in a round and put you straight to dead, you tend to remember the times Striking surprises you, too.

But, yeah, it's seen a fair amount of tinkering over time. A lot of it didn't work right at all for the first year or two it was in, and once that was corrected it took some adjusting to where it felt like it was good enough, but not too good.

>1) Whenever you think something is too good or too
>unbeatable, or even if you just think a certain combo can't
>stand up to another certain combo, the best way to find out if
>and why you're wrong is to play whatever you think is on the
>strong side of that imbalance seriously.
>
>Even if you have to play something you'd otherwise never play
>to do it, you'll keep the knowledge of how to beat that thing
>for all successive characters.

Sadly, for as much as people used to say they were horrible, I'm going to go out on a limb and say Evil Conjurer. I decided to try one recently to see if they sucked as bad as people said, and it's honestly stupid powerful. I can't even find my wands, and I was working people (Particularly those poor ragers. Nightgaunt isn't even fair for ragers).

Scion Conjurer is ridiculous and sucky to fight, but hey, someone's got to be the bad guy and that I don't mind so bad. They're usually just better than me to begin with. Scion conjurers with greater devil conjuring? Seriously, WTF are you thinking! In reference to Jerohk, pretty sure this is after repeated deaths to Charine. In part, I'm not one to run away from fights just because he is overwhelming me (no way to figure out a way to win if you don't try), and in part because those devils left me with such ridiculous damage over time affects it was half pointless to run anyways.

Wed May 26 05:48:32 2010 by 'Lyristeon' at level 50 (130 hrs):
The guy tries. But someone needs to teach him about 'Tactical Retreat'.

At least there I was a hero paladin. Nowadays, I'm dealing with it in the mid-thirties. At least tell me some of those abilities come with devil level?

> At least tell me some of those
>abilities come with devil level?

As in, lower classes of devils can cast only a subset of the spells? That's the case. Most of the scary stuff starts to appear around Barbed IIRC.

Heh, it's painfully obvious once you start dealing with fiendish ice devils that they're about six steps above even lesser ice devils. Those things are just wrong.

I seemed to remember a comment that players won't see all of a familiar's abilities at level 17, implying maybe that you got some stuff at higher levels with familiars.

My question was more, are there devil abilities that you (or the summoned devil) have to be a certain level to see? Like where bloodthirst does X, Y, & Z at hero, but only Z at level 35.

Or are fiendish ice devils as absolutely terrifying at 40 as they are at hero?

>Heh, it's painfully obvious once you start dealing with
>fiendish ice devils that they're about six steps above even
>lesser ice devils. Those things are just wrong.

They only have an extra spell or two, IIRC. Without doing the math I don't think they're likely to be more than a level or two higher.

>I seemed to remember a comment that players won't see all of a
>familiar's abilities at level 17, implying maybe that you got
>some stuff at higher levels with familiars.

Again, assuming I remember what I was talking about, the main implication of that was that you might have a familiar with abilities that wouldn't be relevant until a higher level, not that you wouldn't see abilities on skill until later. For example, you get familiar at 17 and some familiars have abilities that modify conjuration spells (all of which have echoes when relevant) so if you have a familiar that helps you with elemental summoning, that isn't immediately apparent at 17 since conjure elemental is 3 levels later.

>My question was more, are there devil abilities that you (or
>the summoned devil) have to be a certain level to see? Like
>where bloodthirst does X, Y, & Z at hero, but only Z at level
>35.

Abilities on angels/archons/devils/demons are set by servitor "class", e.g. abishai/bearded/barbed/ice, not by their actual level. That being said, they cast their spells pretty much at their level just like a shaman or whatever would, so wrath from a level 40 angel is going to do more damage and last longer than a level 30 angel's, just as a level 40 paladin's wrath does more damage and lasts longer than a level 30 paladin's.

Servitor level is somewhat correlated with class, in that the large mana pump and a bit of luck that it takes to get a lesser archangel instead of a winged angel also "buys" extra levels for the angel, but theoretically there's no reason a level 35 conjurer can't have a devil which will Rot you -- it's just unlikely to have much in the way of killing power because of its relatively short duration and the tendency of people in a level 35 conjurer's range to not have a 6 CON.

>Or are fiendish ice devils as absolutely terrifying at 40 as
>they are at hero?

In terms of the spells they can cast, they are, but the hero's devil is likely to be a lot higher level.

For a number reasons which tend to compound on themselves, a lower level conjurer is much more likely to have a lower class servitor than a higher level conjurer. The Veil is a factor here, as well.

