Thu Jul 10 17:59:45 2014

At 4 o'clock PM, Day of the Bull, 8th of the Month of the Battle
on the Theran calendar Ghulrat perished, never to return.

Race:	duergar
Class:	anti-paladin
Level:	40
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Orderly
Cabal:	EMPIRE, the Empire
Age:	131
Hours:	175

The new wand system is brilliant. I prefer this to having the same easy spot all the time because it's fun, people are whining because it's change, nothing else.

Charges are too low. I get the same reward for fighting an RBW four levels higher than me who I need ABS to go 2 rounds with as I do for tripping a noob 9 levels lower than me. Why would I take a tough fight?

Answer: because it's the only fight I can get. Low numbers don't just translate to fewer opportunities to earn charges, they also translate to fewer charges that you do earn having killed people, because they've got no one to kill either. I think I found two guys ever who were worth more than one, and tons of people were worth 0. I think I got 36 charges but I wouldn't be surprised if I had 50 or more kills using an unholy.

Shady stuff: Don't do it. You know it's shady and you're not going to get away with it. You'll feel bad about it afterwards.

Duergar as A-P: possibly my new recommended pick. Detect hide is the ####, worth the exp penatly I'd say. Sleep landed just fine with 16/18 and they have better long term whip potential (but still not great).

Final point, the game is still awesome and keeps getting better, I just still lack the self control to keep it from consuming life. I'll be back when goblins come out.

I was on team Ghulrat hoping you'd make it big. I enjoyed ####ing (no homo) around with you when you were grouped with that felar AP and I had forgotten what level APs got summon. A lot earlier than necros! But for gods sake take a break man and come back refreshed. You play more than Sindy/Nkgeh etc!

As for Ultriva - he is necro putty. Trust me.

Certain shifter forms are nasty as hell in the low ranks and you had one of them, fighting you on my own while you were in form was just not going to go my way.

Don't worry about Ultriva, he knows what he did, that comment at Dio's was directed at him, not a call to arms.

Your passing is bittersweet. You were always a good fight, but don't mind one less Imperial that can detect hidden.

Anyway, enjoyed your char and the battles. The raid with you, the bard and assassin was tons o' fun.

Good luck with your RL and your next char.

Gergan

Previous A-P's I've been used to being able to kill thieves just by quaffing flight. You needed full ABS to outdamage and saved against everything even with no spellbane. And on top of that, a thief and defender to boot!

I was crapping my pants when you jacked Ulamette while I was a ghost, she had my unholy in her inventory, but I guess you didn't notice or decided not to go that route.

You are probably right about there being fewer targets and people being worth less than before.

However, it is easier to land kills now that teleports that go wrong give the kill to the ap. Also you should find more situations where people are alone rather than rescued by one of their 20 allies who you can't harm.

However, given your comment related to a smaller playerbase...

I think maybe the exp adjustments and the skill learning adjustments need rebasing? As it stands I am permanently on a huge exp boost and never close to a skill learn boost.

Btw, I left my comments on dios re ghulrat. Liked the char but disappointed not to see you stay to overcome your recent setbacks and challenges.

I was spending hours at a time with nobody in range, more often than not when people did log on they'd simply guildsit until they had a group. Also I had the same few people in range all the time and you can't keep farming charges off the same guy.

My fix would be to try and make it more common for people to be worth 2 charges rather than one if they're a tough character who doesn't necessarily have a ton of PK's of their own. There's really no incentive to go after difficult targets as it is because everyone seems to be worth 1 or 0 charges.

Assuming someone's charge worth is the integer part of a floating point number I would do the following:

+0.2 charges if the character is caballed and has their item.
+0.1 further charges if that cabal is battle and they're a berserker.
+0.1 charges for every member of the victim's group alive and in range of the A-P in the room with the A-P when the killing blow is struck.
+0.3 charges if the target is affected by spells/supps cast by a character above the A-P's PK range.

