Walk me through exactly how this ISN'T overpowered?

http://forums.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?3,1009722,1009722#msg-1009722

If any villager wonders why I will never fight them again without barrier take a look at this log.

I know Daevryn said it won't get changed because it's some people's favorite part of the game, it'd be a pretty favorite part of my game too if I could do nothing and get free wins.

There are fights that make deathblow look sick. This isn't one of them to me.

Even as lucky as the warrior got in this fight, deathblow damage only accounted for on the order of two extra hits.

You'd have a log with pretty much the same outcome from an uncaballed warrior with similar damroll etc. if he'd gotten luckier and hit the second bash... or if he'd been wielding a staff instead of a spear... or if he'd been using some better progged gear like prayer beads... and so on.

Isn't spear the more offensive of the two?

Nt

I have accepted there are things I cannot change, however, I think spellbane should be weakened in some manner, perhaps buffed in damage that spellbane itself does, but not granting an extra round of combat, or simply working less often. It is especially ridiculous when the rager is picking on lower levels.

At least with Elystan I understand why he complains.

But you, DC, and assorted others beat down ragers left and right...but still complain about rager powers? Huh?

Rindros did not have to suffer with half of the rng of ragers, since he never casted on them. But having to roll the dice on both spellbane as well as play the deathblow lottery is incredibly frustrating.

When I fight ragers I know that I have to REALLY outplay them to win. I also have to be the right class, since using sleep on a rager, which is a major portion of APs and necros, just leads to you getting ganged because once sleep lands parity goes out the window.

If I'm an invoker or a transmuter, I have to either never fight villagers higher rank than me when spellbane might as well be 100% for all the spells I can land, or hope that they aren't skilled enough to do anything but spam lag (most villagers) and overextend.

The bottom line is that I just don't respect villagers because they require no investment for what I consider a high power ceiling. They get drawbacks, but they deal with it by never leaving the rager box and calling for help when they are in trouble.

First off, I agree to a large extent ragers are a "lottery" matchup in a lot of ways, but so are a lot of things about CF (shifters, wands, which people are going to be rolling allies/enemies, etc).

And you are totally out-thinking it to be honest. Now sure, to kill a Graatch or Igbah in the village you are going to have to set up fights, but you'd have to do same if you fought Dwoggurd or Jaguab in Empire. Killing villagers is all about knowing what kills villagers, and the reason a lot of us harp on playing village before you talk #### is we've died as a villager a metric ass-ton.

My last mage killed Twist's Drillmaster without barrier and with him having levels and hours on me. You cam't honestly tell me that you think I'm a better player than Twist, so it means I knew what situations he'd be screwed in as a rager and capitalized on them.

The midrank/transmuter thing is preposterous and frankly just plain misinfo. A well-played trannie has more options than most to PWN village face clean off. As Jindicho only two villagers got me and one was Ohbehb (and the other was Gaplemo so) and I kinda tortured their midranges for a while.

I think what your (and most other players) biggest issue with the time investment argument is short-sighted, because villagers are like gasoline fires in that they burn bright but burn out. You gotta figure that you're going to die so often as a villager that if you had to prep it would be sheer masochism. As a non-villager, I do have to "put in the time" to gather preps but then I can steamroll non-village gangs and any single villager.

Its a lottery MATCHUP, not lottery char rolling.

And no, I am not talking about having to outplay an Igbah. I need to REALLY outplay random pincer spam/cranial spam villager #234223424, simply because spellbane and resist give them a huge margin of error, and time to let them do their usual warrior thing.

You give me one example of a strong villager dying to you. This tells me absolutely nothing.

You also ignore one facet that I despise about the village, that sleep=fu ck parity. One third your enemies have sleep as a core spell, but fu ck them they aren't allowed to use it.

I don't have a lot of experience playing a tranny so I'll defer to your knowledge. They do however have a lot of trouble keeping them in place since neuro isn't an option if they aren't way lower level.

It isn't short sighted at all. You invest nothing into your slot machine, and you'll die early, but you only need to win the rng lottery once vs my AP, while giving him zero charges, and my huge investment goes down the toilet.

Not to mention the numerous "I destroy all magic items" ragers I run into constantly.

... My APs got 99 problems but Ragers ain't one.

Against Battle you may have to pull out early and heal. That is it. That is all. It takes way more effort than any Battle player will ever really have to put in to their character. Except for maybe when they're regearing for the 5th time after you've killed them and sacrificed all their easy-come-easy-go gear.

Berserkers require a good amount of damage reduction. I have a rule of 3s for damage reduction. A resistance you know will work + aura and/or shield and/or stone skin. Also I'll be carrying a metric tonne of gold, pills and potions. But you know what? Once I've gotten all that stuff, the picnic is over for villagers (and orcs, incidentally).

I've had way more Battle survive being slept than if I simply walked in and cleaved or bashed. And I've been on both sides of this scenario, for the record.

Everyone thinks they can win a stand up fight against an AP or necromancer. Use that against them. It gives you lots of opportunity to do damage or plague or whatever is tactically necessary.

I always figured that was the big issue. A player like won't die to a n00b in the Fortress (they are just free pks) but a n00b in the village has a chance and that hurts your ego.

FWIW when you learn how to kill villagers like Nep and I are talking about then you'll realize the village is the only cabal where a player of your caliber is GUARANTEED a death to me if I want.

A fundamental of balanced competition is that the better player should almost always win. If I can do EVERYTHING right and still lose to Joe Newb pincer spammer, something is wrong.

Time is an extremely valuable commodity to me, I don't understand why you seem to ignore it.

There aren't any locked rooms on the eastern road, and the overwhelming majority of my rager fights occur there. If you somehow find one outside the rager box, then yes, they have a severe disadvantage against some builds.

And once again, ignoring the issue of sleep.

For reference, complaining about fighting ragers on Eastern is like complaining about fighting a ranger in wilderness lol.

And you're wrong (or have a poor understanding of competition entirely). First, CF does not have a true balance. As someone on Dio's said Cf is a lot like paper/rock/scissors. My duergar character might think a temperance paladin with Defiance is unbeatable. My gnome shapeshifter eats that paladin for lunch, but dies to the duergar. Etc.

Second, competition does not mean the most skilled person always wins. True competition means that person wins MOST of the time. Occassionally underdogs can win by adapting "David" strategies, or taking advantage of timing and luck to mitigate skill differences. Their are plenty of "less talented" sports teams that have succeeded over "more" talented competiton, plenty of businesses that succeeded over "more" talented competitors, etc.

