To me they seem powergamey/cheap.

Are they held to a higher bar as far as killing mages at a time when other races/classes have to work for it?

Maybe I'm just too prideful.

invis and auto sneak. yum. follow until weak while ranking then hit some vulns.

That won't work.

Truesight is a lvl 25 power. For both BattleRagers and Applicants. Hence, if you're a sneaking, invisible mage, they have no way to tell you're there. Where is no help.

His response was appropriate considering my misplacement of the post. Svirf/assassin will see said mage on where.

My post was supposed to go under Batman.

Dark and high elves both have a steep experience penalty, therefore they will be up against far tougher foes, even though they have the advantage of stealth. Its one of the reasons why humans in a deathful class are so effective, they tend to have the easiest, most favourable pk range (class penalties permitting). They can levelsit at a sweet spot, and cherry pick easy kills collecting gear/edge points/charges.

My post was meant to go under Batman.

NA

Having played both Svirf and Assassin Villagers (along with a host of others) I found the following things to be true:

1. When you're a Svirf, mages are exponentially more wary of your intentions than any other race. I found that pre-applicant most mages would go out of the way to not be in the same area as me, and as that character would not lie for his first kill it was much, much more difficult to get a kill with a Svirf than with a Dwarf, Arial, etc.

2. It's not an Assassin's ability to see invisible that gets him the easy kills. It's hide. Because of this the easiest class to get lowbie mage kills with is Thug Thief. I had nine mage PKs with my Thug and I'm not a very good PKer now. In 2009 I was terrible, yet still managed to get those nine kills.

So, it might seem like Svirfs and Assassins have an advantage, but I'd put forth that the Assassin's advantage has nothing to do with heightened awareness, and a Svirf is actually at a disadvantage.

In that they have a huge advantage over other apps being able to hide and see invis.

Beyond that, I think that no matter how you shake it out any pre-25 rager applicant that can see invis will have a significant advantage over ones that cannot, at least when it comes to "chances at getting the mage kill". This is balanced out a bit by the fact that svirfs and assassins have to rely on trip to get the kill. While other apps may not get the same amount of tries, they are likely to be more effective when they do get them with bash.

If you ask me, there is nothing more frustrating than running around for an hour only to find that one visible mage in your pk range and have him go invis on you as soon as he sees you. Hell, sometimes its just nice knowing what magi are out there that you can hunt.

In general, I think mages are going to be wary of any rogue warrior they don't know who is running about and avoid them. The only difference is the method they have to use to avoid them.

really?

Thug thief has an easier time too.

As an assassin though, killing a mage should be easy.

And no, they aren't held to a higher bar. They're just suited to being battle apps.

Just like druids are suited to being outlanders, since they are so self-sufficient.

you know because all they have to do is bash and there is no escape...


each combo has its strengths and weaknesses I don't see it as being a big deal that some people have advantages in detection and others have advantages in sealing (keep in mind vs a svirf you generally need just fly to remove all their lag options and assassins aren't usually super nasty melee wise in the low ranks)

That bash success rate got toned down at low levels, that people can see giants coming (unless they are rangers), and that anyone that reduces can't be bashed.

detects are one advantage that svirfs/assassins have over other applicants but its not the only or even neccesarily the best one. that will change a lot based on the crop of potential victims out there. Other skills that are very valueble as an applicant include lagging, burst damage, and concealment.

And from another standpoint maybe svirfs should get something extra once they get into battle since one of their supposed super benefits is totally negated by everyone getting detect invis once they get truesight. It seems to me that most villagers spend more time as villagers then applicants so it would only be fair to give them something more to make up for their lack of additional bonus.

Worst part about rolling a villager is playing through applicant status. Svirfneblin in particular have a lot of advantages which enable them to run through applicant status quick as hell.

The fact that they spend so little time as an applicant relative to being a villager is pretty much one of their biggest perks. Meanwhile, other characters often end up spending a lot more time looking for a non-invis non-guild-sitting mage to kill.

The earlier you get mage kills, the earlier you get applicant status, the earlier you get inducted and start to wipe your range with unmatchable damage reduction/damage output. The difference between lowbie village applicant and lowbie full villager is unspeakably huge, and slogging through the applicant status as quickly as possible is probably the single most efficient way to improve the number of kills/reduce the number of deaths you get.

