Ok, let me first state that I'm not opposed to them, or even that I have an opinion either way (<--doesn't play muters). I am however curious about what prompted the change. Normally I would expect a rash of muters or massive complaining about a particularly competent muter to have been common sometime before this change, but don't remember either. Was it something you guys were monitoring (i.e. statistically) or? I'm just curious about this change which seems relatively big for the class in question and what goes into that decision making process.

Mostly a series of minor updates and/or tweaks to the class over the past few years that probably made them a bit too good in certain situations. Not like they've instantly become as deathful as, say, a fire giant AP for example, but they're nigh unbeatable in their niche.

The decision making process was based on Imm observation of a whole slew of recent transmuters, as well as Imm experience playing the class. So it was mostly subjective. But we're actually pretty good at making those types of decisions, IMHO. And this is a minor enough tweak that we don't expect it to have a huge impact in the balance of the class. We'll see how it plays out in practice.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

*** Email me your testimonials or two-line blurbs. Help our marketing efforts! ***

Normally I buy what you're selling, but the changes to muters aren't "minor" by any stretch of the imagination. Adding more lag time to zapping in duo might be minor. Nerfing the two main weapons in the muter arsenal (duo & neuro) is not minor.

Duo and Neuro still do what duo and neuro did best - Keep you out-of-sight, and keep opponents from acting for long periods of time.

Now you just have to be smarter using Duo to creep up on people. Before, there was absolutely 0 chance of a smart muter being caught. Now there's -some-.

Yhorian

>Now you just have to be smarter using Duo to creep up on people. Before, there was absolutely 0 chance of a smart muter being caught. Now there's -some-.

Wrong again. I'd say you should actually put some time into a class before blowing smoke out your ass, but I guess it's moot now that someone pressed big red nerf button. But look on the bright side! CF just got that much easier for you to play.

Two hero muters. Plenty of kills, dude. Even with my svirf got some.

It's cool crying when they 'nerf' something, but they really haven't. So stop.

Yhorian.

"It's cool crying when they 'nerf' something, but they really haven't. So stop."

Hunh, and I always thought you were a little more respectful than that.

I happen to agree with Enbuergo. Transmuters have major drawbacks, such as an almost complete inability to solo-fight Villagers - you're a metabolic quickening/fly bitch prep for friends (mostly) in those situations. All their spells take up oodles of mana as well (75->125), so a long, drawn out fight is pretty bad for Transmuters (as opposed to Invokers and their 20 mana novas). Also, while you can point to Transmuters that have done some damage in the past, I can point to more of many other classes that have done far, far, far better than any Transmuter I've seen.

I just think it was a bad judgment call when comparing the upsides and downsides of Transmuters. Transmuters are definitely my style, but they have plenty of drawbacks regarding duo. It kicks down the sneakiness of a class that is generally very fragile, and puts a big dent in their allure to me, in what made them Transmuters.

We can sit here and argue about how good or how bad Transmuters skills are, and you can point to one that is powerful, and I'll point to one that is weak, and vice versa for other classes to compare to muters, but I think each class has their niche about what they're good at, and Transmuters' little niche just took a moderate beating.

In a way, I see this as similar to looking at healers, and all the times they are needed in most explore areas, then the imms saying "They're too good at explore areas, so in explore areas their healing is cut by 30%". They would still be about as useful as others in explore areas, but wouldn't that be killing their niche?

- Runaktla

Just like any human being. Telling me I'm blowing smoke out of my ass, when I played a muter not 3 months ago, is pretty much going to irk me off.

But I apologise, short fuse. As for the argument, I think villagers will remain a muters biggest problem but it's like matching up a shaman to a lich - you've got so many other perks, it doesn't matter if you've got a big weakness. Muters power doubles in groups where other classes don't and I don't like how they've become a power tool to hammer injured characters. That kind of thing can really aggravate people because for MOST classes a muter is impossible to draw out. This way, they're not impossible just improbable. Duo was far from nerfed because it increased so much in power recently - the master/adept of dimension edges gave so much you really had to take something away. Muters are second only to AP's in the pure power that edges have actually added.

And villagers are easy if you catch them with spellbane down, because some never gear for svs/svp. Those fools were my meat :D

Yhorian

>I happen to agree with Enbuergo. Transmuters have major
>drawbacks, such as an almost complete inability to solo-fight
>Villagers -

I'm sort of surprised you think this, given how well you do with the class in other situations. Blind spot, I guess.

