Thu Jun 16 19:19:40 2005

At 4 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 15th of the Month of the Dark Shades
on the Theran calendar Jhyrdaer perished, never to return.

Race:	half-drow
Class:	conjurer
Level:	49
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Orderly
Cabal:	SCION, the Scions of Eternal Night
Age:	94
Hours:	150

Welp this is good bye to yet another character.

The main reason why I chose to make an evil conjurer was mostly because I saw a few imms talking up the ice devil on this forum and I wanted to see how kick ass it really was. Well, I've seen it in action now and and so the primary objective of the character was fulfilled. That said, I can see there is a reason why I had to make my own evil conjurer in order to see this. There is a good reason why nobody plays evil conjurers and that is because they quite frankly suck. They are very delicate and not that deathful. Despite my frialty, I found that my own worst enemies were not the hordes of maran, villagers, outlanders, and ragers but in fact were my own servitors.

Well beyond saying they suck, I won't whine too much more, but I will give a few suggestions for making conjurers (especially evil ones) more viable.

1) Make other demons beyond Harmentia and Mors-Gravis more viable. The Morosa demon is a joke - the few times I conjured it I ended up fighting and dismissing it after the first kills I made with it. The Challegha demon is also too aggressive to be useful unless you're nightgaunting someone and even then it's benefits do not outweigh the risks of having it. I think a modification of their behaviors may be in order if you ever want anyone to use them. Also maybe vary their attack types somewhat. 2 slice, 1 beating, and 1 suction. It would add a lot to the class if one of them had a non physical attack. if one of the demons had a defilement attack it would be a big help. Also most of the demons seem to have by and large the same attack spells. There are a few exceptions, the morosa demon with the thing that makes it untennable, and the harmentia with its poison. The poison is cool, but it would be nice if it and others had a few more things to choose between.

2) Elementals

It is nice to have versatility in your attack type. Some of the 'elem' commands I found to be pretty useful. Others not so much. I think it would be nice to see them have a few more elemental skills beyond earthquake, fireball, geyser, and wind wall. Maybe the earth could periodically form a club and smash the opponent in an elementally form of a cranial skill or something.


3) Psychic Vampires

The clairaudience and clairvoyance spells are pretty nice except for the fact that you're very likely toying with your own death every time you cast it. An evil conjurer, even with a fire elemental, stands little chance against these things. It would be nice if there was some way the conjurer had to combat them. If they can dimiss/shove angry demons, devils, and elementals back to their own plane, why doesn't it work on vampires?


4) Angels

why are they so much better than demons? My demons rarely bashed, I've observed angels do much more, whic helps to cover one of the conjurers major failings - lack of lagging ability.


Demons/Archons: There really is no comparison as to which is better. I've played a lawful goodie conjurer and now Jhyrdaer got to level 49, and a luminous archon is much handier than an ice devil. The devil may be a bit more viable if it actually cast barrier quickly. Also it still spends a lot of time casting spells that often dont put the target in a world of hurt. things like slow, poison, etc. Granted most of it is pretty nasty. Most of my fights though were too fast for the devil to be a big factor.

The conjurer himself: One big weakness of the conjurer is that he has few and poor options to lag & keep the target around long enough to kill them. Another is the fact that he's useless without his servitors, another is that the conjurers minions melee isn't anything special & he's a rotten tank. It would be nice if something was done to aleviate one of those glaring weaknesses.

A few suggestions:

a big damage spell that only works if you don't have servitors.

a decent lagging spell. I used pebble to boulder wands and they did land me 1 kill... but most of the time the boulders missed. Maybe another servitor that lags anyone(but conjurer & possibly group) who enters the room or lags on command. Maybe strengthen shockwaves lagging ability.

about melee, I addressed those suggestions in the above sections about the various servitors.


On to Goodbyes...

Immortals:

Eshval: Thanks for watching, & briefly talking to me. Despite the fact that the godly pesona is crazy insane, it was nice to know that there was someone up there taking an interest in me.


Scion:

I know you're in the gutter right now and that my deletion doesn't help. Most of the time, I was the only scion on, and it got old quickly. Good luck to you few survivors.


Runaktla: You're an awesome roleplayer and I enjoyed our discussions. I'm sorry I've let you down. I never really had time to work on my project because all the time I spent on I was usually trying to hold off the hoard and couldn't go & explore. I really wanted to finish it, but I geuss it just wasn't meant to be. You're an awesome chancellor and I hope you stick it out to the end.

Krilcov: You were a great ally, and even though people told me you talked too much, I never really minded. You were competent and your removal will hurt the chasm.

Lumiere: Sorry about leading us all to death at the fort. It was my fault we died, and I should have seen that dispel/quicksand coming, but well, #### happens and I didn't think we'd get beat that badly.

