But Grazes against my key PC opponents.

I am dying Inside 4 to 6 rounds if I type any command other then flee/quaff.

I do not see how it is possible to defeat another character that has that kind of damage reduction.

There is no doubt you have to hero first of all. Level difference is the key in the making the save vs spell, also because of the improved invis and often heroes have better EQ too.

And now about the tactic:
Do not put any commands in and fight only 1 round. If you don't do at least decimates against an invoker then flee/teleport and go somewhere else for about 15 minutes, then come back later to the east road or where you met that invoker. Do it many, many, many times. Eventually an invoker will either stop fighting you at all or will not use his rods against you. And those are the only times when you should be dying to an invoker - when he gives you pretty close fight, but he outplays you.

It takes more skills and more knowledge to do such against an outlander invoker because it's faster for them to gather rods and camo + one day they may have insects. But i think it's still possible to adapt even to that situation, but you should give an outlander invoker even less chances to murder you.

I do not recommend ganking because it will give you an illusion of winning the fight, what may actually kill you. It will also make an invoker using his rods and also perhaps stoneskin for SURE.

You could go totally Nreisshe's style. Let's say if he was on your place he would often flee/teleport before the first round of PK (right after an invoker casted anything on you) and 95% of the time he would teleport much, much, much earlier before that. But you will not murder an invoker either this way, though it could be the fair trade if you cannot do anything else at all and you don't want to try and learn.

I was prepped to the teeth with everything I could have, and exploting a vulnerability of yours.. I can assure you, most of my fights are not that swift or easy...

hang in there buddy!

but in CF... there are times when you come across a fight where there is no possibility of winning... in those cases you tuck tail and run... and return to fight another day!

If you are fighting a non-cleric, your only option is to get more gold than they have and as much damage reduction as you can reasonably muster. Your goal is to force them to burn through their preps. Even veterans will not realize you are doing this and it doesn't require you to even swing at them, only to leave when you see them coming toward you on where or scan (and can reasonably assume they did prep).

Certain cabals offer damage reduction. In Fortress' case, squires have prot vs. evil that does not stack with the commune/spell. Empire buffs sanctuary to reduce damage about 10 or 15 percent more than it normally does, and only if they are second echelon or higher divine citizen.

Svirfnebli can inherently call stone skin. It has a 24 hour cooldown at least, and lasts between 5 and 10 ticks depending on the svirf's level. It is intended mainly to partially counter their blunt attack vulnerability but works like it does for any other human against every other attack type.

Rangers, particularly savages, inherently have damage reduction against a variety of damage types (typically one or both of heat and cold depending on the ranger, stackable with resist heat/cold preps and various bark skin edges) and giants are resistant to physical attacks.

All mages, including anti-paladins, have access to a/b/s but this usually requires a large investment of time and CON to find of varying difficulty dependent on each location-class combination, even with a stack of locations gathered either through experience, consulting with other characters ICly or other players OOCly due to the random generation.

Invokers are using their weaker elemental shields which when stacked together provide a progressively smaller bonus to total damage reduction per shield layered on top of one another. They can have seven of these, or six of them and barrier. Dispel magic is also an option. Bleeding, poison and disease are also all good options but none of them alone will cut it.

Many, if not most, third and fourth tier shapeshifter forms have some form of inherent damage reduction. This is usually attributed to any form that is supposed to be reasonably tough, durable, and either stubborn in personality, extremely thick hide, or both. They also get stone skin inherently. Transmuters get damage reduction inherently but it forces them to give up the fly spell.

Conjurers get damage reduction inherently only against positive and negative attack types (light/holy, unholy/black light). Otherwise they must either rely on devils and archons (barrier/aura/vampiric touch below 50% hp and sanctuary/healing at 75% hp respectively), or have A/B/S if they want/need the offensive punch angels/devils provide.

If it's a clerical class, you are fighting a paladin as an evil. That is before taking into account their race, and if they are prepping with stone skin, shield, or an elemental resistance such as heat, cold, lightning or acid. Paladins have up to some 66% odd damage reduction against evils inherently once they are at least level 24 if they stack sanctuary and protection from evil, both of which they get inherently. This, and everything else they do, costs mana. You must catch them without the white aura (catching them without protection versus evil is impractical if not impossible, low mana cost, 24 hour duration), make them burn through their mana, or bring a shaman to dispel. Bleeding, poison, communed or spellcast blindness, and disease again are all options, but need to be reapplied frequently because they will be cured and you want to force the paladin to burn mana and word. If he does both of these things (or fails to do them and you kill him because of it, in which case this doesn't apply) your next task is to run to his hometown and finish the job before he can get to his cabal. Paladins are generally not allowed to carry much more than a paltry five gold around or they lose empowerment temporarily and get nasty titles, so the paladin won't have enough gold to do more than heal heal once, and heal refresh four or five times after halving his remaining movement.

