Well I should say that while I have played CF for many years now this was the first time I have played a transmuter up to hero. Transmuters were a double edged sword for me. On one hand I enjoyed them, their spells and being able to hide from most anything, as well as the ease of exploration. On the other hand I very much disliked the amount of prep time needed to fight. Duo lag, plus wanding up, plus spelling up, and most of the time my foes had already moved on. This also made it difficult to fight along side my allies who were being attacked when I wasn't ready. The best scenario would be to wand up, then hope to find someone before barrier fell...but then I would also have to spend quite a bit of time gathering wands, which was also a downside. Not being able to use the where command in duo was also a bit trying, I don't really think transmuters would be all that unbalanced if they could...but then again I often play from an assassins POV.

I was also troubled by fighting villagers, spellbane made it extremely difficult to kill them...unless I was very lucky. Then again they could not kill me either, unless they were very lucky. I suppose transmuters have it rough since their spells are pretty much all targeted rather than area spells.

I also learned exactly how many golems there are in Thera. I carried around a staff of striking just to fight them since most of the time none of my spells could harm them at all.

I don't want this to seem like one huge complaint, because I certainly don't feel dissatisfied with CF or the class in general. It did bother me, from a squire's perspective, that of the foes that were evil there were few that I could kill alone. IE Liches, Villagers, a certain A-P, and that made me as a player feel paranoid about not being what is expected of a Fortress hopeful. It also left me with few options during several hours of play time, and I must admit I felt a bit guilty exploring rather than going after the powerhouses.

Anyway, I think ultimately transmuters are not for me...or perhaps goodie transmuters are not for me. I did have some fun with this one, and explored several areas I had not done so previously. One huge KUDOS to the staff - the amount of new and interesting areas. Very nice, definitely enjoyed the planar sanctum, the consortium, and a few others.

Admittedly I also shot myself in the foot with this character by creating him without a specific role, goals, or background in mind. I don't think I'll make that mistake again and it isn't my usual style. I find the game so much more fun when I have an in-depth character and I found myself struggling to recreate him after I had already heroed(even though I did hero very quickly).

See you guys and gals with the next.