So, I know that conjurer is supposed to be a very much 'learn by experimentation' class but CF is notorious for punishing you for trying to read too much *or* too little into things. (see recent drag/enlarge discussion)

So we need some clarification for intermediate tactics on how to play this class.

1. At the low levels, both solo levelling and tanking in PK long enough for your damage to pay off is a problem. Obvious issues are your HP pool, your familair's hp pool (they are pretty much useless for tanking or initiation without both warded and warrior familiar, just begging you to waste CON) how much of a risk you are willing to take with getting/using your stone skin and protection preps if applicable, skill level and weapon choice for parry and shield block, effective and early use of warp dimension against high damage opponents with fewer swings in melee, choosing whether you need shield block or not, ensuring your servitors are higher level than your target in order for melee to hit, and the happiness of your servitors. Conjurers clearly meet or exceed the damage of most early-mid level warriors, but are fragile before a/b/s, and are particularly fragile if you continue to use the chaotic servitors. Is there anything I'm missing so that some level 19 drow warrior at half health doesn't tool or chase off a level 25 or 27 conjurer in 3 or 4 rounds? A level 19 warrior of any race should pretty much explode against a level 25ish conjurer even with just an elemental.

2. Nepenthe mentioned the usage of challegha demons specifically against tanky opponents in order to take advantage of their frequent and powerful usage of acid-elemental direct damage spells. The playerbase immediately rebuffed him with how difficult it was to actually check several areas and still keep a challegha sufficiently fed and happy at early levels without losing so much HP that you can't actually tank your target. Challegha require a near constant source of corpses and are known to jump their conjurers at sub-25% hp if pissed off, where a sub-25% conjurer obviously isn't going to be finding corpses. When a challegha consumes a corpse, what affects it?

Mob align prior to death?
Mob level prior to death?
Mob size/corpse size prior to death?
Can/should challegha consume undead?
How can a conjurer keep a challegha happy enough to actually hunt and prep for his opponent and not have to stop for corpses every 6-12 ticks?

3.All demons autoattack certain classes on-sight. Except in cases where these classes are restricted to one alignment, are all of these demons alignment-indifferent when choosing their targets? (I've seen challegha assault gnome shapeshifters but not seen mors-gravis assault sanced evil clerical class mobs)

4.Mobs currently change target if their current target is immune to their damage type in melee, typically to the player. Anyway to tweak this behavior for lowbie solo ranking purposes?

5.The level at which you get relevant protective circles is 22 and 27. This creates a pointless noobtrap which almost certainly results in a loss of XP if they get unlucky, or a pointless waste of time since binding a servitor in combat is impossible even if it's in combat with a groupmate or your familiar instead of you. Can we bump the conjure elemental and conjure demon/angel skills to levels 22 and 27 instead of 20 and 25? Sure it might be cute to teach noobs about how you are dealing with the RL equivalent of a wild animal when playing conjurers but it really is a pointless yet painful lesson.

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

Since you asked questions all over the place here are some answers.

1.) Can conjurers beat level 19 warriors?
Yeah you should actually be able to beat a lot of these level 19 warriors without even having an elemental (magic missle plus familiar). Conjies are pretty strong at every rank after 12 and I would go as far to say over powered as far as PK is concerned from level 27-51. The only mitigating factor is your skills have a chance to kill you, barring that you should be able to overwhelm anyone single target then a lich if you plan for the engagement right.

2.) Why use challegha I hear its bunk?

So demons (and all servitors) have specific strengths. A generally good strategy is to pair the strength of your servitor against the weakness of your enemy. For instance if you are fighting an arial sword spec their strength is parrying lots of melee attacks. It would likely be a bad choice then to use 2 servitors that deal most of their damage with melee attacks such as an elemental and a harmentia demon. In this case the challegha shines because its acid blast completly ignores parry/dodge/shield block and will deal direct damage attacking the arials low HP. Conversly if you are fighting a thief (someone with generally poor melee defenses) you want to use a demon that does a lot of melee damage (harmentia).

If you are fighting a group you want to use devils because they can hit whole groups (even if you want to pick off one person its very difficult to force your servitors to attack one specific person when engaging groups). When you are in raid situations you often want to use a devil because it can target multiple people (whereas a demon could only hit the cabal inner unless you use special tactics such as letting it get mad so it takes a moment to track allowing you to redirect or convince the defender to hit the demon so it auto tracks in)

3.) What do demons attack?

There are wiki's out there for this, by and large though you can ignore it because its usually in your best interest(or not that big of a cosideration) to initiate combat instead of waiting for them to.