In most cases when dealing with high damage reduction, landing as many small hits as you can rather than one big one is in your best interest provided your goal is to damage them e.g. you have enough spell saves that lag isn't still the best option. Assassins can bypass damage reduction entirely if the user of the damage reduction is stupid enough to move slowly and get stalked, and the assassin hopefully isn't using a weapon the victim is resistant to (specific resistance not global resistance) and can catch the opponent resting or sleeping when they attempt their assassination. They also have options of using the stalks to increase their own damage reduction and the ability to reduce the opponent's damage reduction via edges for mark of the prey.

A little over half the time, if a class has inherent damage reduction they probably aren't going to do much to you without mana. Getting them to burn it or using energy drain (if they have low spell saves) is in your best interest in this case.

Finally, in ALL cases where you can reasonably control it, you need to flee when it's evident your opponent has prepped to the teeth, or at the very least has used more damage reduction than you are comfortable fighting. This goes for ALL players and damage reduction id a fact of life from level 25 onward, and you can reasonably expect a minimum of 33% damage reduction on all opponents that are attacking offensively from level 40 onward. Even veterans, provided their goal is to kill you rather than just bulldoze you out of the way long enough to complete their cabal raid, will scale back their damage reduction to 'give you a chance' but ONLY if you don't keep suiciding on them when they fully prep. You need to hit an run until they either run out of preps or scale back their damage reduction so far that they realize they made a mistake too late. For mages this means using either just shield or maybe only shield and aura instead of shield+aura+barrier, for clerical classes this may mean they downgrade to haven + protection instead of sanctuary + protection.

I'd leave and go get more.

I've tried that very tactic before and it's never worked for me. I've also never experienced anyone giving me a chance by "not" prepping, nor would I do that for anyone else.

I'll take your advice and run. For my build at least, it's not possible to beat them. :)

aerqer

I'm well aware that the solutions presented are impractical given the size of the MUD. With a large enough population you would have enough (competent) cabalmates that you would be asking this question on CB or in gtell and not here.

What you are asking is 'how do I kill someone with that much damage reduction' and the short answer is 'You outwit them, you permalag them, you cheat (and most likely get caught) or you don't fight them.'

There are a solid 40% of unwinnable fights in CF for every combo in the game, and for you to reply how you did means you know this and you also know that you're both trolling and that percentage goes up and down based on the amount of area knowledge you have in particular and how well you know your own class and that of the enemy.

Long story short, if you don't have the gold on hand and/or a safe place to rest plus access to slow in order to heal/regen MV's faster than the mage can get preps (most barrier locations require at least 10 minutes of the mage's time), you either need to log off, avoid him, or put off your cabal raid until another time. Many, many classes and cabals are balanced around the ability to heal quickly between fights or pick their fights better rather than being either directly offensive or directly defensive. You also provided so little information (intentionally, in a completely desperate attempt not to out yourself) that you knew full well the responses you would get would be useless.

nt

And they can kill you in 4 rounds?

So, it seems like they're prepping heavily and then jumping into a fight with you.

The key to defeating this strategy is to go on the offensive and eventually you'll catch them with their pants down.

What class are you, and what are they?

Once I figured out how to be on the offensive at all times my deathfulness shot up. It was night and day.

I don't think it can be done except maybe in some obscure way they would never fall for twice.

I Would literally be out melee-ed by an Invoker with that sort of DR if both of us just stood there.

Even if I put in commands, his shields deflect them, and his damage would go through at the end of the lag duration as normal even if I could.

I used to have a hell of a time with Invokers, so I played a 7 path one to con death to figure out how to beat them.

The first thing to acknowledge is that the key to stopping an invoker is to prevent them from casting. It's the only way to beat them. This means silencing them (tigerclaw, hurl throat) if you want them to run away, or lagging them mercilessly if you want to kill them.

The key to lagging invokers is realizing that each of their prime elemental shields can only stop one unconventional lagging technique. If they have a Shield of Ice, pincer will not work on them, but cranial will. If they have a Shield of Waves cranial will not work on them, but pincer will.