Have fun retrieving from Empire when they have a bard and healer on and any warrior. Course, I get the feeling you just might be the player that would log off in that situation or go hide somewhere (which makes me sad because I loved Bliggy).

Cavaet: From the builds I've played, that is (Fire Axe zerker, Duergar dagger defender, dwarf mace zerker).

-Offensive forms with blunt damage are going to ruin your world. The people who make it look easy might stand out to you but stoneskin and resist don't look so good when your eating rhino trample. This vulnerability is not limited to top teir forms either, if they are geared with ABS you have zero room for error if you want to fight them.

-Bash. All human size people bash you like giants basically. You suddenly realize how many people have bash as a svirf and getting pissed when dark elves can perma lag you


Basically size small and blunt are pretty huge vulns you have zero way of covering as a svirf villager. Thats a big disadvatage over the life of a 100-200 hour character compared to the difference in time it takes to get a mage kill from svirf to not-svirf of same class

I think most people get that mage kill even without detect with less then 5 hours actually dedicated to hunting.

An offensive shifter hitting a vuln has only a 50% chance of beating a villager provided he thirsts in the first 2 rounds.

Also bash for non giants is pretty unreliable due to weight. Try playing an elf with greeting and eating roots for giant size...doesn't even compare.

Cause really, adding more dam reduction to villagers just makes them all the tougher. Granted, an invoker can stoneshatter it, if they get it through spell bane but most people really just have to deal with it and hit them all the more.

Fighting a svirf villager that takes gates, puts up resist and stoneskin, and you see pretty quick that not as lot of melee classes can beat him, unless maybe he is a scout since spell evasion and critical probably aren't helping him where as deathblow/thirst or healing ability would.

Vulns only matter if you land strikes that exploit it too. Vibrato is great against them for example, but if they are not getting hit all that often the vuln does not matter. And keep in mind a vuln exploit is not going to multiply damage anywhere near what deathblow will.

If more svirfs took defender or scout, I don't think anyone would complain about them as much. Thing is most go berserker, and thirst + deathblow + resist + stoneskin is going to pretty much beat a lot of other single char builds in Thera in a straight fight since only a few classes can probably get equivalent or better dam redux, but they can't ever really match the damage output of the deathblow capable svirf, and those who can match the damage output tend not to have the same level of dam redux. Then again, I really do not see many people going against villagers 1 v. 1 anymore, so sort of a moot point.

Bards being an exception in their ability to rape villagers of course, but that's mostly because of strong melee defense, distortion, and vibrato, and really even then the bard does not have a win button by any means. The general ways I see svirf berserkers being beaten are generally just not available to a lot of builds though in a 1 v 1 fight. Hard to perma lag them, and even if you do you have to exceed their melee ability which is always difficult against a berserker. Hard to match them just in pure damage output too. Basically, villagers you have to fight them with a bit more tactics than others because rarely will you just win a straight up slug fest against them.

All of this is working under the assumption they have the head of course.

If they did not have inherent sskin, would anyone play a rager svirf?

They have mediocre stats, small size without the ability to enlarge, and the most exploitable vuln in the game that is completely uncoverable unless you get a crack team of elite Forties and a nexus outcast to help you.

ETA: I guess Alston would play one so he could get a Mage kill for Tahren, though. . j/k!

I imagineYou'd still see more svirf villagers than gnomes even removing inh stoneskin from svirfs. Conversely, if you gave gnomes inh stoneskin, I imagine you'd see a hell of a lot more of them in the village instead of them always being shifters.

Generally my point was just that the best perk of a svirf villager is stoneskin, not detect invis or any of their other abilities. I do not think svirf villagers are OP at all. Just saying they can be tough little bastards when you add up berserker powers + stoneskin, and claiming that vuln just doesn't sell me on them being in dire need of it. Pincersvirf is a cliche for a reason.

And cause I was bored I wrote out a brief imaginary dialogue between some IMPS when they conceived svirfs in general, showing why I could never even approach doing what Imms do.

