I think we hear a lot of bitching, and I just wanted to take a minute to give praise for some of the really great things that have been added lately.

Legacies. Warriors want to hero, and a warrior at hero is on par with every other class. This is an added bonus for non-warrior classes who need tanks to rank. Legacies give warriors a reason to reach those high levels.

NEW PRACTICE SYSTEM KICKS ASS. I can NOT understand why people are complaining. Spamming your weapons skills is completely unnecassary and almost completely worthless. Almost, I say. Honestly, if you can't find a way to pound your cranial skill, or have defenses go up under the new system you are retarded. My level 27 dwarf has all his important abilities mastered, and some of them through spamming. ITS NOT THAT HARD. But I can't tell you how great it is just to be able to roll a character, and play it. The less time we spend practicing the more time we can spend having fun.

Succumb command turns one of the more overpowered spells in the game into something much easier to deal with. Nightgaunts always made the weakhearted stay in hiding spots and not rank or RP. Adding the succumb command made conjies think twice - and opens up time for other characters to do fun stuff with yours.

Throwdown is so logcial. I'm glad it finally went in.

Now the anti-ganging code? This makes the game that much more playable, and discourages hiding all the more. Mad kudos.

Not to mention all the amazing work heroimms are doing to turn CF into 100% unique areas. New areas and stuff are going in all the time. There is an alarming % of armor out there that I don't have memorized. So much new stuff gives the game a great new feel for all the old players that were sick of the same old armor.

CF is at a new high. I think we lagged for a couple years with out any real improvements - but for the last year we've been booming. I have a new sense of excitement over CF that I haven't had since I started playing in 96.

Now if you could just get those heroes to stop being such pussies...

I agree very strongly with everything you said, what you list are all really good changes and I never stop appreaciating the good stuff the imms constantly deliver.

I'm really only talking about damnation for Shamans, and from my own point of view.

-startwhine-

damnation turned into a lucky pick of mostly useless afflictions.

a commune that I used practices on and personally tried to use in combat as often as I could to drive up its percentage, I finally get it to a good level and wammo, nerfed. Bad timing for me.

I also spent practices and time on redemption as I expected others shamans to use it against me. Now they will go for other communes.

I think my real beef is with the way it seemed to get downgraded. A pair of chars as any char does put the skills at hand to the most effective use they could come up with. And by the cries of the fallen a lethal combination it was. I am sure there are more.

Does this mean that the skill(s) should be toned down or completely nerfed?

As is usually fair to all a comprimise is probably the best solution.

Why not make blackjack a little more difficult from a group or on a target you recently fought? After all you walk into a room full of guys and you are not going to heighten you awareness? I'd suggest more but I really know nothing about blackjack.

Why not tone the skill down in small steps and see what difference it makes rather than make it so less usefull right of the bat? (Yeah I know, it is still a little better than curse for a number of reasons, exept against another shaman)

As has been suggested already perhaps:
- let the communer select the affliction, or
- only let any particular afflicion land once, or
- Increase the mana drain
- remove some of the more redundant afflicions from the list that can be achieved by other means (str, svspell, moves, mana)

I know most of this has been said already, just wonder if any of it has been considered?

-endwhine-

Thanks for reading.
Deavr

I've debated on answering this post because I hate talking about shamans on forums. Everyone is a critic, and everyone else is an expert. I believe I have a pretty good handle of the shaman class, not just by means of sending people fleeing, but I can actually kill a large number of people with a shaman. (Thanks to 3 years of expirimentation (sp) after an IC coaching session from Gareth at the urging of Shokai.

Its apparent to me that the IMMs are lowering your chances of being ganked. They made gang bang lag less, they added succumb, they got rid of flee;sleep;flee;sleep. Stacking damnation is, by and large, a gank strategy. AND HERE I GO:

Lets say your fighting one on one with your shaman. Doesn't matter what class your fighting, there is a sure-fire strategy that will kill them. Spending time hoping your damnation has the right affects is time that could be spent landing sups that have a definate, immediate and useful affect. I submit that stacking damnations in a one on one fight is an inferior fighting technique. If this technique was succesful it would be a result of luck, not skill.

Where stacking damnation comes in useful is when a party is sleeping. Shamans have no way to sleep, and thus your talking about a 2 on 1 at minimum. Just about any class that can put you to sleep has a fair shot at killing you afterwards. Enter shaman, and you've got yourself a VERY VERY GOOD shot at killing someone, even with out stacking damnations. There is nothing cheaper or more ganky than a knock out trap, having your con damned, and getting rotted. Does this require skill? Nope. None whatsoever.

Did shaman take a hit in the power deptartment? Not at all. Is it harder to gank someone? Yup. Learn to use ALL the shaman supplications and you'll never miss stackable damnations.

Having said that, I think it would be cool if you could pick what your damn does (ridding con loss as an option) similar to how a healer picks his "protection heat" etc.

Now here come 1000 experts to tell me just how wrong I am.

I think you might want to stack two or three damnations on a paladin.

They can cast redemption if I recall, but not terribly effectively so it uses a lot of mana doing it. They might remove one damnation, but they are unlikely to remove 3 of them without using all or at least much of their mana. It basically gives you a nice way to drain their mana & leave them unable to recall, or simply leave them unable to recall.

Never the less, you can curse and damn. Thats two instead of three - not a huge loss, or really worth complaining about... yea?

Thanks for your considered response, I myself am on my first Shaman.

To be honest I didn't even use multiple damn that often as I could rarely afford all that mana. Likewise I'm not sure there is no skill involved. As someone that does not perma I find it hard to keep a sidekick along RP wise, but I can see your point and in this case the pair were lucky to have an easy and unquestioned alliegance.

Anyhow, thanks for the tips.

Maybe they might consider somewhere in the middle ground as far as reverting the change.

Maybe I need to find me an IC coach. ;)

Cheers,
Deavr

If I'm playing a shaman and I know that damnation has a chance of landing -20 hp or something else equally useless, I'm inclined to not waste the lag on it and simply curse. That could just be me *shrug*, I'd rather insure I get something I *know* is useful like svs. Exceptions do apply, but really its negated a huge part of its benefit namely stacking -str on people who hang around with healers. Redeeming damnation isn't easy when you've stacked a few on, now its lost I'd say about 90% of its power.

Example, I'm going against a healer and a warrior, I want the warrior to drop his weapon, am I likely to use plague and etc when the healer can just cure it? Poison? Worthless. I've got weakness and I used to have damnation if weakness didn't do it. If I want to drop my target's dex? Damnation could do that potentially. You could always claim wither, wither, wither but lets be frank wither is quite easily preventable if you're not facing an unskilled opponenet.

Of course I guess I'm just 1000 experts or whatever that found damnation useful on ragers and etc where I worry about rangers and such curing their plagues but eh, whatever.