Thu Mar 5 20:40:32 2015

At 6 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 29th of the Month of the Dark Shades
on the Theran calendar Leata perished, never to return.

Why azure shaman in Fort:

Wanted to do a neo-shaman for a while, and Fort seemed like it needed help, and when I rolled there was an azure spot, so obviously I took it to give it a try. Had to re-conceptualize a role I had in mind around azure, but it was fairly straightforward and Baer seemed like the perfect fit. Everything fit together like a glove.

Speech pattern:

I wanted to have a unique accent to express that I'm azure, thus not an ordinary human and I think that goal was met with success. Obviously it was loosely based on Yoda, but you try to come up with a unique accent and keep it up for 236 hours without slipping and we'll see how well you do. Dwarf garbling, felar meh'ing, and "giant stupid is" accents are fine, but most of the time people slip up even in those. Unnatural sentence structure is really hard, especially on the fly. At least in Yoddish it was fairly straightforward. Another reason I went for it was to provide some lightheartedness into the game. So many people take things so seriously, it's as if something important is at stake. Geez, it's just a game, relax. Like ohno, Yodagirl destroyed my world illusions by her speech pattern, I'll rage-delete and cry in the corner forever. Sheesh.

Shaman paths:

Breaker and Archon's choir. For some reason I thought they'd go really well together mechanically, but obviously they weren't the best paths for me as a player.

Breaker:

Breaker was first, and I was doing fine with it up until the hero ranks, where all the Breaker communes stopped working entirely. Now, each Breaker commune has some damage and a special echo if it worked. I had most of them mastered, but even if I hit a special effect, it did not seem to do anything that affected the fight any. I was really, really disappointed in all of them.

Devalue Life - special effect hits, they run away literally the next round, each and every time. Success rate of special effect - around 33%, never did anything.
Questioning Thoughts - a duel, special effect hits, then they proceed to land every spell/skill, maybe complaining a bit about being hampered after one of us words/teleports. Success rate of special effect - around 50%, never did anything meaningful during PK encounter.
Forbidden thoughts - landed just once, the person just fled and ran away, seriously nerfed commune. If it ever worked, can be tactically sound despite the cost, but I was extremely disappointed, especially compared with Forget. Success rate around 1%.
Fearful mind - worse than useless, special effect hits, they're supposed to have fear, but no, they come back two round later and attack no problem. Huge waste of mana and lagtime. Literally worse than doing nothing since you're lagging yourself for no reason. Success rate (if it can be called that) - around 20%
Harrowing Visage - the only useful commune out of the Breaker path at hero ranks, a very weak version of evade, probably can "evade" 2-5% of skills, which is not nothing. I would be guessing it's based on morale comparison.

Archon's choir:

Not as bad as Breaker, the major reason to take it is to have undispellable sanc in Majesty to fight the other shamen. Much more suitable to a Tribunal shaman, in fact seems tailor-made for him.

Holy Justice - a nuke for wanted evils, some damage against criminal evils, worthless anywhere else. Situationally, very good. (Like if you need Liantae to run away.)

Emblaze - damage spell when one can't (won't) use demonfire, roughly comparable, but the bad thing about it is a two-round lag. Also goes together with phoenix brand rather well, albeit not worth it to go that route in PK due to the very low success rate of the brand and two-round lag on it.

Sermon of censure - good area damage against wanted evils, can bring other evils out of shadows/camo, situational.


I was mostly alone in Fort with 5-10 imperials in PK. Obviously they spent literally RL hours in the imperial lands so that they can come to centurions in Balator within two-three rounds if I tried to start retrieving. So a big meh to all imperials except for the very select few who gave me solo fights (some of the time when there was zero risk to them doing so). Imperials typically wouldn't come raid if I was defending with 3-4 of them on. (Example, I'm on, have the orb, they log on as they do in a bunch and never come raid.) I'm not one to play a fair-weather char, but this was a bit much, day in and day out, I'd login to be alone and facing imperial horde. Rarely, there would be a bright spot in having someone to roll with and then we'd have some fun, but overall felt like a chore towards the end to log in.

