Tue Aug 2 07:39:08 2016

At 7 o'clock AM, Day of Freedom, 32nd of the Month of the Sun
on the Theran calendar Tarak perished, never to return.

Race:	cloud
Class:	warrior
Level:	51
Alignment:	Neutral
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	NEXUS, Nexus, Seekers of Balance
Age:	395
Hours:	356

In the Immortal words of Queen ... Another one bites the dust.

I knew this day was approaching fast, given I will be on a jet plane in a week to spend 2 months overseas I had always planned from the get go to delete prior to leaving because if I am lucky I would be able to put in 10-15 minutes a week.

The main driver behind playing a hand to hand spec was a fight I had in the Arena with Sekope against Gashti (I'll pick up your PBF out of curiosity). I was quietly impressed at how resilient the build was against being maledicted (And good ole me has no log of course) but if I remember right I thirsted for both fights near the end because I thought I was going go down. That and I had just played dagger/mace so I scratched these of the selection list. I made my mind up to avoid sword this time round, so I decided to pair it with whip/flail to see if I could get any mileage out of it.

Goodbyes:
Nexuns:
You were all cool I enjoyed hanging round with you guys.
Grason, Gimbalin, Tannock, Doongi I hung around with you more than anyone else in Nexus, appreciate the good times and the bad. All the best, but atleast now you know why I didn't want to be included in the vote. Gimbalin ... I was sad to see you go.
Lanning what happened you just vanished :(
Lsokoa and Koelegh cheers for the induct.

Battle:
It was a pleasure being on your side as Sekope, and as Tarak I really enjoyed the fights that came up on offer when they did! Burwell you just slammed me over and over, I enjoyed our back and forths.

Empire:
Strangely I didnt end up fighting you for as much as I thought we would have. I believe there is seriously something wrong with the way balance is calculated. I have bug boarded it, the worst being the day I died to 5 of you.
Balance was good for literally 2 hrs and roughly 13-14 players on 7 of them Evil, 6 of them Evil Lawful Hero Range, you guys had the Icon and it wasn't until 20-30 minutes after you held the Orb that it actually flipped. And even then it only flipped on the Evil side. The next highest person in pk was some level 34 storm giant. When it finally flipped my days were numbered so I thought I would give it a go.

Appologies:
Erlai ... I am really sorry how things went down after that fight. I had actually dropped everything you had in a search to find your spear. When I called you back I was trying to get things back to you. I never saw you come back after you deleted. Its not the way I wanted things to go down in any way shape or form. I hope you are back in some form. All in all a crappy day. Sorry once again.

Imms:
Cheers for doing what you do.

On Cloud Giants:
I have always had fond memories of giants I have played in the past, so I thought I would try a giant, ... I know alot of people say they are not viable any more and I just thought it just takes more work, get the skills good (And my skill list was epic) ... And in all honesty unless something changes I cannot seeing myself play another giant again ... particularly cloud giant. The character became a bitter cycle of getting gold and other preps so I could have stuff to give myself all I could for fights and stay alive on healers when I had to.

In saying what I am about to say I will add in the disclaimer "Individual results may vary"
- The low int makes you essentially vulnerable spells
- I thought after Sekope with decent saves and resist disease that I must have been saving all the throws on plague damage, having messed around a bit tho on something else I am yet to see above a graze ... so I dont see how the vuln translates that into a MUTILATE
- I understand that I picked two specs that don't tank to well but wow even when using the same weapons as my opponent I was just so underwhelmed by the way I tanked. Ward was great on Sekope so I tried to fix my issues with Ward, this helped a bit but then I also took Fires the two together helped alot. But in all honesty I had some very different legacy choices in mind and it was take the two I did or con die in a week. Which was a pity because going 2 defensive legacies was probably the hammering of the first nail into the coffin anyway.
- I did still have my moments and the utility of hand/whip/flail was pretty cool. Most likely something I will try again ... Just not on a giant
- Bash just seemed terrible, I managed to bash someone down twice, I was enlarged for this, and that person was another cloud giant. Outside of that I seemed to be falling on my face all the time or getting evaded
- When your con gets low you don't have the Wisdom to pick wise recovery so heal like rubbish
- The exp penalty is the biggest in the game and I really do not understand why. Yes you get giant resist but in 95% of pk situations you may was well not have it. The times it could help ... Necro army ... It probably would have been the difference in dying in 1 and bit rounds of combat rather than in the first round :P
- I honestly decided to take some fights on purely based on if I got protection evil or protection good. If I got the one I did not want I would wait it out.
- I hate the fact that it seems like giants are pigeon holed into cry/flurry specs. Yeah its great but having the potential to do 1000+hp of damage in one more does not make a race in general balanced.

