Fri Apr 12 18:39:33 2013

At 11 o'clock PM, Day of Deception, 2nd of the Month of the Frost Giant
on the Theran calendar Zmiaslrithla perished, never to return.

I deleted because I was tired of being everyone's bitch.

I had thought that heroing a necro, even as a wight, would make me better off than being a level 47 h-drow necro, but getting people asleep at hero was largely impossible, spells in general were hard to land, and even when I had an opportunity to build an army, it was largely a non-factor as my foes could ignore it.

If I picked my foes, I could compete from 20-30, but from 40 up, I became an easy kill. I knew that the gauntlet to hero would be difficult, but I had mistakenly thought that Becoming a wight would make the difficulties worth it. The wight quest was thrilling, and I loved my interactions with Scarabaeus, Suttun, and Zhenyen. The uneasy tension I had with most of the Empire was delicious. Thank you all.

My foes at hero were classy, and I enjoyed looking at their quest forms, their retooled long descriptions, their cool powers, and their extra specs. None of this do I attribute to them ripping me apart, but it did feel like salt in the wounds of this undead hare being chased by the hunt.

There were many exceptional characters who received remarkable rewards, but these characters seem to fall within limited circles of allies. Please spread the attention to characters in opposing cabals, so that the cabals feel a bit more balanced in both power and in perks.

In my totally honest opinion:

There isn't a reward or set of rewards that anyone has right now that's the equal of the power boost of becoming a wight.

"None of this (rewards to Fort & Outlander) do I attribute to them ripping me apart, but it did feel like salt in the wounds of this undead hare being chased by the hunt."

---

The resistances offered by being wight were handily offset by vulnerable_Maran, and they did not improve my ability to fight a range filled with high melee output. I disagree about the power of all rewards, though, as the ability to evade spells as well as out-melee a necro army as a black jaguar is kinda sweet.

Thank you, though, for taking the time to comment on my post.

>The resistances offered by being wight were handily offset by
>vulnerable_Maran, and they did not improve my ability to fight
>a range filled with high melee output.

Vulnerable_Maran in what way? Lightforge weapons don't do holy damage. (And that's not THAT bad of a vuln to mitigate for a hero necromancer.)

>I disagree about the
>power of all rewards, though, as the ability to evade spells
>as well as out-melee a necro army as a black jaguar is kinda
>sweet.

Jack Blaguar is pretty boss, no doubt. But:

1) If you actually sleep him (and yes, that's going to fail a lot more than it succeeds) he's proper ####ed. Can't call for help, can't quaff once he wakes up, can't change forms again or revert, and if he should run out of mana while forgotten (and Jack runs through it pretty quick) he's instantly dead.

2) Defense shifter is sort of a different bag, but if an offense form (even a quest form) can tank down your army with any consistency that represents a serious tactical error on your part.

I'm not trying to bash on you there, but I've fought that fight a number of times from both sides and I consider it just about unwinnable from the offensive-ish shifter side, given equally skilled players.

Having never played necro what kind of tactics you would suggest, especially in that situation?

I'm not trying to call you out I just am genuinely curious about necro tactics especially where you aren't relying on the undead army to do all the work.

1. If you are unprepped you word/teleport.

2. If you are prepped you try a few blind/sleep but word/teleport when your health is below 60-70%

What you are saying pretty much consists of running unless you get lucky. What he's talking about sounds like kicking ass nearly every time.

I answered what you do without an army and he assumed prepped and with an army.

Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Although I had the opportunity to fight very few shapeshifters, those who were not the jaguar I could make a contest.

vuln_maran = Eyes of flame + Baer Tat. Throw in some high damage gear, and you are rocking APs and Necros.

Nep, I'm sure you could make my build look like gold against Oshui, Tolgrumm due to even more hp gear or better prepping. I'd be happy to take some concrete pointers from you. The statement, "No offense, but you suck" just doesn't help much.

I don't think it was intended to be a "no offense, but you suck" comment. At the very most, "no offense but you are new to necromancers."

