Sat Sep 26 21:40:28 2015

At 7 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 22nd of the Month of the Ancient Darkness
on the Theran calendar Tiissana perished, never to return.

Race:	felar
Class:	ranger
Level:	51
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	BATTLE, the BattleRagers, Haters of Magic
Age:	38
Hours:	159

Rager berserker desert beastmaster is probably the best DPS build I've ever played. Even with second-tier gear I could hit demos often and oblits on the dervish dance, which has a small dam modifier. There were two disadvantages:

1) No kill-sealing ability at all. If people didn't self-lag against me, I wouldn't be able to kill them. It's unreal how many times someone fled and quaffed writhing/convulsing. Serpent kinship is laughable even if you manage to catch them in the wilds. Even if it holds, it lasts less than a tick. Usually though, it does nothing but waste two rounds.

2) No real defense out of the wilds - felar dodge isn't that bad, but that's all you get.

It feels the desert is missing a skill to be viable. Dervish dance is fairly good, but that's the only thing you get pretty much. You also get it in hero range. I knew what I headed into and just wanted to try it out and see how well it worked, but seemed a bit meh. Remember, they're losing Snare, Bearcharge and Entangle, all key ranger skills.

I even tried wielding a whip and lashing, but that didn't work either as the lash would just miss. It's extremely unreliable for non-lasher non-spec.

For an easy example of an upgrade, I would advocate for Sandswirl to work anywhere, much like assassin Vanish, but as it stands right now it's not worth a prac. Could easily see a bedouin throwing a stash of sand in the air and while you try to sort things out, he's gone. Don't see why this would be limited to deserts. Maybe have him collect the sand beforehand to have it on tap and be one-shot until the timer runs out, but please do something to fix that terrain.

Beastmaster is fine, albeit for my case I would argue for the bear to not be a charmie, and for the wasps to also be a skill much like kinships. But that's a rager limitation, not the expertise fault.

My personal pet peeve is having to sit for RL hours in the wilds after a retrieval or a raid because I lost fastcamo. I never ranked in civilized, nor sat in the inn, nor did any sort of prolonged civilized activity, just using the roads for travels and raiding/retrieving, but was always one raid/retrieve away from losing At Home. Please make the time spent in cabals not count against the wilderness timer.

I would like to thank all the good people and boo on all those who see it their goal in life to ruin other people's fun. In any interaction, imagine it was you on the other side of the screen. If everyone did, Thera would be a much better world, but I'm not one for complaining, so won't call out all the extreme crap people did. You know who you are. Please stop.

That one time when you've destroyed 95% of my hp in a round at the giant (and I was tranced) - I was just staring at the screen with "WOW" written on my face.

You can move all around Thera without travelling roads. Pathfinding makes the speed comparable to common road travelling.

In practice, when I need to make a dash to/from Imperial Lands, for example, taking the annoying desert route or even more annoying Grove route is usually out of the question due to the increased time. Same goes for most places I need to be as a rager. Yes, I can use saved paths through the client, no, I will not actually do it. For outlanders it's wildly different for reasons you no doubt know.

Grove is not random, it's nowhere near annoying, and is actually shorter than road. Considering you also have Glauruk shortcut you even can outrun and cut people who run from you using road.

P.S. Though desert is indeed annoying w/o AI. But considering you were bedouin, bringing more battles there seemed logical.

Couple things that I figured I would chime in on:

2) No real defense out of the wilds - felar dodge isn't that bad, but that's all you get.

*You still have parry and dodge and potentially shield block, you actually have great defenses. You just happen to have WAY better defenses in the wild.

It feels the desert is missing a skill to be viable. Dervish dance is fairly good, but that's the only thing you get pretty much. You also get it in hero range. I knew what I headed into and just wanted to try it out and see how well it worked, but seemed a bit meh. Remember, they're losing Snare, Bearcharge and Entangle, all key ranger skills.

*Dervishdance is sooooooooooo good. So good! I think the way you build around predator's stance and DB made it much less good than other builds that have utilized it, but there are tons of cool things it does that other skills do not.

My personal pet peeve is having to sit for RL hours in the wilds after a retrieval or a raid because I lost fastcamo. I never ranked in civilized, nor sat in the inn, nor did any sort of prolonged civilized activity, just using the roads for travels and raiding/retrieving, but was always one raid/retrieve away from losing At Home. Please make the time spent in cabals not count against the wilderness timer.

*Uh, I saw you spend a lot of time in the Arena which certainly does not help your wilderness time, especially when you are waiting for the countdowns and watching other people fight.

You did have a really cool char who was fun to watch, sorry I couldn't think of a cooler title to give you but hopefully the one you got helped you feel appreciated. Maybe the next char you do will be as fun, and work out even better than you hope.

1) When I was speaking about defenses out of the wilds I talked about predator's stance, thus naked hands, thus only dodge not enhanced by Wilderness Familiarity. I found the avg 28 staff damage lacking compared to hands, my only hope of getting anyone was max DPS.

2) DB and stance can just flat out kill anyone, too bad I didn't find too many fights. IMHO the dance on felar hands is sick - three DEV-Oblits. With 28 avg staff it was Mangle-Massacres, two verbs down.

3) I'm not sure the time spent in the Arena was that much, sure I fought there from time to time, but not nearly enough to cause me to lose At home. Raids/retrievals and roads did me in.

4) Thanks for the feedback and for watching, and I really appreciated the title, didn't expect anything since haven't really done anything special (just beat two ragers in a caged arena match).

5) Desert does need a skill IMHO. Dance<Snare, plus you lose Entangle and Bearcharge. It's vital for ranger to be able to seal a kill. Not like anyone is likely to beat him in the wilds, they just need to stay around a bit. I bet if I counted all writhing/convulsing flee/words as PKwins, I'd be over 200. :)

NT

Was not good enough before. I had it one a Drow beast master and I thought it was great for getting past peoples defenses. I've no idea why people thought it was lacking in the past and buffed it.

nt

I spent most of that char's life at hero.

I always liked it.

Admittedly I don't think I tried to use it out of the wilds instead of having parry.

nt

Just got old logging in to a range of Inn seaters and Sodsob & co, often without a head, which means eating a death or two 90% of the time. It's not that I mind that at all, it's just annoying to regather gear after.

There are no fights to be had, no Nexus for example to speak of. Or imperials who'd care to fight.

Sorry for abandoning you, but at least now you should be much better off with Sodsob gone.

Stale does happen. I enjoyed you a lot. Tough bastard.

GLWYN.

Always willing to mix it up, you were scary even out of wilderness and headless.

If only anyone ever fought me. :) I think you learned quickly to avoid me completely when I had the head. :) But good fights, my favorite Imperial FWIW.

I hate to see this. I really enjoyed your character, I know our times didn't mesh up lately, but I had hopes to be able to find you and move forward soon. I hope you come back soon.

Unfortunately, when our times stopped being aligned, it grew stale. I carried the items for the last task for like a month RL. :( Not a knock on you, just the way it is. I can only play in that time window when you no longer can.