My free gift of the day to the players: a few CF misinformations and misconceptions illuminated to the best of my ability:

- Cabal leaders do not get any kind of general skill bonus. People probably think this because Scion leaders gain a bonus specifically to their cabal powers.

The orc chief does see a few perks for leadership as far as orc skills go, but I want to say most of that is just by virtue of being a level 51 orc instead of a level 50 one, so I'm not sure if you want to count that.

- More overall damage is more important in killing a phantasmal killer than the number of hits dealt to it. If iceneedles seems really good here, probably it's because iceneedles is a lot of damage period to unarmored opponents, and phantasmal killers don't have a lot in the way of armor.

- Liches do not have 25 stats across the board and never have. I don't even know how that one got started.

- Shifters in form typically swap their normal racial vulns and resistances for that of their form.

- STSF knowledge does bleed out reasonably quickly over time. It isn't all or nothing and it doesn't last until you quit.

- Generally, if you think a Tribunal has given you a bogus flag or otherwise has wronged you, you need to appeal to Tribunal mortal leadership or a Tribunal Immortal. It's not a rules matter and other Immortals are not going to get involved. We make an exception when a Tribunal tries to flag a dozen people at random, otherwise, you're on your own -- it plays out IC. They've got a chain of command for a reason; one of those reasons is so I don't need to get those complaints.

- Soul of the Mountain does exactly what you see on score. No more, no less.

- There are no class-based components to parry success. Obviously, a warrior who has the axe and flourintine skills will parry an axe a lot better than an invoker without either, but that's not because of his class.

- As far as I know, there was no Gates of the Forge nerf-fest. Sorry.

- From a bird's eye view, generally, your character's enemies collaborate a lot less than you think. Sometimes it seems that way because your enemies know a good place to find you is the cabal where your item is, and sometimes it seems that way because you don't realize your enemies are fighting each other too. Often I'll see (for example) Outlander druid runs up by Fortress, kills a Fort conjurer, and is accused of Empireguy on his way to get his item back of holding hands with Fort even as he runs for his life from the rest of the Fort coming after him.

Generally, whatever cabal you think is behaving ####ty, you'll see things differently if you play it for a while.

I've heard from some people that mastering the final spells for an Invoker makes that path more powerful, but I've never noticed a difference. Does mastery of the final path spell have any effect on the damage output of the earlier spells?

Yes.

When worn, it affects your panache by -2 points.

That is panache exactly and what does it affect?
It seems really random on an item.

Panache is a classy word for 'Charm' or 'Charisma'

Thanks. It looked really odd to me.

How to get down that one locked <DOWN> in the ruined keep... I have put quite a few hours into that over the years.

But I've definitely opened that before.

What roles does hitroll play in both offense, and if any, in defense?

1) Could you please tell me what Power Word Decay does, aside from the stuff in the affects list? I *think* I know, but I can't be certain.

2) What was the story with the area "near galadon, underground, with a glowing tombstone" before it was tied in with the Violet Wood? It had to do with Jullias, right?

3) What's the deal with the locked door near Arkham that I have never been beyond? (north-east)

4) What's the deal with the big, immovable door in the Violet Wood?

5) To what extent does a conjurer's location affect his elemental summons? It makes sense that if a conjie wants to risk trying a water elemental summoning underwater, it should be beefy. What about on top of the water? How about earth elementals? Wilderness? Caves? What is really the best? And with fire, are all "hot rooms" equal with respect to conjuring them?


That's all for now.

>1) Could you please tell me what Power Word Decay does, aside
>from the stuff in the affects list? I *think* I know, but I
>can't be certain.

I want to say it can kill you as rot kills you if it runs you out of con. I haven't played a necromancer that's had it and I could be wrong.

>2) What was the story with the area "near galadon,
>underground, with a glowing tombstone" before it was tied in
>with the Violet Wood? It had to do with Jullias, right?

Jullias' shrine, once upon a time.

>3) What's the deal with the locked door near Arkham that I
>have never been beyond? (north-east)

No idea.

>4) What's the deal with the big, immovable door in the Violet
>Wood?