Didn't want a leader position due to low hours and Leata being not the only char, offered myself up to Baer just to induct the new crop of lowbies, but she wisely picked Farmaur, so at that point I was content with deleting since there was someone to induct and it didn't seem like I was leaving the Fort empty. Another part of the delete was the PK struggle, especially when named as the Leader of the battalions. I think it comes down to the particular thresholds of saves, after which shaman doesn't land any communes at all and all my enemies seemed to have the requisite number. I couldn't land blindness/plague for the life of me on any of the heroes I fought. Forget about something more elaborate. Special mention goes out to Forbidden Thoughts, wasted quite a big chunk of my life trying to land that one.

I'm bad with remembering names, but good chars for the mud are roughly Marintok, Altariel, Crraya, Aoirse, Kwoalewei, Twilbo. I'm probably forgetting quite a few others.

Thanks to everyone, even those who didn't like the char. Remember that we're a small community and other people are people too.

P.S. Am not a newbie and not new to shamen or hero PK.

gr

I spoke to Leata so rarely that it wasn't an issue for me but I think some effort to make it an immersive environment is not too much to ask.

It was useful around the midranks but if nothing landed at higher levels, I could see that being a problem. It's great in theory but ironically I feel it would need some loving to be as good as other paths. When you have a range of decked characters, saves are always an issue - I wouldn't doubt folks having -100 pretty easily these days.

Would you ever take the Archon Path again?

A shaman should get huge numbers of attempts if necessary and can take steps to increase the chances of things landing.

I've also fought people where for 20 rounds we couldn't land stuff on each other and eventually broke off from the accumulated effect of our pitiful melee. Then later we did land some stuff. Shaman are well equipped to draw fights out and move them by small increments.

I found as a hero shaman you choose your supps according to who you are fighting. Eg low con race, plague and poison, not stuff that has to pierce great saves.

A class that completely depends on landing these spells shouldn't have spells that work once in an entire characters life (like he said for Forgotten Thoughts). Plague and poison? What would that do to anybody in the hero range that has at least +7 strength, not to mention healers/periapts and the most common preps. Those are some of the most worthless communes at hero to strong players.

I don't think you can argue that any other class has similar issues. Necromancer? Oh sorry, I can't land blind... while my huge army just beats your face in. Transmuter? I don't think I've ever in my entire life seen a transmuter have issue in a fight even against villagers with Calming - not to mention that neuro seems to basically bypass almost every spell resist with ease and then permalocks you out of commands for several hours. Sure a Shaman can heal itself and run away, but then you get into cases like Behmurra... unkillable unless I got bored or overstepped my bounds but I couldn't kill anything - a glorified crappy healer.

This really just boils down to the fact that shaman revamps are *not* balanced and please stop spouting "it's fine!" without taking a look at things. The demon path had abilities fire once in 100+ casts, not to mention even skills that could never be improved. It's a buggy and unbalanced game, things should be looked at. It's not like Leata was beating face everywhere. And I don't know about you but I'm getting pretty tired of seeing the same class combos all the time.

You may have played a lot of shamans, but your assessments are way off the mark. Just because something didn't work the way you wanted it to, doesn't mean it doesn't work.

I mean you guys already locked my shaman thread.

My transmuter (grippledank) had one hell of a time fighting an imperial warrior with calming, I basically couldn't do it, even with barrier.

I also had a drow imperial warrior with calming and I laughed so hard as I destroyed full ABS invokers with nothing more than detect invis up and I didn't have any leet gear. Effectively always making a saving throw (without mentioning lowering spell levels) is a game changer if the mage is dependant on getting a lot on you fast.


Not being able to kill anything because you are so worried about taking risks is your playstyle. I wouldn't expect them to make many things less risky for good payoff.

Not sure if you are talking about me here or torak, but I kill a fair bit.

