A while back I posted about final form vulnerabilities and how they can be crippling. One answer was that they are pretty easy to cover with preps.

I just wanted to point out a glaring flaw with that logic.

Mobs who can exploit vulnerabilities also tend to dispel. Some to an absurd degree.

Example: I recently fought a bishop in a temple and counted how many times haste spell was dispelled during the fight. 35 times. I didn't take the time to count how many dispels just took down other spells.

I gave up using any preps for obvious reasons after the first 10 rounds as I was lucky to get 3-4 rounds out of them before they were dispelled.

To me, that goes beyond "challenging" into the realm of simply annoying.

So, there.

Though I do mostly agree with your general view on defensive regen forms, a lot of tough mobs that dispel also don't move. And if they do move, that usually just means to me that you're fighting a way too tough mob solo. Not all mobs are meant to be killed by solo shifters, even though shifters are very good at doing the whole kill mob solo and explore thing. :P

A large number of the forms that have a vulnerability also have regen. Those same forms also tend to have a resistance to another dmg type (usually its vuln % to cold and resist % to fire). Even if you take extra dmg from 1 dmg type you recover faster from all of them.

It may even out on mobs...fire v. cold.

However, players will come with the cold every time.

Also, I'm finding regen is much more a between-fights skill. If you don't have protections up, you are fleeing for your life. If you do, regen is not going to help much.

I know we've been down this road and I think we just have a diff of opinion. Before it was overpowered, now it is under in my view. Especially for regen forms that aren't excellent dodgers.

Example: I was excited to get a komodo dragon once so I could disease ragers. But, with 2 round bite lag, I found out that I could not live long enough with ABS to disease ragers. And the regen I got before I fled was about equal to 1 non-deathblow hit.

Still loathe mob dispel spam. Especially since so many primary form skills do not work on mobs. Cobra venom, deafen, smashface, pummel (it's just broken), and nutpunch for example. :D

I'd write something about the positive aspects of shapeshifters, but I'd run out of room.

Seriously, though. Nut-punch: Xanadu like effect with -10 dex -10 str and reduces movement to 0. Undead, the ladies and Citizens are immune of course.

@Alias 'qq' set to 'nut glik'

Just think of those mobs as having a "no dispellable preps" flag. Kind of like certain mobs are immune to certain things. These mobs are immune to preps. You can use a/s/b but not resists, protection vs. alignment or stoneskin.