Of the 36 charges I got, I believe only one came from a an enemy dying to a mob right after engagement, in a situation I'd specifically engineered to bring about that mob death, so I'm sorry but I don't agree that it makes it significantly easier at all. It's really kind of a niche situation to teleport and mob die - generally if you're teleporting from an A-P you're bleeding out anyway unless you're a cleric or prep hard.

Of course, you could change tactics to reflect the change. Cast curse earlier against awake enemies, making them have to teleport to escape, especially with good use of black circle. I'm not talking about just the guys that were slept first.

But anyway, you clearly did well enough despite that. I think it is still possible to have a strong ap if you are prepared to put your unholy on the line against the odd other ap that has decent charges, as and when they occur during the life of your character. Of course, it may be the other ap that ends up strong when you try it. :)

I'll indulge you.

Simplified A-P tactics following a failed sleep:

1. Are you outdamaging them in raw melee?

Yes -> Goto 2.
No -> Cast iceball (there is in fact another decision tree here but for our purposes this will do)

2. Can they be bashed?

Yes -> Bash them
No -> Curse them

So you see it doesn't really change your tactics at all, because the above decision making process doesn't change, you still curse under the same circumstances. If you let them teleport, you haven't done your job - I know Chisantus had bad luck with it but conversely sods law dictates that while you always teleport to dragon tower, your opponent always teleports to an appropriately aligned healer in the furthest away protected city.

The one charge from mob death I was referring to didn't come from a bad teleport, it came from judicious placement of the felar chief in the path of a thirsting RBW. I said it was a deliberately engineered situation, I don't think anyone can rightfully claim to have deliberately engineered a bad teleport for their opponent.

Other A-P's:

Aside from Grumholt I fought two other A-P's over the course of this characters life. For a total of two charges over three kills. On paper, the one of them should have been a very challenging opponent but he provided no charges for the kill never mind having any to leech.

As an A-P, you're putting your unholy on the line every time you take a fight, and to some extent every time you log in, not just against other A-P's. In my entire career in CF I've never had a windfall of charges from another A-P. The eight I leeched from Grumholt after he deleted were in fact the only leeched charges I've ever had.

The charge system is I think supposed to incentivise A-P's to take on more difficult targets. Right now it doesn't. You get the same reward for 2 rounding some poor schmuck who just powered to the bottom of your range in fine leather as you do for going to to toe with a flurry-happy RBW sword spec. Of the 40ish kills I landed with an unholy, only two were worth more than one (two, to be precise) charge. Admittedly I didn't kill absoloutely everyone in range (I have killed exactly one scion over the course of my CF career, an out of form shifter - the scions still elude me) but I killed most of them, including some very difficult fights that consumed a lot of resources and involved a good deal of risk. And there was no difference in terms of charges between them and the lambs to the slaughter.

I don't like to play conservatively, if I see a red PK on who the chances are I'll be out looking for you no matter who you are or who you're with (with the occassional exception of classes I can't see or forties being shadowed by a hero acolyte), which I think is both a strength and a weakness. An intelligent player with the goal of building a weapon would avoid targets which posed any threat to him and probably build a weapon almost as quickly, since the additional risks I take by fighting opponents or groups who who are capable of fighting back don't lead to much greater reward, and are a much larger drain on resources.

And I don't believe that should be the case. There should be some effort to either scale up charges overall or add flat bonuses based on certain things like being a cabal leader, or being an RBW with the head, or rolling three deep against a solo A-P.

I think Daev once said that the risk of fighting RBW's as an A-P was justified by the fact that they tend to be worth more charges. That just isn't the case. As Saguntius, I once rolled over three different RBW's in a row, none of whom were worth a single charge. The ones I killed as Ghulrat were never worth more than the uncaballed guys in fine leather fresh out of FoN.

I think I've made my point.