Twist: "Nice race we came up with, looks like a viable variant on gnomes for people who want to be a bit more melee oriented but still keeps with them making viable mages."
Daev: "Looks good. But what if players want to play a svirf rager? Nobody will because of that massive vuln we gave them just like nobody plays gnome villagers. I don't think rager resist is enough dam redux to make it survivable."
Twist: "Oh ####, you're probably right. I guess they need an inherent ability to grant them dam redux for a time to cover that so people will play them as villagers"
Daev: "Fine we'll do that. Svirfs are earth things, inherent stoneskin will take care of that. And it's an inherent ability not magical at all, so they can use it. Hey Thror, you're finally going to have a bunch of midgets running around the village!"
At this point Thror starts swearing about people sissifying his village.
Daev "Now then, should we do anything about gnomes in the village?"
Twist: "F*** gnomes, we'll just create the shapeshifter class for them instead."
Zulgh: "Fine, but in then I'm going to code skills called punt, cross, and leverage, just so people can enjoy kicking the little bastards all over Thera."

Yep. That's probably how it all went down.

That's kind of how the conversation goes in my head, too, only I add in a little commentary about giving svirfs a grab-bag of resists, too (like fistlaw mentions below) just to make sure people will play them

So I guess I wasn't clear but I was agreeing with you that inherent sskin is by far the main factor that makes svirf a playable/desirable rager race. Otherwise everyone would just play dwarves. I couldn't wait to use that line about the crack Fortie and nexus outcast team and that may have obscured my point.

The only part where I diverge is that I think all that crap is given to svirfs because without it, they are a sucky mediocre race that no one will play. I have a feeling stoneskin benefiting Ragers was just an afterthought balancing consideration where the designers said, "oh what the hell, it's not a gamebreaker.". In fact, I remember the first time svirfs got the inherent there was a debate over whether it was magical. And over time I think PK counts have shown that svirfs, while competitive, are not the deadliest option. My guess is that's because of their size and inability to efficiently lag in most cases (i.e., enlarge yourself and remove a vast majority of the ways a rager svirf can finish you).

And the fact that Ragers can't otherwise get stoneskin and every other player can buy it for 200 coppers is why there are sooooooooo many more svirf Ragers than svirf anything else (again what I was discussing with fistlaw below) - stoneskin is a goldmine to a rager, but not that valuable to the rest of the game which means non-rager svirfs are devalued.

Sorry for the long-windedness I just think they're a funny, committee-design race.


Eta: damn autocorrect.

With STR-DEX-CON being 22-20-22. This is much better than 18-20-18 of gnomes, who are more suitable for magic while svirfs for being a warrior. No other warrior race except for humans have all of STR-DEX-CON at 20 or above. I think this is partly behind svirf's success as a warrior race. So, mediocre stats with no glaring combat weaknesses. As for their popularity, it is mediocre. Personally, I liked playing a svirf axe spec in PK when I had one.

They have no "weaknesses" but they have no strengths, either. That's not "nice," that's mediocre. And you can't compare them to gnomes, which are hands down the weakest warrior race.

Here's the deal: if you set the perks aside, why would you play a svirf over a dwarf? You wouldn't. Even if you set aside the vulns and size factor, too, and just looked at stats, you would still take the 25 v 22 con over the 20 v 18 dex, almost every time. That's why svirfs keep getting the sweet loving to at least make them remotely desirable - or in the case of Battle, legitimately desirable.

I'm not trying to bash the little guys, I'm just trying to make the case that all the little perks are pretty necessary based on their size, stats, and oh yeah, that's right, the most exploitable vuln in CF. Whenever you think about a svirf build, you are building it around the perks.

nt

It's easier for a random spec warrior to be able to exploit iron than blunt, assuming he himself does not have an iron vuln, of course.

But what if you're fighting a shifter, invoker, necromancer, conjurer, druid, etc.?

nt

sdfv

Hardly anyone playing a mage at those levels is going to be packing reduce and use it to try to fight a Battle applicant.

I mean, I do that, but probably 98% of mages are going for the return potion instead.

I honestly HATE being a lowbie mage, despite having seen what some people (invokers in particular) can pull off.

And get back to me because you are dead wrong.

I fought multiple lowbie mages in the last year packing reduce which means they are unlaggable with a flying potion.

The changes to purchasing from shopkeepers allow them to buy reduce pre-25 which is a gamebreaker for lowbie pk with a mage.

