I'd like some immortal input on how they feel about frightful fiend. Honestly aren't bards powerful enough without this song to have a one-trick song that they can sing fairly regularly that is almost (1/3-1/2 the time) insta-kill on any non-prepped lower than human int char. I don't think this is a very exciting factor in the game when my char gets hit with a fiend I have to flee quaff. If I'm a giant I start healing, if I'm an Orc I die. If I got slept beforehand this will DEFINITELY kill me. I have no chance at all against it. Yes there are svs mental preps, but seriously do I need to have this anytime I see a bard as a mandatory prep. I guess the answer currently is yes, but why is it so strong?

The hunt is also an extremely powerful skill that prevents you from wording but has the same power output as fiends probably more but you can get away from it. If you get hit with a powerful fiend you're dead. Someone tell me why they still have something like this in the game?

I would suggest make fiend take you to 1hp? Then you realize you are not longer afraid of it. Make it have to track you like the hunt. But the fact that a bard can sing it and then do whois blank over and over and see they are dead is not an awesome addition to the game. Of course the reason this is coming up now instead of later is because right now there are a TON of bards who do it all the time and it is getting really really old.

... And faced ALOT of bard... I can say that fiend ain't overpowered. And I've never played one myself. (Bard that is.)

Resist mental usually saves me from getting killed by a fiend (If I can word home)
If I'm a villager, yeah, I screwed if they DO get that fiend in. Most of the time, they don't and they'll get bashed to the ground.

+ DASH is THE skill.(Severely underused)

Anyways, to me, it looks all fine.

My last giant, lived for a LONG LONG time and fought A LOT of bards. (Including Kyaltaru) and only died ONCE ever to a fiend. And on that fiend I DID have resist mental up.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

Just thought I would mention that even with felar intelligence Mreash died 0 times to fiend. And he got fiended often.

.

On the other hand, not everyone in that cabal is a ranger, and afaik none of them except maybe the wood-elves get a healer at their recall point. So they're sort of in the same boat orcs are, except for the fact that they don't all recall to the same place.

My point is this:

Mreash is not indicative of the general population's problems with fiend because of his intelligence. His 23 dex = 100% wild fam negates any issues trying to tank the damn thing, so it will barely do any damage to him.

I've landed powerful fiends on felar rangers in the wilderness before. They're utterly useless.

For him to speak up is pointless due to the extenuating circumstances of his build.

If Grand Nocturne did more unblockable progging skill damage like fatigue it would be different, but it doesn't. (and if it did it would exacerbate current complaints)

For everybody yells "Oh, fiend is overpowered" I suggest you to make bard and go fiend everybody you see.
Then claim how it is overpowered.
Trust me, it is not.

More often then not it will get you killed while you are trying to fiend somebody.

...

I've seen lots of orcs and giants live through grand nocturne, for what it's worth.

Orcs even get an edge option specifically to help with fear effects.

All that being said, probably your best defense is to not let the bard sing grand nocturne in the first place. As orcs/giants I've gotten beat down bad (and occasionally killed) by a good grand nocturne, but a lot more times than that started bashing a bard that came to try it and their next command came at their pit.

It's a scary skill when you're a low int character, no doubt. Probably it's one of the things you should worry about most in the game. But it genuinely is not an "I win" button.

Bards are probably the second hardest class to bash after arial dagger specs. They aren't bad tanks either, plus they have natural resistance and often additinal dam reduction (aura/stone-skin/vanguard/rager-resistance/protection).
Where you find so many noob bards who get straight bashed to a pit?
You can't really do much with low int races to avoid sleep or(and) fiend against any half decent bard (besides bringing friends with you).

You can believe what you want, but while I've been on both sides of the matchup, I promise you I play low int characters with bash a lot more often than I play bards.

You can't be proof against the bard getting a shot at you every time, but you certainly can make sure you kill the bard at least as often as they kill you.

Yeah. I dunno about killing the bard as often as he kills you. Unless you're Hunsobo/Igbah/Woldrun or something.

Both parties know a fight's going to happen -> thinking this favors bard.

He can adjust size, meaning you'll need to spend time looking at him first to figure out how you should adjust yours. He can also potentially prep more than the warrior. Then again, warrior will have resist mental in this scenario.

Giant ambushes bard -> obviously favors giant, but I'm thinking his advantage is smaller than the opposite scenario where bard ambushes giant. In the former, it basically boils down to whether giant can bash bard into the ground. If not, then bard gets away, assuming we're not in some cursed terrain. In the latter, it boils down to whether bard lands sleep. If he does, then giant's probably toast unless he calls in a rescue. Esp. if bard has scrolls/talismans on hand.