Because I tend to believe that the game is very well balanced. Sometimes balance means catching someone unprepared and killing them that way.

I haven't found too many chinks in the evil conjurer armor though. A well-played character simply isn't found unprepared. The game is too large, and a player can simply seclude themselves until they are prepared to enter the hunt again. I know this because I often use this to my advantage.

My last several mid-level characters have had to deal with both good and evil aligned conjurers. Demons and devils in the 35-40 range are extremely nasty. If the conjurer is using any protections at all, or has a decent set of equipment, then they start looking really powerful, really quick.

Also, evil conjurers are probably the most annoying things to fight. In two rounds I've seen a devil use -con damnation and then rot the next round.

Start throwing in edges for familiars and constructs from the Consortium, and conjurers start looking like easy street.

Now I know that keeping demons and devils isn't the easiest thing to do. But people have figured out what it takes to keep each type of devil and demon happy, and are now simply powergaming that aspect.

After having to deal with them quite a bit for the past several months, I believe I will have to research them and try one for my next character. Just to see if it really is as tough as I seem to suggest it is.

And tell me how many times you mob-die to your own servitors :)

It's probably going to be at least 8-10. That's the drawback to evil conjurers.

As I stated in my post, whether directly or indirectly, I would obviously need to learn the ins and outs of playing a conjurer. I'd like to think that my general knowledge of the game would make me, at the very least, mildly successful at my first conjurer attempt. There are many people that have already done this, and are now capable of powergaming the aspect of keeping servitors content or happy.

Besides, mob dying matters very little to me these days; experience holes are a thing of the past.

Mob dying is hardly a drawback anymore. And equipping a mage is much, much easier than equipping most melee classes.

A winged morosa demon's slice DISMEMBERS a Maran Tara'bal!
A winged morosa demon's slice DISMEMBERS a Maran Tara'bal!
A winged morosa demon's slice MASSACRES a Maran Tara'bal!
A winged morosa demon's slice DISMEMBERS a Maran Tara'bal!
A winged morosa demon's slice DISMEMBERS a Maran Tara'bal!
A winged morosa demon mutters mad profanities from the Abyss.
A shining silver construct's punch misses a Maran Tara'bal.
A shining silver construct's punch decimates a Maran Tara'bal!
A water elemental's drowning EVISCERATES a Maran Tara'bal!
A water elemental's drowning EVISCERATES a Maran Tara'bal!
A Maran Tara'bal's searing light EVISCERATES a shining silver construct!
A tiny, winged nightwalker's asphyxiation maims a Maran Tara'bal!
AllyAssassin's divine power DISMEMBERS OtherEvil!
AllyAssassin's claw EVISCERATES OtherEvil!
EvilConjie's chop misses a Maran Tara'bal.
EvilConjie's chop misses a Maran Tara'bal.
Your slash mauls OtherEvil.
Your slash decimates OtherEvil!
OtherEvil has fled!
A Maran Tara'bal moves to block OtherEvil's path.
OtherEvil's crush wounds AllyAssassin.
OtherEvil is covered with bleeding wounds.


Not bad considering the Tara'bal had invoker shields on him.

I also remember getting thrown down from like 70% to 10%, while being a Dwarf (so not exactly with low hp) in sanc AND with invoker shields. Oh and I got damned in the process too.

All in one round.


(think I was around level 25ish)

nt

I can't find the log, sadly.

nt

You seemed to be thinking I was talking about this log, when I spoke of damnation, but that was an additional example.

LOTS of kills, LOTS of stupid deaths that no-one else would die to. I like seeing XXX is DEAD!!! though, so I think it's a fair trade :)

Random mob deaths to your own servitors don't count as PK deaths anyway, exp holes can easily be retaken with a bit of time investment and if you're smart you'd have plenty of trains saved up to take care of the con loss. And any half-decent evil conjuror is keenly, keenly aware of how happy his servitors are, and will run to a desolate spot to either dismiss them or re-up their happy happy rates the moment he thinks he's losing control.

I played three evil conjies so far to a max level of forty, complete noobs, all of them, and though my servitors turned on my plenty of times, I rarely died to it. And I mean, seriously, I was really bad. And when I did die, only once did it happen in a PK situation where I would have won without servitors turning. And even then, I was able to word before my demon finished eating my face off, so my opponent didn't get a chance at my corpse. Didn't lose much at all out of it.