Rest: rarely saw/talked with you much. It would have been nice to have had a few more allies, here's hoping you play s'more and soon.


Outlander:

Baltherius/Tiz-whatever: I hated fighting both of you :P Druids suck.

Qing: Good job on that last kill. I had no idea where I died, and it was idiotic of me to leave my imp there for you. I was frustrated before, and you pushed me over the edge. Good job.

the Healers: You guys were very annoying


Fort:

Solasarath: You're godly powerful, I was a kid fighting Tiamat the one time I went against you.

Dorn: Thanks for giving me a few 1 on 1 fights, they were rare when dealing with the fort.

Qulent: Good job avoiding gaunts... mostly

Villagers:

Jul: you almost got me when we fought in arkham, I got lucky. You were one of few opponents that I could beat.

Rawnie: You thievin bastard :) I got lucky with that imp, I probably would have died otherwise.

Non-caballed:

Xtingagg: I owe you big time, thanks for all the help and travels. I regret that nobody we tried to gaunt ever made it back to us. Good luck with the character, and I hope you get the attention you want and deserve.

Talenthas: you made a nice punching bag.


Anyone else, leave a reply and I'll respond.

I did have fun with this character, but I'll never roll another evil conjurer again.

Jhyrdaer (Condrylin)

Haha.. yeah, i actually didn't see that imp coming, funny thing is you being a binder thief, and the cut down on knockout time, i was too busy trying to tie you up to actually react to the imp coming in. And by the time I saw it was quite a smart move on your part. Then once your minions were on me gave me little chance to try and finish you.. and I was quite annoyed. ;) All in all I never really go to see you around much but good luck to you in whatever you come up with next.
Rawnie

Seems like we never really got a group going and that sucks. Was hoping that was gonna happen eventually, but I suppose not. I once played an evil conjurer so I know your sentiments in regards to the devil.

Good luck on your next char.

Here was someone that could have made a very viable arch enemy for me. I'll also tell you this, I demanded the single fights we had, because others wanted to come with. I HATE ganking, so I'm glad we could have our solo fights. That being said, I think you undervalue a little bit, the power you were throwing around. After tangling with you a few times, I was legitimately concerned that you would be a force to reckon with. I'll give some examples: Your damn imp kept cursing me (hate those things), your devil rotted, slowed, dispelled, poisoned, and weakened me I believe. I ended up getting out of there because I was no longer wielding. I think you were a little premature on this, and think you should try another. Whether you know it or not, you were kicking my ass pretty well. Good job, and good luck on your next.

That last time we fought in the chasm I was so running on fumes :)

I'd used up all my wands in prior fights, the last ones went while we were fighting outside the chasm. I was even out of opal wands & gold which was especially bad news. At the end all I had was resist positive and the aura that my devil had given me.

I am surprised that the devil had done all that. I didn't notice :) You actually got rotted? If so you're the only pk that I got with that.

I do appreciate you demanding the single fights, if you'd brought a gang , I probably wouldn't have come. I was certainly in no position to stop you guys if you can en mass. I left at the end because my servitors left me and there was no way I was going to hold you off if you attacked. You were probably my favorite opponent and reading this makes me regret my decision somewhat. Don't worry, I may roll a fortress char next ;)

I knew you would not have what it takes to be an evil conjurer.

I really doubt you even observed all the effects of the ice devil. Specially since much of it is hidden to all but the victim of the spell.

Conjurers are powerful for pking, they just have associated mob deaths. The most annoying thing about conjurers is you have to leave your trains for con instead of hp. Even the most skilled conjurer will get mob deaths for many of the reaons you stated. However, these burdens are between you and your servitors and also mobs in the game (flee/return window is very short now).

As far as pking goes conjurers are a sweet deal. You just took the wrong familiar, you're suppose to delete when you dont get the raven.

Last bit of advice, you should have kissed my ass from the start. Having played evil conjurers I know that an air shifter is my greatest enemy. But from the start you played the arrogant role, even refusing to answer my questions. Big mistake, as you may have become aware when I flew to you between conjure and bind.

After you went after & were part of the gang that killed Rastorenn and then you died & I killed the person who looted you. I wasn't in a position to be friendly with you when you started demanding 'your' wands back. If you were a scion a naked foe of another scion comes to you demanding wands would you give them the time of day? I really didn't want you as an enemy but didn't have much choice.

As for the effects of the ice devil... I think I know most of them, I talked a lot with those who were victimized. The problem isn't that the ice devil doesn't do nasty things, it's that the fights are so short that they can't do enough nasty things. They generally only cast on average every other round. Most of my fights were 2-3 rounds before I either had to flee or my opponent did.

I was well aware of the hardships I faced by sticking with the imp, but I'd already written a very long role & mastered parry. I decided to go with the handicap.

