I'm going to try an experiment here.

Those of you who spent a significant (let's say 100+ hours) amount of time playing a seasonal race, please respond to this post and tell me these two things:

1) Who was your character (name/race/class/other details), and

2) What's your feedback on playing that particular race?

For the purposes of this particular discussion I'd like to leave the limited life/time-span out of it.

1) Dwunot, c/e goblin that was in the GSV, but played mostly as uncaballed doing my own thing in Silverwood. It was a fun experience because of the RP and Imms intervening with him a few times, but they play very much like victims for others in PK.

2) Goblin Raiders are just pretty underwhelming when it comes down to it, which in playing a goblin I guess you go into expecting. They really have grappleweapon and trip/cheap shot as viable combat options, not much else. Against any one with fly and most all mages they feel very handicapped past rank 30. Orc hide is nice in certain situations, and sneak is nice (though both require you to forego using the mount). 24 con and dex made them decent in melee, but the lack of any real tactical options in PK made him pretty stagnant.

I would say their lack of the ability to influence things at hero, and their limited PK options end up making them hard to sustain for a long time unless you develop a fun RP angle. You can't viably go to most places as the level 40 cap just means you can't fight anything solo that is 51 for the most part. Don't even try to raid cabals with a goblin. They can be retrieval lackeys, but that's about it.

Mounts are awesome for mobility purposes, not much else. You can't dismount while fighting, you can't pick up a disarmed weapon, and you are still bashable and trippable, so the mount really had to be used as a merc or for scouting. Skirt is not useful enough to justify staying mounted in a fight, and the damage increase seemed non-existant, though I think Scar addressed that so that it does have a boost now. I enjoyed being able to cover the map quickly when mounted. They would make one of the better scouting types in the game for any cabal.

Vuln magic is rough, as it is easy for anyone you fight to exploit, and a lot of tougher mobs will as well. I imagine a human invoker could probably kill a goblin in two spells, I know lots of mobs routinely unspeaked me even with high saves, likely because of the level difference.

Raiders end up playing like very crappy hybrids of orcs/thieves, with none of the customization options those two allow for. They can be fun to run around killing midbies with trip and cheap shot since they can rely solely on melee output in those ranks, but once you get past that to around 33 they get pretty stale pretty quick. Archery seemed not at all worth it because you still rely on your few combat moves, and the lack of offense from the bow made it a worse option in every PvP than dual wielding.

In the last nine ranks only gaining backstab and dash, I have to believe there is actually no incentive for a goblin to rank past 30 ever. Your available tactics don't change, but those of all your opponents do, and most people by then can deal with trip. A goblin power curve peaks at 30, but from there they rapidly start losing their ability to compete against anyone.

I imagine a rager goblin could be a beast until he distended. As they are now, I just don't see a reason for anyone to sustain a goblin for a long time outside of for the RP. In PK they are extremely frustrating because of how narrow your options are, and having to rely on ganging or fleeing at rank 40 is a turn off for most PK oriented players probably.

That makes a difference. I found a goblin berserker a very tough match up.

I'm aware they can go GSV or other cabals, but generally speaking any other race class combo is going to better than a goblin in that same cabal.
I was also wrong about their skills past 30, the help file for raiders is out of date. They get improved flee aerial shot and rapid shot past 30 as well (none of which make them any more effective though- they just make bow use slightly less terrible)

That's why I said goblin ragers might be tough in mid ranks. decent hp, high dex and cheap shot + DB is enough to kill people. At 40, they're meat against most anyone of equal or higher level. Goblins lack the skill set to compete with high 40's to near hero range characters generally speaking. That doesn't mean they can't land kills at 40, cheap shot is good enough to get that done, but against any mildly skilled opponent with flight, you're toast or watching them just walk away from you.

I think against shifters I had dirt and kick/elbow/knee as my useful commands. Fallback is fine, but a level 40 npc with PC HP dies really really quick in PVP, usually 2 rounds against any warrior. Unless I used a bow, then I had poison/flaming arrow. In most melee fights where the guy was flying, you could add grappleweapon and disarm. (You also have virtually no maledicting options, so you rely on winning the passive melee if you land every trip, which you don't often do) The fact is goblins are so overwhelmingly limited in combat options that they become dull to PK with after a short while.

Couple grapple weapon with deathblow, that's already nasty. Their backstab can unspeak (I've taken one). They have resist and spellbane to counter relatively poor defense. Played right I think they make for nasty berserkers. Against some, nastier than either warrior or thief.