For example, the switch to iceball tactic is most effective against newbs but the early curse better against vets, often even if they are still out damaging you. So used wisely it can help push up charges and charges per kill. Don't forget your subsequent iceballs have an increased chance of big damage after the curse.

Spell based maledictions very rarely land by the time you reach the midranks. If you're getting outdamaged passively, you need to attempt to redress the balance and note whether you're still getting outdamaged or not. Active damage is not the only option here but it is the most straightforward and most widely appicable. Forcing an opponent to flee is better than risking death trying to land a malediction that makes it more difficult for them to escape (they're not trying to escape, they're trying to lag you). Given the number of attempts it usually takes to land curse, raising the probability of higher direct damage from spells is not usually sensible unless you're in an extended fight. If you are, you're better served layering on more maledictions. If you're being outdamaged it's generally not an extended fight

You generally can't do what shamans do and hope to maledict your opponent to the point where they're dead on their feet because you don't have a shaman's capability to heal and come back. Defense shifters are one exception here.

Generally, if your opponent is outdamaging you, they're trying to lag you and lagging themselves in the process so it's more useful to try and make sure they're the one who hits 0hp first. Wasting rounds using an unreliable method to prevent them from recalling is not an appropriate response to that situation.

Hello!

Regarding RBW: I find you either fight a "Marcus rager" with a very high skill level and 6+ charges reward. Or you fight some average joe rager who is still very dangerous due to his powers but granting 0-1 charges.

The good part about RBW is you just have to stand on eastern and they come fight you, no need to hunt them!


Regarding variable number of charges: typically this enters into play much more in hero range.

Good luck with your next one!

I think I pulled at least 5 charges just baiting people to peek inside Ostalagiah and get summoned into the arena and either having them flee or wand of returning myself if they were a rager, they would often choose to die to the mobs instead of letting me finish them off (but probably wouldn't now that people know).

The best part was that even the people who can teleport if I worded had a chance to wind up in Shadow grove long enough for me to cut them off. Or just wind up being backstabbed to death in the duerg tunnels.

I also got several charges off of the people who would teleport as soon as they realize you're attacking them. Sleeping and locking people into a room became a lot less important with the option of doing big damage and scaring them into teleporting hurt by reflex (sudden slasher faceslash at an area transitional while they are spamming directions + 1 trip/iceball) enough times for them to finally get unlucky.

Although I'm not clear how you can summon from in there. Isn't each room home of a mob that will attack you, preventing you from summoning?

I still have fond memories of waiting until a paladin let Sanc drop because he was so eager to finish me, and summoning him to the udgaard captain that's aggro to paladins, in the village northwest of udgaard.

I always try to stay away from Feldar because he's terrifying :(
Cannot even count the number of times I've fought cloud scouts next to him only for him to assist THEM in killing ME and his patrollers.

But as for the arena, the mob in the first room isn't aggro. If they weren't ragers it was kind of about baiting people to peek in on me through consecutive areas so that they don't anticipate the summon when they peek into ostalagiah, otherwise it's pretty easy to just word.

Most people who responded quickly tried to attack me though as a reflex to being summoned (I guess to avoid sleep). Also, I didn't have it happen, but consider how likely it is that they have typed "s;where;n" to peek in on me. If I summon them on that south move, they're gonna walk right into the big fire giant mob (and hopefully flee back).

I would really like to try that again on a few spots with black circle someday, since if I'm spamming where and they walk into movement intense terrain with the command "where" queued themself, I can get my summon off before that even gets through, and their one free command will have been wasted on where.

As for faceslash+trip/iceball on walking people, in a perfect world everyone would have word mastered in the 30s and it wouldn't work, or they'd just flee and not panic and carefully choose the right direction to go or quaff a return. In practice almost nobody does unless they've been there for a while.

Summoning mages to Thrym doesn't

Can't remember now. Got some imm love for it though. I remember the victim was unalethekai so maybe he recalls.

What are you referring to by shady stuff?

nt

n/t

nt