CF isn't meant to solely be a number-crunch. It's one of the reasons why power-gamers don't rule the game.

>A fundamental of balanced competition is that the better
>player should almost always win. If I can do EVERYTHING right
>and still lose to Joe Newb pincer spammer, something is
>wrong.


I think the point is, if you are losing to Joew Newb pincer, then you didn't do EVERYTHING right. I don't know though. Ragers are a non-factor for us non-mage players.

Ego would be me being worried about getting bested by other players. This is an issue of getting bested by *powers* and RNG. It falls into the same realm as cleave and PWK killing you. Poor mechanics for a game that has harsh penalties for dying - such as spending hours and hours regathering preps if they're a #### and loot your containers and permanent con loss. And before someone chimes in and says preps don't take long to regather, let's just say some of the preps I use require some element of farming.

RBW's are common place. Deathblow is a common skill. If cleave was so common that people were routinely dying to it, you'd see people complaining about that too, because we want a skill oriented game not a dice roll.

Sleep is also a skill similar to this, but over the last 10+ years I've learned how to completely counter sleep using tracking NPCs and wilderness rooms and things of that nature. There's no equivalent for countering deathblow other than playing a hyper-defensive character with stupid amounts of damage reduction. Maybe you're ok playing that way but I'd rather be *playing the game* than gathering preps.

"There's no equivalent for countering deathblow other than playing a hyper-defensive character with stupid amounts of damage reduction."

I will now point out that Krunk, an aggressive orc, went 183-18 against Battle.

It's practically an order of magnitude less time consuming to collect skins and other orc essentials than other classes. That time freed up is what allows orcs in general to do so much PKing of Battle, and generally have a more enjoyable experience.

Not to mention saying someone has to play an orc because of fallback to deal with ragers is a stupid non-answer to anyone else.

You said, "There's NO equivalent for countering deathblow other than playing a hyper-defensive character with stupid amounts of damage reduction."

I pointed out one extreme, glaring exception to your statement.

Here's another: Allysia went 166-10 against Battle.
Here's another: Mharlndarn went 114-6 against Battle.
Here's another: Oshui went 57-6 against Battle.

Here are at least four different players, playing different builds, in different cabals that did extremely well against Battle. None of them were "hyper-defensive." And these are just ones that I pulled off the top of my head, if I looked there would be more.

The problem isn't that there is no way to counter Deathblow. It's that you can't figure out a way to counter deathblow.

We'll agree to disagree. In that list you've got a Scion transmuter, despoil + ABS + transmuter dam redux + stoneform...a bard that had a gank-o-meter of 2.66 and a guy who had the tankiest most overpowered offensive form with pounce and ABS in the game for the last 10 years or so.

I'm not sure exactly what you consider more defensive than those three things.

Anyone who cites Oshui as an example of how to deal with ragers may as well stay out of this conversation because we're on a totally different wavelength, I'm not going to beg for a broken overpowered shapeshifter form to deal with my cabal enemy. And honestly, the mechanics are what they are...random, 5x damage. You want to talk about how to deal with random 5x damage without having 50%+ damage reduction or hyper-defensive tanking (or letting an NPC or group of 3 tank for you), feel free to let me know, I wasn't aware that was a controversial statement.

Those who can't actually discuss the topic deflect onto "Hey, this guy 2 years ago destroyed village, so there's no problem here" sort of nonsense. I understand full well what kills ragers and how ragers can kill you. The mechanic is bad, because you're fighting the power not the player. The player is just spamming bash/pincer/cranial, hoping they hit pay dirt on the RNG. It's a lame mechanic for a game that is supposed to pit skill vs skill.

Character PK Wins PK Loss Battle Win Battle Loss
Kostyan 517 60 156 5
Mharldarn 422 17 114 6
Blitztenturn 395 46 105 8
Krunk 391 53 183 18
Hunsobo 382 37 60 4
Igbah 375 56 106 6
Kharghurln 366 69 110 25
Tavlin 356 26 114 8
Narissorin 352 37 119 14
Zubei 350 19 104 5
3906 420 1171 99

These characters averaged 9.3 PK wins per loss but averaged 11.82 Battle PKs per Battle Loss. An average of 30% of their PK wins came against battle. Only 1 character killed less than 100 Battle!

Not only did they have a better win-loss ratio against Battle than they did overall, these numbers suggest that it's pretty tough to make an all time PK killer without Battle as an enemy.

In fact, the only rager I excluded from this list was Djabree. The rest fought battle regularly. The next character without Battle as a natural enemy or having been in Battle is Nreisshe, outlander, at #17. Only three of these characters went into double digit losses against Battle!

Now come on. If battle powers were so unfair and OP these numbers would look much different.

EDIT: For reason the numbers line up with the columns in the entry window but not when I look at the message. Sorry.

Sorry, I fail to grasp what this has to do with anything. Village powers allow newbies to get respectable kill numbers by doing nothing but spamming pincer/cranial. Any Jerry char showcases this reality. How ragers stand up to the 'best of the best' is an entirely different discussion, completely having nothing to do at all with whether or not they should have a random 5x damage mechanic.

If anything, at the top 10 all time ever, you're going to find the super preppers and the people with 3 legacies or 3 specs or overpowered combos that got toned down afterwards or so on and so forth...they're the last group of people you want to prove any sort of point on whether or not the mechanic is a good mechanic or a bad mechanic.

You guys are really stretching to find ways to try to justify why this works this way. Reality is, it's either too good or not enough, because it's totally unrelated to what it's like to be a villager. It might fire never in a fight, in which case it was useless, or it might fire like crazy completely obliterating the other guy for no real reason other than bad luck. You don't need to do a lot of statistical analysis to make a decision on whether you like that or dislike that. Every competitive game, like Starcraft genre and even MMO's with PVP elements specifically try to minimize the result of the RNG because it's a bad mechanic for competition and tournament style play, I'm not going out by myself on a limb by saying it's a dislikeable mechanic. If anything, I think a core problem with this community is how introverted we are...kinda like a gamer community version of "Not Made Here" syndrome.

I think looking at the "best of the best" shows alot. If anything it shows that there are players out there that do a very good job racking up PKs against battle while dying very little.

It shows that not only is it possible to deal with deathblow, and for all it's randomness, it's doable in such a way that these people actually fare better against ragers then the rest of the mud. It shows it is not as significant as a power as you think.

More importantly, and I mean no offense by this, but, it sounds like you are taking the elitist-sounding stance that deathblow shouldn't be in the game because it requires no skill to be successful with. That's why I'm pointing to how the elite fare against ragers.

