Hi all,

I'm here to create a constructive discussion around Tremblefist, his role in Cabal raids and any recommendations on what could be changed.

My personal view is that I think it's great Orcs have some way to raid and pillage, I also like that its unique from your standard inner/outer cabal format.

However I do think there is one very major challenge: Tremblefist is really just a super buff outer guardian - there is no benefit to raiding Orcs if they don't hold your item. Not only is he super buff relative to other outers, he's also a Shaman which makes him very dangerous to retrieve against even without defenders. This is especially bad for Villagers who cannot simply recall and heal plagues.

This has resulted in Orcs being given items to prevent lowbies from retrieving, whilst the heroes (who raided in the first place) can stop almost everyone else from killing Tremblefist.

RP reasons aside, I think this only hurts the cabal war dynamic. A part of managing a cabal is having a good mix of ranks to ensure you can retrieve as needed. This this means more raids, more death and more fun anyway.

My recommendations:
1. Change Tremblefist's class to something other than Shaman.
2. Make him slightly weaker. I think it's cool that he's rougher than a standard outer, but a level 30+ should be able to solo him, even if slowly.
3. Overhaul Orc raiding. Give them an inner and an outer, and an item to lose. Give them "clan powers". I've always thought it would be cool if Orcs could gain a power from each item they held. E.g. Orcs with the Head get deathblow or resist, with the Orb get protection from good and fire immunity, windwalk, etc. This could make for some crazy powerful Orcs if they took everything, but then everyone on the mud would be busting down their gates too.

Keen to hear your thoughts.

Are you really complaining retrieving about Tremblefist?

This is the one "outer" that can be killed by any cabal to get your item back, and rarely has a hero to defend it.

Just ask your favorite hero fortress member to kill Tremblefist for you, or any lightwalker hero about. If the chief isn't around, it is not hard to get it back.

And if Tremblefist has more than one item, then surely at least one hero or 30+ level character from the other cabals will login and get the item back for you in the process of getting his own back. Most 30+ characters can retrieve from tremble easy enough, it just takes time.

The guards still do back away from those that are evil. Also, getting the NPCs to track to the gates is actually much harder to do than you think.

The raid mechanic of Tremblefist is being completely abused and OOC arranged. It is supposed to be a rare thing, but instead its a continual thing for where when I played even what, 4 months ago, orcs had the item constantly. With Tribunal and Orcs at that time all raiding together with Empire for Outlander.

It was specifically why I stopped playing because it was utterly stupid. There was no immortal oversight and somehow all this was passed over as fine.

If its once in a while, sure. But its constantly, endless, and arranged. And specifically done to avoid the normal raid mechanic where lower ones are supposed to be able to get the items back for higher levels when they are utterly outnumbered. This allows the overwhelmingly powerful to STAY OVERWHELMINGLY powerful.

You try to deal with getting a 56 hour plague as either Outlander or Rager every single time you touch Tremblefist.

That orc gate guards are aggro to anyone below I believe level 30. That orcs lead other orcs to gates and have them aggro level 51 orcs on the people who are trying to raid.

And then necros and other douchebags summon mobs and scourge them with level 55 uncureable spellcrafted crimson scourge. They also summon mobs that also assist orcs (giants/goblins/etc.) who assist throughout.

I just don't see how Immortals cannot see this while I lived it for a month and a half.

At least, not as a one off. There are plague cures lying around all over the place including ones you can use while blind, although you'd be better off with something that cures blindness.

But yes, there seems to be some douchey stuff going on, not limited to raids. From the usual suspects.

Right off the bat, Tremblefist cleary sucks to face if you're under level 45 or a Rager without The Head. Absolutely sucks.

But, honestly I've wrung a tremendous amount of fun out of those seemingly hopeless situations and here's why I think there's value in Tremblefist as he stands right now.

First of all, ever retrieve The Orb from the orcs with two maran invokers? It's trivial. Cabal powers do not enter the equation. Ditto any two hero Outties should be able to take down Tremblefist pretty fast. Both of these scenarios include a lone defender, even. Tearing through the Empire inners is even easier with the right couple of dudes and Tremblefist should be at least as hard as getting the Codex.

Anyway, in those situations where you are lower level and maybe there's a defender if you can get your thing back it will require a level of cooperation that, in my opinion, is what makes CF worth playing. If you're a Rager of any level this is doubly true.

Orcs are the rock to Battle's scissors and that's just the way it is. The bravest dudes around are going to regularly get their asses handed to them by certain (most) orc Chieftains and or whatever other hero orc might be around. The bash perma-lag is real and only if you are a berserker and your deathblow goes bananas do you have a chance in hell of beating a motivated orc at hero.

