I warn reader's I have not re read this text. Typo's ahoy!

I thought it best to post before I decide to activate again.

Waramanga, where do I start.

It started out as a well planned character, which unfortunately evolved into a test character which eventually led to endless frustations. I even prayed about it and spoke with a few incredibly nice immortals who put up with my bleating. Sadly as much enjoyment I had being part of the village was ripped away quickly by the characters total inability to function. Dying did not bother me neither did the equipment loss , which I might add was rather rare. A very welcome change to how things used to be.

I had accepted that as an axe wielding giant that I would be a meat bag, the trade off was to be a deadly meatbag that would hopefully outdamage anything out there. This was the characters true failing. Waramanga was infact probably the worst combat character i've had, even comparing my previous character a healer. The build was pure damage; Heavy axe primary and trapping as a legacy, Dagger dualed with sisters of balance to allow utility and dodge reduction. The aim to actually hit more often with the trapping axe.

The result.............. Astonishment.


Firstly a few observations;

Axe spec skills were next to useless on Waramanga. I learned axe skills at a horrifically slow rate. A dozen hours for a single skill at best (whirl).

Hook; rarely used, a shame to be honest - supposidly it is actually good. To many cursed weapons or unhookable weapons.
whirl; Rather a disapointment, -7 -7 2 round land and a chance for a 1.5 damage hit. It seems to be based on dex comparison. I would miss assassins 40 to 50% of the time.
weaponbreaker; I liked this at first, but the fail rate increased as I leveled. Weight 50 axe would fail to break weapons of only 10 pounds at a rate of about 40%.
pincer; Now I have seen dozens of logs where this seems to work time and time again. I was astonished to have it fail a good 30% of the time.
overhead; I love the yell "axe murderer!" , I grabbed the edge for this as soon as I could, Not once. Ever and I do mean EVER did it stun the target. It missed the most out of any skill with me missing about 60% of them.
Disembowel; This skill actually sucks ass. With the rate that it fails at, or that you land damage and it does nothing , it is not a viable tactic. Miss rate on this when writhing was well into the 30% mark.


Dagger spec skills were amazing on Waramanga. I learned dagger skills at an exceptionally fast rate. A couple hours for a single skill at most.

underhand; I did not practice this much, as tactically speaking this was a mid fight skill and rarely did I have enough hp to attempt a fight past four rounds. Oblits on underhands are nice however.
hamstring; actually worked fairly well after reducing the targets dex a little first , as a opening however it was only good against low dex races.
artery; Swing and a miss, A shame but cannot have everything work perfectly.
concealed; didnt prac since id never hold a dagger in primary.
hurl; about a 20-30% failure rate. Exceptionally good for hurling throat or leg. Bleeding total damage is insane for a 2 round skill
Stab & twist: Wow, I suddenly realise why dagger specs are so insane. Best was a non vuln OBLIT DEVA with a low ave dagger. I managed to erad Oblit on a vuln. Huge damage & malediction.

Other notable Warrior skills;

retreat: I really do think that this skill should have a far higher success rate as it would grant the player another viable tactic to use.
drive: I tried to use this where i could, I could never work out what was in play. Sometimes I would fail to drive a kobold and at other times I could drive The duergar king.
Dash: Highly underused skill.
metal/light/bone Armor skills: Once perfected all of these actually added up, An excellent addition to the game. I think the rate of blocking could be icreased base on armour class however.
aim & precise aim: I ever only understood this to be a counter to the armor skills.
Enhanced reactions: Well Waramanga sure as hell received 0 bonus from this skill. Looked to work fine for everyone else.


Cloud giants;
Probably the worst race playable on carrionfields;
High experience penality and to be honest you gain nothing for the cost but more endless pain.
Vuln holy & negative: It seems that well over 30% of the weapons in the game now deal some form of holy or unholy.
Vuln disease: DEVA**'s from level 51 crimson, plagues that DISMEM & MASSA and last for 25 to 200 hours.
vuln mental: Well I never got to get my ass handed to be by a bard, Eleia perished before I was able to have that privlage.
No inhernet: BUmmer & boring.
Weapon resist: I think that there are only a tiny percentile of standard weapon damage , making this borderline useless.