In fact, I found those numbers so significant that it occurred to me that if Jerry really wants to make an all-time great PK character he might be better off killing ragers than playing one.

nt

Any person who outclasses a rager by 100% is going to find them easy prey because they struggle to get away from getting ganged into the ground.

Deathblow does nothing to stop that. It goes into my point that "either it's not enough or it's way too much".

So if you're the guy who gets the worlds best ever shapeshifter form with uber tanking, uber damage and tiger-pounce, yeah you're going to wrack up a disproportionately high amount of rager kills. That fact :

1) Isn't consistently reproducible for everyone, obviously. Not even that same player.
2) Doesn't even remotely address the 'common use case'.

It's like saying entwine is an awful skill because of orb of travel...in other words, it means absolutely nothing.

If you want to make a point, that there's a consistent strategy to deal with RNG that doesn't involve being overly conservative, go for it. You can't because it doesn't exist...the fact that they *can* take half your health in a single shot means you have to prep like they *will* take half your health in a single shot...otherwise you'll get deaths mixed in with your wins due to bad dice rolls. But pointing out a list of overly conservative people, with some of the best set of circumstances available to them that allowed them to climb over the other thousands of characters that have existed over the years, doesn't achieve anything.

I think our key disconnect is you believe there's a huge skill gap in this game...and maybe there is between a total newbie and a veteran, but amongst the veterans who have been here for like 10+ years I don't see a skill gap. I don't view anything Krunk or Oshui or Cabdru did as magical. Impressive, sure, but I understand what they did that was successful because I understand the mechanics of the game and the circumstances of those characters and none of that changes my opinion on this topic. Again...they're not some magical people whose ways mystify me...rather you can succeed at something and still think it's not a good gameplay element.

Example : I can have all 3 of my ABS wands on a char and still think the ABS system is bad. I can destroy a billion ragers and still think deathblow is lame. Understanding the mechanic well enough to deal with it and approving of it is not the same thing. There's a lot of mechanics I don't approve of, that doesn't mean I don't abuse the hell out of them when I can.

Another example: To give you a non-rager example, I don't like the mechanic of 'summon'. I think it makes ganking the hell out of people way too easy and basically forces people to hide in some obscure part of the Theran world to avoid getting ganked into a stain on the floor. Or it forces people to just log out. I fully understand summon and how to counter it and I fully exploit it when I have it but that doesn't mean I have to like it .

I was looking at aiding Homard refute your claims that the only way to deal with deathblow was a hyper-defensive character and some of the other things you pointed out like a Scion ABS transmuter.

That's when I noticed it wasn't just a few, or even most on that list went to the PK feast and had second and third helpings of Battleragers without fear of indigestion. It was all of them. And different types of builds, too. And if you continue to look down the list, the trend continues. I don't really have the time or desire to go through the second best group, or middle of the pack pkers, but, I'd wager we'd find some more of the same.

You can call all those characters hyper-defensive, or ultra conservative or they have ABS or whatever you want. The fact is, all of those things are effective ways of dealing with deathblow and there are more.

You know it's funny. The reason I like Villagers is because they require very little time investment into prepping. Ironically, this is the same reason you are arguing against them over. You don't want to spend a lot of time prepping. Maybe we should be having a discussion over prep times instead?

Certainly you are rolling the dice if you choose not to prep before fighting a Villager. But, a Villager isn't the only character build in the game you are rolling the dice by fighting without prepping. Not even close.

...That doesn't mean I like it as a mechanic.

Not sure where the disconnect is. I don't like the mechanic, for valid reasons, lol. Has nothing to do with prepping, I don't like prepping either. Has to do with randomness. I don't want my powers to save me with luck, I don't want my enemy's powers to save them with luck, I want to have a plan and they have a plan and he whom executes it better wins. I don't want to flee at 70% health, I don't want to burn through 3 wands to face some guy in #### gear and overwhelm him with pure damage redux. I don't want to gang him down 3 to 1. I want to put my skill as a player and my knowledge of my class and his class to the test, not bash each other and hope the RNG favors me over him.

I mean that's really the bottom line. Some fights in this game are engaging, fun, and I'll fight some people back and forth all night. RBW's aren't one of them because of this dumb mechanic. You can argue that ragers die a lot to orcs, that the top 10 people ever in the history of the game got there by splattering ragers over and over and none of that matters to me because it doesn't change my opinion that eating deathblows or delivering deathblows is not inherently fun because it's driven entirely by the random number generator.

And how does that show skill?

A n00b with full ABS is going to do a lot better than a decent player without it.

Deathblow is, again, just the flip side of that coin.

n/t

nt

That's about all I glean from those stats.

There's a reason no one else can pull that kind of thing off, and it doesn't have at all to do with mechanics.

Isn't is horrifically annoying when people just allude to things?

We have actually discussed the topic, you just still don't like the answers you're getting.

Wouldn't it be the reverse? I've stated my opinion and from my perspective, people are trying to argue me out of it with stuff that hasn't anything to do with my opinion . You're not going to make me enjoy - "you rolled a 3, you die". Doesn't really matter how well X anti-paladin did 4 years ago against ragers...that doesn't do anything for me.

I'm not the one looking for answers, like I said, it's not ego, it's not pride, it's a mechanic that I don't think belongs in a competitive game. I'm responding to people who, for whatever reason, want to argue that with me lol and at least in one case, it's pretty clear that the person arguing with me also doesn't like the mechanic but would fear that if it were removed it'd get replaced with nothing as compensation.

Fallback behind slaves? How well would Krunk have done if he had to actually *tank* ragers?

So, short of changing my class and race to something else that has no reason to fight ragers to begin with...we're still back at what I said. I'd argue permalagging the guy while not tanking is a pretty good example of 'hyper defensive' - just happens to be an orc that can do that pretty much only again ragers.

And there are other ways to get elementals, charmies, etc.

If you fail to see why orcs do well against ragers then maybe you're kinda proving my point about disparity in player skill. Between savage feeding, bash, cheapshot and slaves with cutoff or pincer, plus oily skins healing to full, plus auto-dirt kick if they go that build, there's clearly more than just the merc involved.

Feel free to try to pull off the same thing with a swarthy merc from Hamsah though.

It just happens to line up to be very good against ragers. Either you're trolling or you really don't understand what you're seeing when you're reading an orc bash-the-villager log.

Just want to get everything on the table.

So you don't have a chance against villagers if you're a mage without ABS or a melee class that doesn't prep.

Not sure what the problem is here (and I don't even agree with that statement FWIW)....