Nexus in general:
I have to be honest I don't get it. Especially when for me it seems like the balance calculation is so broken.

The biggest thing I struggled with ... in a very simplified format we want Magic to be free flowing. So how do we do this, well ... we find powerful mages to kill take all their equipment and then lock it away.

I am 3 cabals down now Empire and Battle I would go back to, but I cant see myself doing this with Nexus.

Some of this may be because I struggled with the build in general.

Any who I'll post all the logs I have. There is something new in the wings which I will slowly potter around with over the next 2 months, hopefully see you all in October!

I was really confused when I got bashed to death by you.. I didn't think it was possible to get bashed to death as a giant. And your luck! I missed probably 90% of my skills against you in every fight, backrake, bearcharge, even serpent no matter what I tried I would consistently miss; and it kind of sucked, especially when I thought I had you. But fighting you was fun and I'm glad I got a few of those opportunities. Anyways good luck overseas and I'm sure I'll see you again in the fields.

For what it is worth.

I always assumed you were on for this reason I always entered areas enlarged. Particularly the massive giant. There was not a single time I stepped onto that square where I was not enlarged.

I've tried a cloud giant or two in Nexus. I've also had a minotaur warrior in Tribunal that fought a lot of ragers. I found the problem to be that that any time you are playing against something that can deathblow, you need to not get hit much. Your build got hit a lot.

As far as the disease weakness, it is rough. Every time I've played a cloud giant I've feared the hell out of any necromancer as it was just a lopsided battle.

Fires was a weird choice in some ways, as from my understanding it lets you dodge more and when you entwine you don't dodge as well. So often you were setting yourself up for failure with it. Ward was a good choice and it was obvious in some of your logs you saw good mileage with it.

Bash is a fine line, either you are dominating people and they can't get a command in or it doesn't give perfect lag and they redirect to you and you feel the pain. I would still rather have it as it is than have everyone playing enlarged giants bashing each other as their only command. As it is we are encouraged to use more skills than just bash.

The exp penalty probably needs to be rethought on cloud giants, but at the same time had you ran your build in the village you might have destroyed. As far as it goes with giant resist, I found it useless in pk as I was always being hit with wrath maces or poison daggers or some such.

As far as cry/flurry builds, it can be very effective but their are other builds to go as well. I'd like to see you have done your build as either Fortress (storm) or Outlander (any giant) and faced a different type of enemy. I think you would have had fairly different results. As it was, you held your own quite well with somewhat of a sub optimal build.

As a powerplayer, I'd give a serious thinking on different aspects of the races. Races have pros and cons, and when designing a build, you should utilize and deepening pros because that will turn into a competitive advantage.

When it is cloud giants, the pros are: resist, strength, con, size, flying. The cons are: vulns, dex, int.

By going entwine/pummel build on a giant you mitigate dex con, but do absolutely nothing about pros and other cons.

If I was powerbuilding a giant, I'd most definitely do battle or trib, axe/polearm, trapping/(landslide/cry?) build.

It's pure logic:

You have inherent fly - battle is first choice, because you don't get fly otherwise, nexus/trib is second choice, because you don't get fly via cabal powers.

You have aerial oppressor - forsaking it for flails/hth means you just drop racial bonus without dropping racial cons. This makes you gimped. While at the same time taking trapping and heavy weapon makes your trapping better - which becomes your competitive advantage. And concequently you one-shot ppl with overhead.