In my opinion, the real drawback of playing evil conjurors is the vast, vast amount of knowledge and investment it requires to function really well. There's this huge gap between mediocre evil conjies and godlike evil conjies. There are tons of super-rare, super limited items that boost their skills, tons of powerful prep knowledge reserved almost exclusively for conjies, tons of really powerful or useful charmies that you can utilize if you know what you're doing. Tons of little hints that you need to be aware of that your servitor will give before it decides to tear you a new asshole for ####s and giggles.

Goodies don't really need to think about these things, though they certainly help, but a successful evil conjie needs to know a lot of ####ing #### if he wants to begin and maintain the momentum that make conjies such a wrecking ball.

Pretty much this and evil conjurers have probably the toughest time doing anything solo/tanky until near hero of any mage, including transmuters (and maybe, maybe excluding invokers).

Don't get me wrong, evil conjurers can be wrecking balls in some limited circumstances but at the same time, they're the easiest I find to deal with of all the 'power houses'. They're almost never ready to be raided, because of falling timers, which makes them pretty bad at cabal defenses. Once you can repeatedly kill a nightgaunt or at least avoid it or bypass it by wording to another continent - that factor goes away, in which case they are only really dangerous for 20 minutes every 1-1.5 hours.

If anything, things like murderous reputation and other edges are unnecessary and too unbalancing - but at their core evil conjies are no where near RBWs.

Imp is a great tank, even the non-questy one. It's even fairly decent before you get the familiar edges. I was able to do all kinds of crazy stuff with my imp, and the quest-imp uplift wasn't really as much of an power-up as I think many people thought.

And honestly, I'm at that point where I'm happy to see most Nightgaunts, because I usually have a significantly better chance against them than the actual conjurer. I just haven't a clue how you're supposed to deal with the devils and such from 35 til near hero. I'm not sure most characters can. Just in the mid ranks I've seen insane maledicts and unspeaks from spells not even exploiting vulns.

I'm usually crazy enough to fight even when my opponent has the upper hand, but I've taken to completely avoiding any half-competent evil conjurer out there. I don't even think about messing with scion conjurers, and I've only played a few characters ever that I thought even had a remote shot at killing one.


Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere near the patience to actually play a scion conjurer (can't even manage a conjie past the mid 20s before getting sick of it, let alone get one into scion), so I guess I'll never know what exactly they fear, heh.

There is an extremely steep learning curve on non goodie conjies too. Even if someone spells out for you how to manage the servitors it takes a fair amount of practical trial and error before you are able to really leverage them.

you hit the nail on the head though, if a conjie is able to get ready for a specific matchup then they can steam roll almost anyone.

But they do have a lot of points of weakness beyond bash them while they conjure.

Couple of things
-Most elementals hate being in water and will rebel if they are in it for long
-If a guy has a devil fleeing is a key point in happiness, try to minimize the number of times you flee and if you can get them to flee a couple of times they will likely turn.
-Hit archons early in a fight so they never sanc the conjie
-If you just want to drive them off kill the elemental
-There is an area where if you get the conjie to run through it his servitors will be trapped there
-Conjurers can't force their servitors to target a specific person so fight them in a group and rotate out the tank.
-Close to the above fight them at an inner guardian.
-its tough to hunt them at their conjuring spot but most conjies only use one or two gaunting spots, learn them and ambush them
-Knock out the conjie, kill his servitors, then kill him
-Conjies are absurdly vulnerable to fiends, more vulnerable then cloud giant villager

Everyone knows Twist's chars have never fought when he wasn't fully prepared. Its true because I read it on the Internet.

I just have accepted the fact that Twist and Nep chars are going to beat me so the "Twist doesn't need no stinkin stoneskin" argument isn't a great one IMHO. I guess my point was always that non-buyable preps are bad for the game unless used extremely sparingly. Then again I don't play to be a wrecking ball, I just want to compete/hold my own and RP so the appeal of l33t secret knowledge just isn't there to me.

Wands for mages aside, I don't think there's a lot out there that's genuinely worth having that isn't buyable. Sure, you can get an aura potion and a shield potion as a highish level warrior -- but those things are probably more limited than wide coppers and you aren't going to see them come out a lot in fights. Return/teleport/flight and situationally/depending-on-build enlarge/reduce/protection/stoneskin are more the order of the day, and you can buy almost all of the above in a couple protected cities in a couple minutes.

I consider l33t gear to be along the same lines as preps. My RBW has a lot lower dependency on l33tness gearwise than my Maran warrior. He also has less means to hold onto it but yeah. Is it balanced? Probably, but I still know which is more tedious than the other and tedium just ain't my bag baby.