Trapping: This legacy is nearly useless, there are at best a dozen weight 40 and above weapons in the game, four being axes.



Time and time again I have heard about how a player makes the character good and not the character, After having played Waramanga I whole heartidly disagree. I ran into so many single sided fights it was embarasing. I never once ran into a fight thinking that I would do any better than flee. Any viable tactics were throwen out the window as soon as it became obvious that i had little under 5 rounds to flee from a fight or die. there were only a few occasions when somehow, using absolutly no tactics I managed to come out on top. I fought a few people in arena, one comes to mind as it was the pinnacle of what Waramanga was like to play. 1200hp to death in just under 2 rounds. I ate nine attacks and a batter, I got in 2 attacks and died. It did not matter who I fought , the same thing happened time and time again. I even found a idling invoker that managed to outmelee me, thirsting. It was common for 50-70% of my combat rounds to consist of 1 attack , if I was using a shield, or two if I was dual wielding. Yet hasted transmuters would consistently get 3 attacks, nearly every warrior or assassin I fought was 3-6 attacks a round every round.

I really started hating to play Waramanga when all I did was run, run, get hit, run some more. Even when I grouped up and struck opposing foes it was a one way street with me crushed underneath the truck. I recall atleast five fights when I knew the person was idle or linkdead. hamstrung, whirled, hurled leg, stabbed and with me thirsting I still was unable to kill them before they reconnected. Missing five pincers in a row on a gushin link dead heavily maledicted assassin was beyond frustrating. No melee hits landing, no skills working, With atleast -20 str and -25 or so dex. Fights like these taught me to trust more in stab than any other axe skill.


Suggestions:

- Axe skill learning rates to be icreased to that of dagger spec skills.
- whirl to be totaly str based, similar to that of artery is with dex.
- Weaponbreaker to actually be weight based matched with str based. Breaking any weapon a elf is holding with a giant swung weight 50 pound axe should be a total given. Just ask hamstringing a giant as a 25 dex is a total given.
- Pincer, Evade?, It could have been a 100 hours of bad RNG, but pincer's reliability with 25 str looks to be the same as with 18 str, again I would suggest making it the flip of dex based skills. This should be a given for giants and a total flop for 18 str and below.
- overhead, Well 3 round skill with absolutly no side affect and a incredibly high miss rate to. Would sometimes hit for less damage than a regular melee hit. I suggest allowing this every round, as even kicking deals more overall damage. Overhead could have various side affects, broken shoulders and arms disabled from the blows to cripple the ability to parry. Direct head hits should lower int and wis for -10 or -20 and with a lengthy duration.
- Disembowel, For this to be viable it should work as well at writhing as convulsing. There should be no missing, it should hit and deal damage , with a nasty side affect. Similar to disrupt organ extreme side affects.

- stab , seriously needs to be reduced. The combined damage is massive and heavily reliable. A combined 250hp skill with some requip gear is a almost a given and has a malediction. Not even perfected this was the most reliable skill Waramanga had.
- Cabal healers need to be replaced with level 70 healers. I gave up on relying on the battle healer to cure my plague and just sucked it up and died. To many times did i blow through a dozen cures all failing. I think the worst was 40 gold and my whole equipment set (piece that were worth enough) only to die before curing the plague.
- shapeshifters should be able to be targeted by name, even whilst in form. Fighting two of the same and having them flee and swap position was annoying when one is writhing and the other is covered.
- rager spellbane really does need to work against npc's, Its not reliable with divine saves against hero players. So I figure against level 55-60 Npc's it would be less so. Eating ERADS and OBLITs through resist from the archmage at hero every round was basically a letdown.
- Extent all giants "weapon resist" to actually entail all melee combat damage. Regardless of damage type.
- Adjust resist and vulns and inherents according to exp penality. Or vice versa Adjust xp penality based on the fore mentioned.
- Adjust exp for evil ranking zones inline to that of Good xping zones. Some areas are incredibly unbalanced offering three to five times the opposing alignments exp per kill.
- Have a cigar and a bottle of Jin on me if you consider even a handful of these suggestions.