A part of the area that was never finished, to the best of my knowledge. I occasionally poke Jullias about this when I see him.

>5) To what extent does a conjurer's location affect his
>elemental summons? It makes sense that if a conjie wants to
>risk trying a water elemental summoning underwater, it should
>be beefy. What about on top of the water? How about earth
>elementals? Wilderness? Caves? What is really the best? And
>with fire, are all "hot rooms" equal with respect to conjuring
>them?

There's an edge that makes these things matter; otherwise they generally don't.

>>4) What's the deal with the big, immovable door in the Violet Wood?

>A part of the area that was never finished, to the best of my knowledge. I occasionally poke Jullias about this when I see him


I want you to know that I spent 3 RL hours with my first character trying to get in that door. :P

I've probably spent more than 20, over a few years, if you count time spent sitting there trying to come up with other ways to try to get through it.

The amount of hours I have spent on that door, until this just came out, is absolutely ridiculous. Heck, I worked on it for awhile again just a few months ago with one of my mortals.

I think you should finish it and put something beyond it! Just make sure the way to open the door is so insanely hard to figure out that what ever is beyond it makes all these hours we all spent well worth it.

Two rooms are through there. Just isn't any way to get there, and I don't really know what J was up to well enough to try to finish it.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

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

I might have spent real life days trying to figure out the quest to get into King Tiotrik's treasure room and get the black diamond. :(

>1) Could you please tell me what Power Word Decay does, aside
>from the stuff in the affects list? I *think* I know, but I
>can't be certain.

I want to say it can kill you as rot kills you if it runs you out of con. I haven't played a necromancer that's had it and I could be wrong.

--Nep is definitely right on the money with this one. Power word decay is like a weak rot, if con runs out you will die. It does some other nifty things that rot does not do, but for the most part its is a poor man's rot. Me and an invoker were successful in killing a fairly high lvl mob with PWD/iceneedles.



>3) What's the deal with the locked door near Arkham that I
>have never been beyond? (north-east)

No idea.

--Old Shrine

>3) What's the deal with the locked door near Arkham that I
>have never been beyond? (north-east)

If you mean the one I think you mean, I think this post addresses it. At least I assumed it did, because the door was there before the change, as a seperate zone (I guessed a shrine at the time). It was also there after, but now part of the new zone.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=3&topic_id=734&mesg_id=734

I've seen that at least one has been required to delete, recently, due to "forum character/player exposure," yet I count at least three major active characters who have revealed themselves through log/forum posts on the alternative site. They have not been deleted, or forced to delete. I am a Pittsburgh player. Sporadically, I admit, but a player nonetheless. Should I expect this kind of treatment? Am I on borrowed time, and you guys just missed banning me, too?

I have played for almost a decade, and enjoy what I have experienced here. I'd like to know if I'm FAB (thanks, david carusso) or if I'm going to be able to play, without the guilty-by-association brand that comes with living in the same city?

Thanks,

Cartherlen/Gnarugk

Do you cheat all the time? Do you constantly go OOC? Do you lose your temper and bitch someone out more often than you change your underwear? Do you pass OOC info all over the place? Is your specific mission in life to make CF imms unhappy/pissed off?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then yes, please be worried.

If you answered no to them all, then you have nothing to worry about.

I don't think any staff particularly care where you're physically located.

As for Mr. Kanye, when you have a long history of breaking rules, you don't get warnings or wrist-slaps.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I just know of at least two other players who are site-banned but haven't done anything other than share a similar IP to ones that are currently banned for Kanye's misdeeds, and another individual who posted an aggregate of information he compiled over his time playing. I just figure it'd be rough to invest time in a character and end up banned because it's not possible to distinguish individual locations with Comcast as your provider.

Hopefully my roommate will call to initiate the interwebs purchasing process from Verizon so I don't have to 'borrow' Comcast from next door. Thankfully, I was able to logon briefly over the weekend to keep my char from autodeleting.

Are player undead supposed to be blindable in any way shape or form? Especially by things that don't affect npc undead? I posted about this in the bugs forum months ago but never saw a reply. Thanks.

