I warn reader's I have not re read this text. Typo's ahoy!

I thought it best to post before I decide to activate again.

Waramanga, where do I start.

It started out as a well planned character, which unfortunately evolved into a test character which eventually led to endless frustations. I even prayed about it and spoke with a few incredibly nice immortals who put up with my bleating. Sadly as much enjoyment I had being part of the village was ripped away quickly by the characters total inability to function. Dying did not bother me neither did the equipment loss , which I might add was rather rare. A very welcome change to how things used to be.

I had accepted that as an axe wielding giant that I would be a meat bag, the trade off was to be a deadly meatbag that would hopefully outdamage anything out there. This was the characters true failing. Waramanga was infact probably the worst combat character i've had, even comparing my previous character a healer. The build was pure damage; Heavy axe primary and trapping as a legacy, Dagger dualed with sisters of balance to allow utility and dodge reduction. The aim to actually hit more often with the trapping axe.

The result.............. Astonishment.


Firstly a few observations;

Axe spec skills were next to useless on Waramanga. I learned axe skills at a horrifically slow rate. A dozen hours for a single skill at best (whirl).

Hook; rarely used, a shame to be honest - supposidly it is actually good. To many cursed weapons or unhookable weapons.
whirl; Rather a disapointment, -7 -7 2 round land and a chance for a 1.5 damage hit. It seems to be based on dex comparison. I would miss assassins 40 to 50% of the time.
weaponbreaker; I liked this at first, but the fail rate increased as I leveled. Weight 50 axe would fail to break weapons of only 10 pounds at a rate of about 40%.
pincer; Now I have seen dozens of logs where this seems to work time and time again. I was astonished to have it fail a good 30% of the time.
overhead; I love the yell "axe murderer!" , I grabbed the edge for this as soon as I could, Not once. Ever and I do mean EVER did it stun the target. It missed the most out of any skill with me missing about 60% of them.
Disembowel; This skill actually sucks ass. With the rate that it fails at, or that you land damage and it does nothing , it is not a viable tactic. Miss rate on this when writhing was well into the 30% mark.


Dagger spec skills were amazing on Waramanga. I learned dagger skills at an exceptionally fast rate. A couple hours for a single skill at most.

underhand; I did not practice this much, as tactically speaking this was a mid fight skill and rarely did I have enough hp to attempt a fight past four rounds. Oblits on underhands are nice however.
hamstring; actually worked fairly well after reducing the targets dex a little first , as a opening however it was only good against low dex races.
artery; Swing and a miss, A shame but cannot have everything work perfectly.
concealed; didnt prac since id never hold a dagger in primary.
hurl; about a 20-30% failure rate. Exceptionally good for hurling throat or leg. Bleeding total damage is insane for a 2 round skill
Stab & twist: Wow, I suddenly realise why dagger specs are so insane. Best was a non vuln OBLIT DEVA with a low ave dagger. I managed to erad Oblit on a vuln. Huge damage & malediction.

Other notable Warrior skills;

retreat: I really do think that this skill should have a far higher success rate as it would grant the player another viable tactic to use.
drive: I tried to use this where i could, I could never work out what was in play. Sometimes I would fail to drive a kobold and at other times I could drive The duergar king.
Dash: Highly underused skill.
metal/light/bone Armor skills: Once perfected all of these actually added up, An excellent addition to the game. I think the rate of blocking could be icreased base on armour class however.
aim & precise aim: I ever only understood this to be a counter to the armor skills.
Enhanced reactions: Well Waramanga sure as hell received 0 bonus from this skill. Looked to work fine for everyone else.


Cloud giants;
Probably the worst race playable on carrionfields;
High experience penality and to be honest you gain nothing for the cost but more endless pain.
Vuln holy & negative: It seems that well over 30% of the weapons in the game now deal some form of holy or unholy.
Vuln disease: DEVA**'s from level 51 crimson, plagues that DISMEM & MASSA and last for 25 to 200 hours.
vuln mental: Well I never got to get my ass handed to be by a bard, Eleia perished before I was able to have that privlage.
No inhernet: BUmmer & boring.
Weapon resist: I think that there are only a tiny percentile of standard weapon damage , making this borderline useless.


Trapping: This legacy is nearly useless, there are at best a dozen weight 40 and above weapons in the game, four being axes.



Time and time again I have heard about how a player makes the character good and not the character, After having played Waramanga I whole heartidly disagree. I ran into so many single sided fights it was embarasing. I never once ran into a fight thinking that I would do any better than flee. Any viable tactics were throwen out the window as soon as it became obvious that i had little under 5 rounds to flee from a fight or die. there were only a few occasions when somehow, using absolutly no tactics I managed to come out on top. I fought a few people in arena, one comes to mind as it was the pinnacle of what Waramanga was like to play. 1200hp to death in just under 2 rounds. I ate nine attacks and a batter, I got in 2 attacks and died. It did not matter who I fought , the same thing happened time and time again. I even found a idling invoker that managed to outmelee me, thirsting. It was common for 50-70% of my combat rounds to consist of 1 attack , if I was using a shield, or two if I was dual wielding. Yet hasted transmuters would consistently get 3 attacks, nearly every warrior or assassin I fought was 3-6 attacks a round every round.

