Deleted. It annoys me that wins in this game are not really based on skill a lot of the time. There is skill involved in plenty of fights, yes, but it's stupid when certain fights (in this case, me versus a bash-spam giant sword warrior) boil down to who spent more time doing boring #### like collecting/finding ABS or getting parry and (insert weapon skill) and whatever-else to 100%. Time-sink rewards remind me of WoW, and there's a reason I quit that game.

Maybe not a very relevant side note, but one that's probably going to contribute to me not playing again: There should be no such thing as a "poor matchup." If I am playing race/class A, and some other guy is playing race/class B, he should not get a free meal ticket to success unless I go spend three hours real time gathering up enough #### to hold a candle. Which I wouldn't have even been able to do with this character, because it was a rager. I mean, ####, in this situation I couldn't even do anything against the bash (which literally lagged me for at least seven rounds in a row.). There was no solution to this situation other than not to fight at all. That, to me, seems stupid and broken.

You lost against a fire giant who had 3 levels on you. If a fire giant warrior who is higher level than you is in your pk range, you should be afraid. You lost this fight because it's not even a fight you should approach. Fire giants have an experience penalty for a reason. They're dangerous. I only attack fire giants if I've got a level advantage. You failed skills, and he succeeded at skills because level has a huge effect. Learn what encounters to run away from.

I'm with you on the skill spam. Spamming skills up to 100% gives an enormous advantage. I wish that spam were taken out of the picture, and a system of 100% through time were added. A lot of people will play down the affect of 100%s (like parry, dodge, sblock)... but in all honesty a great number of them like the system like it is right now. They've figured out effective ways to get themselves 100%s under the current system, and don't want anything changed in the future because they enjoy the advantage it brings them. I call these people as$holes. =)

>You failed
>skills, and he succeeded at skills because level has a huge
>effect.

It really doesn't. Probably it has an effect on 0% of the skills that were relevant in that fight.

Well, the reason his "skills" (more like skill) were/was succeeding 99% of the time was because he was a giant using bash, giants get bash at 100% automatically, giants are large sized, and I was a dwarf (medium size) who was unable to do anything to my size because I was a rager.

As for why my skills were failing, I do think that has something to do with the fact that I hadn't spammed them up to 100%. Nep said I may have given up on my disarms/entraps too early, and that indeed might be the truth, although I do think I was able to give it at least 4-5 attempts over the course of a few fights.

.

>>You failed
>>skills, and he succeeded at skills because level has a huge
>>effect.
>
>It really doesn't. Probably it has an effect on 0% of the
>skills that were relevant in that fight.

.

You are actually bitching, and quitting....

because someone got some reward for putting in time and effort?

You really think they don't deserve to have a slight edge because they dealt with the hastle of working on ####!?

Ridiculous.

Is it so bad that I want the victor of a battle to always be determined by skill/intelligent tactical choices, rather than how much they participated in a timesink? That isn't ridiculous, dude. And in this case, it really was a lot more than "slight edge."

No, to answer your question, I don't think they deserve a reward for that. Do I deserve a reward if I pull off a marathon three hour jerkoff session? To be completely honest I would probably be very excited if the imms implemented something that made practicing skills next to impossible.

I mean, how do you go on in life? Do you have some ridiculous trust account given to you by your grandparents who were like confederate generals or something?

You get what you put into it. If you don't put in alot, you won't get alot. It's not a hard concept to understand.

FYI, you were a ####ing village berserker in the mid 30s. Ever heard of deathblow? Is it that giant's fault that you chose to go polearm spec?

I'm trying to post without being completely flabbergasted at how naive and utterly incompetent your reasoning is, but I'm failing.

I don't think people should get rewarded for spamming up skills, actually. I do think they should be rewarded for good tactics.