I'd say a transmuter vs. Battle one on one looks a lot like an evil transmuter vs. a decent paladin one on one -- you 'lose' more of the fights (but escape to fight another day), but when things really go your way, they're pretty much just dead.

I noticed this especially painfully with drovis while reaching into the hero ranks when nexus was still in power. With strong magic I would see 9 spells in a row without a single spellbane. Just gotta take that extra time and swing the balance a little.

>I'm sort of surprised you think this, given how well you do
>with the class in other situations. Blind spot, I guess.
>
>I'd say a transmuter vs. Battle one on one looks a lot like an
>evil transmuter vs. a decent paladin one on one -- you 'lose'
>more of the fights (but escape to fight another day), but when
>things really go your way, they're pretty much just dead.

Just a few responses to you and various other things I've seen posted here. This is based on my experiences, playing Runaktla and Kazadan (Scion Transmuters), who were pretty successful, and Radia (Fortress Transmuter) who wasn't at all, and comparing them to others.

Thanks for the compliment, but while I wasn't bad, I started off pretty shoddy but then got better, but I sure as hell was no Kanaev (for Conjurers), Kwalin (for Invokers), or any of the A-P leaders/notables in Scion, current or past (Victoria, Cabdru, et al.). My ratio was somewhat close to a modest 70% (not like those 90% folks), which is what I tend to get no matter what I play (Assassin/Necro/Transmuter mostly). Although if you want to see a Transmuter played by me with a crappy ratio, take a look at my Fortressite, Radia (post Runaktla). Having leader Scion powers/despoil, and a Nightwalker, upped it a bit, but then again I wouldn't complain if I had insect swarm with a summoner either.

Against my own argument, I'd have to agree with that other dude, Transmuters are not shabby at killing paladins who don't have strange bracers and defiance (Solasarath was hopeless to fight as a Runaktla, but then again those are both very rare items). On the other hand, against Villagers they're a bit more hopeless than you are making them out to be. With the exception of fighting a Thief when I had my eagle staff, I had to have a severe edge to kill one (5+ level difference, friends, Archmage spam nova'ing, etc.). A Rager has to be real careless to die to a lone Transmuter if there isn't a significant advantage of the Transmuter (and having a/b/s doesn't cut it). I could have 2,000hp, ABS, and an eagle marked staff, and a Villager (non-thief) could be in newbie clothes with Grime's weapons and he'd whip my ass silly. Its that bad. As for the thieves, there's even an exception, if they're a binder and I get blackjacked, I probably wouldn't survive. I'd feel like a jerk to say this, cause I'm sure you're well versed in most classes (especially AP's), but I'd be surprised that you could make that comment if you have ever played a Transmuter who often fights Battle (with powers), and ditto with the Paladins one (Transmuters are decent against them if they're name isn't Solasarath and they don't have strange bracers/Defiance).

Hell, one time Runaktla on CB said something like "Well at least the Nightwalker can hold him (Vershelt) off a bit". My words implied that I was running out of ideas on how I would solo push that Cloud/Warrior/Zerker off, Muuloc said something on CB amounting to "That sounds like a weakness.", and I said "Unfortunately, my craft has a severe drawback when dealing with Villagers head-to-head." or something like that. Muuloc didn't respond after. I think he realized, yep, Transmuters are pretty useless against Ragers. I was so laughably useless against regular Ragers, let alone someone like Gerylanst (Battle Bard Leader). I would seriously often laugh at how useless my character was against Battle. I think I've beaten this horse to death though, Transmuters are useless against Battle :). But, then again, that's only -one- match-up.

Transmuters are not good at killing groups, unless they are leveling and aren't prepared for a "what if X attacks" situation. My Necros, or basically anyone who can summon (APs, Shamans, Paladins to a certain extent), or those who have sick damage/area spells (Invokers, APs, etc.) are good for killing groups.

As I said in the past, extended fights are hell for Transmuters. The duo, 'metabolic slow', sleep thing helps to recover quickly, but then again faerie fire, poison, plague, rot, moonbeam, et al. can stop that, plus you're out of the action for a bit.

Try killing a heavy damage dealer without a Nightwalker, or despoil (Scion powers complement Transmuters well). Its tough to soak up all the damage while you neuro/neuro/meta slow, etc.

I also dare you to kill a Conjurer that has an archon with a Transmuter.