As far as providing tips on how to play a Wight I don't think he, or I, would want to let the cat out of the bag so early. I think its far more awesome when somebody who figures out its quirks rocks them out of nowhere. There may just be something missing.

>Although I had the opportunity to fight very few
>shapeshifters, those who were not the jaguar I could make a
>contest.
>
>vuln_maran = Eyes of flame + Baer Tat. Throw in some high
>damage gear, and you are rocking APs and Necros.
>
>Nep, I'm sure you could make my build look like gold against
>Oshui, Tolgrumm due to even more hp gear or better prepping.
>I'd be happy to take some concrete pointers from you. The
>statement, "No offense, but you suck" just doesn't help much.
>
>

I'm pretty positive if I told you the fire rate on le Baer Tat you'd disbelieve. It is really not very high. You should have a significantly higher instant-kill rate via PWK on most characters if that gives you any idea.

Eyes of Flame is a really double-edged sword, primarily because it lags the Maran each time it works. I've honestly never seen a successful Maran shifter who did not really, really struggle with whether to use it not in a fight with a necro or A-P because their ability to lag you out whenever they want (as long as they can survive doing so) really gives you pause. Since dodge is your only defense (and if you're a form that does good damage, it's probably not a very good dodge), you can take a lot of physical damage really fast in two rounds if anything erodes your tanking ability even a little.

So you have a few different tactics there, situationally: if eyes of flame isn't on, winning the race to first strike with sleep or PWK can win the fight. Failing that, dispelling haste and/or stone skin is going to kick the shifter's tanking down some; so would dropping their strength. Spells like crimson scourge and poison will take their toll; so will slightly more unconventional tactics like a wither wand.

Well-timed use of rescue can help out a lot here too (see lag).

Seriously, I cannot stress enough how fast you can go through a thousand HP in eyes of flame lag, even with A/B/S, to a good zombie army once the tanking goes south.

>I'm pretty positive if I told you the fire rate on le Baer Tat
>you'd disbelieve. It is really not very high. You should
>have a significantly higher instant-kill rate via PWK on most
>characters if that gives you any idea.

Subjective experience is definitely at play here; I never was able to successfully PWK a player, but I was pounced several times. To be fair, at hero many of my fights were against maran or people with high saves.

>Eyes of Flame is a really double-edged sword, primarily
>because it lags the Maran each time it works. I've honestly
>never seen a successful Maran shifter who did not really,
>really struggle with whether to use it not in a fight with a
>necro or A-P because their ability to lag you out whenever
>they want (as long as they can survive doing so) really gives
>you pause. Since dodge is your only defense (and if you're a
>form that does good damage, it's probably not a very good
>dodge), you can take a lot of physical damage really fast in
>two rounds if anything erodes your tanking ability even a
>little.

Does Eyes truly give them 2 rds of lag? It seemed nothing like that, but likely because I was often trying to get in the first attack. Where Eyes of Flame really hurt Zmia was in that not getting in first strike was really, really bad when she could not live for four rounds even if crimson scourge or dispel magic is successful.


>Well-timed use of rescue can help out a lot here too (see
>lag).

This I was able to pull off at the mid levels when I had about 600 hps; at higher levels, 800 hps wasn't enough for a scrub like me to compete with Maran and sword specs in general. Mace specs could be brutal, but doable with an army.

Nt

"I'm pretty positive if I told you the fire rate on le Baer Tat you'd disbelieve. It is really not very high. You should have a significantly higher instant-kill rate via PWK on most characters if that gives you any idea."

Yeah, no, this is a bit misleading. The damage prog is rare. The flee cutoff not at all.

>Yeah, no, this is a bit misleading. The damage prog is rare.
>The flee cutoff not at all.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Go ahead and take a guess at the likelihood of firing on a flee. You'll almost certainly guess too high.

I'd guess it's around 20%. Not sure if there is any scaling anywhere though (more evil kills, on an evil with more goodie kills, et cetera).

It's a case of people always remembering when it fires (especially multiple times in a row) and not remembering all the times it DIDN'T fire.

That's a lot too high.

...mostly because I've seen it fire 3 times in a row multiple times.