Granted, over the past few years there have been a number of successful invokers that have exploited Shield of Electricity, which reacts for big damage against metal weapons. The way around this is to not use metal weapons.

Don't waste time trying to dirt/disarm them, one of their minor shields renders dirt kick useless and any invoker worth their salt is going to have non-disarmable weapons. But, if you can get them to drop their weapon due to strength loss you'll remove parry, which is their only defense.

Massive saves vs spell will help you. Spellbane will really help you (wink.) If you can find aura and shield preps, definitely use them (I don't know where the hell to find them) but if you can't stacking on as much +hp gear will help as well.

One of the most important things to remember when fighting invokers, though is that part of their skill-set is preparing the terrain in which the fight will take place. They can grease, ice, quicksand, rain of stone, etc, and make the environment that the fight occurs in totally in their favor. By getting the jump on them when they haven't had time to do this will help ensure your victory, never mind that they won't have had time to prep.

And let's not forget that almost all invokers spend significant time spamming up skills. If you can find out which out of the way hole this guy likes to hang out in, you can kill him pretty easily while the only commands he inputs is shield up, shield down, so if all else fails, there's always that.

And this invoker just walked up to me without a care in the world after fighting through mobs to get to me. Tossed out three area spells and I was dead. 1,000 HP gone. I hit them three times for scratches.

I didn't have any real preparations for them. I can't recall because they have at least 4 cabal mates flying overhead at any given time.

I feel like I have 2 choices. Log out or go to corner and wait for them to find me.

I do not want to run out of Con before I hero, but I've already spent one train to get con back. So anything helps.

First of all, unless you're RPing a pacifist, you're gonna have to get into some fights. So, if you don't hunt people down "unless you have to" it sounds like this might be a case where you have to.

You can always try RPing with this invoker, trying to convince them of your worth (or lack thereof, depending on how you approach it.)

But it seems to me like going on the offensive is your best bet.

Which brings me to this:
I'm just guessing here, but it seems like this is a situation of uncaballed Dwarf vs. Outlander Invoker. That can be an especially nasty matchup because you can't always see them coming. What might be an appropriate IC response to such aggression?

I'm thinking that you might want to side with their enemies. If you're Lawful, your character might just be sick enough of this crap to apply to the Tribunal. If you're not, maybe you've been burnt one too many times and it's time to forsake all magic and join the Village.

Either of these options puts you on better footing to deal with this Invoker, and one or the other should be viable for you. And frankly, if you go Village Scout and gear for damroll, with Critical Hit you can see those grazes turn into ***DEMO***s, as it cuts right through damage reduction.

As far as legacies go, I've never taken the svs one before, but rumor has it that it's -20 svs. That's nice and all, but you can easily get that with gear, so I'd go with something else. If you're not a gnome or svirf, you might want to look into Landslide, as it will give you another unconventional lagging technique via drive.

When it comes to training con, there's a new edge that is pretty cheap that just increases your CON by one and can be taken multiple times, though it does get more expensive each time.

It seems like it's only 2 rounds of lag and that's the lag for their spells anyway. So if that's the case then is it helping?

I can't see them coming because they have improved invisibility. So they get the first shot every time.

A fight Goes like this..

I lose 1/3+ HP.
I flee quaff.
A druid or the Nightreaver Flys to me and I die. I can't move faster then they fly to and Peck and I can't out fight them.

or

I lose 1/3+ HP
I try to lag and even if I do or don't I lose 1/3+ HP
Their weapon discharges I try to flee quaff
I die.

I don't have any options here that I can see except to log off or con die without a chance. I was completely unprepared for the amount of damage these guys can put out.

And they quite literally come at me every 10-20 or 30 minutes on the outside after I unghost. Not because they are ####s, but because their so many of them they have been waiting in line.

I've never taken it, but I'm pretty sure that it's trip lag, which means it lags them 2 rounds and you 3. But that lag adds to the lag on their spells, meaning that for most invoker spells it's going to be three rounds between castings. That means that it's going to take nine rounds to kill you, so the next thing to consider is how to out-melee them.

But the first thing you need to do is rank up to hero and think about legacies. If this is the only issue that you're really having, you might want to forego Landslide and think about Gates/Soul. When it's fully working, the damage reduction a warrior can see from Gates is pretty substantial. When you combine it with Soul, you should be seeing a drastic increase in how long these fights last, and an invoker is not looking for a long, drawn out fight.