Farewells:

Enemies;
What do I say, I pretty much ran from you all. Even the few who I attacked openly you could have beat me easily if you stuck around to actually fight.
Waramanga's deathblow was pitiful, I always drooled over the other villagers who deathblowed upward of fives time more than I did. I can really only a few pks where I landed a deathblow or two. The biggest hitting for DEVA*'s the smallest hitting for a wound.

Friends;
Many of you probably thought I was just disheartened, I was not. I really wanted to keep on slugging away, but to be honest it was painful. It was almost like a addiction to putting your hand under the stapler. You know it hurts but the occasional rush of adrenaline you get from receiving the pain Might pay off. That never came for me. After hero'ing and getting my con back to 22, I was preped and ready to start laying the smack down. But Waramanga was in a endless spiral of skills failing, tactics becoming unviable due to skills failing. I grew tired of running from single fights after 3-4 rounds down to 200-300hp from 1200 and heavily messed up.

Assassins;
Man did I really get pissy with you at the level 27-45 range. I think the record was about six failed assassinates one after the other. I lost count of how many times I actually did die, but the assassinate atemps had to be higher than my pk and npc deaths combined. What made me hate you all the more, your class is insanely overpowered without assassinate and yet nearly all of you rely so heavily on it.

A stowaway;
Yes you know who you are, you were my port in the sea. A kind hearted player that made me melt with just a Hello. I had really wanted to try and make something of what we had going. But then I burnt that bridge when I stooped to trying to kill unprotected and partially idle mages without preps in the Eternal. Of course failing pincers and landing no melee hits always resulted in failure.

Immortals;
Thank you for the advice, then patience and the tolerance. Sorry to have let you down.

I've played tons of cloud giants over the years, and it's definitly an aquired race, but probably the most powerful, especially in the village. Look at the pillar, there are more than a few cloud giants up there.

Keep plugging away, and you will figure out what works best


Iggy/Brinkmun/Acaga/Gery


I love giants!

hey man, its me. spoke to ya before the rites. I hate to say it but was pretty certain you wouldnt make commander, even if nothing more than low vitality, and that I believe is hte main thing gahtho didnt make it -heard he kicked ass in it, including in the battle of wits- but only heard his take on it. I wasnt at the rites, and noone posted any of it. Dang rites logs hoarders :)

Khazlizad was my last axe spec, empirial war master like 2 years ago now. I never played another axe spec again. He was a fire giant axe. My pincers worked almost every time, but every other skill failed almost always. They didnt even succeed as much as yours did, so I did nothing but pincer.
Thankfully I usually swung with w 110 or so damroll so.. :)
and still I wasnt the beast gurgthok once was, dang deathblowing axe. Gurgthok wasnt my char.
I tend to go away from skills that fail alot, i.e. retreat that fails more often than not, and doesnt do much considering the lag after retreating only means your gonna get reengaged anyway. I stay away from axes because of the high fail rate on everything. Daggers no matter the race, their skills almost always land, and yes the damage ability for daggers is str based.
giant dagger specs are disgusting.
sword skills work often, giants are best at flurrying though, dagger skills work even more, but carry spare daggers because of breakings.
mace skills work good, I love that spec. Hand to hand after playing merewl I will never do it again, at least for a long time to test it see if it was either my char or whatever, or if the legacy actually reduces parrying ability which is what it looked like.
axe I will never take again. If your super dodgy or super tough, whips are damn right nice control, otherwise dont take them.
thats about it as far as I have seen with weapons, and have always been.
believe me, I remember going to akan for a sanc item waaaaaaaay back when, I have been playing here longer than most people have been mudding anymore, and my mudding career has been longer :)
anyway man, good luck with next char

I liked your char and his rp. Didn't like the lastname you picked though. Are you some huge jap comic fan? :p My first few chars on this MUD were giant warriors, but if you ask me to play one now, I don't think I can tolerate the low int. In any case, I thought you were a good rager. Come back with a different build perhaps!