Your rager warrior is more gear dependant then a non village warrior since you don't have other means to boost your effectiveness (such as allies buffing you, ganking buddies, preps, mercenaries, etc..)

The ragers that are cleaning house are not doing it with low end gear and when you die a lot as most villagers do retaining high end gear can be problematic.

I'll disagree.

What do you gear for as a warrior?

Saves? Spellbane.
Stats? Bloodthirst.
Damroll? RBW haz it in droves.
HP? Resist.

Are ragers more gear reliant? No, not at all. Do they still scale well with uber gear? Sure - but above and beyond people who need to cover weaknesses without being assisted by cabal powers.

Ragers, when they have the right set, CAN seem overpowered. Stat gear to cover all maledictions (so you don't have to thirst the moment someone boneshatters you), -svspell gear to make spellbane actually work better, +dam gear to make your deathblows memorable :)

But yeah, a great set is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more important to a rager than a Storm Giant Maran. Unless of course, we are talking about a Twist/Nep/Jalim/Elhe set where you got two hummingbird pendants and two humansunders and blademaster's gloves.

You know, in the history of the game I don't think I've ever had two hummingbird pendants. I'm not sure I've ever had two humansunders either, though maybe I have.

I have held NEITHER ever :). I have held strange bracers (as a rager...d'oh...what are the odds) and troll amulets, but never etched dragonscale pendants (even before Tiamat was buffed). No Defiance or any other no-disarm. I have fought Anazu and died horribly to him :)

Probably the best piece of gear I've ever had was the Dragon Slayer (which I had with a gnome shifter lol). Kasty rules (and so does that item).

Edited to add: I shouldn't have included you since you don't play more than 100 hrs hardly ever :) You gotta put in the time to get that gear son!

I've never had a single set of prayer beads :(. Whenever I am playing a goodie, they are always maxxed out on a goodie I can't kill.

I *ALMOST* had 2 unicorn pendants...

Bravo Graatch. Bravo.

nt

nt

nt

Doesn't exist anymore and has been replaced by them.

nt

The area they were in was replaced by another area.

They were orginally held by Drizzt Do'Urdern, but in CF's quest for Orginality (which I like, no complaining), they got rid of it. At least, that's if IIRC. But man, would I love to be a sword spec with Twinkle and Icingdeath right now..

I've Had two unicorns, and two humming birds, and two prayer beads, I lost the beads to an outlander delf within 2 mins of getting them, damn cavefisher :( Twist still one shot me :(

I had both unicorns with my paladin Barilan, then gave away my whole set to show Arvam i wasn't greedy and get a second virtue (fortitude to stack on my temperance, worth it I thought at the time) Then the guy I gave them to happened to delete 2 days later and I went and got it all back :P Double double unicorn love! (Though I doubt Arvam was super happy about how it played out lol)

As I understand it, most of your chars flame out in the mid thirties.

They buff villagers to the point of ridiculous at times.
Pincersvirf with thirst, stoneskin, resist, anthem. He really is not getting hit overly hard by anything. Throw in gates to make it more insane. But gates is gear dependent too.

I should play one of those.
Except I just watched every one of them get bashed into oblivion in every fight and I can't do that to myself.

I mean, you can go arial and basically say "My songs are going to be half as good as any other bard, but at least you can't perma-lag me with trip", or you can go human/wood-elf and die horribly to trip at least 10 times.

Bards really do make villagers like 10x more powerful though. It's like having something to prep with!

I'm not really sure what your solution to that is -- killing people and taking their better gear is a cornerstone of the game.

Right now the difference between uber-prepping/quest gearing is like:

Me <---------------------------------------------------> Them

Should be more like:

Me <----------> Them

As a repost :

1) Better non-limited items near hero that can be purchased (reduce the playing field difference between the uber-stacked and newly regeared).

To expand here - would be cool to be able to buy something equiv to scorched iron gear @ hero, midnight/white worm gear @ 35 or 40.

2) Less gear reliance in general (nerf prayer beads, nerf heartseeker, limit the amount of game-changing gear).

To expand here - over the years playerbase has declined but ubergear has been expanded so probably needs a general rebalance.

3) Remove all wands except for aura and give shield/barrier to mages as class perks - reduce barrier dam redux by half.

Started this with shield, which is good. Should continue the trend imho.

4) Consolidate preps - remove stoneskin preps, remove shield preps and reduce rager resist from 33% to 25%.