I never bothered to attack a Tribunal who has guards. Those guards will hurt you quite a bit while you're prepping the PC for dying.

I haven't played a Transmuter since the Edges popped up, but that more deals with the respective power of edges. Maybe a Transmuter's edges are way better than others (like the other post suggested). If they are, then of course they should be lowered. If they aren't, well then isn't that the point of edges, to be real good at something, like Legacies? Will regular iceball be lowered for APs since there's now a new iceball-improving edge? Ditto for the other edges, and what advantages they provide?

I also haven't played a Transmuter since the Veil things popped up, but then again, doesn't that mean that they're equally hindered when the Veil is strong? Likewise, do you need to tone warriors down because the Veil can be strong sometimes?

Yes, Transmuter powers will utterly rock someone 6-8 levels below, generally, but then again I can point to that being the truth with almost every other class and a skill of thiers. On the converse, Transmuters will be useless against people 6-8 levels above them.

I think that the average Transmuter player is better than the average player, because I've repeatedly seen people say Transmuters are too fragile for their liking over and over again. They attract a certain type of player.

Also, as far as neurological disruption, I swear when I played Radia, I rarely got results from using it. I even tested it on fellow IC friends because I was wondering if I was broke; nothing like I remembered with Runaktla. I posted about it, I know I did, and someone responded that it hasn't changed in a long time. I'd land a good neuro on Veressis (at around level 40) when he/she was 6 ranks below me and it'd do 1-2 rounds lag. Never did any more and I tried real often. All I'm saying is if that's still possible, sheeat, then at least up it when its on the low %. That was useless. It was like being a warrior with no offensive ability but could bash, so it was like bashing yourself to death. Maybe I was just chronically unlucky.

Anyways, overall my opinion is that Transmuters are a fun class. They have advantages, and disadvantages, and this change isn't going to destroy their usefulness, but it puts a dent in their niche. Their sneaky assassin-y ability was like their thing, is their fun point, it doesn't make them overpowered. Possibly those people who played transmuters were good at taking advantage of people being careless, which is what transmuters were good at doing, and now that is hindered. I was very surprised that this change occurred, I would have never guessed it was under a microscope for being too powerful.

Well that was my rant, I'm not part of this "the imms are screwing me" crowd or anything, but this change just hog-tied and ball-dragged much of the allure of Transmuters for me. I would have never survived any of the infantile attempts at deterring Ragers from the Chasm if this change was in place then.

Edited to add:
FYI: I hereby withdraw my comment to Yhorian re: being a jerk to Enbuergo =) I just read a few posts of his.

Agree 100%, in a traditional, one versus one, let's not flee until one of us has zero hit points sort of fight. There's just certain builds which are h-orrible for a transmuter. Giant sword/mace berserker is one of them. I remember fighting trukrag (sp?) and Brinkmun and even Khadrun thinking, "Gods be damned, did a/b/s just get nerfed? How come I have to flee with them still at 50%+ in health and I'm almost dead?". Haha.

I think what Nep is talking about is most of the time you'll "lose", but you can avoid dying everytime unless you mess up. As someone with a bit of an ego as everyone else does, this can be tough for me to swallow... but I think you can kill more berserkers than kill you as a transmuter with a/b/s. You just have to "cheat" and bitch them a bit when they're in Evermoon or something. But you already know that. Just preaching to the choir here.

Your vanilla flavored Paladin on the other hand is just the ... least scariest thing in the world to a transmuter. Tough to kill, sure, but they've got no teeth with a/b/s and neuro on your side. I agree there too.

umm it seems like your slight unaware of some things.

Out of this whole rant, I all get is you crying about being underpowered. Yet, You havent played one recently, with alot of changes going on and your making claims like "I was useless against a bard villager leader" (who was a ####ing skilled player) and "i was useless against groups" dude if your trying to take on groups your playing the wrong ####ing class...

Not every class can take groups of three on well... and it def takes a player with great knowladge and skill to do it in most cases unless its a pack of noobs. But it sounds like you want your char to be unstoppable and since its not your ranting. Tres lame.

I would venture to say having seen first hand they are still pretty beefy. But then again battlemage or not I think its pretty damn lame for a transmuter to out melee a hero warrior useing axes. I think its rather retarted that you see transmuters nuro'ing peopled flat dead in the water command wise and a firegiant axe spec is getting out damaged by a elf transmuter.