And it's still in the bug queue to get fixed (along with about 200 other things).

Ah, thank you for the fast reply. Here's another one for the list then. I hope I didn't break the camel's back.

1) What, exactly, transpires when you flee from a fiend? I've always heard the fiend gets stronger...well, how?


2) I know this is subjective, but how much weaker are today's liches compared to what they were during Istendil and/or Zorszaul's times? Barring gear, cabal connections/powers, what (if anything) has been removed or tweaked in the phylactery power set?


3) Since it has become something of a CF Myth, and I like dredging it up, is the Shaman revamp drawing close (within the year?)


4) Vampires - the helpfile still exists. Are we keeping these for Eshval's Court Flavor, or will we get to see them as a PC race at some point (presumably via some kind of Spectre transformation)?


5) Is there a hidden flag called "sharp" that high level imms can put on PC's? If so, does it have the effect of getting rid of a weapon's AVG and always hitting at the high end? (I could have sworn someone brought this up like...hell, 7 years ago.)

>1) What, exactly, transpires when you flee from a fiend? I've
>always heard the fiend gets stronger...well, how?

IIRC, it heals some of the damage it's taken, and it possibly becomes more resistant to damage (potentially un-doing some of the 'softening' of the killer that typically occurs over time as you fight it.)

The moral of the story isn't necessarily that you should never flee while fighting one, but more that you only should flee when you're getting something important out of it.

>2) I know this is subjective, but how much weaker are today's
>liches compared to what they were during Istendil and/or
>Zorszaul's times? Barring gear, cabal connections/powers, what
>(if anything) has been removed or tweaked in the phylactery
>power set?

As far as I know, everything is out still there and as strong/common/etc. as it ever was.

>3) Since it has become something of a CF Myth, and I like
>dredging it up, is the Shaman revamp drawing close (within the
>year?)

I won't say no, but we haven't started one.

>4) Vampires - the helpfile still exists. Are we keeping these
>for Eshval's Court Flavor, or will we get to see them as a PC
>race at some point (presumably via some kind of Spectre
>transformation)?

It was something we were considering doing as a spectre transformation at some point. That's still about where it's sitting.

>5) Is there a hidden flag called "sharp" that high level imms
>can put on PC's? If so, does it have the effect of getting rid
>of a weapon's AVG and always hitting at the high end? (I could
>have sworn someone brought this up like...hell, 7 years ago.)

Nope. I haven't heard that one before, but there is no such thing.

There *is* a 'sharp' flag that can go on weapons; to the best of my knowledge it does absolutely nothing, and I can't think of any weapons that have it. I always assumed it was an artifact of DIKU/ROM and was intended to someday implement something like a 1st-2nd edition D&D sword of sharpness.

>As far as I know, everything is out still there and as
>strong/common/etc. as it ever was.

A lot has changed about liches to balance them out. I won't go into details of course. Guess Nep didnt want to either.

You're mistaken, or you know something I don't. :)

Edit: Unless you're counting that you can't ritual your own corpse anymore. That I know changed, although for a long time it didn't seem to come up.

Nah that was a fairly recent change :P

Liches have lost the ability to group, that is a somewhat recent change. I remember grouping with a lich at more than one point in my mudding career. Phylactery system also got an overhaul, they work differently than they did in the Istendil/Zorszaul days. Certain pieces of eq that liches favored back in the day no longer work for them. (Though they still get that spell to work via phylactery)

Not being able to group and change to phylactery system did a LOT to balance out liches. Not to say they still aren't crazy powerful, just that there is somewhat smaller chance of an istendil/zorszaul springing up again. And that boys and girls is a good thing! I remember deh pain!

>Nah that was a fairly recent change :P
>
>Liches have lost the ability to group, that is a somewhat
>recent change.

Oh, that's true. That's probably six or seven years old, but still.

>I remember grouping with a lich at more than
>one point in my mudding career. Phylactery system also got an
>overhaul, they work differently than they did in the
>Istendil/Zorszaul days.

