Tue May 28 19:05:27 2024

At 12 o'clock PM, Day of Thunder, 17th of the Month of the Shadows
on the Theran calendar Larishae perished, never to return.

I really loved the idea of this character, and I knew that playing the character would be fun for me regardless of whatever happened. I fully expected to be playing an underdog, since Fort was pretty weak at the time I created her. That didn't end up happening for hundreds of hours, because Scion dried up and I guess everyone else also rolled Fort at the same time. Damn. But then it did happen, and it was a real "careful what you wish for" moment since I am far too bad at this game to face those kinds of odds, especially with a class I have never played before and a build that turned out feeling pretty underpowered.

Anyway, the idea for the character was an exploration of the concept of an angel. Larishae was the colloquial "angelic" woman archetype, while Naya'il (the Seraph that merged with her body, read the role if you care) was a true hard-core vengeful spirit of goodness from the Azure Fields. Playing both characters in moments, and their interactions with each other and those around them, was often very fun. Playing this character in Fort was cool, because Larishae without Naya'il would have been better off as an Acolyte, while Naya'il without Larishae might have even been too zealous for Maran. It was often hard to really work this in without feeling like I was cramming it down people's throats, which I hate to do.

Mechanically, I felt much like I do playing any class for the first time. I am not a super fast learner when it comes to this, and I never felt like I really "got it" with how to play a shaman. I wanted Seraph's Wing and War, I ended up with Seraph's Wing and Proclamation. I think having War instead would have been a huge difference, but it's easy to say that when I have no real frame of reference. It seemed like in the rock, paper, scissors, I was holding a toothbrush. I had a few proud moments, but just as many WTF ones. I had been determined to age die this character, but after getting utterly and hopelessly owned in every single fight for days and days, I wondered why I was putting myself through it. While it might be "good for the game" for the overwhelming mass of evils (and spore-spamming druids) in hero range to have a rabbit to chase about, being the rabbit is only fun for a very limited period. And why did EVERY SINGLE griefer thief think it was super hilarious to target me? I would log in, and suddenly there they all were. Looking at the hours to go before age death, I threw in the towel.

Fort people: Many of you were really great! Stand-outs include Nahria, Zaurea, Dhuuston, Nithenoel, Davrithil (I know some of you saw him differently, but he was really cool to me), Durmicke, Coqui, Brasch, Skarvi... I know I forgetting a lot of people here. I felt like for the most part this was a more RP-focused crew than most of the times I have been in Fort, which was wonderful. Thank you for your talks, your struggles, and your patience.

Enemies: Mauotto, you were really fun! I loved our back and forth fights and exchanges. Watclawsh, I know you were frustrated with my summoning but it is really the only way I had to deal with you. I thought we had some fun battles. Neshamar, sorry again for losing my #### on you that one time, I know it basically halted all interaction thereafter. I apologized to you in-game, but here is my public apology as well. I would like to say we had some fun battles, but we didn't.

Trystein and Prossyn, the talk we had at the Inn recently was one of the highlights of this character, so thank you. Ravenhgna (probably butchered that spelling), you were always so fun to hang out with.

Finally, Baerinika, I knew going into this that our hours were never going to line up and that I would have to make adjustments to my schedule to ever speak to you. As it turned out, that was a bit of an understatement. But I am happy I got to be in your religion, and we got at least one really amazing talk that made me wish I'd had a lot more. Thanks for the custom description thingy, that was the first time I have ever had one and it made me feel like the otherworldly creature I was trying to be.

You were such a great foil to Raveghna's energy! It made every chat really fun. Really enjoyed your character! GLWYN!

I already wrote my goodbye to you on Discord but I will just add one more thing that I thought of since then.

You, along with a few other solid characters, had a really great role and roleplay that really stood out as exceptional. I was lucky to be leader during a time of such great characters, even if you weren't one of mine, and I had some great Scribes and Acolytes. Thanks for all the fun times we had, even if they weren't dominating in PK. We were successful in retrieving from the Orc village that one time. That could have gone much worse.

> Playing both characters in moments, and their interactions with each other and those around them, was often very fun.

It was also very fun for other players too!

Its all good. I didn't want what I said on discord to come across as critical, I thought you were great apart from that. I just wanted to explain why I never followed up on our conversations after the fact.

For what its worth, I think if you get a little better at chasing your experience will drastically change. It might have seemed like I wasn't having issues with you, but you were actually the toughest fort hero for me solo for a very long time after I entered that range, and not by a small amount. My repeatedly coming back that first day was in fact me trying to work out why that was. Agree with that final seraph wing prayer being terrible, hope it gets tweaked.

Unity: Cool idea I wanted to like, but in reality it was never justifiable. It causes every "ally" in the room current fighting your target to do one attack against your target. If the attack hit, it was less than normal damage. So if you have you, a mercenary, and two groupmates fighting the same thing, you and each person gets one chance at an extra hit per use, and you can use it every round. Sounds cool right? But the attacks rarely hit, half the time you use it and get literally zero hits, and since the hit damage is reduced I never once saw it do enough damage even with a bunch of people pounding on an inner guardian, for example, to justify using it over, you guessed it, Torment. When I was by myself, I used it all the time because then it granted "Guiding Hand." But for the group usage, the far cooler use-case, if the hits were unblockable or normal strength then maybe it would be useful. But otherwise, why use that when I can use unblockable torment, dispel evil, etc.?

