I think conjurers need a couple basic tweaks.

1) Why do you lose 1/3 con when the familiar dies? I find this to be ####, since you can easily lose it instantly even with the Warded Familiar edge. Losing half your life is enough of a drawback to a dead familiar - you could even have it piss off your existing servitors a little, if that wasn't considered to be enough. Or make it impossible to "c familiar" again for the next 12 hours, if the fear is that people will just send their familiar in over and over. But losing con is too harsh a punishment for failing to protect a mob with next to no hp.

2) Unbound (or even bound) servitors which are pissed/attacking you. Is it really necessary for them to follow you across continents, into the past, etc? I've dumped three back-to-back 300 to 500 mp dismissals into #### and watched it just fail. Escape should be a viable option, but as it stands if a servitor is pissed at you and it's strong enough your only option is to "c dismissal" and pray that the RNG doesn't #### you before you run out of HP.

Thanks for reading.

Fighting a conjie is going to usually go one of two ways.

1. They're not ready and you one-round them with no sweat.
2. They're ready and it's going to be a damn hard fight, no matter which servitor they're using.

The presence of familiars and the consequences of their death adds a little bit of a middle ground to these often unsatisfying scenarios. Sometimes redirecting to a familiar can turn the fight if it dies, sometimes conjies flat out forget that they have familiars in play and if you can lag them out you can kill both of them. These situations are a lot more fun than a one-sided ass-kicking.

As for the unbound servitors following, that really, really sucks, but it helps make up for just how nasty conjies are at high levels. These built in mob deaths delay the ranking process enough that powering to hero will be a somewhat bumpy road. I think the playerbase is okay with this.

If I were going to make a change to conjies it would be to add the following options to dismissals:
'c dismiss target half' would use half of your available mana
'c dismiss target max' would use everything you have left

But that's just because I'm not good at calculating that stuff when I'm in a panic.

I'm a first-time conjie player and I find them incredibly strong. I probably don't even know/use half the tricks, but can (and do) still take out most any enemy. For example, people just stay in their cabal the whole night in order to avoid my gaunts. People run away from me without even trying to engage, etc. The only challenge is very very strong build, like some berserkers with good eq, paladins (again only with good eq). And even then they usually have to retreat if they manage not to die. My quest familiar aside, it would be way too OP to let me be even more powerful by not knocking my con around with a familiar death. I've been actively Pk'ing with a regular imp and lost it a few times. Sure, it hurts a lot, but at least you'll run me out of con that way.

P.S. My servitors killed me way more than all the other players combined. Make two strong circles before conjuring a strong one.

P.P.S. I actually now have an opinion that conjies should be toned down a bit. In what way, I don't know, but when they're ready to go, they are really really powerful.

I kind of felt cheated that time we fought, I retreated wounded to the village and you sent the familiar in after me and I managed to kill it only to have you call it back immediately and send back in to kill me. It was more salt on the wound that I missed that last kick that might have killed it again! :)

By the way. I've always wondered if you kill a familiar and it costs con, do you get a PK for it?

1) Familiars are a really strong ability that is balanced, in part, by the high price of their death. Quest familiars aside, broadly, there are two kinds of familiars: those that are good tanks or otherwise need to be with you or risking combat to use their primary abilities (e.g. imp, faerie dragon, homunculus, efreeti) and those with detects that would otherwise be unavailable. The latter are going to be fragile no matter what you do and I even think taking Warded Familiar for them is usually a waste because it falsely leads you to think they're going to be tanky when the reality is more like you moved from extremely fragile to very fragile.

The good news is that if you play well you can run roughshod over that thief. The bad news is if he outplays you he might nuke your familiar and really cost you with one good backstab or trip.

2) Again, this is a unique balancing point and drawback of the class. Your servitors are really hard for other people to deal with; they're also hard for you to deal with if you're not careful.