If you want to have defensive cloud, I'd get forsaken thoughts over any other defensive legacy, because you get most damage from people exploiting your vulns, not from actually getting hit. If someone doesn't exploit your vulns - these guys are not really someone you keep in mind when designing a build.

By this logic, having flail/hth nexus on a giant is much like going polearm for gnome. It's fun, but you just drop your bonuses without covering problems.

NT

To be honest I do not think these words go together ...
"If you want to have defensive" ... "Cloud"

Like I said I I personally don't believe being able to do over 1000 hp in one move necessarily makes a race valid. One thing that was great about Tarak is so many fights were right down to the line. Maybe I will do a giant build again one day but even from your own farewell

"Overall giant warrior is beastly on low- and midlevels when played right, I didn't expect to down so many people. Up on hero, the ratio decreased significantly"

I would be interested to see how many fight you had resulted in you dying in flurry lag if you didn't manage to pull off a decent one. I realize it is all a trade off ... But it just seems to me that giant builds are solely reliant on 1 skill to win a fight. But hey I was reliant on 2 skills, entwine and pummel :)

Where has other high dex/high int builds seem more open to a variety of tactics. Its probaby this reliance on 1-2 abilities for a giant that turns me off them compared to what they use to be. But my last giant was some 15+ years ago, and I am pretty sure it was a ranger and I am pretty sure it had old school ranger bears :)

By defensive cloud I mean a warrior who takes defensive legacies. Obviously the tactics are to utilize those defenses and outlast your opponent. Tarak had two defensive legacies, definitely fits my definition of "defensive" :) If you analyzed our fights, you'd notice that I was exploiting your vulns massively, and I don't think I was the only one :)

As far as flurry lag is concerned, I think that number is below ten. The most frustrating were when the flurry was completely evaded and I died to wrathspamming concequently - typical situation with elven paladins. But then again I was a gambling type, and could flurry on small wounds sometimes, if I felt it to be fitting the situation.

As far as the number of skills is concerned - the #1 skill for a giant is bash (Greeting really helped here, I'm sure), so bash+flurry are already two :) I have also relied on riposte (which is shining in group fights with Seven Winds, even if not perfected), entwine and parting blow :) If you check my PBF you'll see that I had pretty much all the necessary skills mastered, I've even had charge perfected and it was really nice a couple of times, starting with obliterate is fun and people don't expect it generally from a sword-spec.

I have also invested in evasion, and it helped me in some life&death situation. I also added Lucky edge (hoping that it would help me evade as well), that was before Umiron posted that he would never take it as an edge though, so I don't know the effect :)

I guess for me this is where I have the issue with giants

From one of your own comments:
- I think I've spent about 150 hours working on skills before I moved above 15 rank.
- Most of the time I was thoroughly preparing my assaults beforehand to squeeze that 5% more damage that would tip the scales my way. I think I'll have pretty low pkh because of that. So when I went and two-rounded someone like a truck, chances are I've spent an hour to prepare for that.

I enjoy the PK aspect of the game. Perhaps I just picked the worst build in the world to do a giant on and that 100% falls on me. But this character more than any of the (Very few) ones since I returned seemed so dependent on massive time sink to eek out that last 5%. Weather it be lots and lots of skills practice, getting gold so I could waste 30k of it to stay alive from that stupid malice commune. Or gathering key preps so I had a few reliable options when I really needed them. Having to prep for an hour to slam someone seems excessive what if they log out :) ... yes yes I know I am taking it to literally.

But then there were other things I cannot deny:
- The bug with the bond causing me to attack bondmates when conjurations got angry
- The whip/flail bugs with entwine taking some options away ... This probably hurt most cause I didnt want to eat a space prog
- The balance calculation being so obviously wrong

And being giants, they have harder time getting them.

Balance calculation is one of the things that keeps me from playing Nexus. I'm afraid I'm gonna end up sitting with 5 hero imperials and good tipping.

>I've tried a cloud giant or two in Nexus. I've also had a
>minotaur warrior in Tribunal that fought a lot of ragers. I
>found the problem to be that that any time you are playing
>against something that can deathblow, you need to not get hit
>much. Your build got hit a lot.