And thus, if it's less than 10% (which one could imply by your statement) than you're saying that I could see a one in thousand event multiple times over the course of a character?

That makes me hate CF even more

>And thus, if it's less than 10% (which one could imply by your
>statement)

Yup. (IIRC, ganging drops the chance to very nearly 0, too.)

But, as you're effectively saying, sometimes lightning strikes the same place twice.

I don't discount that sometimes you get lucky/unlucky and you get exactly N+1 pounces strung together when N is as many as the pouncee can weather, and I don't discount that sometimes just one more round of combat is killer, but... can you see why from my perspective, this is an ability that I consider good in its niche but not exactly gamebreaking?

...it makes it seem like 20 times more nasty then it might be.

I would argue that theorycrafting a build to exploit that "double" pounce wouldn't be that difficult, though what you give up in return to build a character like that may not be worth it (especially since you might not be good enough to get the tattoo).

It's definitely a power worth merit. Though I think Twist's tattoo is OP so what do I know

I've had it on Wujin, although I'm sure mine was not "maxed" out if there are levels on tattoos. But I'm fairly sure it is higher conditional upon certain factors, and some good guesses might be: strength of opponent in terms of AP souls, level of opponent, number of allies beside you, number of enemies you are fighting, maybe even morale, whether or not you have 'inspiration' from the tat's other prog, number of good-align kills the opponent has, etc. But across all enemies you can face, it is probably pretty low. Also keep in mind that strong opponents probably flee more rarely than weak ones, so simply weighting the probability with their proportions in the population might not do.

So suppose we have an opponent (like Waserax who suffered a 3 or 4-pounce streak from Niheriva) who qualifies as a "tough" and "very evil" enemy. There might be a 15% chance for him.

Since the probability of pounce is not independent for adjacent attempts (since you're likely to have the same guy flee from you multiple times before you test the tattoo on another guy), you are likely to see streaky pounces from the tattoo. Especially if you are a capable evil PKer like RobDarken.

> There might be a 15% chance for him.

I know of no circumstances in which it works better than I'm discussing here, only ones in which it works worse.

I believe the actual chance is even lower.

That being said, a lot of builds are designed around hit and run tactics. You'll see them fleeing multiple times per battle. If you play orcs, for example, they automatically wimpy under 50% hp, so that means they'll flee, willingly or unwillingly, multiple times in most battles against competent enemies. Thus, the multiple flee thing ends up being a good chance of a pounce every 5-6 engagements.

There are also builds which sort of force most people to flee, like barriered air/offense shifters. If you aren't experienced or properly prepared, you could easily end up fleeing from it 7 or 8 times per engagement, perhaps more. That's like one tattoo pounce every 2-3 fights.

It's easy to see why people who've only had experience fighting the tattoo would see the tattoo pounce chance as far, far higher than it actually is. It's especially bad by certain builds against other builds.

I'd have guessed about 10-15%, which I do not consider very rare.

If it's lower then maybe I am just unlucky, because I get hit with it in excess trying to figure out what's courageous about preventing somebody from running away.

...and pray for it to freeze people

Wight does seem kinda weak (not knowing any powers, just seeing logs). I'd give them some beefier melee without a weapon and maybe give them more of a health boost re: eating bone.

The health bonus from lich/mummy is so huge. ####, Tweedster posted the log and god damn if his lich didn't get like an extra 500 hp just for liching. That's (putting on my best Mike and Mad Dog impression) YUUUUUUGE (pronounce Huge without the H). Seriously.

and you can hold you own well in hero range, it will cut down on the "wights are way underpowered" talk.

In ghetto terms, "why don't you ####ing roll one up and prove wighty doesn't suck". *smile*

Keep in mind he would have people bitching about how OP'd gnome dagger polearm specs are and what bs the wise parrier edge is if he played one, so Nepenthe doing well with a wight wouldn't really change anyones opinion.

I recalled at 60% hitpoints. That was on average two rounds of attacks when fighting Oshui, and Flee/Sleep isn't a viable strategy against well-geared maran with pounce. From Tolgrumm I could not get away due to wrath.

