I'm curious what the staff thinks about bloodthirst, after more than one round of discussion on dioxides.

In short, is bloodthirst some special ability, different from any other class/race/cabal power, and only to be used under certain circumstances, or, as I believe, is it another ability in any character's arsenal to be used as they see fit, neither special nor un-special?

1) easy way to kill newbies. Large groups of newbies.

2) easy way to rape and kill melee classes. Offensive tool.

3) slightly less easy way to neutralize maledicts and area spells. Defensive tool.

4) Tears melee classes apart. Not nearly as dangerous against mages (lowbie mages avoid the bloodthirst, hero mages are difficult to kill with it) and of medium usage against communers.

5) Countered by summon and (competent) gangs.

6) Will give many really random PK wins if the user isn't afraid of dying.

7) Expect every berserker to use it whenever they feel like it. It's one of those things like goodies killing neutral mobs for gear; technically good RP would be to never kill a neutral mob for gear, ever, but because of both enforcement issues and major funstick annoyance the actual in-game penalties are almost nonexistent.

8) Huge, huge advantage in the rites. And to a lesser extent, any hero warrior tournament or contest.

So we're on the same page, you realize bloodthirst is followed up by battle fatigue, and you know what battle fatigue does, right? I think several of your points ignore that vulnerability.


>8) Huge, huge advantage in the rites. And to a lesser extent,
>any hero warrior tournament or contest.


It depends on which portion of the Rites. A toe-to-toe, no one can flee, Circle fight is the only time when you absolutely should thirst without fear of drawbacks (other than a couple of spec moves), and it is a huge advantage over someone that can't thirst.

But when your target can flee, such as in the melee portion, for example, you have to be really, really careful about when you pull the trigger on thirst, because if you do it too early, others will take advantage and you will lose. It's almost like when you have a big army in the boardgame Risk - you can destroy a smaller army, but after the battle, your army is half its original size, and thus vulnerable to other players in the game. It's how I won the melee portion in my Rites.

I don't remember there being a rites when you were named Commander. Thought they just gave it to you?

Not that I cared. I thought you deserved it. The only thing I cared about was not getting to go toe to toe with you as Bartis ;)

No, you're right, I lost the Rites, but won the melee. Ghrummin wasted me in the 1v1 and the Wits.

Basically, the history of Malakhi was that every time a leadership position became available, and there was at least one other decent alternative, Malakhi was the runnerup. But when there were no other possible alternatives available, Malakhi became the clear choice!

Everyone tried to be nice, but we all knew the real reason was because Malakhi had no vision of where the take the cabal - rager PK is so continuous and so constant, I couldn't really see the BattleRager vision forest through the PK trees. So I think he made an excellent MageSlayer but a horrible Commander. :)

I greatly admire the visionary Battle leaders. It is not an easy role to play.

Wish I had gotten the MARAN to hunt you down more. You needed to be put down (but no one wanted to listen to me and were afraid of Empire more).

Assuming the rager can prevent an opponent from fleeing through a lagging maneuver or cutoff like ability:

It gives a haste effect, which puts them at a serious advantage against all melee classes now that there are very few hasting options available to the majority of characters. Add resist and deathblow, and most melee characters would be wise to run off and wait five ticks.

In general, I would say that Battleragers are not as underpowered as the people who play them make out, otherwise the pincer svirf stereotype would be a Nexun, Outlander, or Tribunal.

It stinks playing Battle when they do not have the head, but it has been a long time since that was the norm.

I tend to agree with you on most other topics, but you have a chip on your shoulder where this cabal is concerned. I totally understand that, because I felt the same way before I took a serious run at Battle.

So that's my challenge to you: give it a serious go sometime. Even if you still hate the cabal just as much afterwards, I guarantee you will be dramatically better at killing them when you're playing something else.

Totally different experience from scout or defender

Right, I should have said berserker warrior. That's the purest form of all that's great and terrible about it.

>Right, I should have said berserker warrior. That's the
>purest form of all that's great and terrible about it.

I know that I would be personally terrible as a berserker warrior and not in ways specific to it being a battle warrior. A battle warrior has a large gear swing in terms of deadliness. E.g. I fantasize occasionally about a fire sword trapping/chilling, but the difference between having armageddon and a sweet set of +dam/svs and ragesteel + crappy weapon is huge. That's an extreme case, but I think it's true for other builds.

So my experience of "if I engage a berserker I'm going to get out-damaged sickeningly" would never hold true in the reverse because I can't gear a warrior to do that. Thus I can't learn from people who somehow overcoming my gross damage output, because I won't have that. Even laying aside the hero level stuff, getting and holding the kind of set that makes all midlevel battleragers seem invincible is beyond me.

Having only played a rager scout, cant say I know any of the fancy secrets how to defeat a berserker outside of avoiding them and strike them with a gang(preferably when they are fatigued because one berserker can within seconds wipe out a small group of non-prepped regular chars) or leading them into tough NPCs.

I bet you have a better grasp of the general weaknesses of Battle than you did before even that.