Things like blowfish are just 'another unnecessary thing' IMHO.

n/t

I have never ever ever lost a fight because of gear. i walk around with whatever i find on the ground in the pits of cabals and i get from killing people. Leave the gear how it is and try to work on your pk skills.

>I have never ever ever lost a fight because of gear. i walk
>around with whatever i find on the ground in the pits of
>cabals and i get from killing people. Leave the gear how it is
>and try to work on your pk skills.

I'll cut you some slack because you are new to the game. Why don't you hero a character before commenting on what the gear-to-skill balance looks like?

Derialx (elf bard) some random shifters Cinalas svirf pincer spec tribunal. I have had many in hero range such as Goratha Gahsa Vorinath and Roriack. I have been playing two years yes i guess that is new but honestly gear isnt why you get pks it helps but it doesnt make you unstoppable or unreasonablely hard.

Gear can and definitly DOES win fights. 100% absolute fact.

Don't believe me? Rank a warrior with NO gear and see how that works out.

hat is an extreme example perhaps but it is an undeniable counter to what you posted.

I have gone on killing sprees with only fine leather on and a practice weapon. Koil is a great example i got my first four kills with that set. Point being Gear doesnt win fights if you have a normal set of basic clothing it doesnt matter. Oh and an elf bard balances out the shifters I had two of them in hero range.

In over twelve years of playing and probably 1000 kills I can definately say having no-disarm avg 28 weapons and a 70 damroll with divine saves is playing a different game than fine leather and a practice weapon.

And that's not even getting into gear that does awesome stuff like prog heal during combat, prevent you from being paralyzed, auto-flurry, detect hidden, etc.

I think one of the big issues with jumping back into the fight now adays is with the "OK" gear.

Sure we have the ragesteel set which isn't exactly bad, not good but not bad. But what we don't have anymore is that "OK" non limited set.

A lot of that stuff that used to be non limited has been either limited or removed based on the item standardization.

Back in the day if you caught a full loot you could just grab two nightwings, two skull rings, a set of spikey green and two nightmare blades or blacksmiths hammers or whatever and you were back in the fight. Take note that this could have been accomplished almost fully within ghost time.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like this isn't quite possible anymore, and ragesteel just isn't quite right for hopping back into contention for pk.

Or maybe I have just become spoiled as a player over the years and can't jump back into the fight without a decent hit/dam...

I don't know, but either way hope this puts a few thoughts out there about making some of those standard items and placing them back in the game.

Thanks.

Haven't made much use of Ragesteel, but am I the only one who tends to not replace some of the Magister's gear or (forget the name) the priest gear, because some of those pieces are pretty sweet hit/dam/saves? I seriously don't know that I've ever found armor I could typically get to replace and be better than some of those. Especially for SvS.

I think this is worth discussing; take it in that spirit and not the spirit of me trying to bust you down.

>Back in the day if you caught a full loot you could just grab
>two nightwings, two skull rings, a set of spikey green and two
>nightmare blades or blacksmiths hammers or whatever and you
>were back in the fight. Take note that this could have been
>accomplished almost fully within ghost time.

What part of that isn't possible anymore? The hammers and nightmare blades are limited now, if I remember correctly, but they're about always in so I'm not sure how that's different?

I think getting some decent gear pretty quickly before you unghost is still possible, but I also think that most of that decent gear isn't in a lot of the time or has been removed.

Now this is all likely attributed to my personally evolution as a player and realizing what gear actually is decent and useful and what is just rose tinted from my first few years!

Thanks for the reply.

No one but TMNS has accused me of being an elite player, but I have had a lot of PK success with various combos - so maybe that will give me the street cred to say the following:

1. I don't see how anyone that's played an ABS invoker, evil assassin, or maybe even a temperance paladin could call a Rager overpowered. Whoever thinks Ragers are OP should play one of these classes - if you have some sense of sportsmanship and/or a desire for challenge, eventually you'll stop hunting Ragers.

2. I think you (eskelian) are seriously overestimating the time involved with ABS and underestimating the time involved with playing a rager. Where prep time takes a serious uptick is for melée classes (non assassins because they have assassinate/trance) stocking up on one shot non-buyable preps. That is almost not worth it for me. But ABS invokers, at least, require relatively minimal boring time getting preps. As for RBWs, there is PLENTY of 15 min interval downtime - only your downtime will be hiding somewhere watching your HP come close to zero from bleeding or immolation or plague or whatever hoping you manage to survive. Maybe that's fun time for you I don't know - but if it is I would imagine getting barrier would be fun time for you, too.