I really started hating to play Waramanga when all I did was run, run, get hit, run some more. Even when I grouped up and struck opposing foes it was a one way street with me crushed underneath the truck. I recall atleast five fights when I knew the person was idle or linkdead. hamstrung, whirled, hurled leg, stabbed and with me thirsting I still was unable to kill them before they reconnected. Missing five pincers in a row on a gushin link dead heavily maledicted assassin was beyond frustrating. No melee hits landing, no skills working, With atleast -20 str and -25 or so dex. Fights like these taught me to trust more in stab than any other axe skill.


Suggestions:

- Axe skill learning rates to be icreased to that of dagger spec skills.
- whirl to be totaly str based, similar to that of artery is with dex.
- Weaponbreaker to actually be weight based matched with str based. Breaking any weapon a elf is holding with a giant swung weight 50 pound axe should be a total given. Just ask hamstringing a giant as a 25 dex is a total given.
- Pincer, Evade?, It could have been a 100 hours of bad RNG, but pincer's reliability with 25 str looks to be the same as with 18 str, again I would suggest making it the flip of dex based skills. This should be a given for giants and a total flop for 18 str and below.
- overhead, Well 3 round skill with absolutly no side affect and a incredibly high miss rate to. Would sometimes hit for less damage than a regular melee hit. I suggest allowing this every round, as even kicking deals more overall damage. Overhead could have various side affects, broken shoulders and arms disabled from the blows to cripple the ability to parry. Direct head hits should lower int and wis for -10 or -20 and with a lengthy duration.
- Disembowel, For this to be viable it should work as well at writhing as convulsing. There should be no missing, it should hit and deal damage , with a nasty side affect. Similar to disrupt organ extreme side affects.

- stab , seriously needs to be reduced. The combined damage is massive and heavily reliable. A combined 250hp skill with some requip gear is a almost a given and has a malediction. Not even perfected this was the most reliable skill Waramanga had.
- Cabal healers need to be replaced with level 70 healers. I gave up on relying on the battle healer to cure my plague and just sucked it up and died. To many times did i blow through a dozen cures all failing. I think the worst was 40 gold and my whole equipment set (piece that were worth enough) only to die before curing the plague.
- shapeshifters should be able to be targeted by name, even whilst in form. Fighting two of the same and having them flee and swap position was annoying when one is writhing and the other is covered.
- rager spellbane really does need to work against npc's, Its not reliable with divine saves against hero players. So I figure against level 55-60 Npc's it would be less so. Eating ERADS and OBLITs through resist from the archmage at hero every round was basically a letdown.
- Extent all giants "weapon resist" to actually entail all melee combat damage. Regardless of damage type.
- Adjust resist and vulns and inherents according to exp penality. Or vice versa Adjust xp penality based on the fore mentioned.
- Adjust exp for evil ranking zones inline to that of Good xping zones. Some areas are incredibly unbalanced offering three to five times the opposing alignments exp per kill.
- Have a cigar and a bottle of Jin on me if you consider even a handful of these suggestions.


Farewells:

Enemies;
What do I say, I pretty much ran from you all. Even the few who I attacked openly you could have beat me easily if you stuck around to actually fight.
Waramanga's deathblow was pitiful, I always drooled over the other villagers who deathblowed upward of fives time more than I did. I can really only a few pks where I landed a deathblow or two. The biggest hitting for DEVA*'s the smallest hitting for a wound.

Friends;
Many of you probably thought I was just disheartened, I was not. I really wanted to keep on slugging away, but to be honest it was painful. It was almost like a addiction to putting your hand under the stapler. You know it hurts but the occasional rush of adrenaline you get from receiving the pain Might pay off. That never came for me. After hero'ing and getting my con back to 22, I was preped and ready to start laying the smack down. But Waramanga was in a endless spiral of skills failing, tactics becoming unviable due to skills failing. I grew tired of running from single fights after 3-4 rounds down to 200-300hp from 1200 and heavily messed up.

Assassins;
Man did I really get pissy with you at the level 27-45 range. I think the record was about six failed assassinates one after the other. I lost count of how many times I actually did die, but the assassinate atemps had to be higher than my pk and npc deaths combined. What made me hate you all the more, your class is insanely overpowered without assassinate and yet nearly all of you rely so heavily on it.

A stowaway;
Yes you know who you are, you were my port in the sea. A kind hearted player that made me melt with just a Hello. I had really wanted to try and make something of what we had going. But then I burnt that bridge when I stooped to trying to kill unprotected and partially idle mages without preps in the Eternal. Of course failing pincers and landing no melee hits always resulted in failure.

Immortals;
Thank you for the advice, then patience and the tolerance. Sorry to have let you down.