Let alone being able to walk up and nuro a rager to death and out melee a zerker.

if you want to play the sneak up on and take someone out wam! then play a assassin, and you will be able to take on groups too...

Transmuters have always been support chars in cf, you dont see people complain there healer cant pk and complaing that lash doesnt lag enough...

*shrug* but what do I know hehe

What's with this whole "if I don't agree with it they must be crying" crap? I know, I know, its the internet; its going to happen, but it does get old. Its obvious you aren't really addressing my post in any way, shape or form, you make revelations about things that I basically admitted. Uh hunh, I haven't played a Transmuter since certain changes, but lo and behold I talk about them in my post and well.. you ignore it. Oh well.

Anyways I ain't responding to this any further, I'm just feeling dumber by the second talking about this now.

I am not saying you cant make a point, all I am saying is the way your post came off was horriable. It sounded like a kid who gets mad cus his toy doesnt work as good as the comercial. I was simply trying to tell you that Comercials arent the real world. We cant all be the best. Trust me :) I have learned that....

We'll see how great these trannies of yours really were. Dude.

I think that was him.

And I refuse to reveal the other.

The reason is, I don't reveal 90% of my characters after the Hyzin incident. I've played a good couple of heroes that have gotten great compliments, and I just don't own up to because I didn't like them myself. It's a personal thing, I like to think I have character standards and I get really frustrated when I don't meet them. So I literally drop that character like it never existed and leave an anonymous good bye to all the cool people. This is how most of my Evils end :D I really don't have the heart for evil roleplay.

Besides, my other muter doesn't have a PBF.

Yhorian

Otherwise not.

My RP didn't fit my high standards. Hence the complete abandonment.

Either because I got mad/uninspired/bored, and my real personality leaked in irrepairably. Or because I just couldn't get my head around the concept I created. Using the Necro example: I've never been able to see how anyone would WANT to be a necromancer. They're a race of incredibly dull, all-things-black-loving, 'Please be scared of me? Please?' people. How the hell I can justifying myself becoming an undead-creating, life-abusing freak I don't know. I always feel like a guy in a necro-suit. I've got some creative role - and just so happen to have a set of killer necromantic spells to fight with.

Worse, I always feel like a bastard when I sleep-kill someone. Although I had a recent revelation about that I won't share :)

Yhorian

.

nt

Yeah, you're pretty much wrong. I was beginning to think transmuters were a bit too survivable, and couldn't really figure out a good solution to the problem. The change is a good (great) one. It adds slightly more risk for a transmuter wanting to prep, and a little extra planning. Before, they could go and find a ranking group, walk right up to them completely wanded up, and begin their attempt to murder everyone, while the ranking group may very well be injured, unprotected and very much surprised.

Now if you see that Tribunal-transmuter-that-never-leaves-town-except-to-prey-on-ranking-groups-or-loot-corpses-of-people-they-didn't-kill-in-really-obscure-places-using-c 'locate object' pccorpse and they don't have "Magistrate of whatever" on their title, you might just suspect they are coming after you.

All around good change. It gives transmuters a similar drawback that assassins have.

*snip*

But hey, maybe there's something we missed. I'll run through my thoughts on each, you can point out my flaws:

1. Duo changes. Prior to the change, I could pretty much prep one or two rooms away from my target and be completely undetected (this assumes they weren't actively moving from point A to point B). Pop out of duo, step into the room they're in, neuro, neuro, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. After the change, I've got to prep out of their sight - which basically means in a different area. So instead of getting prepped up one or two rooms away, I've got to leave the area. A savvy player might notice that I'm visible now (via who), but still doesn't know where I am. Maybe I'm fighting someone else? Raiding? Killing a mob? Buying jerky? So now I'm prepped, I reenter the area, relocate my target, get one room away, pop out of duo, step into the room they're in, neuro, neuro, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. So the net change: I have to use external preps (or eat) in a different area if I want to avoid immediate detection by my target. And they might (might!) now have a slight idea that I'm coming after them.

That seems like a minor change to me - what am I missing?

2. Neuro change. I'm a bit more fuzzy on this one, but I'm pretty sure that there was a significant bonus to the effectiveness of the spell the higher % you had in it. Meaning it was easier to land and lasted longer. For a spell that's (relatively) easy to spam up to 100%, this seemed a bit unnecessary - a pretty significant reward (if you will) for relatively little effort. Now your reward for having 100% in the spell is that you won't lose concentration when you cast it. Is that a reduction in power? Sure is! But I think it now falls within the target range of strength, where your opponents saves have more of an influence on the spell landing than they did before.