But I'd also seriously consider joining a cabal.

Flare/Faerie Fire/illumination.

Soul is only 200 HP which is a thought because It might give me the extra round I need to flee!

Those spells are (I think) +110 to AC.

If you're deep into Gates and have an AC of -400+, that's still going to leave you at around -300, which is still going to show results.

Also, they won't know if you have Gates unless you're using a couple of the items that only a Gates warrior would use.

Additionally, every time you make them use a spell that's not killing you, you're turning the fight to your favor. The rounds wasted on faerie firing you may be the rounds you need to win.

>Flare/Faerie Fire/illumination.

Even assuming you're fighting someone who figures out what legacy you have, that's still a round they're not casting a damage spell. Throw a lagging attack after it and you've got two rounds.

There isn't a single thing that makes you competitive. It's a lot of little things that add up.

Trip lag is 2 rounds on the person doing the tripping, and for the sake of having it make sense, 1.9 to the person being tripped. Essentially it allows a single command to be input by the victim before the person doing the tripping gets a chance to trip again.

>It seems like it's only 2 rounds of lag and that's the lag
>for their spells anyway. So if that's the case then is it
>helping?

A somewhat more advanced technique as a player is timing your lag.

If you were really slick (note: this is not something even I seriously attempt to do, but to illustrate the point... ) you could do something like this:

Invoker casts iceneedles (or whatever 2 round spell).

A round passes.

You let another round almost pass and throw cranial/trip/misdirect/lash/whatever, lagging them for two rounds.

Now you've made them pay not quite 4 rounds for one spell.

Somewhat more realistic and reproducible is just to throw your lagging attack after waiting one round. So: iceneedles, you wait one round, lagging attack = 3 rounds for the spell.

>I can't see them coming because they have improved
>invisibility. So they get the first shot every time.

Levels will fix that. Get within five and detect invis is good enough.

>A fight Goes like this..

An invoker that's enough levels higher than you to be unseen with improved invis is a terrible matchup for almost anyone. I'm not saying whatever you're playing will be a good matchup once you're 46th (assuming hero invoker) but it will get a lot better.

I was always doing this instinctively, but i could never explain even to myself how exactly does it work.

"
Invoker casts iceneedles (or whatever 2 round spell).

A round passes.

You let another round almost pass and throw cranial/trip/misdirect/lash/whatever, lagging them for two rounds.
"


Will it still work if an invoker also waited for the round to alsmost pass before casting his 2 rounds spell? And how exactly does the round - between rounds system works? It was always the most important question that was never answered in the special threads about conspiracies :)

>> Will it still work if an invoker also waited for the round to alsmost pass before casting his 2 rounds spell? And how exactly does the round - between rounds system works? It was always the most important question that was never answered in the special threads about conspiracies :)

Yes, since the whole "delaying your lagging move" is done while the invoker is already lagged by his own spell, there is very little the voker can do about it. Basically the only thing the invoker can do is to alternate between 1- and 2-round spells to throw off your timing.

There is also an easy way to get this timing exact, but no spoilers. :)

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Anyway it's impossible for me and always were because of this.

Try to find a way to lag yourself for 10 pulses. And learn how to use it ;)

If you input your command while the invoker is still lagged by his spell and you aren't lagged, you get your command through first. If you both are lagged when inputting the command, the one whose lag ends first gets his command through.

The first paragraph should be enough for you to understand, but I'll delve a bit deeper into the pulses.

Every combat round is divided to 12 pulses, so technically, you can get in 12 commands every combat round if the commands have minimal lag (such as inventory, flee attempt etc.). I do not know for sure, but I believe that the combat round takes place in 1 pulse every 12 pulses. The first to get his command processed gets his command in first. The command gets processed on the first pulse you are free of lag.

This is how I've understood the lag and command order in combat:



I'm treating the combat round as an entity in this image. It getting a command through means the round of automatic fighting taking place. The difficulty-increasing factor is that you don't know at which pulse the fireball comes in relation to the combat round.



To ensure that the next fireball comes late in the round and to avoid the worst case scenario, you can lag the invoker late in the round to ensure that the next fireball comes late in the round. This gives a good opportunity to attempt lagging the invoker for three rounds after the next fireball.

Though if one is to be pedantic, you put one red box too little inbetween the fireballs. :p

That is because fireball gives 12 pulses of lag, but you do not get to decrement your lag counter on a pulse where you process a command. So in effect you cast a fireball every 13 pulses.