4.) I want easy spam ranking!
Solo ranking isn't that awful really, if you get a decent tank you can match the damage output of two warriors for the most part once you hit 25/27

5.)Make circles lower level
I think conjies are OP enough without making them OP even younger. As nep said you got certain combo's that don't have to worry about circles anyways (svirf-> earth elementals, which by the way are way way nasty I would use earth over water when fighting an arial because they dealt the same amount of damage to the arial but the earth had significantly more HP/dam redux, Goodie humans can also conjure angels with little fear at 25)

I address (that is, state) virtually every point you restated here. My questions either go beyond what you just posted or are incorrect entirely. Re-read 5, and in the case of 3 I am thinking specifically of a situation where you use area knowledge to find a mob fulfilling certain conditions and have the demon go to town on it over the course of 2-3 repops until it whittles itself down and you kill it, thus avoiding ever worrying about it being pissed off.

as far as number 3 goes if you just want to kill off a demon then you can attack a big mob, flee, let it kill your demon and be done with it.

You can even use phase door to avoid having the mob track you.

If you have a shortage of mobs just drop a circle and c 'conjure angel', you can also use this (calling a weak one) to make your demon happy.


As far as 5 goes I would say why not just raise the level of the conjures to the level of the circle? The way it is gives you a risk/reward decision.

>As far as 5 goes I would say why not just raise the level of
>the conjures to the level of the circle? The way it is gives
>you a risk/reward decision.


I... I just...

buh... wha...

what

you need to read 5 a third time.

Regardless, I've gotten all the questions I wanted answered answered.

>Is there anything I'm missing so that some
>level 19 drow warrior at half health doesn't tool or chase off
>a level 25 or 27 conjurer in 3 or 4 rounds? A level 19 warrior
>of any race should pretty much explode against a level 25ish
>conjurer even with just an elemental.

There must be, because effective conjurers at those levels aren't that rare. I'd say most of the conjurers who don't power straight towards archon/whatever and do some PK in the 20s are successful at it, and I've heard more than one person say they thought conjurers were too tough at those levels.

>2. Nepenthe mentioned the usage of challegha demons
>specifically against tanky opponents in order to take
>advantage of their frequent and powerful usage of
>acid-elemental direct damage spells. The playerbase
>immediately rebuffed him with how difficult it was to actually
>check several areas and still keep a challegha sufficiently
>fed and happy at early levels without losing so much HP that
>you can't actually tank your target. Challegha require a near
>constant source of corpses and are known to jump their
>conjurers at sub-25% hp if pissed off, where a sub-25%
>conjurer obviously isn't going to be finding corpses. When a
>challegha consumes a corpse, what affects it?
>
>Mob align prior to death?
>Mob level prior to death?
>Mob size/corpse size prior to death?
>Can/should challegha consume undead?
>How can a conjurer keep a challegha happy enough to actually
>hunt and prep for his opponent and not have to stop for
>corpses every 6-12 ticks?

PC corpses are best. Failing that, higher level is better.

You're also making an assumption about when challegha will attack which is almost always incorrect.

>3.All demons autoattack certain classes on-sight. Except in
>cases where these classes are restricted to one alignment, are
>all of these demons alignment-indifferent when choosing their
>targets? (I've seen challegha assault gnome shapeshifters but
>not seen mors-gravis assault sanced evil clerical class mobs)

Challegha care only about how hurt their would-be prey is. Depending on how happy they are, they may not attack the conjurer or his allies when they would attack anyone else in the same condition.

Other demons may care about alignment, class, and/or race.

>4.Mobs currently change target if their current target is
>immune to their damage type in melee, typically to the player.
>Anyway to tweak this behavior for lowbie solo ranking
>purposes?

I don't think I'm going to.

>5.The level at which you get relevant protective circles is 22
>and 27. This creates a pointless noobtrap which almost
>certainly results in a loss of XP if they get unlucky, or a
>pointless waste of time since binding a servitor in combat is
>impossible even if it's in combat with a groupmate or your
>familiar instead of you. Can we bump the conjure elemental and
>conjure demon/angel skills to levels 22 and 27 instead of 20
>and 25? Sure it might be cute to teach noobs about how you are
>dealing with the RL equivalent of a wild animal when playing
>conjurers but it really is a pointless yet painful lesson.

That makes the class weaker for anyone who does know what they're doing, so I don't support that change.

For example, I could build a svirf conjurer that wouldn't be all that afraid to conjure earth elementals without a circle.

a) Some familiars tank better than others. Imp for example, tanked fine for me prior to me taking familiar edges and prior to getting quest-imp. Phase wasp can also tank decently at these kind of levels from what I've seen.
b) Conjies can spam warp dimension to VASTLY improve tanking at low level. It's very effective at feinting and can feint 2 attacks per round iirc, plus it can mod hitroll and damroll down.
c) Even at low level, a conjie can get hold of protective wands.
d) There are ways to handle servitors without circles. Sometimes it involves groupmates, sometimes it involves having an ally leave a circle for you, sometimes it involves dismissal. Can't swear they'd all work as a lowbie, but I know at hero I eventually figured out several ways to handle even the strongest servitors when they turned on me.