At some point Zulg swapped around the names of what did what, but the functionality and what you get from who remains the same.

>Certain pieces of eq that liches
>favored back in the day no longer work for them. (Though they
>still get that spell to work via phylactery)

If we're thinking of an amulet, that changed during the Zorszaul era. I remember the bitching.

>>I remember grouping with a lich at more than
>>one point in my mudding career. Phylactery system also got an
>>overhaul, they work differently than they did in the
>>Istendil/Zorszaul days.
>
>At some point Zulg swapped around the names of what did what,
>but the functionality and what you get from who remains the
>same.

Yeah, you can thank your favorite TLB for that. As far as I know, the only thing changed were the names. All the possibilities that existed in phylactery form then exist today.

I am pretty sure there is a bug or two that I reported with my lich, in regards to identical phylacteries (appearance-wise, anyway) doing completely different things.

With the pressure on a lich in tight situations (which happens just about every time you log in), fumbling phylacs is a recipe for disaster.

I remember 3-4 years ago there was a bug with diamonds that was corrected.

In over 100 phylacs I never saw the diamond one.

I can buy that, because their odds of appearing are less than 1 in 100.

One major change to Phylacs since the time of Isty/zors is completely ignored in this post.


Have the available powers been changed? nope. Have the chances of the powerful ones been changed, not really. So I guess you could be said to be telling the truth when you answer that way.


But we both know that something huge has indeed changed about phylacs since isty/zors that, in my mind, and combined with other changes to cf, make it much harder for a lich nowadays to get to the same level of power.

Some of those other changes....
loss of the 'c locate pccorpse' that had no use timer.
no chance to have dopple.
VASTLY few players = VASTLY fewer potential targets = VASLTY fewer pccorpses = VASTLY fewer phylacs.
No possibility of evoke....sigh.

If you don't want the change in phylacs known, that's fine. I won't post it in the open. But for you to give the impression that there is no difference whatsoever is a little off, in my opinion.

>If you don't want the change in phylacs known, that's fine. I
>won't post it in the open. But for you to give the impression
>that there is no difference whatsoever is a little off, in my
>opinion.

I've got absolutely no idea what you're talking about, so either I've forgotten about this mystery change, or you're blowing it out your ass :)

Post it. I'm curious.

.....


Phylacs from corpses you did not make yourself did not used to have a rot timer. Or at least not a rot timer as short as it is now.

Meaning nowadays, unless you kill the pc yourself, the phylacs are a "use it soon or lose it" whereas in the past, you could gather massloads and wait to use them when you needed them.

Technically that was a change, but it's something like ten years old. I don't think Ist had to deal with it, but anyone thereafter probably did.

That being said: RoA has always known if the lich killed the person or not, and having done the killing yourself has always been a lot better in ways that didn't involve the timer. IMHO, even today the timer would still be the least important part of the differences of scavenging.

> loss of the 'c locate pccorpse' that had no use timer.
> no chance to have dopple.
> VASTLY few players = VASTLY fewer potential targets = VASLTY
>fewer pccorpses = VASTLY fewer phylacs.
> No possibility of evoke....sigh.

Eh. None of that happens in a vacuum and none of it's all bad for a lich. Lots of things have gotten better.

For example: lower player counts might make it take longer to kill 800some people or whatever, true. On the other hand, it also makes it a lot harder to assemble a posse of ten PCs to gang you down. If it takes you twice as long but you have a quarter the chance to die, would you say that makes things better or worse for a guy who basically lives forever and has time on his side?

Empire necromancers were never arcane, thus, never had evoke.

I wouldn't say there's no chance to have doppel... ;) But let's say there's not a cabal of people who have doppelganger, but that also means there won't be a cabal of people who have doppelganger trying to kill you.

You get to fight an extra cabal of people who have a lot harder time using NPC healers. Generally speaking fighting Outlander instead of Sylvan is a lot better for a lich. I could write a lot about this.

No Arbiters chasing you around the whole world with manacles that completely stop spellcasting. This is generally harder on a lich than almost anyone else.

