I'll try to get all my gripes off my chest here as I don't intend on wasting any more time with CF for a good while at least.

Empire bards are stupid, dex changes are a joke (i don't care about what stats you can pull up about non dagger specs still doing well, play a low-dex mellee oriented hero without hell gear and talk to me - throw in the anti-gang code and it's just about possible to even gang someone for a kill). I just haven't been having fun lately. I've never been a great PKer, and I don't expect to be, but I do expect to be competitive, and when I am running around with 60 dam and 1400 hp and Divine saves and still can't be competitive against a single decent character in my range i know it's time to delete.

Add to the fact that I didn't hear from one Fortress imm in the entire life of this character except for a useless 30 second pop-in from Corrlaan and Baer on the cabal channel. What are the requirements for Maran? It seems so ####ing vague and it's damn frustrating when you've been in hero range for 70 hours (maybe more) fighting emperors/warmasters/chancellors and you have detect evil as your awesome cabal power. wtf? I don't think Narclarn was great, but I do think I mixed it up and was worthy of at least consideration or some form of interaction to tell me what I could do better to be a Maran. Damn I miss Aarn and Shokai.

My build was a huge disappointment, both of my legacies (greeting and mercy of the typhoon) seemed utterly useless and neither one ever lead to a successfull result. I don't think mercy fired more than twice in all of my PKing and I fought quite a few group battles and when it did fire it was for 1 extra attack that was usually parried. What a waste.

Kostyan i get the sense that your RP is great because in RL you are an actual evil person heh. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Igbah - good last fight, I think I would've had a small chance if i had time to prep up before you landed the first flurry. Maybe a chance to disembowel at least. I think with this char i saw more lowbie looting than ever. I don't know how those people take in enjoyment in that.


Don't think anything else stuck in my mind; those are all my whinings (and yes I'm well aware that I'm whining) and I'm sure there are very viable counterarguments to what I have complained about. I just wanted to get it off my chest so that I can say that I said my piece and can move on.

Gl with everything, I'll reply if I think I can post something constructive.

Gryshilniar -Icthaen etc.....

Yeah you are right about the dexy classes screwing str based warriors over. My last warrior was a dwarf, and he owned spellcasters and melee without maledicts, but an assassin/dagger spec would completely screw him over so bad it wasn't funny. And he was constantly around with 50-70 damroll, 20-35 hitroll, depending on zeal/berserk/warcry.

Maybe the only advice I can offer is that once you are maledicted past your max (str gear etc), get out. Fight another day. At least with dex-types they cannot end you suddenly with two bashes and a flurry. With a certain STSF person you can't do that, so I guess that's one of those things you just can't beat.

Also, another advantage of high str is to carry preps. Your container can have a ####load of nearly everything you'll possibly need. Of course this also means you mustn't die too much (but your container is probably too heavy to loot). A dwarf axe warrior can be quite a force just by pure damage. Serious melee combat with opposite side tanking and maledicting, it's just not fair. But you can unload an ungodly amount of damage on those who cannot tank you in the first 2 rounds + pincer.

Play an elf warrior STSF/Soul dagger/spear next and powerrank to 51 . Humbert will probably still be around while you get your next char to 51. Hope to see you again!

I've the same problem with the Maran thing (too early to tell on this char, but other Marans). Part of it could be play time, and it does take a while to be noticed. So your week in the hero ranges could have gone unnoticed because you played so much. As far as I've seen, it usually goes like this: Induction, Lastname, Maran, Title, Leader. Since I've never really played any serious chars in any other cabal, I'm used to having just prot/detect/CB channel and generally playing like an uncaballed with more duties. Sooner or later you'll get Maran. (I had one char that was Maran'd at 300+ hours)

Enjoyed messing with you. Maran is just one of those "ya gotta wait" things. My last mort was a squire for over a month, and it's tough to roll with the punches during that time. That said, I actually enjoyed Narclarn quite a bit the few times I watched him. Good luck with the next.

-- Try an Enlilth follower today! Enlilth, now with 40% more chewey caramel in every bite. --

Narclarn, I'm sad to see you go. It was a pleasure to see someone role play as well as you do- I'm always trying to watch good RP'ers to try to shore up my end of things. I'm too new to really appreciate why you were so frustrated, but I really hope you come back!

Minus you. You nearly got me a handful of times. Well done with the warrior though. As a sidenote. Don't go headon Kornuel, his fiends will tear anyone with low intellengence up. Edge + Rep = Pimp.

Exept not edge yet...but still bards are just bad match up for low int races..After getting leader that became even harder as distort lands almost from first attempt even through resist mental..Feel for you, but heh choose your fights I wasn't hunting your head you were comming for me time after time

Fricken cool dwarf man. I liked your style. I would have really liked butting heads with you some more... Ah well.

Just roll a dagger spec STSF now and have fun from the other side maybe? They seem to do pretty well. *cough*.

Hreah.

I understand your frustration.

At times like that I think it's best to take the "easy route" and play the cabal combo that has it the easiest. In this case you should definitely roll an imperial, get the promotion to elite, and enjoy the cabal powers. After a while the frustrations you experienced will begin to dim and you'll be ready to try that combo again

Good luck, it was fun knowing you and I wish we could have done more. I guess my lesson is to group with Fortress people more to get the full experience.