Having said that, it shoulds as if, in practice, good skills were not actually the deciding factor here (based on Daevryn's post).

nt

>I mean, how do you go on in life? Do you have some ridiculous
>trust account given to you by your grandparents who were like
>confederate generals or something?
>

I am a CS student and I work as a flash programmer for some professors on the medical campus at my college who are having me build tools to help teach medical students anatomy. In the past I have also worked for the engineering college's computer support help desk. I support myself through that income and through some scholarships I have earned via hard work and good grades. I haven't received a dime from anyone since I was 18, and I'm 21 now. Please don't be a ####head.

>You get what you put into it. If you don't put in alot, you
>won't get alot. It's not a hard concept to understand.
>

I play video games to avoid grinding, repetitive tasks like spamming skills. Some people are into that sort of thing - if they weren't, games like World of Warcraft wouldn't have a market. I just happen to not be one of them.

>FYI, you were a ####ing village berserker in the mid 30s. Ever
>heard of deathblow? Is it that giant's fault that you chose to
>go polearm spec?
>

Wrong. I was level 25. Deathblow doesn't mean a whole lot when it triggers rarely and, when it does, it gets parried.

>I'm trying to post without being completely flabbergasted at
>how naive and utterly incompetent your reasoning is, but I'm
>failing.

Are you just trolling me now? I think I've made my reasoning pretty clear. I don't want to have to do "work" when playing a video game; let's face it, that's what spamming skills is. The only work anybody should have to do (if you can even call it that) is learning what tactics beat what in the rock-paper-scissors system, and using it to their advantage.

I'm disappointed to see this. I enjoyed the short time I knew you, and looked forward to meeting your character again. Hope you don't decide to throw in the towel for good. Seems like you, as a player, has positive potential to bring an RP/PK aspect to the game.

Carrion Fields isn't always about winning. So what if you lose a couple fights because of bad matchups. It's no reason to get discouraged. It can be a little unfun losing I guess. But it's like that with everything in life. Did you play any sports in or out of school? Were you the best there ever was? Probably not. But just being a part of the team is fun. So dust yourself off and come back to Team Carrion Fields.

I had a lot of fun RPing with you too. Surly, horny, drunken dwarf meets herald elf healer = win.

It's not really that I want to win all the time. I just don't want to lose because of things like skill percentages. Now that I understand that I didn't lose because of skill percentages, I am a lot less frustrated about what happened.

I can't believe you deleted over that :(

You are pretty limited at what you can do at level 25. Against him it was pretty much dirt/disarm/run-away-if-it's-not-working. That's where your leet skills come into play. Figuring out how to deal more damage, and then lagging them out.

As for this:
"but it's stupid when certain fights (in this case, me versus a bash-spam giant sword warrior) boil down to who spent more time doing boring #### like collecting/finding ABS or getting parry and (insert weapon skill) and whatever-else to 100%. Time-sink rewards remind me of WoW, and there's a reason I quit that game."

He was level 28. Not a bash spec. And ABS didn't make a difference because he can't use them. And I don't think he had ANY damage reduction other than giant resist based on the skirmishes I saw. parry/dodge/weapon-skill... maybe. But my money would be it is more a matter of him having flourtine and you not. Which means you got to get one of the swords out of his hands and run if you can't. Not everyone can do that and that's where "winning based on skill" comes into play :)

Anyway I really enjoyed your character. And I was looking forward to some fun times in the village with you.

Not to bust on you, but if you make excuses for why you lose fights and decide it's always because the other guy put in more time, you're never going to get better.

When I think about the people over the years who impressed me the most, PK/tactics/skillwise, it's always the people who looked at a fight other people said they couldn't win, and figured out a way. This isn't rock/paper/scissors -- there's a lot of room to maneuver and be inventive tactically.

Gear, build, and %s rule up until mid-30s. After that, tactics, strategy, and planning go a long way due to having more at your disposal.

This dude sounds like he met a guy he couldn't contend with yet and decided to throw in the towel instead of working through it.

I say bust away on dude.

