I have only been here for a few years now, and I have not really felt like anything was worthy of being complained about until dealing with this spell on my last two characters.

Neurological Disruption is trouble. It's asinine how much leeway this gives the transmuter in battle without even the risk of screwing up (read: transmuter tactics) against any class that doesn't deal massive amounts of damage simply from swinging their weapons.

All the trans has to do is try, flee if it screws up, and come back later.

Once it hits, if it hits big, it's over.

And when I had -8 Saves vs Paralysis, I said nothing. Made sense. Barely protected. I geared up.

Now I've got -42 saves vs paralysis and -51 Saves vs Spell and it is actually stunning me MORE OFTEN and for LONGER periods of time.

A FULL TICK? That's ridiculous.

A TICK AND A HALF? What are we doing here, HANDING them the victory?

I hate complaining, and I hate complainers, but for God's sake, is this really working as intended? Every time I have lost a fight I have been able to say 'Oh, okay, I ####ed up, I could have done this differently here, here, or here,' when looking over the log.

When I read the logs of these battles I just watch the rounds go by as NOTHING can be done.

All the muter has to do is spray and pray, pretty much.

This is the AK of Counter Strike.

So again I ask, and please take me seriously - if this is the real deal, I'll shut up and never complain again - is this REALLY functioning as it was intended?

.

Stunned 22 consecutive rounds of combat. It sure is a lot of fun watching the game happen.

-50 SVS, -12 SVP. Godly? No, but this is lvl 38...you shouldn't have to be running around in limited hero armor to play.

Yes, low int character (Duergar). But duergar are supposed to resist magic? And the character has the Resist Arcane edge.

Yes, out-leveled. It's tough to not be out leveled by human transmuters, isn't that part of the game? It's one thing to have a class combo that will consistently beat you. It's another for you to go entire fights with no actions.

Sorry, but this mechanic is completely broken at mid levels. Maybe it's fine once you can gear for it at hero, but that's a different question.

With their opinion on the situation, or perhaps some helpful facts about Neuro that those of us who are repeatedly getting pwned by it can use to our advantage?

Be higher level then the muter.
Save vs para
Save vs spell
resist mental

That will help reduce the rate at which neuros affects land.

Things you can do to help win the fight.
Disarm the muter (no parry = no defenses)
Lag the muter out so he can't neuro as often



Yeah when you got a muter with 8 ranks on you thats a rough set up, then again fighting anyone with 8 ranks on you will be a tough set up most of the time.

Reroll.

Accept that some matchups work very ####ty against muters with neuro, and some matchups don't. Try developing a character better designed for handling transmuters.

Arial warrior with spellbane, resist, and save gear at an equal level to the muter, for example, is exceedingly difficult for most muters to deal with. A Scion with a/b/s and despoil might still be able to last long enough to beat him off, but 90% of other muters will get overwhelmed pretty consistently.

A binder thief can set up a situation where the transmuter has zero protections, no chance to cast on him, and no easy way to escape.

Getting a transmuter with neuro slept will almost always kill him, and very few transmuters gear for saves to avoid sleep (its mostly hp or damroll).

Etcetera and so forth.

>Be higher level then the muter.

--Not always possible? Heh.

>resist mental

--Villager? Sorry pal.


>Disarm the muter (no parry = no defenses)

--How do you disarm someone with the spiderhands spell?

>Lag the muter out so he can't neuro as often

--How do you reliably lag the muter if they have perfected malleability + edge?

>Be higher level then the muter.

--Not always possible? Heh.

**Not all things are possible all the time, deal with it.

>resist mental

--Villager? Sorry pal.

**There is a legacy for warriors... But then you have spellbane which is better then any of the other options listed.

>Disarm the muter (no parry = no defenses)

--How do you disarm someone with the spiderhands spell?

**Str drop. Dispel the spider hands then disarm. Weapon breaker. Crunchy kot. Hack arm.

>Lag the muter out so he can't neuro as often

--How do you reliably lag the muter if they have perfected malleability + edge?


**Even unreliable lag can reduce the number of casting attempts which is better then doing nothing at all.


At the end of the day bash is still scarier then neuro for a wider variety of people and circumstances in my book. Keep in mind that neuro is a 100 mana spell and keeping all your preps up as a muter cost a fair bit of mana. Another excellent tactic against muters is to just blast them with dispel magic.

nt

Duo makes it hard to track moving enemies and to be fully preped (can't zap in duo). There is also the lag of coing out of duo and the mana cost of going into it in the first place (fighting as a muter is all about mana management)

Transmuters get some nice ones. Not a fan of the neuro edges (hey let's make a super strong ability even stronger!).