But that's super fun. Figure out how to knock him out. Get the nightreaver to snare him. How far are you willing to push parity against such a foe? Well, if you don't have the head maybe you should just gang the crap out of him.

I dunno, it's the ethical and strategy questions of CF that always did it for me. As for who should the orcs be siding with? Well, any cabal should be able to use orcs as pawns in their own ways, but who should be handing orcs items to down? Well, probably only Entropy or in some cases Battle. If, as a chaotic rager, you find yourself in possession of The Scales what's the problem in giving it to an orc who can defend it better than you? Especially if giving it to the Destructor will start nonsense between your cabal and the spire.

But Empire? No. Never. The Emperor should rightly have a fit if they found out that an Imperial had ever given an item to anyone who's not an Imperial. Though that does happen, too, again, mostly with Battle where some Blade will find himself alone after a mass imperial log off and be like dude this is the third time we've taken the whatever and I have got to rest. Do you want it?

But yeah. Orcs should be scary for some people and cake for others. Just make sure you don't die of plague trying to get away. That's super embarrassing and please remember that warbanner hurts them as much as it hurts you.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

And I believe that characters below lvl 40 shouldn't be able to retrieve at all. So it's probably an only "cabal" that actually works **right**.

Let me begin with the comment that Orcs and BattleRagers are probably my 2 most played mortals, so I do end up with both sides of this scenario.

It has been stated, repeatedly, in the past that the fact that orc raid involvement being unique is very intentional, and I don't think any of the reasons for that have changed.

In reality, the difficulty is almost always most specific to Battle, who yes are most handicapped in this scenario. It does rather always baffle me because Battle also gets all that death blow hate...(also, wtf??? You want deathblowing orcs??? *shudder*)

Keep in mind that in order to have Tremblefist take an item, you have to have an orc around to give it to. This leaves it no real different than when cabals raid together and decide who is going to take a cabal item. Personally, I tend to agree that no respectable Imperial should ever be associating with orcs, and given that Imperial Law dictates cabal items are to be at Empire, I should think it to be appropriate for Imperials who intentionally break said law to leave a cabal item with orcs to be punished.

That said, I have only minimal activity atm, and no direct influence on Empire policy, but given the scenario primarily amounts to one particularly bad matchup, I don't see Tremblefist as a whole being particularly broken.

I agree, I think there are a multiple issues:
1. You cant take an item from the orcs as "pay back"
2. The summoning of other orcs to the gates/ tremblefist that assist
- As a level 40 character I went from 100% health to 5% in one combat round after several mobs assisted the gate guards
3. Gate guards
- I remember these backing away out of fear beyond a certain level (this does not seem to happen any more)
4. Tremble
- The dispels/plagues/blinds/curse/ etc are a big hinderance and when coupled with the healing commune ability means a level 30+ chart can be largely unsuccesful

I have retrieved as a level 22 from other cabals plain and simple you cannot do this with orcs. I will go as far to say that you cant do this with many 30+ characters.

Over the years the dynamic may have changed, but my own experience has been that Tremblefist forces heroes who are really dependent on great cabal powers to actually suffer the consequences of losing and having to retrieve their item, instead of waiting for lowbies to do it and tell them on AIM to log back in/log in at all.

The last time I experienced this was over a decade ago, but I still have a grudge from the almost 2 year series of rager bandwagons.
What is the situation like now?

It was extremely frustrating because, barring a few players with some balls who'd show up to retrieve when it's hard (thinking of Marcus, Twist, Borkhad), you'd literally never get to actually fight RBWs without the head, even if you just finished killing them to take it. And #### the noise about that being easy to arrange.

Really biased against it. Low to mid level ragers are still really strong in PK at the ranges they'd struggle with Tremblefist. I don't give a #### about them. You're a regular warrior with free detect invis, but minus a return potion for a while, deal. Heroes should just go retrieve their item, period.

Option 3 sounds really cool though.

edit: I will say I'm not completely unsympathetic, because from what I gather, it sounds like there is a problem with Empire bandwagons, which is exactly the kind of behavior that made me like how Tremblefist works in the first place.

But I would perhaps dissuade cabals from using Tremblefist if enemies are showing up to retrieve against pk opposition.

For example, a hero could come with lowbies and tank for at least a little. Even if the hero bails, at least he took the risk of showing up.

I like Tremblefist as a foil against those guys who repeatedly try to gank but won't solo retrieve attempt Vs any opponent. They send in the lowbies when faced with a fairly even fight. And I'd like to see even fights encouraged, not reward avoiding them.