I'm not a fan of rock paper scissors balance but yes, orcs are very strong against rager warriors. I'd *prefer* that they weren't so one-dimensional but there you have it.

I also didn't say you "didn't stand a chance" as a melee/mage, I said you need to be "hyper defensive and use a lot of dam redux". Randomly doing 5x damage will do that. It's a natural consequence of RNG + 500% damage. You can't time it, you can't stick around unless you can take 5+ clean shots from the guy without dying because deathblow allows that to happen with one shot such as a parting blow. So yeah, it leads to hyper-defensive gameplay...from the same staff who complains that people don't take enough risks .

I mean look at the responses to this log...you shouldn't have attacked without barrier, you shouldn't have attacked without more HP, wasn't worth it to attack to begin with...yeah, that's the net result, don't fight them unless you're compensating heavily for deathblow. That means you're fighting the cabal power and the RNG, you're not fighting the person, and that's a poor gameplay experience. Just like it's a poor gameplay experience for the rager who has to eat through a 5k hp polespec NPC while getting perma-lagged by an orc who is doing OBLITs on savage feeding.

will deathblow turn a fight now and then against a melee char? Sure but if you could beat them unprepped when the villager is headless then you should have a very similar success rate against villager with the head. I know a lot of you have irrational fear of DB and overstate the redux of resist but in reality what I said is true.

An axe spec is going to beat a dagger spec, a sword spec will beat an axe spec, etc, village powers will shift that a little but with any build that doesn't have pitifully terrible defenses you are just not going to get hit with DB often enough for it to matter most of the time. And stone skin is so damn close to resist in terms of dam redux and so readily available that its just silly people still have these conversations.

You've entered fantasy land, congratulations. Every warrior is going to try, against another warrior, to either hit them harder with unavoidable damage like flurry/pincer or disarm/maledict and hit them with more melee shots. Saying village berserker powers don't do anything measurable to help you seal a kill or turn a fight in those fights is fantasy.

Believe what you want to believe though, just don't insult everyone else's intelligence. Unless you fight the guy 900 times, a short streak of the RNG one way or the other will absolutely distort the results. That's the nature of randomness - you need a sufficient sample size to even it out. If you're playing to rack up the most kills, you're probably ok eating the bad deaths. If you're trying to get a good set to build momentum, or you have a lot of preps you need to hold onto or etc, then those nasty streaks might be really bad for you.

Personally, I just don't like the mechanic, I don't like games of chance.

First, let's start by saying Nep, Quas, Homard, and I have hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing villagers and village leaders.

With the exception of Homard, we've also had better than 50 percent PK ratios against villagers.

It would be like me arguing with you about the relative OP'ness of mariner nets on the sea. Or Trapper deathfulness.

Deathblow is random, no doubt about that. But there are so many ways to mitigate it I honestly think berserkers are the weakest of all 3 paths in terms of true deathfulness.

...I need to teach you guys how to argue.

Debating something is like :

Point
Counter-point.

Point: Trip + Cheapshot is really powerful.
Counter-point: Yeah but flight negates it, as does being able to kick the crap out of the thief.

What you're doing here is : https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

All the people you've mentioned I've killed, so I don't really hold that because they believe something is balanced it therefore is because I don't find them as infallible gods that disagreeing with is foolish. I also don't think you get to dismiss a point 'because you've played something a lot' and therefore I should trust you. If anything, that means you have a more vested interest in keeping it in the game if you're exploiting it.

Basically if you want to make a point, make it. My point - RNG heavy mechanics are bad, they lead to conservative play, they lead to skill getting outclassed by luck and they force people to spend tons of time prepping or being forced into heavily defensive builds or niche to deal with safely. If you want to counter the point go for it.

My point:

You begin with the assumption that hitting multiple deathblows in a round is on the average, normal (assuming that because you are basing your entire argument on the perceived unfairness of the random x5 damage in a fight swinging a fair fight into a lopsided one). That assumption is wrong, I can't stress that enough. If you argue that deathblow introduces too much randomness, than you have to admit that there the other side of the coin, such as when deathblow doesn't even FIRE for 4-6 rounds in a fight where one deathblow could win it. They are two sides of the coin.

On the same token, I don't see how gathering preps shows any sort of skill whatsoever other than the ability to memorize prep locations. How is the fact that if I know where all three of my ABS wands are (and can get them easily enough in certain lucky situations) I am inherently going to be "tougher" than someone who can't find them? Is that an indication of skill whatsoever?

Again, if you counter that with "Well that's another point where luck ####s up the funstick", I can argue a billion other points where luck comes into play (playing when your immortal does, who roles allies, who rolls enemies, landing bash the moment someone's shields drop (aka PK timing), what gear is available, what times do you play, et cetera) that have no mechanical requirement whatsoever. Instead of trying to minimalize "luck" in CF, you need to understand there will always be a variable of luck you can simply not control and therefore, cutting down on the amount of luck in CF is akin to chasing the Holy Grail.

Basically, what it comes down to is this: Deathblow is a niche skill that barely moves the scale towards equality when playing a villager who gives up all magic. I'd argue spell evasion/spellbane/field dressing/resist are all better powers than deathblow, but that's just me personally. Sure I've won fights with deathblow I had no reason to win, but I've also lost fights that I would have won or survived 100% of the time if I could have used magic.

Much like playing a goodie doesn't allow you to go slaughter whatever neutrals you want to, much like playing a Trib doesn't allow you to go break the law, much like playing an Outlander means you can't use coins, all cabals have drawbacks. I'd rather have chameleon than deathblow. I'd rather have special guards (especially lieutenants!) than deathblow. I'd rather have forsaken portal than deathblow. I'd rather have cry of deliverance than deathblow.

See this is where we get into the root of the matter.

"...If you argue that deathblow introduces too much randomness, than you have to admit that there the other side of the coin, such as when deathblow doesn't even FIRE for 4-6 rounds in a fight where one deathblow could win it. They are two sides of the coin.'

I agree. In a fight where deathblow refuses to fire at all, the RBW is essentially gimped. I dislike the mechanic on both sides of the coin. I'm not anti-rager ...I do play ragers occasionally. This doesn't refute my "it's a bad mechanic" argument either, it just reinforces it.

"On the same token, I don't see how gathering preps shows any sort of skill whatsoever other than the ability to memorize prep locations. How is the fact that if I know where all three of my ABS wands are (and can get them easily enough in certain lucky situations) I am inherently going to be "tougher" than someone who can't find them? Is that an indication of skill whatsoever?"