I never said hello to you except the first time. I always said "Manga" and we started from there on. We ranked and talked and tried to PK. Always was fun with you, never an idle moment. I swear to god, I will miss you.

I remember thinking to tell the leader that they should induct you and before I could press "enter" on "say You should give Wara a hut, he is good", you were inducted. Made me feel so good that you were in.

Now I am a lil depressed. I needed your help to level up.

I've played both. Axe specc with a fire giant, I was still a newbie then. Did fairly well, elite blade fire giant. (Batu, you can look him up.) He actually had trapping, which was a somewhat decent legacy. Not "super good" but decent.

Ckol was a dagger spec arial. And NEVER did stab do THAT Much damage for me. But then again, STAB is STR based I believe. I've actually been toying with the idea of a dagger wielding fire giant just to see how nasty the stabs can be. ;) Chilling + outcry of steel + stab/underhand as a fire giant? Nasty stuff?

I can understand that things didn't go to well using axe in mainhand and dagger in offhand. But axe specc cloud giant should do decently.
(Oooh, and you didn't try to pince with just one axe now did you? Don't think it's possible though so...)

Personally I just think this sort of char didn't fit your style. I've no idea what you've played before, but I know playing shifters I suck BIG time. Even when I get some of those really good forms, I suck, but with warriors I do somewhat well now.

Keep it up though! Find your combination! ;)

No offense.

Without trying to rebutt the whole thing point by point, let me just say that a lot of people have played giant berserker axe over the years and nearly all of the made it seem tougher than you did.

This kind of character might just not play to your style.

This dude is on crack. I mean, he said there is only 4 or so weapons that are 40+ pounds. You should know with Thrak I usually could grab two or three if I remembered to rest before fighting that ####ing Hulking Giant in the Weald.

This makes me want to roll a giant berserker.

PS The only thing he is right about is stab. Stab ####ing rules.

I am pretty sure that I said a dozen, I could be wrong but I've not time to re-read through my mammoth post. Weapons that are 40 pounds and heavier, I could not find a dagger above 30, or a few other weapons which I think would make life interesting for the trapping legacy.

I had a dwarf forged hefty axe for so long with Waramanga, it was a good weapon. I just wish there were others, conquest was not in the few times I checked.

Stab really shocked me early on, I had seen others stabing for DEVA*'s and thought wow. 2 round skill that DEVA mangles, well over oblit for damage is really nice. Then when I got the occasional OBLIT with a envenomed dagger I thought that with a real nice dagger i'd get far higher. Which I did.

The really interesting aspect is how well hurl worked. I have played a couple at most non giant warriors, so going dagger spec was rather interesting.

All my previous giant warriors were Bull at a gate type characters. This one I tried to play the same, but after a few pks that had me dead within 3-4 rounds I guess I lost my confidence at running into a fight axe's pincering.

This is what was so dam frustrating. I have not played heavily over the last few years but I have had a small arsenal of ragers , all of which were giants, over the past 7 years. It was why I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what just was not working. Other villagers who I grouped with, who i fought in the arena were able to see what I was pointing out. We were all perplexed as to what was wrong.

The only thing which I did not do with this giant was level sit at 20 and prac every weapon. I am hoping that my next , who will have every weapon at 100%, will be vastly different.

I still would like to hear your view on cloud giant vuln's however as they are probably the three worst vulns possible in the game.

> I still would like to hear your view on cloud giant vuln's
>however as they are probably the three worst vulns possible in
>the game.

I don't think any one of them is that bad.

Taken as a whole, they are pretty bad. But, on the other hand, you've got weapon resist, giant size, resist cold, perma fly, 25 str, 22 con. If I have a character that can pick any of the giant races, even with the most vulns I pick cloud nearly every time.