I don't know, man. I've PKed in those levels with every class in the game. Sometimes with crap gear, sometimes with crap skills, usually without preps you can't buy in Galadon (unless you're counting detect invis for the characters that need it and can have it.)

More options do open up for a lot of things, but tactics that work at 25 don't necessarily work at 35. Adding levels gives but it also takes away.

I am not saying you're wrong or anything, but could you tell me what you, in my situation, would have done differently? I'll try to explain with as much detail as possible so you're not taking shots in the dark. I am a level 25 pole spec battlerager berserker dwarf (so no preps allowed, no ganging allowed) fighting a level 28 fire sword spec warrior. Fire sword's tactics consist, predictably, of bash spam, and his bashes are extremely reliable because he's a giant (100% bash) and because, um, he's a giant (bigger than me, I can't change my size.) You're Nep so I'm sure you already knew all that, but I felt like stating the obvious I guess.

So anyway, we've got a situation where I get an opener move, and then he reliably lags me for at least four rounds in a row usually. Let's be generous and say I always get a command every four rounds. I can survive maybe twelve rounds tanking him. My opener charge generally hits for a badass DEMOLISH but then I pretty much can't hit him in melee. My disarms consistently fail against him, my entraps consistently fail against him. Slice hits for caps damage, but I don't exactly have much time for many of those between his bashes.

What, specifically, would you have done in my situation to win this battle, other than running away, leveling up, and trying again later?

To be perfectly honest, that is a hard match-up for you, race/spec on race/spec-wise, although in a straight up fight resist probably does trump the DR he realistically can bring to bear.

Some questions off the top of my head:

Are you going through his resistance(s) with your attacks?

Were you good or neutral (I could look this up, but that sounds hard right now)?

Are your disarm/entraps failing because his weapon can't be disarmed, or because you're just failing?

You did practice sword, right? (As in, to 75% or whatever)

Did you consider non-ganging forms of support from your cabalmates? Bandages from a defender, scouting from other Battle dudes to help find him at a time that's better for you and worse for him instead of when he's ready and hits the giant, help grabbing his weapons if you can get one out of his hands, etc?

Did you consider switching to non-spec weapons? I'm not saying that was the right move here, but if something seems like a bad match-up for your only spec it's sometimes worth a look.

Did you consider maybe switching up your other gear to better handle this kind of fight? Again, this is somewhere that your cabal can possibly help you out in a non-ganging way -- you've got responsibilities and need to help with the giant, but that goes both ways, too.

>To be perfectly honest, that is a hard match-up for
>you, race/spec on race/spec-wise, although in a straight up
>fight resist probably does trump the DR he realistically can
>bring to bear.
>

He was not DR'd at all, afaik. I am under the impression he was tooling me through resist without bringing any DR to bear.

>Some questions off the top of my head:
>
>Are you going through his resistance(s) with your attacks?
>

Yes and no. With my polearm I was not. A few times I tried a flail/sword combo that got through his resists (in fact the sword was ice attack, so I was getting a vuln), but I tanked even worse there. This didn't seem like that big of a deal to me, though, since the problem with me damaging was more that he was avoiding all my hits, rather than giantresisting damage.

>Were you good or neutral (I could look this up, but that
>sounds hard right now)?
>

Neutral.

>Are your disarm/entraps failing because his weapon can't be
>disarmed, or because you're just failing?
>

Just failing, he was using black iron broadswords.

>You did practice sword, right? (As in, to 75% or whatever)
>

Yes. Think I was up to around 83%~ ish, even, from using them once in awhile while leveling.

>Did you consider non-ganging forms of support from your
>cabalmates? Bandages from a defender, scouting from other
>Battle dudes to help find him at a time that's better for you
>and worse for him instead of when he's ready and hits the
>giant, help grabbing his weapons if you can get one out of his
>hands, etc?
>

I was under the impression that even asking for bandages and grabbing his weapons and crap in a non raid situation was frowned upon for Berserkers.