No paladins with dual wield.

No Masters tesseracting giant gangs straight to you. Or master conjurers with transform + archon + scourge + mental knife. Etc.

No one with force duel whipping on you right now. Would you bet on a Leika to lose a force duel with a lich? I wouldn't.

No Scarabs to fight. (Trust me, this would be bad.)

Thieves are generally less scary to a lich than in the past, IMHO.

The list goes on. I'm not feeling sorry for lichdom.

No Scarabs to fight. (Trust me, this would be bad.)


Ooooh ooooh! *raises his hand*

I know why!!

}(

Leika, Lariya, Solasarath, Saroiya or Niheriva?

Just wondering because of the Leika mention...

Leika hands-down, IMHO.

Not that a bunch of paladins should be fighting each other, and not that Leika is necessarily the best paladin to beat some other arbitrary enemy.

It's nice.

Me.

Does the lucky edge affect everything, or just a few things which require a lot of luck?

It impacts your Luck stat, which is covered in a couple places on the forum. I don't think it's terribly important based on what I've seen in the code, but some players really think it's important. "Lucky" is sort of a "Have it your way!" customization, then.

If you're hell-bent on the minute probability of cleaving people in half (sorry, IN HALF!!!) or gambling a lot, it's useful for things like that.

It's an expensive Edge by my reckoning, but a cheap edge by the conspiracy crowd's claims. :P

I should also add that the Unlucky flaw is available for people that can handle a handicap of that magnitude.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

What is it about a piece of head wear the success rate of blackjack:

* Material?
* AC values?
* "Type", i.e. full helm vs. one that allows face wear
* Weight?

Bash/bludgeon AC, I think.

I mean, that makes sense, right?

Re-reading my post, I just realized that I edited out some necessary grammatical elements. Ooops. But yeah, bash AC makes sense.

Only other question I can think of is, "What does 'repellation' do?" But, I'm guessing that's intended to be an IC thing.

Do you have more chances to teleport to Whitecloak Encampment than anywhere else?

You can either teleport to a room, or not.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Kostyan is overpowered not because of STSF, there is a lot of other stuff going for him. (c) Valg

What is this mystical other stuff assuming you can generally see imperial tactics/sigil/healing curse and what exactly they contribute to the fight.
Does imperial defense alone make so much difference in melee?
I mean Kostyan pwnd almost everybody in straight melee, he hits more often, conceal more, parry/dodge better even if you exclude additional imperial tactics kicks.
For example, when I had an arial dagger spec with "dodging" legacy against his drow (with slighly worse melee-wise stats) with STSF+imperial defense he usually owned me in melee. Landed more skills, concealed more, etc.
If this is not STSF or imperial defense, is this LUCK?
And I have seen Kostyan landing more drow bashes in a single fight than I landed successful PK arial bashes in my life.

.

It isn't even mystical. I can't tell you how many times when I was snooping him that he just always went into a fight better prepared. And for some reason, people just tended to stay too long.

When you have a healing curse and a dagger spec has you being hurt by 4 different things every round, you shouldn't wait until you are almost dead to get away. And there were a ton of times where he would flee, the other player would think they scared him away and all he did was heal up and come right back while you were still bleeding every round. Yes, he is very good. When he hit hero, he was 22-9 in less than 100 hours. He spent the rest of his time hunting prey. Most of his kills came from finding most of the people in the same places. I am not trying to simplify what he did. He just made it look simple.

I know everyone wants to point a finger at STSF. It isn't the case. He was just better prepared to fight and he was always looking for a fight.

I know imperial powers so I can figure why people die.
My question is why he outmelees almost everybody. I'm talking about straightforward automatic melee hits and manual skills.
Healing curse can't really help with it, and preps, in general, do not increase your parry/hit ratio. He had strange bracers for a short period of time, that's it.
What kind of prep drow dagger spec should use to ourmelee an arial dagger spec with dodging legacy. Dam reduction helps, but that arial spec was a rager so he had some dam reduciton as well and his eq wasn't worse than Kostyan's.