For what it's worth, I found it difficult to play a muter. I'd locate someone then step out of the area to go three-dimensional and prep. By the time I'd put up all my muter spells and zapped myself a couple of times I was down a significant amount of mana and, more importantly, it took a while. Often I'd go back into the area where my target was supposed to be and find out he'd already left.

This suggests a way to frustrate muters: always be moving.

Unfortunately it's hard to do this while ranking. Hopefully if you're ranking, though, you have two other guys who can harm the muter. This helps you in a couple ways. First, the fact there's three of you makes it more dangerous for the muter. Second, he may choose to attack one of them instead of you. Which is a win for you. It's like walking around with two decoys.

Transmuters are more reliant on their mana then nearly every other mage class.

So use hit and run tactics. Get him to burn that mana off. Get that staff out of his hands.

A transmuter with no mana is like a villager without the head. If you can't kill them, something is wrong with you.

Fiend is tough for transmuters to kill especially if they are a strong fiend. Pugil only does so much. I think bards in general can pretty much just laugh at a transmuter.

Honestly, if you can rock ~-40svs -20svpara you should be fine unless you're level 42 and the muter is 51.

Go bard (because fiend is a nightmare for them since its immune to basically all of their spells) or conjie (since all you got to do is dispel magic and laugh at the poor muter, you even got an edge to be able to see them in duo).

Offensive shapeshifters also tend to be able to pulp muters.

As I had DOUBLE that saves versus paralysis and the Neuro still lagged me for a full tick.

You always can get unlucky with any amount of saves. It's just much less likely.

That being said, because INT/WIS are a factor in most saves (including this), the dumber you are the more saves you need just to break even vs. a smarter character.

If you're a villager, you have spellbane. That will help slightly (albeit not a lot, but typically it'll allow escape if you have moderate saves). If you're a high int villager with moderate saves, you're probably save enough even with spellbane down.

The level thing is more about picking your fights. Just be aware that if the muter has ranks on you, you need to stay more alert for him.

The disarming point is really important, though he's not referring to the disarm skill itself. Kotegaeshi, for example. Strength loss etc.. At the very least, you've a decent chance of stopping a high int muter from using the eagle inscribed to further lag you out.

I'll agree with you on the lag point. Lagging out a high dex muter just isn't going to happen if he's got malleability up. You're better going for -str and -dex. With enough -dex you MIGHT have a hope of lagging him through malleability.

>I'll agree with you on the lag point. Lagging out a high dex
>muter just isn't going to happen if he's got malleability up.
>You're better going for -str and -dex. With enough -dex you
>MIGHT have a hope of lagging him through malleability.

Along a similar line of thought, also consider that a transmuter's speed doesn't play well with bleeding. With something like a dagger warrior I've always found it easy to put the transmuter in a position where he might not die but can't win, either.

And the 1 was without the head and after I had just fought another shifter in SCION.

Duergar dagger spec in BATTLE is quite possibly the worst matchup possible for a trannie. I remember I'd lead with hamstring, artery, then try to land the hurl throat when he was writhing for the no c 'word of recall'.

I might have to find those logs on Dio's.

Muter spells got a boost to get through spellbane?

Because I didn't find any villagers particularly dangerous (outside of the village, that is).

Might be because I gear for very significant stat loss over other things though.

And it was after, I'm pretty sure.

Sadly, giant sword specs (or actually, any sword specs) really really owned that character.

And I don't even want to start on Zulg's buggy Komodo rake that made me delete :(

Metabolic unity means you don't suffer that badly, once you have that at a decent level.

When I got cut by dagger specs, perfected metabolic unity pretty much allowed me to ignore it. Although I think I had one of the metabolic unity related edges too. Perfect self, maybe? Or Mastery of self?

nt

I think it's fine, really. Transmuters who rack up a lot of kills aren't all that common. You probably can find more orc PBFs with 100+ kills than transmuters.

As for how you deal with a transmuter who has it? Being well set-up to make paralysis saves helps a lot, which is pretty similar to being well set up to make other saves (high int/wis help, level advantage helps, etc.) but saves vs. paralysis is your big gear/affect based factor rather than save vs. spells.

A lot of your typical Battle-fighting-mages tactics are a big help; for example, if you can draw out the fight that probably plays in your favor.

Beyond that (and it's easier said than done for some characters), being a character that simply doesn't lose the fight even if they don't get commands for ten rounds is a pretty good solution.