>Did you consider switching to non-spec weapons? I'm not
>saying that was the right move here, but if something seems
>like a bad match-up for your only spec it's sometimes worth a
>look.
>

Yes, experimented with this several times trying to find a weapon he hadn't trained in or maybe I could just tank better with. Tried maces, flails, swords, axes...

>Did you consider maybe switching up your other gear to better
>handle this kind of fight? Again, this is somewhere that your
>cabal can possibly help you out in a non-ganging way -- you've
>got responsibilities and need to help with the giant, but that
>goes both ways, too.
>

Did not try this, but then I'm also not sure how it could help. Could you explain a little more as to what you mean? Are you saying pumping my hitroll could have helped me get past the parrying? I had a pretty high hitroll/damroll already... was toting midnight dragon gear and a lance from the udgaard man-at-arms.

>He was not DR'd at all, afaik. I am under the impression he
>was tooling me through resist without bringing any DR to
>bear.

Hard to say. Probably the most he'd have is stoneskin which alone is little enough to be subtle.

>Yes and no. With my polearm I was not. A few times I tried a
>flail/sword combo that got through his resists (in fact the
>sword was ice attack, so I was getting a vuln), but I tanked
>even worse there. This didn't seem like that big of a deal to
>me, though, since the problem with me damaging was more that
>he was avoiding all my hits, rather than giantresisting
>damage.

I'm not saying it would solve all your problems, but having a non-physical non-fire polearm there would have made it a lot closer. I mean, you're giving up 1/3 of your damage on everything right away, even the things you're "guaranteed" to hit with like the charges and slices. In a fight that's at all close that's a big deal.

>>Were you good or neutral (I could look this up, but that
>>sounds hard right now)?
>>
>
>Neutral.

Just curious if protection could be a factor, but I was assuming it wasn't.

>>Are your disarm/entraps failing because his weapon can't be
>>disarmed, or because you're just failing?
>>
>
>Just failing, he was using black iron broadswords.

Disarming a sword with a polearm isn't too bad, and entrap has a pretty good rate of success against anything. Again, I'm assuming these skills were at least 75% -- I think you gave up on it too early.

>>You did practice sword, right? (As in, to 75% or whatever)
>>
>
>Yes. Think I was up to around 83%~ ish, even, from using them
>once in awhile while leveling.

100% sword would help a little there, but you really do get most of the value out of just having the weapon at learned.

>I was under the impression that even asking for bandages and
>grabbing his weapons and crap in a non raid situation was
>frowned upon for Berserkers.

Depends on who you talk to.

Is it really a non raid situation if he keeps attacking the giant to provoke you to fight?

If I'm a berserker and I can do without this help, I will; but part of the reality of being caballed to me is that sometimes you need to use the perks of being caballed to help you bear the responsibilities of being caballed. If you were an uncaballed guy, you'd probably never keep trying to fight a guy you felt really overmatched by, but as a caballed guy you felt like you had to.

In the case of Battle specifically, sometimes the reality is that you need to use the kinds of help you can get to balance out your lack of magic.

>>Did you consider maybe switching up your other gear to
>better
>>handle this kind of fight? Again, this is somewhere that
>your
>>cabal can possibly help you out in a non-ganging way --
>you've
>>got responsibilities and need to help with the giant, but
>that
>>goes both ways, too.
>>
>
>Did not try this, but then I'm also not sure how it could
>help. Could you explain a little more as to what you mean? Are
>you saying pumping my hitroll could have helped me get past
>the parrying? I had a pretty high hitroll/damroll already...
>was toting midnight dragon gear and a lance from the udgaard
>man-at-arms.

Here I more mean (and this may not be relevant in your case) that as a warrior I'll usually try to gear for some kind of balance of +str, +dex, -saves, and damroll. Against someone I knew was just going to spam bash and that I was having a hard time with, I might consider swapping out my str/dex/saves gear for more damroll or hit points.

That sucks.

Is this a result of the long, long fight which you eventually won or did you have another battle with that giant?