1) Everything you're saying here is correct, but what I'm saying is that it's a matter of degrees, and appropriate consequences for familiar death. Sure, it's a strong ability - it needs to be balanced accordingly. But con loss? Nothing else in the game makes you lose con for making a minor mistake, aside from death itself. Why couldn't it be changed to something that just makes you more likely to die? Examples:

A) Increase the damage it does. Allow this damage to kill the conjurer.
B) Lag the conjurer for (x) rounds when the familiar dies. Maybe even as long as unholy transfer lag.
C) Make the familiar unable to be resummoned for a really long tick timer.
D) Some combination of the above.

I'm not asking for familiar death to be of no consequence, I just think con loss is excessive. Please consider changing it - at least for me, it's making my conjurer a lot less fun to play.

2) Okay, fair point.

>I think conjurers need a couple basic tweaks.
>
>1) Why do you lose 1/3 con when the familiar dies? I find this
>to be ####, since you can easily lose it instantly even with
>the Warded Familiar edge. Losing half your life is enough of a
>drawback to a dead familiar - you could even have it piss off
>your existing servitors a little, if that wasn't considered to
>be enough. Or make it impossible to "c familiar" again for the
>next 12 hours, if the fear is that people will just send their
>familiar in over and over. But losing con is too harsh a
>punishment for failing to protect a mob with next to no hp.

Your options here are to not use familiars at all or use them sparingly. Otherwise, warded/warrior familiar are required edges at this time.

For a large subset of familiars there's no reason for them to be out other than scouting or utility purposes. This isn't changing since familiars are simply your spirit animal as the Outlanders/native americans refer to it. It's part of you.

>
>2) Unbound (or even bound) servitors which are
>pissed/attacking you. Is it really necessary for them to
>follow you across continents, into the past, etc? I've dumped
>three back-to-back 300 to 500 mp dismissals into #### and
>watched it just fail. Escape should be a viable option, but as
>it stands if a servitor is pissed at you and it's strong
>enough your only option is to "c dismissal" and pray that the
>RNG doesn't #### you before you run out of HP.
>
>Thanks for reading.

Get the banisher edge. Dismissing without a circle is a last resort. If you aren't PKing, use only the base strength servitors, the ticks spent sleeping to deal with the mana costs of stronger servitors aren't worth the trouble without access to slow or the ability to stay asleep during the entire slow duration.

Scrimbul,

While I appreciate your advice, I know what my options are, or what "the correct strategy" is under the current setup. My argument is that for balance purposes, it's strictly unnecessary for you to lose con for losing a familiar. Thematically, taking boatloads of damage from losing your "spirit animal" is still appropriate, and balance-wise it's really stupid that you can hemorrhage con just because you want to regularly make good use out of one of your main class features. Daevryn is actually on record saying that it's an incredibly easy way to lose con. My question is: should this be so?

As for dismissing, your points are valid, but again I don't see why, for balance or even roleplay purposes, the servitors (especially unbound servitors) are able to travel across continents to hit you. Even PC travel spells like gate or nightgaunt can't do that.

Conjurers are meant to be dangerous to play, I get that. I'm not proposing that this danger gets taken away. I'm just saying that losing con for familiar death is too harsh, and that there should be slightly more options with regards to getting owned by the RNG with angry servitors.

FWIW I'd literally rather get taken to 1HP upon familiar death than lose con for it.

Often your familiar will define how your character will play. Got raven? You're going to be an ambusher, since you can find anyone. Got imp or faerie dragon? You're going to be the guy running down eastern to engage people, since you've got a brick wall for a familiar.

Familiars are extremely powerful if used properly, and if they get a nerf in the cost of misusing it, they'll need to be toned down severely to compensate.

If familiars are so hugely important to how your character will play, why is this left up to chance? Why not make it like a warrior's specialization - chosen? I mean, for me, I can definitely say that if I ever play a conjurer again I will level it to 17 and delete/recreate if I get a familiar that can't live for more than a round or two with the warded familiar edge. So why not skip the middleman?

and remove wands, and remove all rng from carrion fields.

Lets also just clone every infant so that nothing is left to chance in anyone's life.

>and remove wands, and remove all rng from carrion fields.
>
>Lets also just clone every infant so that nothing is left to
>chance in anyone's life.