Although in a log in which everything goes the transmuter's way they can be pretty unstoppable, against decent opponents it's pretty rare that everything does go their way. Certainly I've killed a lot more hero classes with a protective shield spell via total command denial as bashing giant warriors than I have with transmuters using neuro.

>I think it's fine, really. Transmuters who rack up a lot of
>kills aren't all that common. You probably can find more orc
>PBFs with 100+ kills than transmuters.



Top muters are tougher than orcs, but otherwise the two are pretty much the same. Warriors, on the other hand...

Edit: Top muter and warrior are the same guy. Kostyan should play an orc.

~

Getting there. I wouldn't say I'm completely there yet.

~

n/t

I got injected in the Ass three times a day when I had pneumonia, and it wasnt a little niddle OMG the nightmares! :)

n/a

I checked my logs, and with elgroth was hit with 5 big neuros in 15 attempts.. That being said, I hate transmuters.. but that is mainly because of duo and damage reduction/malleability making them hard to kill, not because of neuro..

But I can guess it gets nastier on the lower levels, when people are usually walking around in crappy eq with poor saves. Esp. nowadays that the village is kind of getting their butts kicked, which means the veil is almost always thin.

Having to gear for decent svs, str, dex, hp and dam at mid ranks is hard enough, whack on -20 svp minimum and you're simply going to ignore it unless as you said you've got some elite gear.

Would it be so game breaking if svp was simply removed and neuro became entirely svs and int dependant?

Helps to have deathblow, resist and spellbane, and be a sword spec will full Pwent, though, right?

Resist and deathblow doesn't do much against neuro afaik :p

But anyway, I only counted attempts that actually passed spellbane (since you don't know what they cast when you 'bane stuff)

>Resist and deathblow doesn't do much against neuro afaik :p

Resist means the transmuter has to keep you perma-lagged for longer in order to kill you. That makes it less likely he'll be able to achieve total command denial.

Deathblow means you do more damage. The more damage you pump out the more effort the transmuter has to put into prepping before attacking you, which may mean he just decides not to bother and picks on other low-hanging fruit.

Other posters have suggested the "best defense is a good offense" strategy for handling transmuters. In other words, do so much melee damage (even without entering commands) that it's difficult for the muter to both lag you out with neuro and take your hp to zero before his reaches zero first. Deathblow significantly increases your offensive output. So to the extent this "best defense is a good offense" theory is correct (which may be "not very") deathblow helps you avoid dying to muters.

Of course they help with actually winning the fights. Especially since deathblow increases the variance of your damage output much more than it increases the EV. So the muter has to flee at an earlier point if he/she does not want to risk dying.

Is to make them bleed. They will take *** damage from bleeding when quickened, and even more if accelerated. Any class with a bleed can make a transmuters life a living hell. Get them bleeding, rope a dope some, they're probably not gonna outlast you.

'Neurological Fortitude'
Characters with this edge are less likely to become paralyzed by neurological disruption.

If you have a problem with getting frozen, take it. If you don't, forget it.

Just for the record, I have been perma-frozen about four times in 2010. Three times when Mharl had levels on Eck and once against Mharl with my current when both were at hero. Once Eck reached hero it never happened again.

Acknowledging that, I don't think that either of these characters would have used edge points on an edge just to offset neuro, even if it were a medium-cost edge.

Absurdly overpowered, unless you're wearing elite SVP gear. Especially as a duergar, neuro spam just results in me standing there and becoming a corpse.

Trying to neuro races w/ high int, like elves and drows is difficult. Mind you I don't know what preps they use, but getting a good neuro is hard to pull off with other spells too.

When I had my tribunal drow muter, I fought with a scion drow muter. Only used lilith head charm, but neither of us was able to pull of a good neuro. The fight usually ended in a draw ( well, i fled because i had less total hp).

Giants, dwarves, duergars are the easiest to pull off. You can start with a mental jolt then neuro till you are content.

With ABS, it was A LOT easier to stand toe to toe with melee chars, but without the ABS, and the low total hp, can't last too long to get spells off.

Think I'll try an gnome muter and see how much the extra hp helps with.

Same level, 20 int / 20 wis, fully prepped with -51 svs and -42 svpara...

This was the first neuro echo:

Your entire body explodes in pain, stunning you into helplessness!
You find it hard to concentrate as your mind pops and buzzes.

That was the initiation of combat. I was frozen.

The next round, he cast again:

Your entire body explodes in pain, stunning you into helplessness!

Following that, he cast it a few more times, with no echo of success at all.

I was totally frozen for 11 rounds.

