Wed Mar 6 08:25:02 2013

At 2 o'clock AM, Day of Freedom, 25th of the Month of the Frost Giant
on the Theran calendar Gamarik perished, never to return.

Race:	gnome
Class:	shapeshifter
Level:	51
Alignment:	Neutral
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	NEXUS, Nexus, Seekers of Balance
Age:	154
Hours:	108

Osprey - I hated this form with a passion. Sure, you could probably pk with it but as it excluded me from falcon I was not a fan.

Lynx - I hated this form at first because it is terrible to rank with, but it ended up being great to fight others with at the ranks.

Vampire Bat into Giant Wasp - I figured 2/3's odd that I would get equal or better form and boy did my bet fail.

*The Good
-With ricochet skin, I had a basically juiced evade. It doesn't take much damage with wands so it was pretty easy to shift wasp fly and live. I never died a PK death because of this.
-Once confident, I didn't use a ton of moves flying around in the sky.
-I twice fought an elf falcon in the air, both of us having full protections and I ran them off with pinch. I am not sure if this was more due to HP than anything though.
*The Bad
-Fly speed was terrible
-Pinch - A pincer that might hit DISMEMBER to MASSACRE, but probably only hit 60-70% in PK. Three rounds on failure pretty much always meant the enemy got away. Pincer in itself is only useful because you do a ton of damage and axes generally hit pretty often and hard. So take out the hitting often and hard and doing a ton of damage and you pretty much have something that is useless. I would have killed for a rake like lag just to have the chance to be useful to my groupmate.
-Neurotoxin - I thought at first maybe I could paralyze them then shift to my offensive form, but the paralyze barely seemed to do anything. The confuse seemed to be the best, but as a three round failure on pinch pretty much meant that anyone was gone it wasn't going to happen. All in all, I would trade this ability in a second for peck, as a one round skill allows you to flyto more and bloody pecker landing is worth way more than any of the poison abilities are.
-Damage - The forms damage was terrible.
-Damage Reduction - A saving grace, but not enough to wear anyone down.
*I would love to hear any argument about how this form remotely compares to eagle/falcon/vulture because it doesn't. It is that bad. Is it usable? Yes. Does it remove the entire fun out of having a major air form? Yes.

Dire Wolf into Alligator - This was the one saving grace. It was good for me to get experience with a regen form because I always thought they were better than they really are. The three round bite is kind of stupid, but in general it felt balanced and fun. I do not think I could have gotten my black with dire wolf, so in general I consider this a worthwhile change.

Black Location - I am not going to say where of course, but this is the second reason I lost interest in the character. I learned how to get it without dying after four deaths, but even then I was out of being useful in coordinating battles for over an in game day. As a shapeshifter half the reason I went nexus was so that I could scout to my bondmate, and then to have that taken away so regularly just made it a whole lot less fun. After changing both final forms, I wasn't going to get to pick a new black and take the right edges to make the forms I got useful.

I wanted to play this out, I enjoyed my role and interactions. So far if I roll a shapeshifter and hero them without trying I get good forms but because I have nothing invested I generally don't end up playing them. When I take the time, explore as a lowbie, interact with a cabal and pk early, I end up with at least one problematic form. This time it was more my fault, I probably should have kept vampire bat.

I am out of nexus for a while.

I thought it was a really good form for you, especially defending at the Nexus inners. While you only nabbed a few kills with pinch, its the fact that you were rarely lashed/entwined or pulled, which meant you could just sit there and not worry about being taken out of the inners. It also meant you could run past villagers waiting outside of the inners without fear of pincer/cranial/lash or any other initiating lagging maneuvers.

In any case, you made raiding the island very difficult and I found wasp to be a very durable form. I think of it like an A-10 minus the weapons.

I always thought of it as a flying pachyderm without that much damage or damage reduction. That being said, being an annoyance is not as fun as chasing down villagers and killing them. Regardless, you often took the key with me there anyways.