Proclamation: Can prevent one flee, one spell, or one supplication. After which the target is immune for some lengthy cooldown period. IF the target does not resist, they get lagged for one round if they try to do the thing you are preventing. I got a couple kills from the "stay" usage, because sometimes people try to flee one round from death. But more often I would try to use this for like 3 rounds and fail 3 times and the target would run off. And it's a trick that only works once. Once people know they need to factor in "stay" into their fleeing strategy you might as well not use it anymore. As for blocking spells and supps, I guess this would be to prevent word of recall if you time it right, but nobody is wording from shamans in combat. You can flee from shamans freely.

Equalize: Bizarre supplication. I am told it can grant you some of the protections your target has on them. But ABS/stone must be immune, or I am very unlucky, because that never happened. The only other effect is a bioempathy-like thing where when the target damages you, they also get damaged. But it's very weak, like hits and wounds, so not really deterring anyone from murdering you. If I could steal someone's ABS for myself, this would be incredible. As it was, I gave up on it.

Augmented Edict: The true shining star of this path, buffs a bunch of usual shaman things.

Solitude: This cuts people off from their cabal abilities (and maybe rescues and other things, though I never was in a situation to find out). It has a super short duration, like rounds not hours, but can be re-upped by hitting them with it again. But the reality is, it is resisted nearly always. I saw it actually land in PK twice total. I could see this being great against Battleragers, if you can get it to land and they don't just flee immediately. When I was testing this against a willing opponent it took us like 10 rounds to actually make the effect land, and landing it multiple times didn't seem to do anything more.

Vociferation: Chance at doing damage to any viable target in the area. Not amazing damage, but not bad. It also wakes people up who have been slept, though it seems to maybe only work in the same room as the person slept? I am not entirely sure. Maybe it's a guarantee to hit/wake people in the same room, and a chance outside of it. All I can say for sure is it did not wake a person up who was not in the same room once, and it rarely hit people outside of the same room. The idea was to use it like call lighting after people fled, or to wake allies up from a distance, but it never worked. I also tried to use it to reveal hidden people I knew were in the area, and that worked occasionally. 48 hour cooldown.


Final thoughts on Proclamation: Augmented Edict alone would make this a good supplemental path for someone who already has one very strong path. Every time I got hit with "Forsaken Thoughts" my silly ability to block one supplication for one round looked more ridiculous. Watching someone hit a person across the world with Unerring Smite made me feel extra bad about my ability to MAYBE hit someone in the same area. My feeling was the skills are mostly unreliable, and even if they did work were of limited use. This was my first shaman, and it would have been really interesting to see a shaman veteran play with my path combo and see how they did, and get their thoughts.

Soldier of the Light: Amazing. Juices dispel evil and basically everything else in the base shaman toolkit against the people you will fight most.

Shadowbane: Supposedly a light-based attack, which I was excited about because I figured once I got Maran, I could use phoenix brand to make people vuln light and then really smack them with this. In reality, it never did enough damage to justify its two-round cost. And honestly, I never saw it do more with phoenix brand either, making me wonder if it even really is light damage. Two torments or even two dispel evils was always more damage than one shadowbane, making this a prayer I never really used outside of experimentation.

Celestial Choir: The best, especially if you have long logins. You can summon 2-5 angels (as an azure-touched) per use, and there is a 48 hour cooldown. The angels stick around for about 2 RL hours. The most I was ever able to accumulate was 21 or 22, but that was only briefly since a few left right after that. But in large numbers, they can be dangerous. Just a few of them are only really useful to mess up people trying to flee, since they auto-attack.

Aspect of the Angel: Trade 200 mana for 120 temp hp and flight for 7 hours. Supposedly there are other effects to this, but I never saw any. Unfortunately, this also makes you auto-attack evil shamans, which killed me once since it lags you each time. Trying to flee for your life when you are auto-attacking the guy you are fleeing from is not fun. I tended to not use this if there was any chance I'd be fighting a shaman.

Elysian Shower: Useless. Garbage. As the capstone prayer for this path, I simply cannot understand it. I submitted a bug about it because I tried it and tried it, and it never did anything useful. Against mobs it was like 2-3 devastates. Against players, it was 2-3 scratches. That includes the "wickedest" people is Thera. It cost 2 rounds to use. There is never, and I mean never, any reason to use this. I think it needs some attention.


Final thoughts: I enjoyed the path because of Soldier of the Light and Celestial Choir. It was kind of sad that 2 of the damage prayers could never be justified as they did less damage (far less for Elysian) than even a single Torment, and I could do 2 torments in the same amount of time. Aspect was ok, especially pre-Maran since it gave me flight that could not be dispelled, but 200 mana for 7 hours is a lot. The path felt lacking compared to others I have seen. I don't regret choosing it because it make this character feel angelic, which was what I wanted. But I do think it should be balanced a bit against other paths. I wouldn't necessarily ever recommend anyone seek this one out, as things stand right now.