Nope. I don't like ABS or prep gathering either and I don't equate them with skill. A better example is someone recognizes your mainhand is cursed, your offhand isn't and you're a sword spec - so he offhands you and grabs the weapon...now theoretically he should kick your ass but boom boom, double deathblow punches and you die. Skill, to me, means you're doing something in the fight to try to tip it in your favor besides "gank someone down", "zap zap zap lash" or "pincer;!;!;!". You want an example of a great skill vs skill matchup - uncaballed warrior vs uncaballed assassin. That's a great, balanced fight and no one is winning that fight usually by just bash spamming in a vacuum.

"I can argue a billion other points where luck comes into play..."

Luck by itself usually doesn't lead to death. Assassinate can be countered, cleave/PWK can be countered, rot can be countered. All of those are arguably horrible mechanics, but at least they have common counters that are consistently effective that don't require you to waste your time.

"Sure I've won fights with deathblow I had no reason to win, but I've also lost fights that I would have won or survived 100% of the time if I could have used magic."

I'm not disagreeing with you. Like the problem is, you're trying to defend deathblow like if it was changed, it'd just get replaced with 'nothing at all'. I'd imagine if you tweaked deathblow it'd be along the lines of giving a mechanic that was equitable to both the villager and the enemy.

There are almost no truly balanced fights. Most all of them favor one guy or the other, by way of skill, gear, tactics or whatever. That's a fact of playing CF, and more times than not the guy who is favored to win does so.

Uncaballed warrior vs. uncaballed assassin as you pointed out. Warriors vary too much for that to be a good example. Random bash sword spec giant is bashing the assassin into oblivion without using any other command. For all the presumed tactics, it's going to come down to bash spam and passive damage output. If he misses, he just leaves the fight, or if the assassin lands the kote or something which shifts it against the warrior (if he doesn't get perma lagged). Luck very much leads to death in CF in probably hundreds of ways beyond DB firing, and if you don't see that, well, I don't know what to say. Evade firing to get me out of perma lag is luck. Basically any passive skill comes down to luck if it fires. There are so many examples of this in CF that you can't make that claim. Fact is, in CF you have to take into account the randomness (by way of knowing the RNG may or may not go with you) along with the things you can control. That's a lot of the fun of playing CF I find. Assuming this set of moves goes perfectly in a fight this outcome is expected, but if it doesn't what are my other options? How does that vary my tactics or plans? How will I respond? The randomness forces adaptation just as much as skill choice by your opponent, and so randomness showcases skill of a player because they are adaptive to fluid situations.

You want to see variety and utilization of all the things chars have in CF, but in most fights, its straightforward how the fight will go, and trying to incorporate other things leads to either dying, or the person getting away. I don't disagree, I mean, I hate the lag system because I believe command denial makes fights boring because you will see orcs doing nothing but bash and killing you with nothing more than savage feeding, and then there is pincer spam, staggered trips and all that other stuff. And yet, I'll still spam trip in certain fights, because that's how I kill the guy, not just make him run away. But it is a part of CF, and I realize more goes into it than just spamming trip/bash/pincer or whatever that allows me to win.

You want the game to be Street Fighter it seems like, where you each have a skill set and how you use them to attack and counter the other guy determines the outcome. In CF, fights are set up by the char's whole existence. That takes into account their gear, preps, skills, powers and skill %s and everything else that goes into playing, which allows them to have a set of things to attack and counter with.

That's what makes what you do with a char matter, you want to assess something like DB in a vacuum when it doesn't exist in one and can't be viewed in one, nor can any singular mechanic within CF.

"Uncaballed warrior vs. uncaballed assassin as you pointed out. Warriors vary too much for that to be a good example. Random bash sword spec giant is bashing the assassin into oblivion without using any other command. For all the presumed tactics, it's going to come down to bash spam and passive damage output. If he misses, he just leaves the fight, or if the assassin lands the kote or something which shifts it against the warrior (if he doesn't get perma lagged). Luck very much leads to death in CF in probably hundreds of ways beyond DB firing, and if you don't see that, well, I don't know what to say. "

Considering both are uncaballed, they can use preps, which means they can adjust size and weight to deal with bash or use stalk + martial trance to render it an ineffective tactic. Yeah it depends on the warrior's specs and build, sure, but assuming he's using some of the more common builds it's a very dynamic and fluid fight with a lot of different outcomes. There's a lot of really balanced fights in CF, I'll disagree that so many are "won before they're fought". Not everything is balanced but many, many things are, to a point where now rock/paper/scissors is the exception not the rule.

nt

Would you rather have volley or spellbane?

Spellbane wins fights. It renders you near-immune to mages lower rank than you.

It is pretty easy to deal with volley. There is no counter to spellbane for a mage other than thin the veil which is tremendously time consuming and then another rager logs on and your efforts are wasted.

But it's doing triple damage, so 6 extra hits over 3 rounds. He's level 37ish.

By seeing its a mangle on an incap, which is a dismember on a standing target through damage reduction (consistent with our other fights). Even if that wasn't the case, 3 deathblows clearly wouldn't equal two shots.

So no, 2x prayers beads wouldn't do that even if your luck is ridiculous (plus wimpy would favor you much more there).

It's not that I fail at math, it's that 36% damage redux doesn't warrant 300% damage, plus spellbane, plus 33% damage redux of your own. This to me is a simple math problem where the numbers don't add up. And the fact that you don't think with bloodlust and two damage reduction wands you should even have a chance at getting away probably says a lot about how powerful you think berserkers are...which contradicts your other posts where you question why antipaladins even need barrier to begin with for 1vs1 fights.

You had a chance of getting away. You just didn't, this time. A chance doesn't mean a 100% chance.

Generally speaking, I think people who have played RBW enough to have a very keen understanding of their limitations and weak points can fight them as an A-P, and yes, even without barrier. This is a kind of instinctive understanding that I don't think anyone trying to explain it to you or theorycrafting can ever really provide.

As a midlevel A-P, RBWs are both your most reliable source of charge-worthy kills and the most dangerous thing to you. It can be wise to avoid them but it can also be the quickest way to build up some steam.

Ragers are soul cattle to be harvested of their sweet juicy blood.

Only, the cattle wrangler doesn't have a horse, rope, or cattle prod. The cow has a shotgun and/or an assault rifle. Sacrifice your fellow cowboys so you can eat the cow when he is out of ammo.

If the bull fighter gets gored, it's over for him... But the bull fighter has way *way* more tricks up his sleeves than the bull. Hell, Ragers even tend to stay within a definable area... like the bull in the arena.

If only CF provided rodeo clowns to help out when things went horribly wrong

Provide rodeo clowns. I just only play a serious character once every 1-2 years.