Rydell was hitting me with unspeaks in our last fight. It was awesome in the true sense of the word.

Ekaerok I fought and had him on the ropes when I landed a lucky sleep, but once he learned to use swords against me, he pretty much had my number whether I had an army or not.

I am more than willing to listen to viable suggestions, but don't be a troll. It makes you sound more like a stooge to the Man rather than a free-thinking individual.

I'll freely admit that turn undead (especially without DR going and/or some holy resistance) would be really hard to deal with on a wight, especially one that didn't have a lot of HP gear.

Given a decent healer, that should be a fight that you usually have to run away from, until things go your way and you actually kill him.

I have never geared so heavily for hitpoints as I did with Zmia, and I approached 400 hps.

I assume you mean "approached 400 hps from gear" and not total...

For me, with a hero mage, that's a decent start. That's about where I expect to be after regearing, which is to say, not everything that I'm capable of getting myself will be in, so there are some compromises assumed. I would expect that total to continue to improve as I kill people and go a while without dying.

From this casual observer's perspective, the trade appears as follows:

A wide medley of immunities and resistances in exchange for several (rather keenly felt) penalties.

For those like me who are heavily reliant on shopkeepers and healers, I'd suggest holding out for Mummy or Lich.

I will say that I am somewhat surprised that Wights don't get even a small health boost in keeping with their 'heartier, more savage existence', but that might manifest in some other, as yet unforseen, fashion.

I thought it's kinda RP that you like bones

didn't know you eat it

I have to say, the fact that I almost got you twice means to me that there's a lot of prep or something about Necs that wasn't coming together for you. You should be 2 rounding me with no issues, just like everyone else

I really enjoyed our conversations. I think your char got more than a little peeved when Vallenthrall or another battlerager showed up during one of our chats. Frankly, that wasn't me...Eloril was 100% invested in attempting some sort of conversion of Zmias. Great attitude/style to the char that I really enjoyed other than that single time. Afterward, you went and got wighted so there didn't seem any point to Eloril in continuing our conversations. I have to say, your own attempts to convert had me seriously examining and rolling the dice on a different character arc.

>I have to say, the fact that I almost got you twice means to
>me that there's a lot of prep or something about Necs that
>wasn't coming together for you. You should be 2 rounding me
>with no issues, just like everyone else
>
I had no problem prepping against you, but you were pretty quick to run away if it looked like I had the upper hand, so I often did not prep in our fights. The danger there is that the low hitpoints of a necro mean that if you have even one good round, such as when quickstrike kicked in, I was in trouble.

>I really enjoyed our conversations. I think your char got more
>than a little peeved when Vallenthrall or another battlerager
>showed up during one of our chats. Frankly, that wasn't
>me...Eloril was 100% invested in attempting some sort of
>conversion of Zmias.
Zmias assumed everyone was a dirty rotten cheat, especially the village as their reputation lately hasn't been that wonderful, but more than anything I was trying to poke your pride to see if I could get that one-on-one fight we hear rumors about occasionally.

> Great attitude/style to the char that I
>really enjoyed other than that single time. Afterward, you
>went and got wighted so there didn't seem any point to Eloril
>in continuing our conversations. I have to say, your own
>attempts to convert had me seriously examining and rolling the
>dice on a different character arc.

For the longest time I thought Eloril was a permanent applicant because he was incompetent, but after a while I decided it must be do to some sort of IC choice. Kudos to you for sticking to your RP!

Never got to know you well enough to trust you. Figured you saw me as useful and you had enough enemies already so I was safe enough most the time. But in a moment of vulnerability I was never sure whether I should fear catching a glimpse of you on the hunt nearby.

We tried to get a couple traps going but didn't accomplish much more than the soiled drawers of our enemies. Ah well, that tends to be my specialty far more than finishing the kill...and can be just as fun.

Tough times right now if you aren't with the Tree or the Fort, especially out there being the loner Scarab, so can definitely understand any frustration underlying the delete. Rarely saw you with the huge army I associated with the scariest of necros, but maybe that was just circumstance/timing.

Would be curious to hear your thoughts on becoming a Wight.