Not at all. You named a passive cabal skill that anyone can get. Maybe against a melee class they do alright as a berserker. (which i fail to seethe point of since they still stink against mages) Really the discussion is about the class, not cabal powers you might take to try and make the most of them.
Backstabbing any thief has and can unspeak, plus a thief has a lot more options and customization, plus much better stealth. Thug thief is way better than a goblin in most ways. Which is intended.
if you think a warrior fights worse than a goblin you havent played a goblin against warriors with specs and legacies.
Keep in mind that grappleweapon is pretty useless against mages, any mage will be flying so you can't lag them, and you are vuln magic, which includes magic and all element types, so enjoy.
Rager powers make them fine in the 30s, but they literally do that for every rager build.
That is why so many ragers sit a while at that range. No rager level sits at 40 though. The competition has too many advantages by then, and you are fighting people in mid to upper hero range. Fight a lion with a goblin, or any abs mage for that matter. You are not going to win unless the mage screws up.

Goblins are an extremely low power ceiling type. They have a high point around 30, and then other classes all start to be on par and surpass goblins by around 35 to 40. It's just a reality if what i. Think goblins were designed to be. They can be fun for a little while, but unless the player loves mid level pk or the rp of them, they probably won't be suited to them. Preying on the weak is what goblins do well. That gets boring for some players. I know. It did for me.

I'd probably want goblin berserker.

But that's just me, having been an ap that dealt with all of the above. Goblins have nice range, so at 40 can fight the 36 ap, can take the weapon without the ap having a reliable way to stop it (because they are hard to dirt and the weapon goes to inventory) and then there's the death blowing against the guy who now can't parry or dodge, of pick up his weapon.

Plus they are rare enough that people don't know what they can do, half the time.

And an AP not worth their salt is free PKs for everyone.

I thought he was an ally because he betrayed me. My weapon was I his inventory because he got it with his opening move. I then tried to sleep him to recover it before he unlagged and died to spellbane and deathblow which I also was not expecting.

If instead you simply wielded a spare weapon, and iceballed twice, you could have killed him in his grappleweapon lag. Or you could have just walked away instead of going for the sleep.

You got caught in a bad situation, and made some bad choices against a guy you didn't know was a berserker. That doesn't mean goblins are inherently strong. It means you just made a mistake and paid for it. Betrayed by a guy you don't know is a rager is why you died, not because goblins are great.

Any evil rager berserker probably kills you in that situation when you make those same mistakes.

He would not have died to two iceballs. Not even close. And if I wielded a weapon he could have killed me as soon as he sacced the one he took anyway, so it was all or nothing.

They be really squishy.

I only played my frost giant ranger for 40 hrs or so, and I know you're asking for the opinion of folks with 100+ hrs

That said, frost giants fill a very big gap as far as the ranger class is concerned.

Frost Giants are the only evil aligned giant size folks that can play a ranger with a hometerrain/expertise that DOESN'T ruin bearcharge - that said, they fill the "onslaught build" gap that is created by fire giants not being able to pick a build that works well with bearcharge.

I've always wanted to ask you guys if you'd consider working something out to fill this gap before, but never thought it important enough for its own thread.

24 Con is a huge boost over 23 Con for a Shaman (around a 100 hp difference at hero)

Frostblade was very useful for times when I was too weak to wield anything else.

Isolated recall point is pretty useful, sometimes. Other times it gets you killed since everyone knows where you recall.

One reason I took Hell's pact was because I was so use to having lavawalk on fire giant's.

I also played a frost ranger savage to 49 when they first came out. I was expecting Higher HP gains (17-19) but now suspect ranger hps are capped at 18 (I always got 17 or 18, fire savage gets 16-18). Bottom line, frost rangers get a little less benefit from 24 con than frost shaman and warriors do.

I'm going to try an experiment here.

Those of you who spent a significant (let's say 100+ hours) amount of time playing a seasonal race, please respond to this post and tell me these two things:

1) Who was your character (name/race/class/other details), and

Gembu/Frostgiant/Warrior/Only 99 hours played... haha


2) What's your feedback on playing that particular race?

I loved it! But for some odd reason, it felt A LOT weaker than a firegiant. Not sure why though... Overall, I loved the race, and I love the seasonal races. I'm going to give them a stab at again sometime.
Just because I have to: The limited lifespan really forces you to make the most of it which do dampen it for me since I do like to play my chars for long periods of time most of the time.


For the purposes of this particular discussion I'd like to leave the limited life/time-span out of it.

Serakon, Centaur Shaman (pre-Shaman Paths)

I read a lot of complaints about using ladders. Over all I didn't find too many ladders I couldn't get up and down with Wind Walk. The inability to use a boat also didn't slow me down much, as a steady diet of seaweed kept me afloat easily enough. Centaur might be incredibly painful to play as a Battle-Guy, but over all I felt the race balanced out rather well. The benefits of Centaur-dom were definitely worth those few major drawbacks. My one quibble was that at the time Kinship didn't work for them, and a bunch of the centaurs weren't 'natural' enough for Outlander-Request to work either... Which probably also made me look like an even crappier good-shaman than I already was.

That was before the strength/wisdom/shaman changes as well.