STSF probably helps with melee. Plus, toward the end of his fights, he switched from Imperial defense to Imperial offense. He also geared super-heavy on dexterity. So when you fought him, if you were both throwing out maledicting moves, his effective dex (and hence dodging) may have been higher than yours.

I played Ckol, and fought Kostyan numrous times.

Ckol was dagger/spear
Geared ALOT of dex. (I was fighting Kostyan alot and I wanted him dead.)
Had STFS
Had dodging legacy
Was a rager defender

Most of our fights ended up with him winning while convulsing. But they ALWAYS ended up with him winning.

He hit me more often for sure, he parried better, he concealed better, he dodged better.

I beleive I have a few fights where all his maladicts didn't scratch my dex at all thanks to my gear, and still he wooped my ass bad. :(
Ooh, and here he was Warmaster. hehe

>I know imperial powers so I can figure why people die.
>My question is why he outmelees almost everybody. I'm talking
>about straightforward automatic melee hits and manual skills.

I'd guess it was things like imperial offense giving him an additional attack. Haste also adds an attack. Tactics giving him extra free dirts & kicks. Edges that help him with defenses.

In the end it comes down to he could get an extra 1 or 2 attacks every round (think of it like having 5th & 6th attack). If you are going up against someone with only 4th attack, you'll get outmeeleed pretty quick.

If he had regular access to haste in prep form, then that's likely the answer he's looking for.

He usually used imperial defense with daggers and switched to imperial offense only when using hth (or killing mobs).
And he used a shield a lot, so effectively he had less attacks per round than me.
In dagger vs dagger fights you don't want to deliver too many attacks against your opponent because direct hits do less damage than concealed, thus switching to imperial defense and a shield reduces your attacks count (and get concealed less) and increased defense helps with conceals.
Another reason: he wanted people to stay in a fight until he charged STSF.
I'm not a newbie and I can see that behaviour and its purpose, but still, even if we both were using a shield and he had STSF+imperial defense and I had dodging legacy he usually outmelee'd me anyway (more hits passed through, more conceals too, I don't count additional imperial tactics kicks here).
He also had better success rate with normal warrior skills like bash, dirt, dagger spec skills.

I don't see many edges that would give him upper hand in direct melee over my set of edges. We both had reconing, parry anything (which rarely works) etc.

Does imperial defense alone make so much difference in melee?


Yes, it does. Imperial Training is a fantastic skill.

But in general, I was pointing to the aggregate effect of the full Emperor powers, compulsive prepping, general know-how, a couple dozen Edges, competent help, etc.

That aggregate is why we aren't seeing clone characters doing nearly as well. It's presently the most-chosen Legacy, but none of the people with it are exactly tearing things up.

Of the seven warriors who have a large number of kills, only two have a DEX above 20 (and neither has STSF). There still hasn't been a time when DEX-heavy builds were dominant.

If STSF is such an "I win!" button, why aren't more people pressing it?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

How many of the 7 warriors with a large number of kills have a large number of hero kills?

Despite the lack of deadly dex built warriors, it may still be fair, however, to say that STSF can make a very deadly warrior uber-deadly. I'm of the opinion that Kostyan was sort of a perfect storm of deadly elements (not the least of which was Kasty's tat)

>(not the least of which was
>Kasty's tat)

I've been surprised this didn't get more mention.

I don't even think the tattoo is that good in general, but it fit Kostyan's play style perfectly and I can't even count the number of times it got him a kill where someone else would have died instead.

...the Dio's crowd kept spreading the misinfo that it was Soul of the Mountain.

No single character has ever got the mileage Kostyan did out of Kasty's tat. In the history of ever.

I haven't had very many sphere Combat followers that got the tattoo. I want to say that Kostyan was the third in like five years.

I actually think sphere Honor gets a better deal out of the tattoo, but that's just my play style. Too bad I can't roll up a follower of myself!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

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

I hate you.

In a good way, though.