At least I always have a bunch of, "Man, if this person did X right now I'd be dead, good thing they didn't" moments.

>7) Expect every berserker to use it whenever they feel like
>it. It's one of those things like goodies killing neutral mobs
>for gear; technically good RP would be to never kill a neutral
>mob for gear, ever, but because of both enforcement issues and
>major funstick annoyance the actual in-game penalties are
>almost nonexistent.
>

Pretty much everything you wrote is wrong, but chiefly I note that you include the very question in your totally wrong answer here, the point being it is not bad rp to call bloodthirst, ever, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. It is entirely good rp to do so, as it is a cabal power, an ability, like any other.

I can, however, see how some players might believe it a valid role to play someone who never bloodthirsts unless the chips are down and they are likely to lose anyway. Or someone whose role is such to never use it against a non-mage. Or whatever.

But this falls, once again, into the category of "This is how *I* think X should be played, so if you aren't doing that, you're wrong."

TL/DR - My berserkers use bloodthirst whenever it seems tactically sound .

Here's the thing: show me anything, anything at all, that suggests this "bloodthirst is special and only to be used in certain, rare, instances" belief. No other cabal has as much written material to draw from than the village, last I checked which I admit is a while ago but I doubt has changed. The war room alone has what, eight different sets of writings? Then the tablet of course. Then the writings by Hildebran or Rhuean, I forget which one. And there are probably ones even I haven't noticed somewhere. Point being nowhere, not in any of them, is there even the tiniest suggestion of a shred of evidence to the belief that bloodthirst is any different than any other ability, power, skill, spell, whatever.

Obviously people can make up whatever #### they want, and if someone wants to make bloodthirst into something it isn't, ok, fine, that's their choice, but it's not the game's way of it and they need to accept that they are imposing a restriction on themselves out of thin air for their own purposes, not something anyone else should even know about, let alone follow.

Bottom line, nothing in the game anywhere speaks to bloodthirst being different, and it isn't.

p.s. Obviously this isn't aimed at you personally as you agree with me, but more just the point of the thing. ;)

A person can't call bloodthirst outside of combat without a mage near by, that could lead someone to think that it may be aimed specially for them. Fairly easy to think that seeing as this can be done, it is a skill to use more oriented at mages.

To add to the above, most of the village writings state that outside of the main enemies ie Mages, that there is tolerance like, Priests are to be tolerated being the example. This would pose the question. Why would you as a member of an army who wants to kill mages and destroy magic, want to use all of your powers to fight people who aren't them if they aren't at risk of dying?

To highlight the above point, there are also writings in the village that say when ten to one, surround the enemy and crush them. That doesn't mean it should be done at all times either, nor does the above few sentences say bloodthirst is be refrained from use.

I am a fan of using the ability because of the large, sudden surge, of damage and fighting abilities. I'll also admit that I am a little hesitant about using it against certain classes or in certain fights because I feel that it's weird to call for blood against someone who isn't a true enemy, ie not one of the main cabal enemies or a mage.

You are wholeheartedly entitled to the opinion that it is a power like any other and it is to be utilized to it's max but you should really acknowledge that there is an equal argument to the contrary by the way people see and interpret the cabal, writings and their own rp. In this situation there isn't a defined right or wrong answer, only interpretation and opinion.

You can't hamstring while fighting someone. You can't rot or wither while fighting someone. You can't open with lots of stuff you can do during combat. None of that says anything about where or when or how you can or should use that power or ability. They are all abilities given to be used by the character. Nothing, nothing at all, anywhere, says to a rager "here are the powers given to you, use them all whenever you want, oh except this one, it's different and you shouldn't really use it" blah blah blah. And there are so many writings in the cabal it's beyond argument that if it was intended that way, it would be said somewhere, or even alluded to somehow. It's not. There is nothing "equal" about one side or another, there is only one side here, factually, in the game. This is a false equivalence. As I said, people are free to concoct whatever they want, it's a made up game in a made up world and people are entitled to roleplay whatever the hell they want (and accept the consequences of those roleplay choices of course), but that doesn't mean that their choices to make #### up has any basis in fact in that world beyond what they are making up themselves.

What you (or I or anyone) choose to do is our own business, and your desire to use bloodthirst at certain times is your tactical decision, as mine is mine. But the question of whether bloodthirst itself is something special is a simple state of fact, insofar as the world of thera itself is concerned. It's the same as dirt kick, teleport, manacles, whatever. A power to be used whenever the player can and wants to, and nothing more or less.

The only time you shouldn't bloodthirst is when it would be tactically sound not to use it.

Now, it's perfectly acceptable to disagree with use of bloodthirst on a RP, character-driven basis. I've had some ragers who looked poorly on those that would thirst at the drop of a hat. I've had others who used it early and often, and thought every berserker should.

But OOC player wise? It's perfectly fine to use it whenever you think you need to.

What I'm getting at, is there isn't a wrong or right answer on when to use this ability.
I presented ideas to why people may think that it is a special or unique ability. Like the tendency to hold berserkers to a higher standard, that this skill can be used out of combat if a pk range mage is there, village writings, the fact that when battle changed during the sylvan war that thirst changed but other powers were left alone.

