>It's not just a notice. I played a massive amount of neutral
>conjurer prior to 2007. I'd say I had them mastered even
>though back then people thought they sucked. They had
>limitations compared to goodie and evil but I loved them for
>exploring more than goodie.

To put it bluntly: You either A) Didn't have them "mastered" (which is my feeling due to lack of understanding of binding/turning) or B) You've forgotten everything you knew and replaced it with wrongness.

To put another way, is it possible you are simply remembering the past with rose-colored glasses?

>1) I'm not convinced. I have angry elementals always attack if
>I put no mana in the binding right before they left, but they
>never did if I just put a 50 mana bind on them.

If you are having elementals turn right before they leave, you are doing it wrong. You are either:
1) In a place they don't like (underwater, cold, etc.)
2) Letting them get beat to #### (I'd guess this)
3) Really low chr or something else I don't know about.

Honestly, the most likely is number 2. Elementals will basically *only* turn if you've done 1 or 2. I've essentially never had one turn that I didn't know was going to and 200 is the most I think I've ever put into a bind.


>You are 100%
>wrong about archons. A transplendant archon can come angry and
>they will heal you sometimes at 100hp. If you imediately go
>kill some evil things, I believe ones that give exp, they will
>get happier and happier. You will know they are happy when
>they start giving out the 200hp heals instead of 100hp and
>follow you quicker. They tend to heal a bit less often than
>they did pre-2007 though and seem to be harder to bind than
>then. Angels were just a total pain, as I said, since they
>ALWAYS turned on me this char even when solely ranking on evil
>mobs and not killing anything else.

I'll concede you may be right on Archons, but the frequency is the determining factor for me, not the strength of the heals. Maybe they're sitting at content, but not happy (on my made up scale)?

If you let an angel get repeatedly beat to ####, it will turn. Angels and Demons are less prone to this, but since Angels can't be made happy as fast, they're harder to recover. The only additional factors for angels vs. elementals is fighting non-evils and possibly their auto-attack prog firing. The first makes them angry and the second (probably) makes them happy.

>That didn't use to be that
>way at all. In fact, before you could use angels and archons
>to kill goodies, they would get angry, you then go back and
>kill evils a ton and they get happy again. This I can confirm
>still works with archons at least. Since I did it.

I'm sure this can work. I would personally never do it, especially as a neutral conjie. You have other tools for this.


>2) I used to rank with earth elementals, explore with them,
>etc under water because they were the ONLY useful elemental
>down there. Air and fire would get angry super fast. Earth got
>angry super slow. Not the case anymore as this has definitely
>changed.

I have never been able to use anything underwater other than para-elementals. If something has changed here, it is a very old change... which since you seem to be comparing to a decade ago, may be the case.

>5) My familiar often did more damage than my elementals, up to
>3x MANGLE a round. Never had a worry about it in pve or pvp to
>be honest. It was a beast. Just certain really powerful mobs
>have insane gas breaths since the change that can do 2k damage
>in a single hit. I love my familiar though and thought it was
>amazing. This was really not a big concern of mine, just a
>note. Really just 1, 2, and 4 bothred me. As a class only 1
>and 2 caused problems.

I guess I just keep getting unlucky with the ####ing monkey on my neutral conjies then. I've used familiars effectively, but even being not overly risk averse, they just aren't worth the con loss to me. Breath attacks have always done giant damage if you don't save, and sometimes even if you do. IIRC gas breath (and most other breaths) are damage based on current NPC HP, so if they gas breath early and you don't have REALLY good saves + DR, you can just get flattened. It's why that stupid Morton gas-breath guy is such a pain in the ass to deal with.