Then again, most likely giant's calling in reinforcements ASAP after getting slept.

I would love to see how good you could make against any of my bards

Although that being said, my comment in Taelina's PBF pretty much sums up my thoughts in that era.

I rarely prepped vs mental (though I probably should have), but even solo (yes - i know my gang ratio was terrible), I had fair success against bards if I knew they were coming - and outside of bash/trip I didn't have any real lagging moves.

Bards scared me... but they scared me less than Transmuters.

Dude, your arguments in this whole thread are so one-sided and biased it's kind of painful to read.

To paraphrase two of your main arguments in this thread...
1) and often additional dam reduction (aura/stone skin/vanguard/rager-resistance/protection). This same damn argument applies to the guy fighting the grand nocturne too, no?

2) You can't really do much with low int races to avoid sleep or(and) fiend against any half decent bard (besides bringing friends with you). You played.. how many.. low-int races? You're telling me you never came up with -one- counter, be it prep, bash, room positioning, dirt kick, something to limit/offset the bard's potential? Come on, this point just reeks of you really saying 'i've never played bards'

3) Bard singing grand nocturne on 5 people and chasing them down one by one. You say it's not ballsy and really only requires one command, and feel it's overpowered because it affects 5 people who are equal to the bard's PK cunning? I say, if just 1 of those people is equal to the bard's PK cunning, then all 5 of those people would have an opportunity to mow down said bard in one round and not let the command even go through.

Don't take this personally; I've just seen much better arguments coming from you and this time it seems like you're stretching without knowing both sides of the fence.

Bards have easier access to preps than most.

And some of those with better access will die to a fiend even with full protections up, unless they blow edges to help even the odds.

I don't know of any other class that can walk into a room full of enemies and cast a spell or song which can ( with a little bit of luck) guarantee you a kill.

I am not saying the I win button works every time I'm just saying all it takes is repeat mashing to get the desired results. I've played a couple of bards and found myself switching to tragic post heroing/close to heroing on both occasions.

Which means that there is inherent difficulty to get that in to a moving target. You lag yourself with every try, and expose yourself to the giant/orc bashing you down and permalagging you to death.

I've been fiended at least a dozen times over the last 50 hours of playing my chars recently, so I'm feeling the same pain you are. However, I don't feel that fiend is overpowered- I just think succeeding to create such powerful illusions in even simple minds should either a) Be extremely taxing (ie, more lag, more risk) and b) Be much more likely to fail entirely.

The other factor is the sheer rarity of saves vs mental gear. I believe I have come across a single piece of gear than gives more than -5 saves mental, and only one or two which give the -5. As always, I'm probably wrong and there is tonnes more of it out there- but where?

Mental save gear is kinda sparse and that's something we're trying to address as areas get added and changed.

That being said, resist mental makes a huge difference and is relatively accessable -- you can buy a few sources of it, including one in a protected city.

>That being said, resist mental makes a huge difference and is
>relatively accessable -- you can buy a few sources of it,
>including one in a protected city.

Taking the opportunity to mention, yet again, that the above is not true for ragers. There should be at least a few resist mental things that are not flagged magic so a rager can get and use. Mental attacks are not magical anymore, and so there's no inherent reason why resist mental things should be magical. Please make some of them - like the one you can buy in ap rotected city - nonmagical.

Get a "get out of jail free" card in resist mental, when songs aren't even magical? Doesn't make sense. Empowerment classes and bards are the balance to ragers waxing mages and melee classes.

I think that's a pretty fair point. I was riding the fence until that comment.

>Get a "get out of jail free" card in resist mental, when
>songs aren't even magical? Doesn't make sense. Empowerment
>classes and bards are the balance to ragers waxing mages and
>melee classes.


He's not talking about a "get out of jail free" card by giving some inherent resist_mental to ragers, he's talking about creating one prep in the game that is (1) not magical and (2) grants resist_mental.

I mean, you can say "ragers wax mages" but then you must realize that mages can prep with ABS/DR to balance that out. Similarly, melee classes can prep with AS/DR to balance that out.

Similarly, with respect to ragers vs. empowerment classes, ragers can prep/gear for svs vs. spell to balance the disparity out.

