So, Corzu's gone - I really... really wanted to age death my first character. But alas, I doubt that'll happen with characters like this. For everyone not wanting to read a wall of text, know that I thoroughly enjoyed Corzu and if it is my last - I'm going out on a high note.

Let's talk about how I came up with the character idea. I've learned after playing this game for nearly twenty years and getting a little bit mature, that I'm definitely a Johnny/Spike (http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b). I like to win but I play pretty out there characters sometimes... and it's usually after a burnout. Ironically every single one of those characters has won a role contest and was usually a lot of fun.

Lot of Thief chars? Keshuk the AP with a doll or Ubosh the duergar beatboxing AP.
Lot of APs? Next was Mubs the giant berserker with a crazy squirrel.
Lot of Shamans? Here comes Danjuh and Lona, the two-headed giant.

My buddy IRL who quit long ago (Mekantos) was known for having a druid maran - and I felt it was time to take a stab at something that hard. There was a post somewhere on the battlefield from Baer or Nep who encouraged people who wanted the class/alignment change so figured why not. I kind of wanted a Scarab but I was a bit sour after being called "needy" so time to try my dark side... a goodie. I have requested several special combos and got turned down on every single one (come on, no goblin shaman?!) - if anyone thinks I'm favored by Baer, you're sadly mistaken. At best I think after Corzu she tolerates me

So here comes Corzu, the gnome with a giant heart. I remember thinking the "deft talisman" edge that turns brandish into 1-round lag sounding incredibly strong, and I had found some sweet talismans in Silent Tower... so let's try for maran with a 25wis/19charisma ranger! I honestly thought I would never make it that far because I picked about the worst combo possible: plainsrunner explorer. Holy crap is that combo bad... I mean, wow. I've suffered through thieves without skills working, spell-free Anti-paladins, a gnome warrior only uses his bare hands, but I would play them all over that ranger combo. It is freeaaaaking terrible. You have nothing in combat besides serpent strike, dirt, and disarm. You don't have bearcharge, entangle, call lightning, or snare. You know it's bad when you're trying to see if thrust/pierce are worth using... and they're not. Your dex and strength are both low and you have the worst vulnerability in the game BY FAR. Seriously, everything does blunt damage out there! If you doubt this, I dare you try it out. Oh and get this - nearly every oldschool talisman in the game that was a damage spell, is now a wand. Seriously, I had a document with every talisman I knew in the game and I went to all of them.... there's only one drown talisman left that works only over water and a windwall talisman I was using until the 40s because there is nothing else. I mean come on, why'd ya get rid of the fireball talisman?! All hopes of using that edge before becoming a maran was completely gone.

Now add to this an alignment change - you lose your few spells and now suddenly have the two worst vulnerabilities. I posted a log on qhcf of taking DEVAS normal melee hits at level 29 from a ceremonial staff. Baerinika was nice enough to let me try the hard road and wow was it hard. Luckily it didn't last forever as it was followed up with a role contest win. I was basically granted the animist path with a few things missing. I can go into on the gameplay forum but I think people know that animists are already incredibly weak. Add in that cloud of wasps never freaking lands (even with Apiarist), spirit howl can't be used in combat and only works maybe 20% of the time lasting for 0 hours, gust of wind is pretty limited on where you can use it, and primordial vengeance was broken the duration of my char's life, this additional path helped me become not completely horrible but it was far from overpowered. I was constantly getting my ass kicked left and right, even with permanent aura on whenever I was logged. If people actually knew the aura sources I used, my life would have been sooooo much worse but alas I was lucky - it wasn't uncommon to have 30+ charges of aura on hand always. Guess no one wants the talismans!

I managed to land kills in the 30s-40s, and if I wanted to pad those numbers I probably would have stayed in that range. Landing cloud of wasps is deadly when you get it at low levels and people actually rank in the wild so landing a gnome ambush isn't that bad. I also was lucky enough to get the incredibly broken ranger staff... that well, I think if some people knew it existed... someday someone is gonna make a fire giant outlander ranger with that staff, use dervish dance with it and get it immediately changed I got too bored though with dwindling numbers in the mid ranks and being on with nothing to do so I decided to hero.