I'll try to address some of the concerns you voiced below, but before I do, let me say that I liked Narclarn. You were pretty much the definition of a balls-to-the-wall player, typified by the time you bailed out my sorry ass vs. Satebos. So you know, that's why I inducted you right after that, despite your being one rec short.

Hopefully you didn't resent my vagueness regarding the shrine location. I'm not against giving hints, but that stuff seems like it's best figured out on your own, or fed to you by the imm in question.

>Empire bards are stupid...

To be fair, "Empire bards with Elite status" are stupid. But they have one big weakness: they can't be duergar. Consequently, they suffer from the same Achilles heel as many other classes.

Also, I'm not sure what was up with the fiends you got, but judging from the logs you posted they're way nastier than any I've ever gotten, including with past characters. Maybe it's the combination of repertoires + tune + edges? Whatever the reason, those looked way worse than I would have expected.

>dex changes are a joke...

Trust me, I know why you're saying this, but I'm not quite willing to go that far. Evade makes that particular guy even more gross than he would already be, but he'd still be gross without them. It's a combination of cabal powers, liberal use of damage reduction, and savvy choice of legacies. That, and the guy's no dummy either. He's pretty much the perfect storm of things I would string together if I were trying to build the ultimate dex warrior. Only thing he's missing is the ridiculous gear, and I fully expect it will make its way to him eventually.

>I've never been a great PKer,
>and I don't expect to be, but I do expect to be competitive,
>and when I am running around with 60 dam and 1400 hp and
>Divine saves and still can't be competitive against a single
>decent character in my range i know it's time to delete.

We're talking about three, maybe four characters here. Hell-gear-guy, Dex-guy, Bard-guy, and Lich-guy. And they're pretty much the cream of the PK crop right now, except for maybe Defiance-guy. So if you freely admit that you've "never been a great PKer", then I'm not sure it's entirely realistic to expect to be competitive with four of the nastiest characters in the game right now. Of those five, about the only people who are competitive with them are...other people from that group of five.

>Add to the fact that I didn't hear from one Fortress imm in
>the entire life of this character except for a useless 30
>second pop-in from Corrlaan and Baer on the cabal channel.

This is in no way a complaint, but I've heard from them (i.e. Baerinika) exactly twice. Three times if you could the note I sent her when I thought mantle was acting buggy. That seems pretty normal. The cabal is supposed to be player-run, so unless one of the Fort imms is your character's deity, why would you expect to hear from them outside situations where you're being booted or promoted?

>What are the requirements for Maran? It seems so ####ing vague
>and it's damn frustrating when you've been in hero range for
>70 hours (maybe more) fighting emperors/warmasters/chancellors
>and you have detect evil as your awesome cabal power. wtf?

The requirements are pretty vague, that's true. Basically, the Captain and Marshall make recommendations to Baerinika whenever they think some more folks need to be Maraninated. She then acts on those recommendations, unless she knows something we (mortals) don't. Last "round" we (Acvilar and I) nominated Rakhir and Kayella, who were subsequently promoted. Can't remember for sure, but I think at that point you'd either just been inducted or hadn't been inducted yet. Since Angaarn just died, it's probably about time for another round. When deciding who to nominate we consider (in no particular order):

1. Playing time. Is the guy around regularly?
2. PK performance. Is the guy successful, or at least trying?
3. General role-play. Can we tell that the guy actually has a role?
4. Rank. Generally we want people at-or-just-below hero range.
5. Seniority. How long has it been since the guy was inducted?

In my mind, the only thing Narclarn would have lacked from this list is seniority. While I can't say for sure you would have been my nomination, you would definitely have been on the short-list.

>Kostyan i get the sense that your RP is great because in RL
>you are an actual evil person heh. Hopefully I'm wrong.

I'll just say that I plan to devote a paragraph or two to this topic when I'm gone. Stay tuned!

>I think with this char i saw more lowbie looting than ever. I don't
>know how those people take in enjoyment in that.

They are indeed ass. I've suffered some wicked lowbie loots with past characters, but have largely avoided them with this one. I'm curious- how would you rate the "hero looting" you saw with Narclarn compared to what you've seen in the past? I wasn't around for all your deaths, but it seemed like you kept that mark of the dwarven crusader through several of them.

Anyway...sorry you had such a crappy experience w/ Narclarn. Maybe try a class that's better able to choose its fights, then go uncaballed and turn to "religion" as the source of your role-play. That way if there are big nasties that give your character fits, you can just choose not to fight them.

NT

Actually, I was on today and Eshval said something like "This Narclarn dude is cool, I think he deserves Maran." And I said, Hell yeah, let me watch him and pull the trigger if he looks nifty. And...then you deleted. Also, you'd been in the cabal for exactly one week. Looking at it, I see you did play an impressive amount of hours during that one week, but usually one week is the min I'll give it before Maran unless you really knock my socks off. I'm sorry you didn't get the interaction you wanted, Baer isn't exactly as hands-on as Aarn and Shok.

Step back, take stock in 1) Are you having fun 2) Do you honestly have the free time to play and 3) How can you make sure you're having fun?

Like I said, hit me up on AOL if you want to vent or just want to talk.

I still love your chars, even if you did condie me