So by extension, it would be logical to introduce non-magical resist_mental and more svs vs. mental gear into the game to balance out ragers vs. bards. Particularly if the IMM pov on bards is that songs are balanced based on the assumption that "resist mental makes a huge difference and is relatively accessable."

Adhelard hit most of the points correctly here, but I'll just echo that my point was not to give all ragers some resist_mental ability. My point was that I can think of 5 resist mental preps off the top of my head and they are *all* flagged magic, and thus unuseable by ragers. That should not be the case. Frankly, since the change years ago separating powers (used to be everything was magic, including communes) and making songs not magical at all, all things mental should not be magical. Like anything else, the "magical" resist_mental thing should be less common, not more common, than the "non-magical" resist_mental thing.

But I'm not even advocating that here. I'm just saying that 1 or 2 of the (10?) existing resist_mental preps be unflagged magic, and thus made useable by ragers (as well as anyone else of course). Just like seaweed, for example.

Coming from someone whos most recent mortal (Woldrun) got absolutely pwned by fiends, and who has had other semi-memorable chars (Hunsobo, Bonthos) who had tough times with them, AND who hasn't ever played a bard high enough to be able to fiend anyone...

It's balanced.

You ask if having a resist mental prep is a mandatory prep for fighting bards. I say as a low-int race, yep. Keep in mind that resist mental doesn't just screw bards out of using frightful fiend. On the right character, it can make a bard into a thief who has to use roundhouse and can't hide. On a low-int race, it'll pretty much make things completely even. That doesn't mean you won't die to a fiend with resist mental. It means you have a good shot at bashing the bard down instead of him killing you.

Two of the chars I just mentioned were able to steamroll a lot of different classes/combos. They had a few achilles heels, and bards were definitely one of them.

So resist mental for the low int race or play a high int race? I play too many giants/orcs.

Normally I fled, teleported, and then just bashed like crazy so that I wouldn't flee from them. Worked more often than not.

There are other classes who have it worse than orcs. I've taken a couple of edges just to survive fiends with my latest.

If you think you're going to fight a bard, you may want to skip berserk. It's good for a lot of things, but it does you no favors there.

Unless you're a shig-ru. They're special.

Just berserk, or also frenzy?

and while we talk about giant warrios the most as they get hit with the biggest fiends they actually have a chance of surviving. The classes that get the most ####ed are actually high int mages.

necromancer
conjies (without archon)
transmuters

I mean transmuters have to rely on their melee and pugil without being able to maledict the fiend at all.

conjies have to rely on their melee defenses which are above most mages but still poor vs a fiend and magic missles, unless its an ultra weak fiend its gonna take you entire ticks of spamming magic missle to kill it and most conjies can't last that long, especialy if their servitors turn.

necromancers as well are hurt but a little less so as they have slightly more options to deal damage.

in all three of these cases you have mages that mostly lack damage output because they don't have it or the fiend itself is immune to everything they have so just to have a chance to survive, a small chance, they need to be uber prepped and decked to the ####.

I've survived grand nocturne as all of the above plenty of times.

The main thing you need to factor in is that, in general, as a dumb character, time is not on your side. The phantasmal killer probably will get stronger and stronger as you fight it because you can't make mental saves for crap. In a lot of cases your best survival option involves throwing caution to the wind and pouring out all the damage you can as fast as possible.

For high int characters (most necromancers and transmuters, for example), the opposite is true; over time, your high mental stats will tend to beat the killer down and make it weaker. Your smartest option as a necromancer often could be something like, cast vampiric touch on something that isn't the phantasmal killer to heal yourself and play for time.

Conjurers are a definitely little more dicey, in that human/half-elf/half-drow conjurers don't have a terribly high int. A 23 int 20 wis (human trans) is a lot better off than a 20 int 20 wis (human conjurer). That being said, much like orcs, conjurers do specifically have an edge option to help deal with this kind of situation if it's a big problem for them. (Force of Personality.)

I think conjurers with an angel or demon bound take it in the pants the worst here, even though they're most likely the most dangerous conjurer setup for the bard to attack. While archons are clearly superior, I don't think devils are quite as useless for this situation as you do.

Kyal goes and fiend 5(?) people and make them all run.
One point of view is; wow, kickass brass balsy move! Amazing work!
But there is also other point to it: what was so skilled about it besides singing a single song and then just chase running foes?

You decide, is it a player's skills that kills 5 people or it's a balanced song that does it.