3. The "ragers are OP" post that connected the most to me was Scrimbul's comment that "dying is not a downside for the types of players that want to play RBWs for their PK win potential.". That makes sense for people like Batman who (according to him) couldn't get 60ish PKs unless he were playing a RBW - I can see for players like that who are overjoyed with a 60/80 win/loss ratio would be overjoyed at 60 wins and not care about the 80 losses - they probably don't have much downtime other than ghost time, either, since they aren't barely surviving much - they're just condying at 200 hours. I can see how RBWs are OP from that perspective, but you can't balance RBWs to that perspective because to everyone else in the game, they're a slightly dangerous character more likely to die than to PK you. Basically I don't think you should balance the game for the lowest rung in terms of player ambition and skillset.

4. Keep in mind you are not the only voice on why Ragers are OP - there is a lot of white noise on the issue and your "point" may be shared only by you. My sense is that your point doesn't have anything to do with Ragers and has more to do with "gathering prep downtime." As I mentioned above, I think you are overestimating this time wrt ABS. WRT single shot preps for non-assassin/ranger melée types, I think the only non buyable ones are shield and aura. I'm not sure where the balance falls on making those reductions freely available. At least as it is now you don't need a warrior with shield/aura to compete ... But if they were buyable I think I'd have to chug them down before every fight.

Anyway, those are my thoughts re: the discussion on Dios albeit not strictly to your posts in particular.

2. I think you (eskelian) are seriously overestimating the time involved with ABS and underestimating the time involved with playing a rager. Where prep time takes a serious uptick is for melée classes (non assassins because they have assassinate/trance) stocking up on one shot non-buyable preps. That is almost not worth it for me. But ABS invokers, at least, require relatively minimal boring time getting preps. As for RBWs, there is PLENTY of 15 min interval downtime - only your downtime will be hiding somewhere watching your HP come close to zero from bleeding or immolation or plague or whatever hoping you manage to survive. Maybe that's fun time for you I don't know - but if it is I would imagine getting barrier would be fun time for you, too.

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I don't claim to be any good at the game but I'll say that I've done the ABS thing since the changes and done the melee class thing and done the rager thing (not to any notoriety mind you - again I'm not that good at the game) and I will disagree. It's exactly as tedious as I believe it is.

I should also rephrase. I don't really think ragers are OP. It's more of a joke of mine that they are so much fun to play that they are OP, because they're a lot less tedious than some of the alternatives.

What did you find tedious about the ABS thing? Just finding them? Because after they're found I think the investment/reward/risk (especially when people figure out where your sources are) factor is the opposite of tedious.

Also I was doing some thinking re your proposed solution wrt stoneskin and shield ... Don't you think there's something to be gained by allowing a warrior to take on groups?

And also I think you had the most PK successful hunter ranger ever.

Finding them and then regaining them. Two of my chars couldn't find theirs for crap, not a single one. Another one found them but, without divulging the locations, it was a complete hassle to gather them. Let's just note here that there was a maze involved - if that's too much info go ahead and edit it out of this post.

Re: stoneskin/etc - you can make that argument for any super powerful items/preps and I'd rather see that tweaked with either anti-gank rebalance or increase rewards for bravery in the form of tattoes/bonus legacies, etc. RP rewards for the win, it brings out the best in people.

Edited because I remember I had an invoker too who was equally lost at finding his wands :(.

Resist mental is nice. Buyable, but expensive last I checked. The free source is (IMO) vastly preferable unless you have certain types of enemies online.

There were some nice preps in there.

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I always loved fighting your characters. Especially when we both werent prepped much.
Except Hunsobo, that sucked bad. :P

Hehe, prep doesn't count for you. We all already know you sacrafice goats to the League of Doom for super powers Twist :P

Twist and you know a lot of stuff about CF that we don't - that's why your elf kicked my conjie's butt despite demon at a level where even RBW's were getting wasted by my demons no problem.

I'd still say the point is that haste/resist/DB on a stick is very good for an aging playerbase who can't be bothered prep-ho'ing whereas the wand system and the prep system encourages just about everyone else to be super-conservative and waste time.

Wand or prep gathering/finding is like the CF version of preparing your taxes - at least to me. This painful, annoying thing I have to do that doesn't offer anything to me in terms of making the game fun or interesting. And really it boils down to the fact that I won't play a non-rager warrior or any mage class because of the tedium involved.

If you consider the 'fun' equation part of game balance then ragers are OP in that regards ;).