Also in reference to your ic comment about nightgaunts.. I didn't expect to kill you when I sent that weak one out, even if it did bring you in. I had low odds of killing you unless I caught you out of form, which was possible, but admittadly unlikely.

Secondly, ignore Jisjis completely. He's just being an arse. From the sounds of it he isn't that different in-game.

Raven has been toned down, it is not as useful as you'd imagine since all familiars walk damned fast, and the imp curse is very handy versus most classes. Combined with devil maledictions, a teleport can be more deadly that wording for a mage. (mostly, nowadays, teleporting really doesn't seem risky)

Devil's protective stuff can go off in any fight, since it now lasts longer maybe you should have tried 'prep fighting' before rushing in.

Demons are fine but I agree with the Morosa comment. They do seem pretty near useless, with the abilities that all the others offer. I think you're wrong in the 'they're all similar in ability' comment however, and the new demons are actually very varied and useful.

Nightgaunting is meant to be the main advantage of an evil conjurer. The disadvantage now is that the gaunt doesn't always return your prey hurt. Now they usually 'succumb' before that and hope that there's no gank on the other end. With this in mind, its a damn powerful ability... I'm just not sure its worth all you sacrifice. Comparing them to Good conjies is not really fair but since you did, it looks like Evils got the bad end of the stick.

So, the clair spells are not usuable. You can't dismiss what fights you, and without a healer (and malaise making npc healers mute) your dead. I think your right in that they have their strengths... they're just no enough to outweigh what they're losing on the whole.

I will largely ignore Jisjis, he is being an arse :).

I don't think is is an appropriate forum to discuss the less than obvious benefits, but I am quite convinced that the Raven is far more useful than the imp. First off, the imps curse doesn't work very well, most of the time it fails - thankfully it lags you about as much an 'inventory' command does and thus is worth invoking till it hits :). I tried a number of experiments to find more obscure benefits of having an imp, but my one thought (that it may make you resist poisons or other maladictions) appeared to be completely wrong.

In my mind one of the chief uses of the Raven ties into gaunts - which have been toned down considerably in the past year. You can use the Raven to check to discretely see if they're in cabals, which is something you cannot do with any other familiar. Also nightgaunts no longer return prey to cursed places or places with less than obvious exits (crawling). In other words they can come to you at full health and if they have the ability to word all they have to do is get that 1 command (c word/comm word/flee; quaff) in and cast it in order to escape. Basically, you need a gang to gaunt. My few solo successes with nightgaunt came when my demon would 1-round the guy when he appeared or i gaunted ragers to places like arial city or gaunted next to cursed confusion zones.

So in many respects, the nightgaunt isn't what it used to be. I'm not saying that the changes were debilitating/undeserved/unreasonable, but they did knock evil conjurers quite a bit down in power... and i'm not really convinced that evil gaunts are all that much better than goodie ones. Whenever I ended up fighting mine they never seemed that powerful.

About my demon comments. Three of them do have 1 unique combat spell and another that all 4 share. I am just saying I would like to see them get more spells - hopefully theme based, to expand their repertoire. My main gripe is still the attack type. All 4 have physical attacks, and 2 of them have the same attack. Morosa and Harmentia 'Slice'. Mors-gravis 'beats' and Challegha 'suctions'. I just think it'd put them more on par with angels if one of them did a non-physical attack.


Your comment about 'You can't dismiss what fights you' is completely innacurate. You can dismiss elementals/angels/archons/demons/devils in combat. It has saved my life many times. You cannot dismiss psychic vampires/lost souls.

About prep fighting, I did it when I was able, but usually I had my own barrier and simply used that. I'm not saying that there aren't ways to get the devil to barrier you, just that it would be nice if it barrier'd as regularly and quickly as any archon sancs.

A big problem for my character was that there are so many hero healers around these days to cure all the nasty maladicts that my devils cast. I really did like my devils, especially the ice devil. Some of the things it cast were brutal. Usually though it was 1 brutal spell then flee/teleport & call in the healer to fix them up.


Thanks for your comments. Hope mine helped some.

Maybe they're not for acquiring people to PK, but more for chasing down those that have teleported/are near death. Using nightgaunts then locate and then tesseract, you pretty much become the best and finishing foes and looting them to the pies.

And I'd certainly take a quasit over an imp, but I'm still not so sure about taking the raven over it. Then again, I have little trouble finding foes.


Yhorian

I have a lot of excuses but none of them are very good, we should both be 51 quite a while ago which would have cut down on a lot of deaths from the 25 people that hit my ranking parties over and over.

You were solid and showed you knew the game well, good luck with your next char and dont' roll an evil conjurer.

I won't :)

I had a lot of fun with you. Every 'Yar!' brightened my day.

I thought you would be one of the top-tier Scions soon.
As far as the project, just because you're gone doesn't
mean it will end. I've seen evil conjies tear it up in
the past, maybe there is something to them beyond what
you found out, or maybe not.