I wouldn't call that a Nerf (which to me means rendering a powerful spell completely ineffective, kind of like making a Nerf baseball that won't break your neighbor's window) - the spell is still scary as hell, just like it was before. But now I can at least make a conscious and more effective effort to gear against it, if I so choose. Again, I may be missing something - what?

Transmuters still have a LOT in their arsenal that they can use, and use effectively.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

*** Email me your testimonials or two-line blurbs. Help our marketing efforts! ***

I guess you have a point if you count "nerfing" something as rendering it completely ineffective. To me, a "nerf" is making a spell or skill much weaker, and that's what happened here.

If you put a 24 tick timer on wither, that would be a nerf. Would it still be useful? Sure. Could shamen still function? Sure. Is it nerfed? You bet.

My point is transmuters have been around forever in pretty much their current form. A few competent transmuters roll up, and it gets nerfed. Seems pretty reactionary and impulsive.

Generally I agree with your arguments here. Good points.. just for the sake of healthy discussion here's some thoughts from a player who has played (way too much!) of the type of character which would pretty much be nerfed to high hell by this change...

>But hey, maybe there's something we missed. I'll run through
>my thoughts on each, you can point out my flaws:
>
>1. Duo changes. ...
>That seems like a minor change to me - what am I missing?

The one thing that I think some of us who enjoy "assassin-y"-type transmuters are reiterating is that this change really does hamper that niche of character. With my last transmuter Nihkorzhebus, I tried to really leverage duo dimension moreso than most people, I'd say. I'd never played a PK-savy (if you can call it that) character before, and the duo/sneak/zap/eat really allowed me to PK where otherwise I wouldn't have been nearly as successful. Is that bad? I probably took it a bit too extreme even I have to admit. What I mean, is that I'd log in and bank on my success being that nobody even knew I logged on. Or was I still logged on? (Similar to how an assassin can religiously stay hidden without stepping out in order to catch people off guard and assassinate them.) Granted, this was only when I was in PK mode and I wasn't always in PK mode of course. Anyways, It seems this is the sort of character we're trying to prevent here. Is that safe to say? By saying this is not a "minor" change I mean it is minor for probably 98% of people playing, but very significant for a few certain type of players. I suppose I don't have a problem with that, just wanted to throw my two cents out on that and that this is a major change for any transmuter having to deal with the already cumbersome task of finding prey while duo'd.

As a side note, I probably wouldn't play that type of character again anyways but it was fun once. The one thing I will agree with is that a transmuter who can stay in duo with only coming out to attack folks or refresh their duo timer is probably not too fun for the rest of the folks on the MUD. Again, I'm fine with the change from that aspect.

I know it's probably not open for discussion but could an alternative be to nerf the Master of Dimension edge? That thing was just silly before the change and made duo a cakewalk. I'd even settle for that and just being able to eat/drink while in duo :) .

>2. Neuro change.
I won't speculate on this as I've yet to play a transmuter with this in place. I actually think that the effect that level difference (say lvl 51 vs 42) has too much of an impact. prior to the change I would perma freeze anyone 6+ levels lower than me 90 perccent of the time. It made me feel dirty ;P .

** Edit: I re-read what I wrote there and now the change makes sense a bit more to me. Carry on...

Hmmm, with Yenzouch (drow muter deleted a few weeks ago), once I hit hero range my opponents seemed to not be that affected by big neuros even though they didn't have that much svspara gear. Just my observation based on the only muter I've played.

There just isn't enough risk involved with the class. You can just sit in duo, prep to nigh-unbeatableness, and then pop out (even easier now) and dish out insane damage. Let them have their butts in the open while they prep, like everyone else.

Mostly on lower-level foes, if you're the same level or higher then it's cool. Some SvP means it's a lesser concern. But with any kind of level difference you are guaranteed to be held for 2-3 hours. Usually on the first neuro too.

Because of this, a human transmuter can guarantee-kill a giant with barrier. There's a whole area of the thirties where transmuters could level sit and completely pwn their range. It's a great reason to always have a bash-buddy at your side, then at least then when they pop out he can pincer them for you. I wouldn't mind seeing level become less relevant, and put a little more relience into svs and svp. With divine svs, and 'protected' on svp, I've been held for 3 hours because there was a 6 level difference. Not just as a one off either.

Yhorian