You see this in-game in that when you are spamming fireball, or trip, the time between your spell and the next combat round will gradually shrink. This is also the cause of the magical one-pulse gap between tripper and tripee.

It's not -20 saves.

It basically lowers the cast/commune level of things when they hit you. If you have high mental stats and divine saves you can basically make all of your save vs spell checks on top of them being lower level.

As a drow using no dam redux an invoker was able to hit me for more than a demo twice. Honestly the legacy is better than spellbane in my opinion.

That seems like a pretty badass legacy.

Full dern suit on a duergar with that legacy was nasty. I laughed at magi/priests as Yarglen.

...after I took that legacy.

Of course, I had 5 CON by that point but I digress.

Honestly after taking it I have to try really hard to justify not taking it with almost every char build I think of

Every time an invoker fights a scout, he'll probably lose and be forced to run because all their spells get baned or evaded. (a thirsting berserker does much the same to them) That's just to show that invokers have a group they get whipped by 95% of the time.

But more seriously, invokers can be a pain for non-villagers, but the trade off invokers have for mass dam redux and high damage output is that they really can not lag you. They tend to rely on quicksand or ganging for kills, so the best thing to do is make them come on your terms, and use effective fleeing, chasing and reengaging to get them to over commit. Lots of times, they'll withdraw though since most every invoker I see plays a very conservative approach, since they are very squishy and die fast when they are not ready for a fight.

If an invoker is geared for the fight, avoid it or delay it for a while. Most warriors have a means to counter an invoker, be it with lagging moves, stun/choke, hurl throat and other moves. The basic trick is to know all the moves you have available and utilize them when called for (knowing how to lag through greater shields is an example) It takes time, but you'll end up seeing lots of invokers being forced to run when fighting non-ragers.

The best tip I can say is as a non-rager, just going toe to toe for damage against a prepped invoker is rarely going to be a win. And their is no shame in fleeing early when it looks like things are not going to go well.

A trib going against outlander invokers for example, should generally be fine since guards will hit him enough to inflict damage, manacles will disrupt his casting and he can't get you in quicksand to hold you in place to really finish you, even when using a vuln spell every round. Cities provoid a lot of tactical advantages against a guy with a wanted flag, try to capitalize on those too.

It is basically a spellcraft that works in the oposite direction.

The better saves you have, the better the legacy works.


With -65vs spell as a duergar warrior lvl 46 I resisted 10-15 spells in a row from a lvl 51 mummy! Now that I'd say is some awesome resisting.

I resisted besically every damned spell from PCs.

Related to this:

I think it is a heraculean task for a nonrager warrior to kill an ABS invoker 1v1 (although I'm open to calming the tempest changing things).

The first thing you need is an invoker willing to take risks. If the invoker scans s and sees you packing two demon maces standing with centurions and Thrym, and decides to just pass and recall out, you are not killing that invoker and should focus on avoiding dying to him unless you can gank him. The reason why is all that damage reduction gives an overly conservative invoker multiple chances to get out. Don't feed those guys PKs.

The second thing is you need a favorable environment. There are some places where an invoker can't cast, places where he can't recall, places where he can't flee. Fight there.

The third thing is, find out where the invoker's wands are. Some of these places qualify for point two, above. Most of them will at least distract or weaken the invoker. Camp these places.

I still have memories of the times my nonrager warriors won 1v1 vs ABS invokers. So just realize the deck is stacked in their favor and be easy on yourself.

FWIW, it's either heraclean or herculean, not heraculean

Even pre-emperor. Though then again, super decked never below -100 vs spell, big HPs from gear and then gates. + with flow of shadows many none-area spells were avoided.

So this is how I did with Ckath:

I prepped up: Rarely with stoneskin since I didn't wanna get stone shattered. But:
aura
Shield
prot vs good
desenstize

Ckath was: arial warrior, sword/axe, flow of shadows/gates of the forge.

I usually started off with sword, jabbing at them while letting them damage me. (Key was to get them to wanna risk sticking around.) + making them bleed with jab. (edge)

Then I switched to axes, timing my pincers with their commands like Marcus and the others are describing above, and all I needed to do was to get them down enough for me to disembowel. :P

Disembowel is king against heavy DR classes. :D (Of course it didn't always work...)

All of those variables are very important in giving you good details on how to properly control the battle to be in your favor, or at least closer to a stalemate.