I submit for the approval of the Midnight Society cf players/Immortals, an idea to change deathblow.

What I would like to suggest is that instead of deathblow being a question of how many goats you sacrificed to the RNG gods and hitting for (#)x damage, or dispelling, it instead punishes the use of preps.

As it stands now, you want to fight a zerker without having to sit on a cushion for a week? You prep up. You want to be sure you can beat him? Prep to the teeth.

The bi products of this understanding is that it
1: Severely punishes newbies who dont know preps
2: Slows the game down by making players spend more time gathering preps
3: Allows insurmountable opponents in those who can prep to the teeth consistently

(Aspect of deathblow itself):Sycophants to the RNG gods (cranial/bash/pincer spammers)

I am sure you can think of more.

My proposal:

With the new replacement skill, Magebane, berserkers will punish enemies for using otherworldly means to protect and enhance themselves.

What this means:
1: Against those unprepped, berserkers will do normal damage.
2: Against prepped foes, berserker will do extra damage on all attacks, in addition to cutting through the otherworldly defenses of their enemies.

Implications of this:
1: Parity. Finding someone unprepped won't be a free win if the rng gods smile upon you, and prepping to the teeth wont make berserkers a joke.
2: Fewer one trick ponies spamming lag and hoping the RNG gods are smiling.
3: Players wont be running the opposite way if they see a berserker and they havent eaten their wheaties for a few ticks.
4: Players will be making the decision that they can go in with some dam redux and take a little more damage, or they can go in with nothing and be at risk from other non berserkers who did prep.
5: No more crying that "you only beat me because deathblow fired so many times."


Minor bi products of this:
1: Zerkers wont absolutely dominate npcs with their damage
2: Vanguard may need to be changed for Nexus


One negative aspect of this is that deathblow is a very cool ability, and it does add flavor to CF, but while not "overpowered" it does create some problems.

So...Flame on. A humble proposal.

edit:removed smilie faces, and I am an idiot for not realizing the first title was an allusion to satire. Downs is a tough disease.

>Minor bi products of this:
>1: Zerkers wont absolutely dominate npcs with their damage
>

I'd like to add that the statement quoted above is not a "minor bi product" of your and other, similar, suggested changes. Because BattleRagers can't heal, can't use protections other than resist, can't magically transport, have a limited pool of people to rank with, etc., deathblow is a huge, arguably necessary, aid to ranking time and efficiency.

Ranking was something I'd always dreaded when I thought about rolling up a Rager, but somewhere around level 40 I realized "hey, this isn't that bad compared to other characters I've played, thank God for deathblow."

This is something I think people should keep in mind when making suggestions to Battle.

This is far more indicative of a problem with the cabal as a whole than DB being balanced because it makes ranking awesome.

A defender can do just fine without a berserker, so yes, they can heal. They also can have bards in the cabal. If the problem is no healing, the solution is simple: recruit bards and defenders. There is no law in CF about cabal leaders saying 'We're recruiting X classes. If you are not X class, it's time for you to #### off.'

Using non-cabal healers only very rarely factors into ranking and only depending on your group composition. It's more frequently abused by neutrals with bad RP (darsylon, darsylon, akan, darsylon) than it is an actually clever move (arkham crypts for goodies, who need an edge like that since the imms made it pointlessly more difficult).

If you want an actual tank in Village, stop recruiting people with no dex or tanking legacies or use more doubleblock. The mana is an issue but bards can do this neat trick where they turn off autoassist, get drunk as hell and rest instead of swinging their sword pointlessly when their weapon skills are 100%. People taking a scout are often going to be some version of: tank warrior, assassin, bard anyway.

In short: total red herring.

Bard Repertoire Clarifications:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=23735&mesg_id=23735&page=

You say a number of things which work in theory, but that I think you would come to realize are unrealistic or unworkable in practice if you spent any significant amount of time playing Battle.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Really.

>This is far more indicative of a problem with the cabal as a
>whole than DB being balanced because it makes ranking
>awesome.
>


I was not saying DB is balanced because it makes ranking awesome, I was saying DB as it exists has a significant impact on ranking, and changing DB in the way the OP (and you) suggested would have more than a "minor" affect on Ragers ranking.

Further, I was saying that if he (and you) are going to make suggestions on ways to tweak Rager powers, you should probably consider the entire experience of being a Rager as opposed to focusing on extreme examples of 1v1 Rager v. Non-Rager-PC matchups.

My thoughts on whether or not Ragers are balanced are very complicated. I realize it's embarrassing to say your thoughts about a text game are "very complicated," but.. um.. there it is. In fact, it's almost too complicated for me to just spit them all out in response to this particular suggestion on tweaking DB. Further, I think two people can have completely different experiences playing a Rager. For example, if I deleted Malakhi after 250ish hours, back when Woldrun first con-died, I would have thought Ragers were awesomely powered and fun, based on the Rager backup I had and the level of PK competition I had. But over the next 300ish hours of the character, when I was, at times, one of 2 hero-range Ragers in the entire cabal, I had a very different experience. And that's just in the lifetime of one character. I can imagine someone like Abernyte or maybe even you, if you ever play a Rager, having a different perception than mine.

Setting the above aside, for now, I'll just settle on saying that all things considered, DB "works" to maintain a competitive balance. I think, for example, that imperial training, black circle, and imperial spies are all just as sickly powerful, as well, but at the end of the day, they generally "work," all things considered.


Also, FWIW, I disagree with the below, and/or think your suggestions are comparable with balancing easy-XP ranking spots on the assumption that enemy PCs will be a constant threat to rankers there.