For anyone that has played a non-bearcharge/snare ranger at hero, let me say that it is incredibly hard to land kills. People flee very easily or usually they just turn and beat your face in. Add in that the majority, if not 80% of my fights were not in the wilds, you can imagine that it was a painful life. All the powerhouse characters constantly sent me packing even fully decked out in goodie-prog gear. I was more of a cheerleader character - building morale and having fun but I wasn't scary at all.

Then I got made maran and I finally had a fighting chance. 1-round lag on crushing hand and wrath staves? It's amazing.... until you realize the work that goes into it. There are over 10+ talismans, and those two are the rarest of the bunch - and the level range of how strong the talismans can also vary... all crumbling over time. Grepping the logs, I had more "call lightforge talisman" than I had "brandish"... and that's including the 5+ talisman preps that I used quite a lot. Even with camp/trance, people in the Fortress joked that I spent my life just building talismans and destroying them. I once spent over a day in-game making 50+ talismans trying to get a single crushing hand talisman because most talismans don't work on neutral characters... and frankly most of the talismans are pretty terrible. It's also incredibly annoying they have all the same keywords so managing more than two types is quite difficult. I could see major malison and fire malison on an invoker being nice for PvE but really, you only use two talismans out of the 10+.

Now someone out there may pull it off better than I did - and people will see the logs of AoE wrath and think "OP!" but in reality it's really not that crazy. I'd equate it to a combo of a paladin and invoker, with none of their defensive abilities or things that make them great. Strong players found out how to shut me down completely (blind so I can't wield another talisman, blunt damage so I have to run, or just flat out lag me). If someone is in front, and I'm left alone, it's strong but I wouldn't say any better than pillar/nova/brimstone/light of heaven/vibrato spam. Certain situations like against an undead player, it was awesome. The other powerhouses though still kicked my teeth in. Did I like it? Absolutely but it really didn't merit the constant bitching on both forums about it.... which was getting real old guys. Come on, you're complaining about a gnome ranger?


So anyways, this is already getting longer than I thought so I guess I should end with some directed goodbyes. In general I had a blast. Playing a weird character is always fun and having an Immortal letting you run with it is a treat - its characters like this that make me love CF but sadly they are few and far between - especially considering I like to play evil characters that don't really get this kind of attention since evil Imms are never as active or engaged, and usually it's limited to terrible pkers or bad combos. I guess I am needy in that I like being the odd guy out but I think it brings a lot to CF. It's a whole lot better than... well, I'll try to leave the negativity out until later

-Baerinika, it was fun. Not sure if you knew it was me or not but I thought we had a lot of fun interactions. I think near the end my roleplay might have become monotone, as interest was dying, but hopefully you enjoyed the character. I have to ask though because it's killing me to know why... what's with the zero immexp? I was a 200 hour character with 300immexp that I only got from collecting fruit for Whisydan. No edges, no Silent Tower, nada. Did you just forget? I never really brought up the tattoo because I thought folks would start another bitchfest of the "double pounce ranger", despite the fact I ran from a ton of fights, and if you wanted to give it you might have without me saying anything. Anyways, hope ya liked it overall. I still think you should let me slide one crazy combo through... it's good for the game One last Corzu hug! *hug*

-Adesoka and all other Fortress members - it was fun. I kinda wish there were more of you at certain times but my times were chaotic as well so we did what we could. Never really got to go out there and explore, but that's probably more of my fault... I know almost the whole game besides parts of ST/Hell/Shadow plane and I couldn't go to any of them so I had no interest. There was a Cardinal at some point, but he never showed up. Captain pre-Adesoka I think auto'd as well, Adverlain I never saw once... seemed to be hard to keep people near the end of my time. Thanks Deaer for actually talking about Davarrah... tried getting some interaction going but no other Imm seemed interested.

-Liffy, I still think you're the most insane healer ever. You would misspell things and type out complete @#%&() garbage - either your keyboard broke or you had completely gone off the deepend especially with how OOC you'd go... and were incredibly dangerous to rely on. I think more people died thinking you'd do something than if they just thought you weren't there. Not exactly sure how you hold it together but you should rethink acting like that.... if you're new, I apologize. Really just looked like you didn't care.