Not really 'lucky'

He hits with three attacks before the A-P is mortally wounded, all of which are deathblows. That's exceedingly lucky. With that kind of streak you could roll up on two people as an A-P and cleave them both in half.

It's okay for this kind of crap to happen at hero. Okay, but not great.

It's flabbergasting you haven't capped DB to 1 occurence every other round parried or not below 40.

Still, even DB wouldn't be an issue at all if /resist/ were bumped to 40. Then DB is still fun, zerkers are still fun, zerkers don't need to prep, but they aren't allowed to pretty much ignore the damage output of all but the most competent rank 36 levelsitters.

Ragers are not exactly getting ganged into the dirt pre-hero, too many people are busy levelling or getting edge points to pick a fight with a pre-40 berserker. The berserker in nearly every case pre-hero gets to start every single fight and the way levelling is designed in the 30's the numbers are offset by the fact that 30's mobs for levelling usually are at least somewhat dangerous if you don't have a healer or a better-than-normal tank.

I've seen lots of consecutive deathblows, maybe those are the ones I notice, but A-P's do not avoid melee well, even with a sword and shield

I'm not actually sure why that would be, but my APs hate fighting melee characters unless I can get a sleep and spellup.

nt

But without the free dam redux or healing

Excluding certain unfair match-ups like berserkers. It doesn't make sense to change all the classes in the game to deal with powers that really, in my opinion, don't do anything other than invite power gaming eastern road campers. It's been the same story for as long as I've played this game, village has it so rough, it's so tough to be a villager. Etc etc etc. Because clearly no one else gets ganged down or dies in this game.

That skill is better than most legacies and is why it s seem to do such disproportionate damage to their gear and utterly #### on people they have levels on.

I see this sort of thing happen to RBWs all the time, both playing one, and fighting them. I've utterly destroyed people in one round where each hit was a DB, and I've had it happen to me when I fight them. I see more of this actually than any protracted fight with a RBW, truth be told. Either whatever they are fighting just steamrolls them, or they live a couple of rounds and DB does it's thing. I'm not chiming in on the overpoweredness or lack thereof, I'm just saying it happens a *WHOLE* lot more in this way than you are saying.

you are in no position to judge game balance, because your focus so far has
been so narrow. You keep making the same mistakes over and over with every
char you play and it seems that you haven't learned much. Try expanding your
focus into playing, to hero, as many different classes as you can for a while.

It's easy for things like DB to appear overpowered when you have no idea of
what they are like from the other side.

If you're not the new guy who keeps playing APs, well you should know better

I'm not Elystan.

I remember when Marcus and Warren were distending mid-ranked players prior to the thief revamp with berserker powers. Does no one remember Wrahg for instance?

Let me put this differently:

- RBW powers are overpowered pre-hero.
- It's been this way for over 10 years.
- It's fairly common knowledge.
- In this log, I'm using every prep available to me and every tactic to increase my life expectancy and my only option for surviving is running away when I see this person on where or ganging them down 3 to 1.

Those 4, put together, result in what I consider poor game balance. I don't know why deathblow wasn't moved up to 40 over the last 10 years...I do know the multiplier is lower, which doesn't seem sufficient.

APs have teleport, so it is even easier for them to run away than some other classes. The big downside of village, is running away isn't so viable.

That's the simplest fix. Until they make RBW warriors worth the effort on AP charges regardless of their pk ratio, I would suggest steering clear of them 1 vs 1 pre hero/pre barrier.

>- RBW powers are overpowered pre-hero.

No, they aren't.

>- It's been this way for over 10 years.

No, people have been saying that for over 10 years, and so they have been wrong for over 10 years.

>- It's fairly common knowledge.

Yes, everyone knows they are wrong.

>- In this log, I'm using every prep available to me and every
>tactic to increase my life expectancy and my only option for
>surviving is running away when I see this person on where or
>ganging them down 3 to 1.

You aren't even close to using every tactic to increase your life expectancy or success rate here. Off the top of my head I can think of three things you could have done. And about a zillion preps you could have used. Plus your enlarge wore off right at the start, who knows what else was actually affecting you. Seriously, if you think the two preps you had for that fight were the "complete package" and that your use of all your class spells and skills were "every tactic" available to you, then your problem isn't deathblow or rager powers at all, your problem is you.

>
>Those 4, put together, result in what I consider poor game
>balance. I don't know why deathblow wasn't moved up to 40
>over the last 10 years...I do know the multiplier is lower,
>which doesn't seem sufficient.

Frankly villagers are generally underpowered at hero. Every single other player can overmatch a villager, if they make use of all the game has to offer. Most people don't want to spend the time or effort to do so, but villagers have a max top end for power which is far lower than anyone else's. My suspicion is you haven't played villagers, particularly berserkers. It's obvious from your statements and play. You need to know more about them, and about your own class, which you used poorly here.

Just so you're clear, you've actually argued nothing here, presented no options other than some vague "zillion preps and tactics" and said absolutely nothing of substance. You've implied that I've never played a berserker, so I can't possibly fathom the incredibly stamina and genius it takes to spam bash, pincer and cranial and that there's significantly more in my repertoire that I'm failing to use without managing to even give a single example.

Stoneskin I could've used, it might have let me live an extra round and possibly wimpy out. If I wielded a sword, maybe I'd have picked up an additional parry. Otherwise, I got smashed by deathblows to the face while getting bashed with a size advantage (the fact that it dropped after I'd been bashed is inconsequential) and my weight maxed. I could have asked a bard to grant me resist or a healer to sanc me assuming those people existed and were willing to help me.

So with those out of the way, go ahead and drop a knowledge bomb on me if you actually have something concrete to say.

"Frankly villagers are generally underpowered at hero. Every single other player can overmatch a villager, if they make use of all the game has to offer. Most people don't want to spend the time or effort to do so, but villagers have a max top end for power which is far lower than anyone else's. My suspicion is you haven't played villagers, particularly berserkers. It's obvious from your statements and play. You need to know more about them, and about your own class, which you used poorly here."

What a total crock of #### bro.

Calling a villager "underpowered" is just meh. While you are right, other classes (even orcs) when prepped to the teeth can pretty much "always" win vs a villager...still calling them underpowered is so stupid...because:

As a villager your entire "investment" in winning is having the head...everything that makes you awesome comes from having the head..and an available small amount of mana....no other time invested...

Wheras "every single other player" that can overmatch a villager has to spend GOBS of time collecting the needed preps/gold for healing/etc to actually WIN that fight

You want DR? call resist

you want haste+damroll+str malediction/bleeding/mv loss invuln? Call blood

You want some really OP ####?? call spellbane

not to even mention deathblow...

