I know there's been a lot of complaining about it.

I want to ask about the status of the changes - is it coming through soon?

Shackles does ***DEMO when you try to move (unprepped) and MANGLES you through sanctuary. With sequester. Healing items tend to do more damage to you than it heals. Any class without a self heal and sanctuary is already dead. Any class with a self heal and sanctuary is probably dead, or at least has no chance of winning the fight without some major other advantages.

Yes, there are ways to avoid it. For example, an auto-trigger when there's a vindy near to q teleportation. And... umm... yeah, thats about it.

But honestly, have you seen the stuff thats been going on?

Admittedly, more skilled players will probably not have as much trouble with this - they know about the game limits and can probably run away, chameleon or camo in the forests, etc a lot better/more effectively than the newbies. But CF is already pretty unfriendly to newbies as it is (not the players or the imms, the nature of the game makes it difficult at best).

I wish I could support my words more - but specifically talking about presently active characters is forbidden, right? Suffice to say, shackles + special guards is virtually a guranteed kill. I suppose its theoretically possible to overcome this with some godly combo. Just because I've never seen this done before doesn't mean its not possible.

There just shouldn't be a class/cabal combination that allows one solo and take on four-five heroes alone, even uncoordinated heroes with no lagging moves, and still come out alive with half of them dead. I'm not trying to fault anyone here - if I was massively ganged like that, I'd exploit whatever I had to my fullest advantage as well, but I'd still admit that it was overpowered.

Right now, when one is wanted and a vindy comes along, I don't see any other option then to teleport or recall or whatever. There should be a way to fight someone with such abilites, but I don't see much of one outside of ganging. As if there wasn't too much ganging in this game already.

If I didn't mention this already, I'm a noob. Know about a way to kill a vindy with sanc while shackled? Maybe, with a very specific race/class/cabal combination with the right preps its pretty easy, but outside of that I don't seem to have many ideas.

I have shackled certain un-sanc'd non-hero characters who the shackles would only hit for mauls or so, one even managed to run all the way to udgaard right after I shackled him near Galadon. So, there are ways to get around it.

You should consider what is presenting the opportunity for you, and others, to get these bloody shackles. You are breaking the law. Personally, I think there are more new players to respond to the Tribunal as being the authoritative figure within the cities, and are less likely to break the law, as say, someone who is more experienced and understands the consequences better. The consequences of being wanted are that you may run into the (infrequent) presence of a Vindicator. If blood shackles weren't a powerful ability, then all magistrates would know how to use them.

I will admit, blood shackles is nasty, in just about everyway possible that we don't want. But to say it is overpowered probably isn't accurate. Since only one type of person gets to use it.

There are lots of things that may seem overpowered at the time it is being used against us. But the way to deal with any strong ability is to prepare yourself for it. And if preparing for the vindicator means to spam where, well, then you should.

There wasn't a cabal whose dedication is fighting tribunal.

As it stands, bloody shackles is MANGLE through sanc (and possibly prot, since I was good and it was coming from an evil) and sequester for 5 hours.

The imms have said that insects will never be given to an outlander because the power is too good....

Shackles is WORSE than insects ever thought about being.

But not the people who understand how it works.

Both times it was MASSA-MANGLE through sanc, and the sequester as five tics both times, IIRC.

It is entirely possible that I am wrong on the stats there, but if so, it is not due to purposeful exaggeration.

Have you watched anyone who was shackled recently?

It seems like the damage was drastically reduced. It did maims on a healer in sanctuary. Still, I think you have to be a superior player with massive cahones to face a decent Vindicator 1v1.

I'm with you, though re: Outlander leaders. Given the extreme powers handed to the leaders of their opposing cabals (one of which has only one cabal enemy) I can't see why an Outlander leader can't get insect swarm. :) Why not?