This however, is a game and in a game all skills are equal in their right to use but this is also an RP game which leaves skill usage to personal belief and character development.

I'm not going to fault someone for using thirst because this is a game but to if someone were to say that bloodthirst = dirt kick in terms of equality in use is complete bs, I'm not going to fault them for that either.

The whole point is that if this game wasn't RP based, the likelihood of this argument would be almost 0.

Are serial mage players who have never played a berserker or a villager.

Also, most of them are that small, yet vocal minority of crybabies over on Dios or IRC.

Artificial is a perfect example of this.

nt

Admit it. You know you were. Tolwhateverthe####hisnameis can read your mind.

I have a problem with the randomness and skewed investment to power ratio.

I'm in your head bro, and so is Jerrokar.

Is your way of thinking that, if I'm not one of your social circle friends I must be one of those few players you hate, and oh no, I posted on a Jerrokar thread so I must be Jerrokar!

Good work detective, you just managed to somehow make Krilcov look brilliant.

nt

This thread will be fun to revisit.

The only thing that I can say for sure is the same between me and Jerrokar is we both have PK'ed you.

I realize I'm not a battle IMM, but personally, having played a rager for 600 or so hours, I think if you can thirst, and survive, more power to you. The drawbacks are immense.

As a rager, I preferred to PK without it unless I needed it - not out of "honor," but because I'd prefer to make it out of the PK alive. As a character hunting Ragers, as long as I can kill the massive giant and enter the village, every time the Rager thirsts, it should become a dead rager.

I always saw a rager who thirsts in one of two ways with Allysia.

1) Yay, easy PK- because 9 times out of 10, the guy is just not going to make a run for it, he's fighting it out til the end which favored me being a super tanky bard that had distorted them. And even if they flee, I'm going into the village to finish them because they won't be able to recover in time.

2) Well, time to leave. Easy enough to use mobs and such to delay and keep them off the chase, or just use a talisman of return. Better if they chase, because maybe I can catch them when it drops, and finish it.

And Malakhi, as a char, scared the crap out of me FWIW since he was my first real exposure to fighting a bad ass rager.

My first ever bard was in scion, and I remember you coming to the chasm, and tearing me and Frismund apart, even after I landed every song I could, he scourged and I fiended you. You still made it out alive, think I even died to bleeding and Frismund worded, but this was a long time ago and you hero immed not long after.

To me, that's how a player can use thirst and make it look awesome. If I had never played CF again or played Allysia, I would have said Thirst was OP because of that singular instance :)

Yay. This warms my heart for Christmas.

Because I have a lot of memories fighting bards as a battlerager, and none of them are happy ones. :)

Happy Holidays!

>I'm curious what the staff thinks about bloodthirst, after
>more than one round of discussion on dioxides.
>
>In short, is bloodthirst some special ability, different from
>any other class/race/cabal power, and only to be used under
>certain circumstances, or, as I believe, is it another ability
>in any character's arsenal to be used as they see fit, neither
>special nor un-special?

Well I am not an IMM but I have had my share of village elders, leaders, etc and believe that it could be seen in either light but as the name would suggest, that it is a thirst for blood and in character a person wouldn't really want to have a thirst for blood unless it as for someone that they truly hated. Having said that, the thought that someone wouldn't use it in any specific battle is foolish because people want to win and in the case of the rites, they could be allowed if nessicary, to call thirst to demonstrate that in true, all out combat that they can be the superior warrior/fighter. So to sum that up, I say No, it isn't an ordinary skill but that doesn't mean that it can't be justified in use.

FWIW the same argument could be made for a number of other skills. Zeal comes to mind. Or heck, fighting puny mobs just to re-up warcry.

Muddying the water on this is that I've gotten both answers from different Battle imms over the years.

Aside: I consider you the all-time bloodthirst king of CF. No one else is better at minimizing its drawbacks and deploying it in as many different situations without getting killed by it in the process. If you, as someone who fights Ragers, set an elaborate bloodthirst trap, have the person you're trying to trick thirst (leading you to think they've played right into your hands), and they somehow not only survive the trap but steamroll you and half your friends in the process, you probably just got PK'ed by Graatch.

Good to see you complimenting peeps.

I think I can count on one hand how many times I've used bloodthirst in my CF career, and I've had over 10 berserkers. I agree with the side of 'this is something I can do, a tool in my arsenal' though. No one tells ragers they can't call resistance if they're fighting an out of form shifter. Magic and fighting piss them off and make them kill things and that is that.

Either use it too late, too early, or just use it/don't use it at the times I should be doing the opposite.

I love the skill because the drawbacks are MANY.

Aw, shucks. Almost makes me want to roll one up and see if I still got it. ;)

Still think it's just another arrow in the quiver, to be used as desired, when desired. Hell, maybe if people did use it more, or at least didn't hold off because of this "it's a super special holy never to be used except in case of emergency!" attitude, they might become better at it and live more and see the benefits along with the drawbacks.