Tremblefist causes more unfair/BS matches than he ever creates.

Where a cabal hasn't tried downing it itself first, only to have lowbies come so heroes don't have an even fight?

Do you honestly expect Team A, who just lost at their own inner (ie, best possible home-field advantage), to have an even matchup at Team B's outer (where Team B has the advantage of a safe haven and healer)?

Expecting an even fight just after a successful raid is pretty silly since successful raids prove one side is winning.. putting the item somewhere that it can't be retrieved just ensures that the team on top remains on top.

1. Firstly, I never said I'm taking about someone that has just lost at their own inner. Sometimes a raid can be done when people are ghosts, or on a major exploration trip, or just haven't showed because they are extremely risk averse. Let's also allow for the possibility that an attacker may have logged off.

But let's assume they HAVE just lost at their own inner and those taking the thing haven't logged off.

2. You can still often wear down an outer against a defender when that same defender can't stop you taking their item forever. But they can make it enough of a hassle to take their item that you won't bother if they can retrieve.

3. I didn't say the retriever has to do it all themselves. just show up and set an example, rather than "heroically" not. I didn't say they had to do it when they are vastly outmatched.

4. Those with the item may not be sitting at their cabal.

5. Using a healer can be dangerous when fighting a summoner plus other.

6. There are plenty of logs of people getting lots of exp retrieving against significant opposition. Partly because you can hit and run to force a defender to deplete their protections, which you cannot do when hey are raiding you. In fact, they can do it to you.

All these things you mention are a distant outlier to how often 19 Imperials raid and give the item to the orcs so that the single level 27 warrior can't retrieve.

But I can believe it happens. To me, the solution is not changing Tremblefist but rather changing the players who are doing that.

With Scion this was done all the time. I was really expecting to hear this was about Scion being back.

But Empire? You'd get anathema'd almost instantly if someone saw you gave the head to anyone else, it's implicitly against Imperial law. I think you'd get demoted even for just helping someone else take an item. If that's how Empire works now, it's not Empire anymore.

I get that it probably happened, but you're here saying it happens often. Is this really a common occurrence? Kinda sounds like ####.

nt

If you mean Empire giving other cabal items to orcs, it isn't happening regularly - much less daily.

If instead you just meant "raiding Battle is a daily occurrence", probably - most cabals are raided daily by various folks.


That's all I have to contribute for now.

-Ish

When the Imperials did give the item to the orcs...irregularly...were they anathaema'd for breaking Imperial Law?

No.

My high priest that got anathematized wanted to put a stop to imperials working with orcs. And that was many years ago.

It was completely tolerated and some people took maximum advantage of that.

You need to do a little bit more digging than just grepping logs for when a cabal item was given to another cabal member or another member of another cabal.

Orcs, Empire, and Tribunal raided Fortress last week. The Tribunal sat outside with a snare, the orcs and Empire raided, the Empire fled at the last minute, letting the orcs finish.

So yeah, I guess if your very narrow view of things is that they didn't actually give it over, I guess you are right? But I cannot believe that is something you would hold onto.

So then they all go on their merry way and somehow this passes muster?

It's cute how you actually seem to believe the clueless crap you are spouting.

Have you ever had a successful Imperial where you didn't know the other council members OOC?

You could tell the truth, but it'll be so CUTE when you lie or say something snarky.

If you weren't the same kind of person.

Way to #### up the thread by lying.

Exaggeration makes you lose credibility. I think you're trying to make the situation sound much worse than it really is.

nt

I think its really cool to include orcs in cabal dynamics..however I think the implementation is a bit off. There are a lot of exploitable things that would make it not as terrible. For example Orcs can still drag other orc NPC's to village entrance and have them autoass the gate guards or Tremblefist. Tremblefist super sucks and it makes 0 sense that he wouldn't be included in the 'cabal item retrieval' count towards edges.

I have seen other cabals get punished for giving cabal items to orcs. I think it would be cool if this was the norm and not the exception. Looking at you Empire.

Orcs having a cabal item would be sorta silly unless you want to somehow combine them with Scion.

I'm all for Tremblefist losing plague though. Maybe replace it with damnation?

I like tremblefist but agree the exploits you described should be prevented.

I personally feel that empire should not work with orcs ever, since they cannot be orderly.

I'm on the fence re plague. Maybe just make it so that he won't plague villager targets under level 30 or something. Those above that can just make sure they keep enough moves to make it back to the village, or alternative spots.

Or people could just play defenders more, instead of berserkers.

Kinda hard to use defender powers without the head.

Very occasionally I have been called to get a rager who was plague-stuck after getting the head back, but you're right, I dropped that ball.