Not getting hit is definitely one (and probably the best) way to mitigate deathblow, but damage reduction through preps, cabal powers, and even a legacy are other ways to address it if one chooses.

But yeah, having to throw down with Ragers as a build that is neither "tanky" or capable of using wands/talismans probably isn't for a lot of people.

>As far as the disease weakness, it is rough. Every time I've
>played a cloud giant I've feared the hell out of any
>necromancer as it was just a lopsided battle.

Being a Rager goes a long way here because of spellbane, but there are legacies and edges too. It's also important not to underestimate the need for saves. A LOT of cloud giants throughout history have bitten it because they thought they could ignore that aspect of gearing in ways other builds cannot.

>Fires was a weird choice in some ways, as from my
>understanding it lets you dodge more and when you entwine you
>don't dodge as well. So often you were setting yourself up
>for failure with it. Ward was a good choice and it was
>obvious in some of your logs you saw good mileage with it.

FoA applies to both dodge and parry, but no other defensive skills.

>The exp penalty probably needs to be rethought on cloud
>giants, but at the same time had you ran your build in the
>village you might have destroyed. As far as it goes with
>giant resist, I found it useless in pk as I was always being
>hit with wrath maces or poison daggers or some such.

I wouldn't mind if cloud giants (or giants in general) were easier to level up, but I'd be hesitant to lower the penalty because experience is what PK ranges are computed from and I don't think any giant builds need a "better" PK range in the low/mid levels.

Yeah, giants straight up eat face of everyone but dexy warriors on lowmid levels, and they eat dexy warriors as well as soon as they get direct damage skills.

And don't get me started on transmuters :)

But yeah, the typical "scary" stuff isn't "scary" when you're rocking 45 damroll at level 24 with a Giant.

Thanks for the response, and I learned something about FoA too!

Cheers for the response.

I hear what you are saying 100%. As I said individual results may vary. And I know with my fight I am taking options away to exploit vulns in many cases due to h2h.

My general comments are not around the fights where you eat 2-3 deathblows and die. Even when Burwell did not have the head very often they would simply slam me. I did post a log of a few of these. The worst which I think I have was I lagged them for 12-13 rounds of combat and hit them once maybe twice. I fell on my face with a bash. Then they switched to me killed me in 3-4 rounds and took the head back.

On Fires Umi has covered this and the help file certainly hints it defense in general, to be honest from reading the help file I would have thought this would apply to shield block as well. But apparently just parry and dodge. The primary reason why I went whip/flail was I knew entwine nerfed dodge and I figured I dont dodge for crap anyway. But even saying that dodge seemed to be such a primary part of my defense and this seemed to be regardless of my weapon choice.

I agree 100% on the whole bash front and I am not argueing the change is not for the better and needed to happen in general. To me it really did seem the only people I could viably use bash on was another cloud giant. And the evades/complete and other misses really favoured the tiny light weight little people. it just seemed from my experiences that shear size and weight now plays a lesser part. And for the very reasons someone should be a bit better at bashing does not equate to them being able to survive it. And that change from 16 dex to 19 dex in the case of a mino did seem to make a decent difference.

Agree 100% on the physical resist being useless in PK's.

As for the fight I won. Including all of those against non villagers. Most of them were against people where they were not prepared at all.
But I commonly had 2-3 layers of resistance in play. Far to many of them were close.

Doing the comparison of logs. With Sekope I would often try to get the head back with 3-4 defenders and I was reasonable successful with it, and totally stoked at the ability to survive. With the giant I did not go into a single fight without preps (No matter how little an amount) and I completely #### myself trying to retrieve from one person let alone 2. And it wasnt from the lack of recall and teleport potions, it was because it was such a narrow margin of survival and then the ability to be able to use the damned things.

I have no issue with hand/whip flail on a giant from the skills point of view, they all worked great eyejab/pull/entwine/stun etc. Its just the class basics were plain aweful.

But ... "Individual results may vary." :)