PS Vigor is teh ####. *Wink, wink*

But there are players that are better in knowledge, general player skill, preps/know-how.
When you simply outmelee your opponent with automatic skills the player skill is less involved than, for example, you play an invoker or something like that.
I believe that several players would do better in his shoes prep/eq/knowledge wise.
I don't discuss the number of kills, because there are many factors that contribute to it: cabal, hours, style, set of allies and enemies, etc.
Here I'm asking why he outmelees in "automatic" skill fights. Healing curse of sigil helps you to nail a kill but it does not give you extra number of ordinary hits or conceals.

So if anything even comes close to being thought of as one, it probably should get looked into.

The moment Nep said he thought STSF should kind of be a default choice for elf/drow, I kinda lost heart harping on it. It doesn't really impact my game that much, so why bitch?

>The moment Nep said he thought STSF should kind of be a
>default choice for elf/drow, I kinda lost heart harping on it.

I don't follow. I mean, there are default legacy choices for all of the races that, all other things being equal, make (relatively) terrible warriors. See also: Autumn Harvest.

Isn't that what you guys are trying for?

All things being equal, we've seen Fire, Elf, Drow, Duergar, and Storm Warriors at one time or another in the last year steamroll people.

I've also considered Svirf and Minotaur warriors some of my toughest foes.

Not to mention Dwoggurd played an arial warrior as well as some other high profile players (Including one of your IMMs).

But here's what I was getting at. I don't like Striking. Mostly, the no-flee ####. I think at times it built up way to quickly. HOWEVER, once I saw your post, and noticed that while although quite possibly the second biggest BLEH legacy (Greeting is first :)) Striking had managed to get the playerbase to play a ####ton more elf/drow warriors. Not only that, it's going to be stupid to bitch about something the IMMs seem not to worry about (IE if Striking is overpowered, then how can it be a default choice?).

Finally, as I said, Striking doesn't honestly bother me. I'm sure in a year or so I'll be playing something that Striking rapes in the face, but at the moment, I'm fine with it.

Imperial defense > your point of dex plus dance, albiet it comes at a cost.

That being said, maximizing your dodging is a pretty good way to also maximize your concealeds.

Which one is better? And to what extent :)

Thank you for this post. If you recall any other common myths, please do dispel them. Most of the ones that come to mind off the top of my head deal with assassinate, so that's probably not something you want to give details about.

>Thank you for this post. If you recall any other common
>myths, please do dispel them. Most of the ones that come to
>mind off the top of my head deal with assassinate, so that's
>probably not something you want to give details about.

Stalking is good. More stalking is generally better. Being seen by your victim is bad. Preying upon your victim's vulnerability helps a little; going through a resistance hurts a lot. Going through an immunity is extremely bad. Hand to hand is always 'straight up' and never accounts for either resistances or vulnerabilities.

If you're complicating it more than that, probably, what you think isn't true.

Only two I'd still ask are does "Seen" count as look, scan, where I assume, or does "who" get counted with that, too?

Secondly, a lot of what people've said that I hear is stuff that would possibly make sense from a RL point of view...try it when they're sleeping, it's dark, or when they're injured/been fighting. Or are we just assuming that since we're assassins, we're just that damned uber and can walk down an open plains in broad daylight and not arouse suspicion :)

I seriously doubt there's an Executioner's Grace for assassinate alone, which he has. :P

The two that have always "seemed" true from my limited experience are the resting/sleeping thing, and some sort of bonus from never having stepped out of the shadows *once* during the stalking period, regardless of whether the target sees you.

So a blunt sword is better than hth for assassinating gnomes? :)

nt

>- More overall damage is more important in killing a
>phantasmal killer than the number of hits dealt to it. If
>iceneedles seems really good here, probably it's because
>iceneedles is a lot of damage period to unarmored opponents,
>and phantasmal killers don't have a lot in the way of armor.

I'd like to add to this that iceneedles maledict the fiend, being able to lower it's maximum hp as well, thus reducing it's hp if it's below old maximum. This matters, as the fiend has high dam reduction and low max hp. Or this is the impression I've had so far, in addition to buff damage to unarmored foe.

Nothing in Life is free, be it RL or In Game. A gift given should always be appreciated.

Moridin