I might have been the imperial warrior though. Cagocluse?

Anyway, calming was op, I'd agree. Ice devil toting conjie? No problem. Shaman? No problem. Necro? No problem. Paladin? I could at least attempt some offhand disarms before pulling back to heal.

and the only times they gave me issues were times I had #### for saves. If my save were -70 on down, breaker stuff didn't seem to land. The times I did have issues with breakers, the result was flee/quaff teleport, not a death.

IMHO there are 4 paths that are really key to sealing kills, so any shaman build should start with one of those, then try to get a path that compliments it.

I had no problem with the speech pattern. Anyone who has half a clue about language, especially someone who speaks more than one, realizes that the syntax of sentence structure is vastly different for other languages and not always that of English. So for me I see your speech as an affectation of someone speaking common who perhaps spoke something else first. Hell I know I sound weird juggling subject and verb order when I am traveling and speaking English to Asians as it makes English easier to understand for them when my skills in their language fail me. So F**k the haters.

Leata was a pitbull, never letting anyone shake her off, totally tenacious. Definitely more affective in the mid-levels from PK, but matured into a solid leader. I don't watch fort a lot, but always enjoyed watching Leata.

I thought he was just ESL it never occurred to me it was trying to imitate yoda. And I was in his cabal most of his life.

I really should pay more attention to things other than who pk.

No, not ESL, and no exactly Yoda either. Good thing someone didn't even think of Yoda, that at least means that I have somewhat succeeded.

Speech was Yoddish, but I was going for azure!=human with it. Thanks for watching? Never felt like I was being watched though.

Enjoyed me some Leata. Great presence. Did a good job guiding the "new" folks in Fortress. Gave me some pointers too (obviously needed and grateful for). And your speech patterns didn't bother me at all. I understood the words you were saying.

Hope the Forum vitriol didn't get to you too much. Come back with something awesome when you're ready.

K

Too bad we couldn't roll together often. I got a feeling that you're not entirely comfy with your build. Should've probably put more effort in your "training."

Wasting other peoples time intentionally isn't very nice.

If this is in reference to my "training," I was very very soft with that, as in asking whether a person had time, had the will, etc. I was to lead squires, evaluate them and give them lessons, being an elder maran. I don't think I ever forced anyone to do it.

I have had cabal elders and leaders before and I know what you were trying to do. I respect what you were trying to do, which was engage in interactive role playing with a very unique character. You started off by telling me that your questions were difficult, but you also assured me that there are no wrong answers if one's heart is in the right place.

What is ironic is you were trying to spice up the interview process and get outside the box of the same questions and answers that all fort interviews tend to be. But then you used all the same cookie-cutter questions that every fort member asks. You would ask me a question, I would answer, you would make a comment, I would reply to the comment, and then you would sit there and stare at me. I did most of the work in the interview. Except for the question of "what does the light mean to you." I'm not going to go into my char'd details because I'm still active, but you didn't like my answer and you told me that to you it sounded like I was interested on "truth" and I should "go speak to Jeede about joining the scarab cult." I know it's a good thing to "test" those you interview and it's nice to give them questions or statements to make them really think. But your comment had none of that. You mentioned it's good to know one's enemy, but it stopped there. You basically told me my answers were wrong, even though you said in the beginning there are no wrong answers. You told a fort applicant to go join scarab, in a way that was not a "test" or anything of the sort. With the other questions, all you did was twist words around for about 40 minutes. The question about why the acolytes and scribes are separate from the maran and squires. I gave you a simple answer, a good answer that had nothing wrong with it. Yet all you responded with was recycled jargon you had already said. "But shield can also be a weapon, a sword can also be used to defend." Every time I said something you would twist my words around and fire back a question, which I would answer, and then you would go back to the initial question. When I asked you a question, you basically ignored me. When I said well I'm still young and learning perhaps you could enlighten me, you told me I should "think about my answers about the light" basically telling me you didn't like my answers. Maybe you didn't like them, but every other fortress member I spoke with told me I I seemed to know what I was talking about. All you did was basically say "I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I I know you are but what am I" for over a hour. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? It's very annoying.