Another battle. The first long, long fight was so long because we were fairly evenly matched; my rager resist was making up for his 100%s in defenses, and so I was having fun. I only beat him the first time through intelligent use of tactics (or at least I like to think. Maybe I just got lucky.)

He then got a few levels and spam-pracced polearm to 100% (I asked him about this in-character and he admitted to it) and was then completely tooling me. The sheer difference between today and the other day when I had that long, evenly balanced fight with him was what really set me off.

You asked me how skillful I was in my defenses.


Rorute tells you 'Ye trained yerself in defenses and whatnot?'
You tell Rorute 'Yes.'
You tell Rorute 'Nearing the point of mastery.'

In both of our series of fights, I only had 87% in polearm. I have most of my other weapons near mastery, defenses in the high nineties, but I don't think I did anything different between the first series of fights and the second. I'm pretty sure I was the same level too (wasn't this all in the same day? I thought I just reformed and came back).

I think you're exaggerating just a tiny bit in your frustration. If it makes you feel better, I got tooled by the exact same giant before he even had flourintine.

You were a fun enemy, I was looking forward to future fights. Good luck with your next if have one.

Sorry it ended this way for you. I thought you were pretty awesome and I loved having another dwarf around too RP with. I ate some retarded #### when we were smaller cause I had a bad connection for a couple days and that was kind of embarassing.. but I felt like we had some good things going for us.

Good luck with your next though, CF needs to keep having solid RP'ers like yourself.

-Thrallin Nurrak

Had a lot of fun with you too, and thank you for your compliments on my RP. I tend to have a hard time sticking it out with characters because I am growing more and more frustrated with the way PK works on this mud. Rorute was partially meant to be an experiment for me in ragerland. I recently stopped playing my favored classes (mages) because of how messed up ABS has become (although it's always been a stupid system). It's not so much that I mind losing, I just want to lose because the other guy made a smarter tactical call... not because he spent twenty hours doing X before the fight.

Dwarf pole at lvl 25 really isn't something to be scared of. Fire sword on the other hand is just as defensive yet it has an offensive side to it too at that point.

The combat system is pretty great really. Warriors get two specs for a reason and taking pole on a non giant and expecting to go up against someone who knows polearm should just be common sense. Main reason anyone takes polearm is cutoff while lagging and you weren' t there yet.

All in all, you should have stuck it out until you second spec.. you knew what you were getting with polearm. The tactics with pole fall into place when you get your second spec. It all plays out at hero.. you should know being a mage player and see what fighting ragers is like at lower levels.. just gotta stick it out till the power comes.

Well, yes. I see where you're coming from.

I didn't really know what I was getting into with dwarf pole, though. I know jack-all about warriors, being a mage player and all. I guess I have learned pole kind of sucks on a non giant race though :P

>I guess I have learned pole kind of sucks on a non
>giant race though :P

I wouldn't go that far, but I think for non-giant non-felar it starts to look more like a utility spec (and if your play style is anything like mine, maybe more of a good second spec) than the hammer with which you will vigorously pound all nails.

Honestly, unless you're playing a game that EVERYONE is the same, there's always going to be poor matchups. Someone will always have X that's better in some sort of situation or another. The great thing about CF, is that you typically either have characters that are "good" in most situations, but never great in anything, or you have a character that is awesome against X, Y, Z but will get totally trounced by A, B, and C. And most likely, you'll have some combination where X, Y, Z is actually the people who do well against this ABC group.

Also, I really think there's a lot more to fights and skill than you're acknowledging. To me, there's tactics, strategy, prepping, and not to mention sheer help from other people. Now, I define tactics as what you do in the actual fight itself. Should I use skill X or Y? Strategy being the plan to set up the fight. Rangers, thieves/assassins, fighting ANY sort of a mage or with/against a class that has terrain or significant preparatory abilities for a fight come into that. Preps...obviously, time you spent with your character getting extra potions/staffs/skills or weapons/armor beforehand. All of this comes into play.

