The following is a list of things that I was thinking about over my past few characters, and I think could be some food for thought.

1) Monks seem to be brutal to deal with if you're a melee class. I mean just brutal. Intensify is ridiculously nice. When combined with respond (to take away weapons fairly reliably) and anticipate (to avoid your Achilles' Heel from any given class) it seems quite unbalanced for any sort of 1v1 fight. I understand that maintaining enough mana to really perform at optimum capacity is a challenge. Even still I think monks are just too beefy for most melee classes, even if the melee class preps up to a decent degree.

2) Frost giants are really neat and interesting to play. The more hp/less dex aspect gives them a unique feel when you're playing one. Iceblade is also a nice niche inherent. And while their iceblade turns no_disarm at lvl 41, it's still only avg 21 or so with no progs or anything at level 45. I think it'd be neat if iceblade got beefed up either in avg, or given a wintery prog or something. I don't know, they just seem lacking when compared to other niche and nice inherents (forgecraft/heatwalk/wingsweep/swiftstrike/faerie fie/stone skin/call lightning are all beautiful in the right scenario)

3) Racial edges for the under-played warriors. (Mainly looking at gnome/wood-elf ones as those are the only ones I have any experience with.) The gnome ones felt balanced. I had a brief stint as a no-name nexan gnome warrior wanna be and the edges helped bring me up to something resembling par, without making me a monster. I think gnome warrior has the capacity to be badass with the right combo though.

Wood-elves however just feel really, really tough. I'd like to see a nexan/outlander one with the edges, as my only sample size of observation are rager ones...but even still, they seem kind of stupidly beefy. I think the main one is Natural Weapon Spec. They just seem damn near impossible to hit while hitting really, really hard. Especially given that some combos have really nice, not very limited, natural weapons they can get. (Mainly thinking about swords/spears and staffs/daggers here.)

4) Resist magic change: I think that this made dwarves/svirfs really buff in that(if I'm understanding this correctly) they now have an inherent 20% dam redux to nearly all elemental attacks. Combine that with some basic prepping or rager resist and that's a LOT of dam redux against a lot of things. It doesn't feel completely right to me(but then again this change is super new so I could be crazy).

Do any of the Immstaff feel the similarly about any of the above, or is everything about where they want it to be?

Anyway, just some observations and thoughts. Thanks to the Immortals for looking over this and any consideration they give to it. Also big thanks to all they do.

>The following is a list of things that I was thinking about
>over my past few characters, and I think could be some food
>for thought.
>
>1) Monks seem to be brutal to deal with if you're a melee
>class. I mean just brutal. Intensify is ridiculously nice.
>When combined with respond (to take away weapons fairly
>reliably) and anticipate (to avoid your Achilles' Heel from
>any given class) it seems quite unbalanced for any sort of 1v1
>fight. I understand that maintaining enough mana to really
>perform at optimum capacity is a challenge. Even still I think
>monks are just too beefy for most melee classes, even if the
>melee class preps up to a decent degree.

Other people addressed this, but I thought the general opinion was that monks were one of the weaker paladin specializations.

Seriously, I can count the PK-successful monks ever on one hand.

>2) Frost giants are really neat and interesting to play. The
>more hp/less dex aspect gives them a unique feel when you're
>playing one. Iceblade is also a nice niche inherent. And while
>their iceblade turns no_disarm at lvl 41, it's still only avg
>21 or so with no progs or anything at level 45. I think it'd
>be neat if iceblade got beefed up either in avg, or given a
>wintery prog or something. I don't know, they just seem
>lacking when compared to other niche and nice inherents
>(forgecraft/heatwalk/wingsweep/swiftstrike/faerie fie/stone
>skin/call lightning are all beautiful in the right scenario)

Compared to a fire giant I don't think they're doing that bad.

>3) Racial edges for the under-played warriors. (Mainly looking
>at gnome/wood-elf ones as those are the only ones I have any
>experience with.) The gnome ones felt balanced. I had a brief
>stint as a no-name nexan gnome warrior wanna be and the edges
>helped bring me up to something resembling par, without making
>me a monster. I think gnome warrior has the capacity to be
>badass with the right combo though.
>
>Wood-elves however just feel really, really tough. I'd like to
>see a nexan/outlander one with the edges, as my only sample
>size of observation are rager ones...but even still, they seem
>kind of stupidly beefy. I think the main one is Natural Weapon
>Spec. They just seem damn near impossible to hit while hitting
>really, really hard. Especially given that some combos have
>really nice, not very limited, natural weapons they can get.
>(Mainly thinking about swords/spears and staffs/daggers
>here.)

Well, the first thing I'd mention is that these are combos that a year ago no one would play on a dare. Svirf warrior was 100% strictly better than gnome and arial/elf/d-elf and in some cases half-elf/half-drow were strictly better than wood-elf depending on what you were doing. Now the analysis of trade-offs is a lot more interesting, I think.

As far as tanking goes, by the way? The gnome edge is strictly, mathematically the better of the two.

>4) Resist magic change: I think that this made dwarves/svirfs
>really buff in that(if I'm understanding this correctly) they
>now have an inherent 20% dam redux to nearly all elemental
>attacks. Combine that with some basic prepping or rager resist
>and that's a LOT of dam redux against a lot of things. It
>doesn't feel completely right to me(but then again this change
>is super new so I could be crazy).

Understand that before resistances were redone, dwarves had resist magic. This meant that a lot of the time they had 33% resistance against most of those things. But what was and wasn't magic damage wasn't extremely consistent or intuitive. Lightning bolt? Magic lightning. Pillar of the Heavens? Nonmagic lightning. Lightning damage weapon? Could be either.

So in a lot of scenarios this is a downgrade for former resist magic races; in others it's an upgrade. Overall it's probably about a wash but at least you know what to expect as one or when fighting one.

>Do any of the Immstaff feel the similarly about any of the
>above, or is everything about where they want it to be?

Things always get adjusted from time to time, but these things are all in the ballpark of correct to me.

Alright. Thanks for the consideration/reading. It's clear to me I need to play a monk to understand their weaknesses better, at the very least.

I feel like monks would be a lot more dangerous if you couldn't basically screw them by fleeing/returning the second you see the intensify go off. It's got a huuuuuuuge downside that's ungodly easy to exploit by experienced players. If the monk's intensify lasts more than one or two rounds on you, you're either getting ganged down or doing it horribly, horribly wrong. I've seen soooooo many monks get killed because they popped intensify at a bad time and gave the opponents like a bajillion free rounds of no commands and no extra damage to beat on them.

I'm not sure other paladin types (assuming typical virtues) are very easy for melee classes at hero either. Shield guy spams wrath, two hander busts you down with big-damage moves, etc.

Champions are still too weak. I am not able to utilized them, which made me too too weak as a champ. They are great in front of mobs. But far less useful against Players.

p.s. I'd like to see a champion prove that I'm false, because I like the image of a champion paladin!

I think it'd be neat if iceblade got beefed up either in avg, or given a wintery prog or something.

I wouldn't be opposed to tweaking Frostblade make it a little more potent.

They are already a much better alternative to fire giants in a lot of situations.
Plus, the mud is full of them. I've seen more frost giants than any other evil race recently.