>A defender can do just fine without a berserker, so yes, they
>can heal. They also can have bards in the cabal. If the
>problem is no healing, the solution is simple: recruit bards
>and defenders. There is no law in CF about cabal leaders
>saying 'We're recruiting X classes. If you are not X class,
>it's time for you to #### off.'
>
>Using non-cabal healers only very rarely factors into ranking
>and only depending on your group composition. It's more
>frequently abused by neutrals with bad RP (darsylon, darsylon,
>akan, darsylon) than it is an actually clever move (arkham
>crypts for goodies, who need an edge like that since the imms
>made it pointlessly more difficult).
>
> If you want an actual tank in Village, stop recruiting people
>with no dex or tanking legacies or use more doubleblock. The
>mana is an issue but bards can do this neat trick where they
>turn off autoassist, get drunk as hell and rest instead of
>swinging their sword pointlessly when their weapon skills are
>100%. People taking a scout are often going to be some version
>of: tank warrior, assassin, bard anyway.
>
>In short: total red herring.

In logs, sure deathblow looks hot. You know who I am, as I played Sarien when you played Lortas. I just got done playing Nurok. And yes, I was pretty successful with PK. However, with deathblow *and any village powers for that matter* come low surviability. To give you an idea, I died six times with Hakdu, and well over fifteen with Nurok. While both of them had far more kills than deaths, I can say with all certainty that if I had the use of preps with Nurok, my death count would have been way way lower.

I can also tell you that as Sarien, I killed Borkahd/Grawshen far more times than they ever killed me.

As it stands, ragers have some very powerful cabal powers, and with good reason....its all they have, and it is all they can get.

Also, if your cabal loses its item, you can still prep to the teeth, and the poor rager now has no powers other than a detect invis ability which now hurts him... cannot prep, cannot recall/teleport EVER how does that work out in balance?

The life of a villager is much much harder than I think you understand, I posted a log of dying as nurok where 2 people cycled trips for 20 something rounds...know what I could do to stop it...nothing. I have pleanty more logs of Nuroks deaths, where I would _never_ have died if my char was not a rager.

My advice to you is

roll up a rager berserker warrior, and see how you fare.

-Sarien

Because even if you find out you can't stand to play a Battle berserker warrior, playing one seriously (including at hero -- just because to see the full picture in this case you need to ultimately experience the whole range of levels) will teach you so much more about how to kill them than anything else ever could.

What you are proposing is overpowered.

Don't forget that at times, berserkers do gang. If one can dispel the protections for all the others...

With all respect to people who know more about this game than I do, this sounds great to me. Because DB apparently only seems overpowered to people who don't know how to counter it, newbies. Why should villagers overpower the people they shouldn't have a problem against? Newbie players playing physical classes. As a physical class playing without preps, it just seems like, don't mess with Battleragers, they have game mechanics on their side. I'm no good at pk, and anyone who knows what they're doing dominates me, but I have an easier time against villagers with mages than I do with physical classes, it just doesn't seem right.

I think either CF should embrace this, or make it Battle law that you shouldn't attack physical reliant classes. I know that would make it so badass physical class players could attack Battle at will if these changes went in, but as most Battle players seem to say, playing Battle is a disadvantage, unless of course you're fighting newbies who don't know how to counter it. Why should Battle be geared against these people?

As someone who's played, I won't say a lot, but a fair bit of Battle, physical classes with little to no preps account for majority of my deaths.

asdf

Seriously.

Ragers are underpowered.

It's just when they have a good presence with competant players (who know how to play villagers, gear them, etc, etc) they seem way stronger than they really are.

A villager without the head is one of the easiest PK's in the game.

That nexus arial dagger spec could have punished even more ragers had he realized that a hamstrung rager isn't going to get back to the Village. Hamstring, flee and rest or flee and make them chase, and villager is not going to have the moves to go anywhere or do anything (especially great against sword specs since they can't flurry). Wait out the thirst and it is even worse for a villager.

2: Fewer one trick ponies spamming lag and hoping the RNG gods are smiling.

Sounds like a valid tactic to me. It's no different than sitting at a pit with a bard waiting on a wounded opponent to word in. It's a tactic that's cheap and very effective.

I don't see the problem with deathblow. Deathblow can be stopped by a skill that every single character on the whole entire mud gets. Look up my logs of me as a druid with roughly 600 hp, prepped with only vanguard, killing berserkers. If even ONE deathblow had landed in any of my early Yevandr fights, he would have won. But guess what, that never happened because I parried them all.

After all the villagers I've played, I took the berserker path twice, once as Trewyn, and once to try and remember how much fun I had with Trewyn. I can say this with absolute certainty. I will NEVER play a berserker again. It's hard for me to pick anything except scout. Even when my roles go strongly in favor of defender, I just want to go scout.

Your proposal is based on flawed premises that lead me to believe you haven't spent a whole lot of time playing Battle. As such, I believe it breaks more than it fixes.

If you want the longer version, not to be rude or dismissive but I've been having this argument for about 15 years and there's a lot of long discussions about proposals very similar to yours to be found in the forum archives with some digging.

It is quicker, easier and more fun to grief the players playing berserkers once you figure out how to deal with it (uber tanking, assassinate, high dam redux, efficient scouting, permalag, movement drain, stealth to gang, or any combination of the above) than it is to get DB changed. Obviously not all the latter is available to every character.

Twist can keep whining in my god damn ear as his village leaders for fulling them and I'll continue to do so because the skill is in their powers list until they either don't have the head or it's changed.

Death to Fort, Battle and Outlander forevar.

Bard Repertoire Clarifications:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=23735&mesg_id=23735&page=

I was kind of hopeful when you managed to make a post earlier in the week and not come off as a complete tool, but, here we are again.