I assume I was playing all of those lowbie mages.

... that being said, lowbie invokers can be incredibly powerful pre-25.

I tried! Several times!

haha

... and lowbie mage PK is fun, but definitely more challenging in terms of risk mitigation than hero invoker PK. I had a much poorer ratio pre-shields than post-shields.

nt

and did ok...

I love you, Thrak. <3

Was I supposed to invoke it or anything?

IIRC, yes.

nt

NT

26-4.

I died a string of stupid deaths to make it 4, but still.

Anyway, reanimate is ####ing STRONG. It's a killer as nobody expects a 20 necro to wipe out all your hp in two rounds.

That said, it's nothing like the easy killing I could pull off as Bhostnak, without detect invis up 90% of the time.

Excluding avoidable situational contexts: Bash > everything a lowbie necro can do.

And he wtfpwns you and loots your newbie breads

While we're on the topic of lowbie mages, did I mention corpse thrall is a ####ing beautiful spell. Not incredibly practical since most people won't fight you in graveyards(unless they don't know about those sneaky rogue graveyard rooms laying around), but really strong when you can use it and has just the right kind of necro flair.

It was actually the only reason I even bothered to make a necro.

Whoever made that spell and reanimate, I will eat your butt hole. I really love that necros are so strong in graveyards, they should be.

Except for the eating ass part

...I really think svirfs could use a modification or two to make them less appealing to the rager power-gamer and more appealing to...everyone else. They come premade with a stupid amount of "cruise control." Yet, in Theran history there really doesn't seem to be any reason why they are this way.

Is it really that they're such awesome ragers, or that they're so much better at being ragers than they are at anything else. I suspect the latter just looking at pure pk stats ... How would you fix that without just making them an undesirable rager race? :p

Remove their innate resist magic. Duergar and dwarves have this already. If anything, elves and dark-elves should have this sort of thing. Svirfs have it "just because." It doesn't make sense, and looking at the helpfile does nothing to clarify it. If this were gone they would STILL be a hugely popular rager race.


I mean look at their PROS:
Resist Magic, Poison, Disease. Inherent Stoneskin. Each and every one of those is a big deal. Vuln? Blunt. Like gnomes, sure, but they have stoneskin and (90% of the time) rager resist going for them.

They get stoneskin and a skill all ragers get at 25...


For non ragers they get bonuses no other race can replicate to invoker earth spells and earth elementals.

The only reason you don't see more svirf mages is that they have poopy int and while their wis is good; gnome is just better (same reason you never see wood elf warriors, their stats are good but arial is just better)

You don't see svirf rangers because their size and terrain choices give crappy bearcharge, you don't see many thieves because their size penalizes blackjack and trip.

I think a non rager svirf warrior has more potential because they can actually fully leverage autumns harvest with reduce potions. That legacy is beastly when you can manage a 2 size or more difference.

Resist magic, poison, and disease. Poison and disease are powerful against ragers (especially rager apps). Magic is a no-brainer. Plus stoneskin.

All of that is priceless for a rager.

Also, the bonuses of a svirf rager over a svirf invoker are not equal. Rager, with resist, with stoneskin on top of that, is sick. I've fought enough to know.

The only race/class I feel sorry for are bards. It would take a sad mage to die to a lonely lowbie bard without magic. But somehow bards manage to get that mage PK.

I tried it with a high elf. If you can't do it real early, you almost end up having to wait til at a minimum 25 when you get enhanced damage. And by then mage kills won't just be a one or two rounder. Basically you end up having to get lucky if you want to get one early.

If you're not willing to do anything cheap, like betray a groupmate, it is a real pain, especially for elf/wood elf since they have such high exp pen. Trip and second attack with no enhanced damage and crappy hp, yeah, not easy to get a kill early a lot of times. You basically have to pray for a high damage piercing dissonance I would think.

I remember my high elf bard became an applicant 47. I got a kill using grand nocturne. Borkahd laughed at me, think I was the oldest app he had ever seen.

Only saving thing is bards are alright without village powers cause they have songs that prep them and healing.

Still a pain though

That helps a lot.

Was practically begging two water shifters to fight him on the water so he could have a shot at getting his kill around the 30's.

~