-Outlanders. Liantae, you already know I hate STSF with a passion and god damn if I don't hate it how strong warriors can be under a good player . I got you once, think you got me two or three times... god I hate STSF and refuse to ever play it! I still think dexy chars are too strong but think it'll take another year before the Imms listen to my rants Lilyth... I think most folks know who you are and abusing that knowledge is really unattractive. Sad because I thought you'd be a fun person to hang out with until it became obvious. Seems you're going to auto anyways. Oburghum, you were fun to have around.... keep it up!

-Gromm, I think you're an incredibly great addition to the CF crew. I think you figured out quickly that I would beat the crap out of you without trying hard heh... and I saw you in those mountains for quite a long time before our last fight. I went into that with only aura, no haste/shield/enlarge, and no invoker shields from Cosita... honestly I wanted to give you the last kill because you deserved it. I think it was like 10-15 to 1 but you kept coming back every single time. Great heart, great determination, and damn was I mad at you that you didn't want to talk to Baer about changing from being evil. You coulda joined the club!

-Empire... this is gonna be short and my one lash out. I've played with friends before, I get it. I still do but ironically we all play different cabals now. I've done the planned Inferno trips before and ironically got slammed for not sending an in-game note... so I'm not gonna fault anyone for doing that. What I will fault is that none of you ever were around alone besides Xeneth and maaaybe Kregan or Sindrir, although both just avoided fighting for the most part. Playing only when it's five players, abusing buggy crap like vortex/pits around centurions or massive thief traps or summoning behind centurions with ganksquads - ugh. You had the best equipment in the game on incredibly strong combos, how about you actually stick it out and not login all so closely. It was a comical joke how many times three of you would login within a minute of each other, and not even for your planned events. I'm glad it's over now that it seems the head of the snake is gone. I get being explorers but at least engage the other side sometimes when it's not a curbstomp.

-Special note, holy crap do I hate your tattoo Zhabala. I never knew it did that since I always picked another archdevil when in Dis but dear god, is your tattoo a pain in the ass. Hopefully that didn't carry over too much to our interactions but that thing was rage inducing.

-Jeede... damn do I hate punching martial trance assassins I could prep to high hell and there wasn't a thing I could do to you when you're hitting for MANGLES through every protection possible. We had a lot of fun talks though and you added a lot to the game - I actually prefer assassins who fight over the cheap way of assassinate (which is just as bad as pw:k+flee necros or cleave+flee APs). So kudos for making it fun.

-Battle never existed during my char. No Imms, no players.
-Same with Tribunal... I think I was a criminal more than anyone else on the game, including the Nightreaver heh. I really think Tribunal just makes the game annoying but that's me. I don't even think Outlanders raided you for a majority of my character's life.

-Marintok, I voted for you for best guy on the MUD and I'm serious about it. You stick it out despite all odds, you went from newbie to complete badass, and you'd fight always. I think I have it ingrained in my brain that I have to flee to survive from playing so many anti-paladins, but you were fighting always... seriously, Nexus would be completely dead without you even with the event going on. You should get a statue in the Isle

-Talisin was a close second, I enjoyed our fights despite the fact you did lagging ANNIHILATES through my preps... seriously, being a gnome is just f-ing terrible! Kudos for having a normal conversation about that one greedy looter and keeping it civil.

Beyond that, I had a lot of fun with most people I interacted with. In the end, I think the reason I really ended it was because I'd not want to login but felt like I should... then would spend half of the time forging talismans, chasing around foes like Jermet who I had zero chance of killing or sitting camo while alt-tabbed reading reddit. Most times, numbers were sub-20 and it got pretty boring. At least evil characters have more enemies and can explore Shadow Plane and the Inferno... with getting no immexp my life, I had nothing to do but sit around and chat. Which isn't bad and really how the game is moving more to RP-centric characters, but I just wasn't enjoying it enough to keep going.

So thus ends the first ever gnome maran Marshall. Hopefully I can keep pk-stats #1 in this one category! I might come back but honestly I think it's time for another long break. Getting into another game alpha which is gonna suck up my time a lot and not really itching to make anything in particular. We'll see, it's nice to hear that folks want me to stick around... usually I get told to #### off in most of my goodbyes. Or in my last one that I'm "needy" *hmph*. Least I get it right sometimes and Corzu was definitely one of the good ones.

Cheers!
-Torak