It takes skill to play a bard. You have to know area knowledge and you have to be a quick ass chaser. 80% of deaths to fiends I guarantee you that you get somewhere where you get to keep all your gear to begin with. Second off, resist mental is so freaking easy to get, and it's not like you have to go out of your way to have it.

Look at the most deathful bards ever. There's only 12 over 100 kills, and half of them are Imperials which is a huge power combo just because of the uber defense you get while not affecting your songs. And Eoria having Empress powers was her main source of power. Skilled and feared bards are *SO* few and far between.

You say where's the skill in singing a song and chasing. But where is the skill in bash bash bash, where is the skill in power word kill/cleaves, where is the skill in c 'quicksand' with full abs dispel pillar pillar pillar? Every thing in CF is mostly like this, what separates the better players are their quick reactions to get out when stuff gets bad, having prep knowledge, and playing smart enough and expecting every way a situation can go bad because you've played so long.

I don't imply that the bard in the log has no skill.
The player obviously has a clue how to play a bard.
But is his skill so amazing that it is enough to overcome 5 enemies who aren't total idiots either? I mean, come on, his opposition in that log has several skilled players as well and I wouldn't claim that they are less skilled.
It's just the way a balanced song work

Bards are amazing support class but they lack kill-sealing tools.
Probably at some point some implementor played a bard and thought "#### that! I can't kill anyone", so he went coding something cheap that racks those kills. The same story with skills like pwk/sleep/insect+thorns or whatever cheap combo we had in CF. Eventually they get nerfed, but why do bring them in a first place?

Why try and change bards if you claim they are support classes and can't seal kills well? That sure doesn't sound like I'm going to be scared of one.

Fiend gets hyped because usually only the strongest ones get posted making it look phenomenal when in hindsight, it doesn't really get as many kills as it seems, hence the top 10 bards pk records.

And everyone is silly and usually uses fiends to open combat nearly all the time. Granted in that log it was the right choice, but I don't think I've ever died to a bard that opened with fiend, including giants. Then... if you're fighting a bard and gushing and he flees to try and seal it with fiend. I find it nearly impossible that you can't get away from him one on one. Run the opposite direction, quaff, anything other but try and chase him, that's just untactful.

There's so many things that would need changed over fiend, if anything really at all. Ap's lashes are just.. well.. brutal, even without that many charges. Flurries on average bust out more damage than any average fiend. Strong hunts are just plain terrifying, I'd SO rather fight a fiend than the hunt. Point is.. when any skill in the game is the strongest it can possibly be, so many other things are just as deathful if not more and at least you can prep for the fiend in a greater way than any of the others aside from dam redux, and that still works for nightmares.

I would agree with your point.
But there is big difference between being able to stomp a single target with bash/pwk/sleep/flurry and area sleep/fiend/damage that also often don't initiate a combat.

PS. You can prep against a fiend whatever you want, the problem is that your preparations will fall after you get slept.

On how many times fiend gets sung on more than four people, let alone how many of them actually die. Because I can guarantee you it's so little making that arguement not really matter whatsoever. It probably happens like once every 2-3 weeks, and I bet 3 of the 4 live.

Loz, for example, is/was never alone. Invariably he made sure he had people to lag for him whilst he sang fiend.

They didn't work together, they didn't prep, and they walked in thinking they would mop the walls with him before he could do anything.

He didn't make them all run. Three of them chose to get out immediately. And may have done the worst things they could. Had they all stayed right there and not panicked and recalled and/or fled, who knows what would have happened.

Either way, the one thing we know is true is that he didn't make most of them run, they chose to leave.

Maybe you have no idea how fiend works and maybe you failed to notice that two who worded out immediately still died to it.
And maybe you don't understand that staying near a bard while fiended generally decreases your chances to survive, not increasing them, unless you can one-shot him (which wasn't a case there).
But I still agree with you that they chose to leave by manually typing "word of recall" or "flee". After all we don't kill people, our swords kill. We don't make people to run, they chose to run themselves.

I know how fiend works better than you my friend. And whether they died later or not means nothing to the point, which is they decided to leave on their own, they weren't forced to flee. And the meaning of "forced to flee" is clear to everyone except you it seems. Which I suppose shouldn't surprise me, but still, you're just trying to be annoying. It's just as possible they would have survived if they had not decided to leave immediately (thus making the fiend a bit stronger) and killed the bard, as well.

And staying near a bard when fiended is usually how most people kill the bard, especially when there are a few people there. They don't know when it's sung whether the fiend is weak, average or strong, only the bard knows that.