Good char,
- Runaktla

The last scary evil conjie was Jhyr's and there has been an assload of changes to them since then.

Ilivarra was pretty mean too.

We have different definitions of mean.

But i'd be the first to say that i would never be able to duplicate what i did with Rituraaj.

Cheers.
Jhyrb.

Thought you had a lot of potential. I wasn't around a ton over the last two weeks, but I think two weeks in the grand scheme of a character is a very limited window. A shame you didn't stick it out a bit longer.

Thanks for the input on conjurers.

Regarding Jhyrdaer, it was often times painful to watch. Having played conjies, I know some of the issues, the main being death to your sevitors. It frankly sucks.

As I watched you, I did understand that you tried as best you were able, but as you say, Scion is presently on a downswing (which I expect to see changing soon - hopefully :P). I enjoy folks who try new classes/tactics/whatever...anything that expands their knowledge and offers a challenge. Props to you.

Good luck

Krilcov: You were a great ally, and even though people told me you talked too much, I never really minded. You were competent and your removal will hurt the chasm.

Yea, and oh the traps I could have showed you. I was holding back.
And I thought I didnt talk enough. Yea maybe my removal hurt the chasm, but would a return help it?

I had fun with you, I learned alot about conjurors, I feel sorry about leavin you alone to fend of hordes. Boy oh boy the possibilites of anyclass with a ranger. Thanks so much for hinting to where to find the stick. You dont know how much it helped so far, its totally wrong, especially when rangers can do alot of things when camoed near someone who cant see them. Ahh... hmm.
GOODBYE DUMBASS CONDRYLIN, ... oh, i got that right. Now you cant call me ******* anymore. It was a pleasure to spend time with your char anyways, to bad I couldnt hero when you did. You fended off hordes, i fended of hordes X 2.

>1) Make other demons beyond Harmentia and Mors-Gravis more
>viable.

I'll try to have a look at this soon. Theoretically, demons should have a pretty big advantage over other servitors in that even if, say, Challenga is only the best choice 2% of the time, it's an option you have and aren't forced to use. If you have any logs that particularly demonstrate why you think the other two types aren't good even on their best day, feel free to toss them at me.

>3) Psychic Vampires
>
>The clairaudience and clairvoyance spells are pretty nice
>except for the fact that you're very likely toying with your
>own death every time you cast it. An evil conjurer, even with
>a fire elemental, stands little chance against these things.

To clarify, did you have problems dealing with all the various 'hunters' that can arrive when you scry, or just psychic vampires specifically?

>Demons/Archons: There really is no comparison as to which is
>better. I've played a lawful goodie conjurer and now Jhyrdaer
>got to level 49, and a luminous archon is much handier than an
>ice devil.

Archon's definitely better for keeping you alive. Devil should theoretically have more killing power. I may try to look at the AI for this and adjust it a bit if I can find the time. Not to change the spells it casts, but to make it maybe pick a little smarter.

It'll always be primarily malediction and not damage damage damage focused, though.

>If you have any logs that particularly demonstrate why you think the other two types aren't good even on their best day, feel free to toss them at me.

I posted this on the bug board ages ago when I messed with an evil conjurer, but Morosa is made utterly useless because its chain lightning hits you and this causes it to attack you. It was said to be by design, and it chain lightnings a lot! And even if it only did it 5% of the time, whats the point of using it if 1 chain lightning means you will soon be starring down the proverbial barrel of a ####ety huge demon.

Rom.

Is that the only problem with the morosas?

It was the only problem I could find with them, cause after the first 2 times it happened I just stopped using them! Hehe

Biggest complaint about devils were that as a conjurer only the ice granted barrier. Which means anything less was almost pointless. The reason I say that is because you have low hps, and no natural damage reduction. The only reason I used the lesser devils was to grab a quick protective shield and possibly an aura then dismiss them for a devil.

Any chance we could get a small echo added to nightgaunts? As it stands right now you have no idea if you are at a place you can't nightgaunt someone to. Any chance of having it changed so that if it attempts to bring it back and it can't you get the echo, confused by your surroundings the nightgaunt is unable to complete its task or some varient of that?

We had a few battles. Minor skirmishes, except for that last battle where you got me good... I was impressed, considering what I brought against you and still died. That was a depressing moment...

Well done though. Good luck with your next.

-the Healers: You guys were very annoying-

Thank you. I was aiming for that very effect. Glad to see I prevailed at something other than drinking a lot. I enjoyed our fights even if I ended up running from most of them. Still kicking myself for letting you get away in the chasm. As the old saying goes though, 'Almost counts only in horseshoes and handgrenades.'

Well fought and from my perspective a dangerous foe. Hope I get the chance to cross paths with you again.

Arminas