Saying that an RBW is not "overpowered" I might agree with...calling them underpowered is pretty stupid... you have some of the best powers in the game, for what is arguably a FRACTION of the investment of time anyone else needs to go through to be as competitive as a rager can be.

> for what is arguably a FRACTION of the investment of time anyone else needs to go through to be as competitive as a rager can be.

I don't agree with this. Battle doesn't have preps, but they are dramatically more sensitive to the state of their gear than most characters.

...and you kinda nailed it.

Battle, more than any other cabal/set of characters/etc, is reliant on gear more than any other type of character.

To quantify that, let me say that most competent PKers will be able to kill someone butt ass naked as a villager (specifically as a berserker). However, at the same time, a duergar sword spec who has two no-remove swords and a full set of Dern gear + assorted svs and stat gear is going to be a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay different fight than a duergar sword spec with ragesteel.

For non-villagers, you can mitigate this by several ways:

1) Gang people down. Sadly, people lose their #### when villagers do this.
2) Get prepped up. Gathering preps is easier than gathering gear. Since, in the example I am postulating, the preps are only needed to be gathered once (to get the gear).
3) Get spelled up by allies/cabalmates/randoms. I know the last time I had a warrior who fought against the village a lot, I'd get meta-quickened and sanc'd most of the time before I fought the villagers.

So in closing, I really don't understand people's misconceptions about the village.

No they aren't. Or let's put it this way, I'm not quaffing frenzy potions, bless potions, giant strength potions and tenacity potions or whatever to make up stats that are missing on my gear as any warrior of any other cabal. Maybe I theoretically could, but I don't, because that's a huge waste of time for a marginal bonus.

Most of my warriors are going to use protection if it will work, stoneskin and enlarge if it makes sense for that fight and that's about it.

And unless the guy I'm fighting has deathblow that's usually enough to start building a better set against other melee types. Ragers are renowned for their ability to luck out with deathblow and pick up a set off an enemy that way. Saying they're more gear reliant than a non-rager warrior seems completely backwards to me - as a non-rager warrior I need that progging gear to justify what I'm losing out by not being a rager.

Honestly, these days I'm wondering if you're just saying stuff to see if people will believe you :-P.

Ganging aside, what you're missing is that Battle is often in the position of needing to win (and in this context, getting the other guy to blink first is usually good enough) or die. You handle maledictions badly, you lack transportation, and you cannot recover HP quickly generally speaking.

Whereas in the same situation my non-Battle warriors/thieves/assassins/etc. drink one of many return or teleport potions they're carrying.

Oh wait, everyone is affected by maledictions and movement management.

All that is moot when you take into account most (not all) villagers fight as close to the village as possible so they can heal/hide under the taint of the destructor in a no summon/recall area. And to enter in there is "raiding" and every villager can gang you at once there if they are losing.

Then you also take into account that everyone (with few exceptions) that have their potions have to flee to use them.

Now if you want to argue casters, we get spellbaned 7 of 10 times while eating deathblows as well as other melee... Sure we can word of recall, but that doesn't win a fight. The only way mages are able to compete is with ABS, which all mages purchase in their guild... Oh wait, they can't. It's a random system of treasure hunt that might be on an NPC that is 90% immune to then and buddied up with a another NPC that also eats their lunch while Mr. Villager got everything he needs on a stick. The limited non-sleek ones are just that and some people are religious about making sure they have it.

Gear you say? A 600hp mage (no gear) vs. 1100 hp mage (non-scion with uber gear) still can't fight an RBW without ABS. The free "shield" spell that lasts 12 hours every 24 hours barely dulls the damage of melee let alone a deathblow. A villager can have enough gear in short order to destroy people. Then if you take into account the current player mentality is to not full loot/sac people... they don't re-gear that much.

I just wanted to counter the argument of gear, mvmt, and recall.

Personally I love seeing dead villagers, especially when there are so many power gamers who will only play the RBW.

Rock to my scissors you say? Well *Rasp*.

There's a handful of situations where the rager could not get away where I could, usually involving summon + gang, but the vast majority of my deaths have been to 'situations where if I don't win I die'...

That's pretty much par for the course no matter who you play and the same "don't log in against bad odds" or "hide underwater" sort of tactics defeat it whether you're a rager or not.

I feel like you've somehow missed or are choosing to ignore that while I've spent probably couple thousand hours playing Battle, I've spent ten times that playing mages.

If I say it's significant in a way it isn't when I'm playing a mage I might have perspective that people who only play Battle or never play Battle for very long are missing.

I know you are the SME (subject matter expert), I just think (and will attempt to prove) deathblow, resist, and spellbane make it easy. I can spend 100 + hours mastering spells so I don't lose concentration, and another who knows how many hours searching for rods, or I can roll a villager, bash a couple mages, say "courage, honor, and strength" and be set for the rest of my character's life with beast mode. It will be the power gamers pick every time.

Perhaps after my attempt I'll sing a new toon.

Again, I'm not trying to change anything I just wish to share a though as if it mattered.

One of the things you'll learn is how to not die to Battle.

My last mage (and the only mage of mine which has a PBF) went 12-46. He was an elf invoker who spent 254 hours uncaballed/Squire and 38 hours as a Maran.

I went 1-4 against Battle. That's one death to Battle every 73 hours when overall I was eating a PK death every 6 hours.

I think that's pretty significant.

And on the flip side, my next Villager killed more invokers than I ever had before even with two elemental vulns.

I think it's easy to feel that something is overpowered, and there's plenty of stuff that feels overpowered (Deathblow and Invokers, for example) until you play them and realize the glaring weaknesses that come with the territory.

Except Nightgaunts, screw those things. Totally OP ####.*

*Joke.

This reads to me like : "I got destroyed while playing a mage, played a rager, did far better."

Not sure how that's proving any sort of balance comment regarding ragers.

I also think Nepenthe should try to look outside of the realm of his playstyle - there's like 4 people in this game who are really debating the merits of a char that's likely to go 400 and 100 vs 500 and 10. The rest of us aren't on that level, will never get to that level and just don't play the game with that kind of intention.

And I dig that I also view things colored by my own playstyle, I just feel like wanting to be able to engage in 1vs1's consistently without getting blown up in three rounds without preps is a more fun and enjoyable way to play the game and I *believe* there's a lot of people who also have that mentality but I don't know, maybe not.

Those of us that don't have the intention of going 400 and 100 or 500 and 10... well, we don't really care if battle ragers have the slay command. Happy to contribute to those precious numbers!