They chose to leave, to flee, right at the start. They weren't forced to flee. You were just wrong. Accept it and move on.

They chose to flee, sure. It was the conservative thing to do since, as you point out, they don't know the strength of the fiend. Given multiple of them died to the fiend, fleeing seems to have been the right move. And it still didn't save them.

Now, maybe they didn't handle the fiend properly after fleeing and quaffing. We don't know. Maybe, if all the fiends had been crappy, and they'd all stayed, they could have killed Kyaltaru. Maybe. But as it turns out the fiends weren't crappy and they ended up dying *despite* doing the conservative "stay alive at all costs" thing.

You're absolutely right. But Dwog is asserting that the bard made them flee, meaning he overpowered them and forced them to flee by his amazing strength. That's simply untrue, as the log obviously shows. They chose to flee when they did. Sure, maybe that was the smart thing to do in that particular instance, but it had nothing to do with the bard fighting them for 14 rounds and making them flee.

He put an affect on them that eventually killed two of them, despite them doing everything in their power not to die. Essentially he made them flee. Had they not fled they'd have died even more quickly.

It wasn't an "immediate" overpowering thing since it took a while for the fiend to do its work. So, technically, they could have hung around a while longer before actually turning into a ghost. But to have a decent chance of surviving (without prior knowledge of how strong the fiend was) they basically had to GTFO as quickly as possible.

Staying to fight the bard would not have helped. One flee and using a resist mental and standing and fighting a fiend is about the best you can do (or word). Otherwise the bard will make you flee with songs, in most cases.

Do you realize that the next song after fiend will be "echoes" (followed up by force-flee song)?
Do you realize that once distorted you will have even harder time against a fiend (especially as a mage).
Do you realize that leaving as soon as possible was perhaps the smartest move in order to survive?

No, they weren't forced to flee by the bard, they were forced to flee by having a clue.

>Do you realize that once distorted you will have even harder
>time against a fiend (especially as a mage).

Out of curiousity, what's your reasoning for this?

Besides general trolling, being able to cast something like vampiric touch on a random mob may help

their damage output is still near nill and their tanking in most cases is pretty poor, what percent of mages do you think achieve perfected defenses other then goodie conjies and how long into the char do you think they do this?

couple this with the fact that unless they have a great set they may only have 700-850 hp. so while they aren't taking dismembers/mangles they add up.

PLus I have fought fiends with all these classes and without taking absolutly everything to fight them you have a low survival rate, even with everything to fight them I had a low survival rate. ( I do take more risks then most though)

As posted elsewhere...

I don't think I've died to a fiend in a long, long time. Barring situations where the bard had a friend with him, slept me, sung me up, then fiended and proceeded to gang me with his friend. Or possibly situations where I'm already wounded or otherwise messed up when the bard sings it.

Then again, I sort of view resist mental as a near-prereq when fighting a bard, just because it is SO good. You can use stoneskin against a warrior, but doing so doesn't semi-nerf almost all his relevant class skills. With bards it kind of does.

I will admit that orcs are somewhat screwed by having a fixed recall point and no healer. That, and forced wimpy flee. Same for rager giants. And, honestly, someone who isn't prepared and gets slept, even by a solo bard, could potentially die if he's not sufficiently buff (or loaded with gold for heal-healing).

Some questions about fiend, though, that I've always wondered about:

1. If you get fiended when you don't have resist mental up, does it buy you anything to flee from the fiend and put it up after the fact?

2. Does the courageous edge work to mitigate the strength of fiends you'll get when someone sings it at you?

3. Does the courageous edge reduce the likelihood that the fiend will make you flee while you're fighting it, thereby juicing itself?

4. Does having high morale mitigate the strength of fiends you'll get when someone sings it at you?

>1. If you get fiended when you don't have resist mental up,
>does it buy you anything to flee from the fiend and put it up
>after the fact?

Absolutely. I mean, even if it did nothing else, the damage that comes out of a phantasmal killer is mental damage.

>2. Does the courageous edge work to mitigate the strength of
>fiends you'll get when someone sings it at you?

Somewhat!

>3. Does the courageous edge reduce the likelihood that the
>fiend will make you flee while you're fighting it, thereby
>juicing itself?

I think so.

>4. Does having high morale mitigate the strength of fiends
>you'll get when someone sings it at you?

Indirectly yes; higher morale is helpful in making mental saves.

Does the Macho flaw help against the fiend? It should!

To my mind, it should make you more vulnerable. After all, you're already a nut case.