These problems happened during more than one fight, sometimes being lagged for six rounds, other times for a full tick, but this one was the worst.

Post an actual unedited log so someone can actually give you feedback.

I showed the only parts that actually matter. The details of the rounds of combat don't matter.

I ran over the log and numbered the rounds. Eleven rounds.

I ran over the log and counted the stun echoes. Twice, in the very beginning.

I detailed my saves.

I don't have a list of equipment for the trans because I didn't even get a look at him during that log.

Those are the only parts that are pertinent to this discussion. I'm not trying to hide anything other than my character and the enemy character, but I don't see how posting a log makes any difference.

I got PWK'd last night with about -70 vs. spell (before being cursed). This after Tavlin failed seven energy drains in a row, any one which would have woken me if it had landed.

The RNG is a harsh mistress.

Satebos just walks up to me, I'm a dwarf pally with resist arcane edge and with all that spiked and geared pretty much for nothing but save and damage, plus I have bless/crusade. I'm as ready as I can be. He points to me and dead. No sleep, no curse, nothing. Just PWK.
So anticlimatic.

Even he was shocked it killed me outright.
Sometimes RNG just kicks you hard. :)

Also remember that neuro costs 100 mana per cast, even on non-freezing attempts.

And because transmuters take a heck of a lot of mana to upkeep their bufs, the odds are that he is entering the fight with mana spent, and can only cast neuro a few times.

Is neurological disruption a powerful spell? Heck yes. Can you perma lag unlucky people until they die? Of course.

But, until you try this from the transmuter's point of view (and by your comments, you surely have not), you just have to trust me when I say that it is probably not as easy to spam neuro your way to victory as you are making it out to be.

It completely trumps any sort of saves.

If you are 9 levels below the transmuter, no amount of saves will save you.

But at even or close levels, you should rarely if ever get perma-frozen as long as you have some saves.

The stupider you are the more svp and svs you will need. You need BOTH svp and svs. Also neurological does not lag for anywhere close to a tick. It can however be stacked which is probably what you are noticing. Problem is muters is that, like thieves, they are the probably one of the best classes to catch people with their pants down. If you let a muter initiate combat, you will probably lose.

Neuro has destroyed both my past and current character.

I think what really needs to be looked at is neuro spam. Maybe they can only land one good jolt and then it becomes much more difficult to get longs stuns (like sleep spammers). There is nothing more frustrating than sitting there watching 20+ rounds of combat go by whilst the muter spams neuro till he gets a big one, drops a few maladicts, spams for a big neuro, etc.

Especially when they have such awesome defences that they can take a dual wielding warrior face to face with moderate preps. I could understand if they cast neuro in an attempt to land the kill AFTER maladicts, but if they're opening with lag any melee class should straight up destroy them. It's like a thief trying to cheap shot a sword spec to death.


I don't mean to rant, but this class is now one I pretty much just avoid fighting unless its a gank.

Can't use the AK in counterstrike for effective spray n pray. We mostly call those people n00bs.

Now you can run around with the pump shotty and do pretty good as a n00b.

Regardless, you are probably omitting certain facts. Level? Are you Vuln Mental? Are you dumber than him? (int,wis)


















Did you strafing, ducking and shooting first?

NT

And spray and pray was really just an adjective.

The point being all he has to do is target someone with a single spell, pray it works the way he needs it to, and win.

If it doesn't work, run away and try again shortly.

If it works? Kill 'em.

-60 svp made neuro reliably fail to perma-lag any of my characters.

But!

There is an oddity in that you gear for svp solely to resist neuro, and it's a waste if you fight anyone but a tranny. It doesn't even prevent or reduce the freeze time on blowfish fillets.

I was a bit heated when I posted this, so please do not take it as an attack to the way the mud is run. I was just frustrated by being completely and utterly helpless, even more so than being bashed to death by two separate people because with bash, at least I can eat a root and mitigate somewhat.

I will post a more detailed and calm post later when I'm not playing.

It does suck. Then again, so does assassinate, power word kill, and cleave.

So you're comparing neuro which has a high success rate to assassinate, PWK and cleave which has an incredibily LOW success rate?

The op said someone can just flee and try neuro again. Same goes for PWK and cleave.

These three skills insta-kill you when successful. Nuero does not.

I also don't think neuro freezes for a significant amount of time (full tick), that often. Least not in my experience.

n/t

n/t

With my muter, I found that almost nobody ever really got frozen long enough for me to get more than one or two spells in.

No, no mental vuln and maxed int/wis.

You are still about as bad as it gets vs a muter.