I don't have the intention of going 400 and 100 or 500 and 10.

But I like my characters and I don't want them to be chumps and die pathetically. It matters to me that people consider me a threat.

One of things I always consider when creating a build is "does it stand a chance against a berserker?"

I don't think you care. I don't think you care at all.

My point is that the thing many mage players, even the good ones, fear most and have the hardest time dealing with is Battle.

I'm not a good mage player by any means, and I don't fear Battle at all because I'm hyper aware of the cabal's limitations and weaknesses.

I'm clearly not skilled enough to kill Villagers (or anyone) with an elf invoker, but the hot-button issue of Deathblow is effectively a non-issue for me, because I know how to escape from the guys who have it.

And don't think that all I did was teleport from the area when I saw them. I was routinely getting smacked by them, but they rarely killed me because there are ways to mitigate Deathblow that range from game mechanics to RP, seriously.

By the same token, playing any class or cabal will give you an idea of what the strengths and weaknesses are and give you a better idea of how to (at best) beat them or (at worst) not die to them the next time you have an encounter.

In related news, if anyone ever played Druids (other than Enlilth, please don't) I now have a pretty good idea how to kill them after playing one for 500 hours.

RP means to mitigate deathblow as a mage?

I'm not entirely sure what you're even trying to say. Not dying to ragers is easy. Not dying to anyone is easy. Assuming you want to play the game and give as good as you get and stand up to your cabal enemies consistently, then their powers are still too good for what they are and create *avoidance* of conflict because of the RNG element.

I think your bar for 'balance' and mine are just different. I want to throw down with people. I do that, and typically win, in situations where I don't have people's powers playing the game for them. With ragers, it's not that I can't beat them, it's just that I realize I'm not fighting the player I'm fighting the powers and the RNG and it's not worth it from a time/prep/cost perspective. Having to word at 70% health because of random deathblows is not what I consider engaging gameplay.

I said mitigating Deathblow via RP. I've both done it and had it done to me. If you focus exclusively on mechanics you'll never see the forest for the trees.

And yes, we have different bars for balance, clearly.

>Again, I'm not trying to change anything I just wish to share
>a though as if it mattered.

Hey, you're absolutely welcome to your opinion -- but you admit that you're assuming something is tough because you've played against it and not because you've seriously played it, right?

And it IS tough -- but it also has a lot more flaws than you think it does right now.

Absolutely I know villagers to be tough because I have played against them. As you said, it IS tough.

The flaws -- I still need to learn. That will come if/when I get a Berzerker (which, for obvious reason most every villager wants to be.)

Are they OP? I don't know. Are they tough as nails to fight? Absolutely. Do they have to put as much effort (I.E. time for preps) into as those who fight them? I say no.

That is just my thought again.

Gear is...well..gear and I'd argue that gear (especially with the lower pbase) isn't that hard to come by. Having looted a couple villagers they seem to have no problems keeping themselves decked...nor did I suffer a lack of good EQ with any of my multiple ragers.

That said, lets take mage vs villager (being that they are polar opposites) and examine the needed time investment to become competetive.

Rager needs an induct - I can religiously pull this off in 25 hrs or less, and without dying to a mage due to lacking detect invis (maybe this is me, but "getting in" to battle has always been a cakewalk in my experience). Not to mention this time period where ragers are most 'vulnerable' which is low lvl pre-truesight...their enemies mainly mages are also generally speaking pretty weaksauce...

Rager gets induct - now is competetive with whatever path the rager picked..his 'preps' are 'handled' for life as long as he has the head.

Now lets look at our buddy the mage.

Mage needs to find his sleeks. People can say "you don't need your sleeks to be competetive" and, if you're a mage fighting a non village warrior I'd say thats true...however we want to compete with villagers so you _need_ those sleeks or limited A/B/S.

Mage is gonna eat some mob deaths finding sleeks, and I myself have never been lucky enough to find my 'full' set. I go 2/3 a lot, but never 3/3. Its a HUGE time investment in comparison to rager getting his powers - unless you get so incredibly lucky to get 3 pickup spots..which I never have.

Not to mention you need to continually re-gather such said preps your entire life...wheras rager simply needs to 'call power' and have the head.

I'm sorry Daev, but having played many ragers and a good amount of mages now...in my observations the time investment to become competetive is no where near 'on par' even taking equipment into consideration.

Ragers have a far lower power ceiling than most others, it's just as you note, far easier for them to get to their cap which is decent.

Ragers take less investment, and in return they have predictable power ceilings and exploitable weaknesses.

It's just a matter of player taste.

Villagers also face this kind of situation

http://forums.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?3,1009587,1009587#msg-1009587

Villagers are just so vulnerable to numbers + lag that they need to be balanced to compete in that situation. As a result of being built to compete with that they have a relative advantage over single opponents.

All that being said people often don't think about how to deal with deathblow the right way. Think less about ABS and more about parry/dodge. If you watch the 1 v 1 round of the rites it can get pretty boring because nobody is landing any hits on each other because everyone is a warrior with all weapons perfected, no blows landed means no deathblows.

Start getting creative in using mobs as meat shields if you have a poor melee defense build or bring buddies to meat shield. A villager might totally have your number 1 v 1 but you can totally have their number 2 v 1 just as hard and there is usually no shortage of people on board with ganking villagers.

I've got perfected defenses and switched weapons for this fight to sword/shield in order to bolster my melee.

I'm not a newbie. I just hear people talk about deathblow not being that big of a deal and for whatever reason, it creeps into my head that it's not that big of a deal...it's a big deal, there wasn't anything I could do in this fight other than not being in it.

For me, I think deathblow at least should get pushed up to level 40. I think I got it on my last berserker at 25, which seems a little too good.

I tend to get suckered in when I see threads about how APs are wussy for not fighting villagers.

They're not wussy, as you can see from this log, it's the only sane thing to do unless you have full ABS and maybe some other things on top of that as well.

Randomly dropping dead isn't exactly fun.

This is a case of crappy RNG. That's it.

For instance, if I sleep a RBW through RNG favoring me and it's 1 on 1, I have a 90-95% chance of killing them.

On the flip side, as a RBW, unless I "permalag" the AP, which is also based on RNG, I probably have a 50% chance of killing them.

A big question is did you set your wimp to 50? Which is what you should do as an AP fighting a RBW?

Having 4 deathblow land consecutively is just bad luck. Same as having my drow AP sleeping your ass, spelling you up, vaulting you, wielding the ixichitl whip and lashes of slaving you until you're dead.