Now, your example...unfortunately, it's one I've run into myself. You're playing a character that's going to be good in a lot of situations, but VERY bad in a few while your enemy is playing something that's VERY good at taking on characters such as yourself. There's some advice to be given, but mostly I'd probably chalk that up to a harder situation for yourself. Compare that to fights that are better for yourself, and maybe consider how your build might have helped those fights. (vs. transmuters, necromancers, most basic warriors, anyone?)

Well, yes, I'm not trying to deny that there isn't a ton of skill involved in a lot of fights. I probably didn't come across this way in my first post, but I'm complaining about a subsection of fights where it's not about "who chose the right skill/spell/supp to use at the right time," it's about "who prepped more or spent more time getting skill percentages up."

I actually decided to play a rager because I absolutely hate prepping and think it's boring, and wanted an easier alternative. Now I'm seeing another situation where, by virtue of having participated more in a particular time sink, the other guy wins.

I can see where you're coming from with the X Y Z versus A B C stuff, but I'm not even sure if this is a situation where it applies. We were both warriors, him with swords, me with a polearm (and whatever else I could try to throw at him.) This guy basically told me, within the bounds of RP, that he had 100%s across the board in all weapons and his defense skills. Now, I understand that a sword spec should parry somewhat better than a pole spec, but I think you might be underestimating just how much this guy was tooling me, not to mention the caps damage he was throwing at me through rager resist.

What I'm saying is that this should have been a more even match up, but skill percentages seem to have won the day. Literally in the seven or so rounds of him permalagging me with bash, I think I hit him maybe twice, whereas I got hit enough times to eat through my >> 500 level 25 warrior dwarf hp. Doesn't that seem just a little bit absurd? He wasn't even wearing some kind of ridiculous hero set, or anything like that.

>This
>guy basically told me, within the bounds of RP, that he had
>100%s across the board in all weapons and his defense skills.

I sat down with the logs for a few minutes and figured out who this was. Either:

A) He wasn't trying to convey what you thought he was trying to convey, or

B) You got suckered big time.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail for fear that someone else could figure out who this is, but, wow. I almost guarantee that your skill percentages were higher.

Transmuter quickening or something?

I've done this a couple times where my skills were bunk, I got a sneaky quicken without my foe knowing, and then whooped on them when I would may have been beaten otherwise.. Instant street cred, woot!

Huh. Well, that's interesting. I guess I stand corrected on the skills thing. If it was him receiving a quicken or he was just hasted or something of the like, that is a lot less frustrating, because that's the kind of tactical stuff you should reasonably expect to go up against, especially as a rager.

Okay then!

Yeah, I can't be 100% sure either way on the haste from the amount of digging I did, but you definitely got snowed on the skills.

It's the kind of thing I'd do as a Battle-fighting warrior -- get some fight-turning prep spells and then try to make you think I was just that awesome all the time so you'd be afraid of me. In this case it sounds like it worked a little too well.

I guess it depends on why you had to fight. But one decent tactic as a rager is to get the guy to follow you around so his protections drop.

Other than that, you've probably picked the one group that has the least tactical options, so you can't be that surprised to lose to simple tactics either.

He had no protections at all. He was out-tanking me and out-damaging me (through rager resist, wtf?) solely because he had higher percentages in parry and weapon skills. This is my main gripe: I got shafted in that fight solely because I didn't spend five or ten hours of my real life getting skill percentages up.

I had to fight because he kept hitting the giant.

I sometimes suffer the same.

That said, I still think you saw something that mainly applies to ragers. Had you been able to change your size to reduce the bash issue, you probably would have been able to land at least one skill that could have helped avoid future bashes.

Not sure what class you were, but as an ap, I loved fighting the bashing giants (and orcs). Normally I could change my own size and use the element of surprise to either land sleep (because I was too small to bash) or to make their bashes much less effective (because I was larger than normal).

Also, you can do other stuff, like use grease.