I don't think that's really the same level of thing there or that a slippery slope argument is really valid here. I'm definitely not suggesting we remove randomness entirely.

For the record, shifters can actually get an edge to switch their forms out if they hate them. Also, shifters get some level of choice - they get to choose a focus, so they are in fact able to pick their "playstyle" from the bat.

But I have the serenity to accept the things that cannot change.

"Cannot change"? Why? I mean, if most people are in agreement that it should change, and the imps can be convinced it's a good idea, and it's a ten minute code fix to do so (I'm not super familiar with the Diku codebase but as a software engineer I can't imagine it would take that long to throw together), what's the big deal?

That is the point of the Gameplay forum, right? To suggest things that maybe could use tweaking? Sorry if I'm out of line posting this, if not. Before my current char I hadn't played CF in years so it's been awhile.

If you get any tweaks to make conjurers less likely to kill themselves, or lose con, then all that free top end damage at all levels on people who can't tank and don't have 90% damage reduction against you?

Gone.

You will fight at the equivalent level of a tier 2 shifter with none of the perks at level 27 if anything you're asking for gets implemented. And the equivalent of a tier 3 shifter at hero. With worse tanking.

Conjurers allow their opponent a vanishingly small margin of error. They also have an extremely narrow margin of error themselves. In exchange, they go through a fraction of the BS any other mage has to go through most of their lives (lowbie levelling, rager apps attacking them, A/B/S wand searches if orderly, worrying about the opponent's spell saves if chaotic, etc.)

For free on a silver platter at the cost of some tanking ability and an extremely low margin of error, they get everything empowerment classes get or everything top tier AP's get. They are also capable of standing up to or exceeding necro armies.

The only people who have a lower margin of error than conjurers in exchange for all this power are transmuters, and even they don't get the killcounts conjurers do because their kills require finesse. Conjurers get to be way more dangerous than tier 4 shifters.

>If you get any tweaks to make conjurers less likely to kill
>themselves, or lose con, then all that free top end damage at
>all levels on people who can't tank and don't have 90% damage
>reduction against you?
>
>Gone.
>
>You will fight at the equivalent level of a tier 2 shifter
>with none of the perks at level 27 if anything you're asking
>for gets implemented. And the equivalent of a tier 3 shifter
>at hero. With worse tanking.
>
>Conjurers allow their opponent a vanishingly small margin of
>error. They also have an extremely narrow margin of error
>themselves. In exchange, they go through a fraction of the BS
>any other mage has to go through most of their lives (lowbie
>levelling, rager apps attacking them, A/B/S wand searches if
>orderly, worrying about the opponent's spell saves if chaotic,
>etc.)
>
>For free on a silver platter at the cost of some tanking
>ability and an extremely low margin of error, they get
>everything empowerment classes get or everything top tier AP's
>get. They are also capable of standing up to or exceeding
>necro armies.
>
>The only people who have a lower margin of error than
>conjurers in exchange for all this power are transmuters, and
>even they don't get the killcounts conjurers do because their
>kills require finesse. Conjurers get to be way more dangerous
>than tier 4 shifters.


Okay, come on now. My main point that I think it would be more appropriate for familiars not to cause extra con loss. I don't disagree that it's feasible for another, almost-as-bad consequence to atke its place. I'm not arguing for anything that would remotely justify the kind of conjurer nerfs you just described.

And to say conjurers allow their opponents a vanishingly small margin of error is kind of wrong; much like a paladin, they lack a built-in way to seal kills (no, lash doesn't count.) Sure, there are wands, there's nightgaunt, devils can curse, etc - but at the end of the day, if you don't want to fight a conjurer, you can just flee; q teleport at almost any point in the fight. Even if he sends a nightgaunt, getting away is as simple as succ; q teleport. Conjies only allow their opponents a vanishingly small margin of error if their opponents choose to over-engage. And my experience has mostly been that people just don't engage me at all if I'm at full strength (not that I'm saying this isn't the smart tactical call or anything.)