You basically told me I don't belong in the fortress with my ideals but when I ask you if I deserve a shot at being a squire, you say yes. Then you say you're not going to recommend me. Wha-wha-what?

What was really disappointing about the whole ordeal was it took over an hour for you to say what most people could have done in ten minutes. Your speech thing was a neat idea, but you did not execute it well. You often contradicted what you were trying to say. For example you would throw in a "not" where it shouldn't have been, negating when you meant not to negate. Sometimes you would mean to negate, but accidentally said "not" twice making it double negative equaling positive when you meant to negate. I'm all for people who like to make RP interesting with things like unique speaking patters, but yours was inconsistent and had some errors which lead to confusion. And you wouldn't take the time to correct yourself either. You would continue on talking it as if you made no errors. That is extremely confusing.

It's one thing to make an effort to RP and be different, I love stuff like that. But if you can't be consistent with your RP, especially your unique speech patters, then please try to ease off or lighten it a bit.

Wasting peoples time intentionally is not a good thing. No you did not force anyone into it, but you are very guilty of false advertising. I'm not going to comment any further on this. I'm still active and I enjoy my character. With all that said, thank you for trying to mix it up and make things more interesting.

I just pray your next character is not a reincarnation of JarJar Binks. Enough people have been scared away from the game already.

I really respected that Leata was always in character and always putting forth 110%

I also liked that you were a total truckasaurus.

I will say, and this is just my opinion, that all of the good points on this character were nullified by the fact that you were roleplaying a flagship character from one of the most well known movie franchises in history. It really sort of ruins the mood for me when I feel like we're interjecting a Star Wars character into the unique atmosphere of Carrionfields.

That said, the good points of this character were good and that probably isn't just my opinion.

Leata was passionate and a decent person to hang around with.

She certainly tried really hard to interact and get various story lines going.

But at the same time she really struggled to be effective in pk from what I observed. It was like she is here to train the troops when she couldn't handle herself and that seemed odd.

That was kind of earlier in her life so maybe she figured it out by the end

Usually am much more effective in hero PK. See my comments above, but yeah, I felt inadequate most of the time. It's not my first shaman or first hero and I was doing much better previously. This char was a struggle, especially once I hit hero. Pre-hero I was doing alright IMHO.

...the Yoda part didn't really bother me as much as it did others.

Of course, I totally agree with the fact Leata was awesome in that they were always in character, always putting forth effort to their RP, attempting to draw other people "in" with their RP, etc. Also showed rain or shine regardless of odds.

I will say this to Leata herself, not every time I do something "stupid" is it because I the player made a mistake. A couple times I died because of RP you acted like I made a foolish decision (I did OOC, totally) but at the same time, not every character decision is a player decision.

I loved the training sessions. Hope you appreciated the effort I put forth in my responses.

You were my favorite squire in that. Most people didn't pick up on what I was going for, but you totally did. It was amazing that we clicked on that and fun for the short while (twice?) that we did it. It's rare that people put special effort in RP opportunities and that saddens me.

Sorry you feel that way. I was going for the unique accent and Yoddish seemed like a good challenge, plus the concept brings giggles to myself. If anything, I'm gone now, so no more Star Wars references to ruin CF for you.

we had some fun together, grouped a couple times when darkness sways and kicked some but, also a few time we died horrible horrible deaths. And that is why cf is fun sometimes to win, sometimes you loose. You seemed to stick it out even during crazy times of the old empire, would be 10 people in my pk 8 imperials, me and you. Sorry to see you go, and good luck with your next. Maybe try nexus

Marintok

And I think it's a collective opinion. Unfortunately, I couldn't be as dangerous as you. When people gank me, I don't hit them ever harder so they die on my passive dam (insert jealousy here.) Was good rolling with you (twice?) against the imperials even if it didn't get us far.