Any chance y'all might be thinking about taking another look at the forms you rebalanced? Think you went a lil bit overboard on taking away from the regenerative forms. Pretty bad when you can't stand in front of an Elite Storm Giant with a tier one defensive form with shell of the armadillo on top to boot without getting nervous about it.

Very well may be my opinion, but I am sure others with Crocodile or Komodo would agree. I do understand the thoughts on rebalancing them, but seems you took just a tiny weenie bit much from their damage reduction. At least if your going to leave them as is you should probably change them from dam. redux to minor dam redux cause getting smacked with Evicerates through scales of the dragon AND a shell of the armadillo just seems a bit extreme for a final form.

I can't even imagine how someone with defense as a minor is doing with them. Pretty bad when my second tier regnerator is doing by far better than my tier one is.

P.S. This is not a rant, just an honest question and opinion. I do understand if it is not agreed with. They just seem more like a "okay I'm hurt. Flee flee flee shapeshift croc." More like a 'healing factor' niche instead of an actual form for defensive fighting.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, Thanks.

I can understand that it would be frustrating to have a regen form that is now less than optimal, but I am glad to see that the Imms have been paying attention to the recent feedback threads on Shapeshifters. The "trash" forms are now a little less trashy, at the expensive of the god forms being less godly. It may have overshot in one direction or the other, but here's hoping for more tweaks/balancing in the future until it's "just right!"

The core reason for what people may not like top tier dodge forms is that unless I'm mistaken, it only takes a skill or two landing to wreck your ability to defend yourself. Damage reduction/deflection is much harder to hinder, if I'm right in my assumption, because they need their con lowered to lose the bulk of their defense.

Roughly this means that when a dodge form gets hindered they get hit much more and have no damage reduction to soak up the pain. If a redux form gets hindered, i.e. Entwine, Hamstring, they get hit about the same number of hits, regardless, and still resist.

A secondary reason is that dodge forms typically hit with multiple light hits which means swift strike, riposte, concealed, masochism, wisdom distraction, space, etc, will hurt them more than a damage reduction form and the hits they do throw out seem easier to defend against.

I apologize if I sound a little like a broken record since I said most of this when people were complaining about Squid and Orca.

I'm not saying it won't be tweaked further, but since for the first time in about a decade komodo and crocodile aren't the forms people are rolling everything else in hopes of getting I'm not in that much of a rush to do it.

Maybe I'll actually see a sifaka lemur PK someone now.

how do you see ANY defensive form PKing anyone on their own?

I had a hummingbird/komodo shifter once, pretty sure his PK rating was 0/0 not for lack of trying.

I mean, sure defensive forms are useful in PK when used in conjunction with other forms. That's why regen from komodo was useful. Nerfing that regen doesn't suddenly make other kinds of defense form useful.

Now I'm just motivated to not pick defensive focus at all.

Disclaimer: there may be factors I'm not seeing and I'd be glad to hear about them.

Honestly, komodo/croc were just too good. They had like 10% less dam redux than an pachy/armadillo, yet they could regen? Huh?

I've played a metric ass-ton of shifters (about 10 to hero) and honestly, when I got komodo with my last one I was amazed at how awesome it was (I mean, I know it was great but yeah).

Plus the imms have stats re: Shifter re-rolling and if they notice a high majority of defense shifters re-roll unless they get komodo/croc well that probably tells you there is a problem.

FWIW Mongoose/Lemur have almost become extinct because Komodo/Crocodile is so good.

Mongoose and lemur have become extinct because they are useless. Making komodo less useful is not going to fix that. Making mongoose and lemur more defensive isn't going to fix that either.

People generally want defensive forms to regain hp quickly, and do the actual fighting with another form. You're not a mob killer if at your best you're doing mutilates in damage.

That's not true! I remember back in the day when a mongoose was the king of all forms. I'd fight the entire mountain of storm giants with it and come out almost unscathed. It was awesome, then after the changed it kept getting smashed around by certain skills. Hopefully the other forms are more useful now.

The original point I made wasn't nessicarily about the nerfs, it was just that modo and croc just don't seem to actually be defensive now, they're just a method for quick healing.

I don’t think anyone was arguing against the fact that komodo/croc were too good. And you are right that having almost the same dam reduction than a pachy/armadillo but with regen was what made them too good.

But dropping their dam reduction to the level of a tier 3 defence form or perhaps even less doesn’t make them balanced, it makes them way too weak. It turns a defence tier 1 form into a passive regenerator, which almost anyone can damage beyond their 50 or so hp regen per round.

If a defense tier 1 form is so squishy that you are better of standing around in your utility form, for defence purposes, obviously something is wrong.

Thanks,

J.

Holy Christ I'm still mad about Zulg for that.

I remember the 3 weeks or so they had that Lion rake, we'd have village pow-wow's and literally wonder if they were an Offensive Form, Defensive Form or Utility Form. I had a dude raid the village solo and kill me and take the item WITH NO PROTECTIONS UP.

Added aside: Crocodile is still pimp for amphibuous love. Why Alligator is ranked higher on my list then it technically should be.

Defensive shifters have the lowest ceiling out of all the class/sub class combinations.

Shifters in general are just PK padding characters for the plague of dex-based warriors we now see. Everytime I see a wood-elf sword/dagger/whip a little piece of me dies inside. Instead of nerfing komodo and croc, boosting the remaining forms would have been a better option IMHO. God forbid anyone actually fear a shifter who doesn't have a quest form!

Unless the sifaka lemur has been balanced in the last few months; it is more insignificant than a speedbump when I played one. I took my midbie necro 52/1 before deleting. I would have been 1/52 with the sifaka lemur had I bothered to torture myself and assuming I could somehow snag a lucky kill.

On the plus side; I find characters that have complete randomness associated with them (such as form assignment) really enjoyable to mess around with.

Regen forms got less good at the same time dodgy forms were improved.

Having had a mongoose beforehand, I am really happy it got some love, as it definitely needed it.

But at the same time, my komodo now, feels much weaker than my mongoose used to.

I also don’t understand how after dropping a huge rebalance on some forms (it is not a slight rebalance whichever way you look at it) you would be ok with it and in no hurry to adjust it because of the idea that players now would want to get some other forms. Shouldn’t the focus of any rebalance be to actually properly balance the forms?

Shouldn’t this at least be attempted in a way to minimize the changes that we players experience so that we know what to expect?

I don’t want to moan, or even sound like I am, at the end of the day I will go on and play whatever feels fun and live with whatever there is, but it just feels wrong to drop changes and not care about their consequences on we the players, and the fact that they may be well done or overdone, or even too little.

Thanks,

J.

The point isn't that I don't care how the balance ends up, the point is I also have to factor into my reaction that people are used to the soaky top-tier regen forms being really, really good, especially compared to the alternatives.

I would tend to agree as well.

Having had a mongoose with my last shifter and a komodo with the current one I fully understand the need for a form rebalance though. Still I also think the dam reduction as it is on the current komodo is way to low. In practical terms I have found that it is not worthwhile using it to fight, and I am much better of using my hare or my utility final form instead, and only shifting to the komodo to heal afterwards or while running away.

It just doesnt feel defensive at all as almost anything will do too much damage to it, past the point where the regen can have an impact. Almost 0% damage avoidance and very little damage reduction means its very easy to significantly outdamage the 50hp or so regen. I was for example beaten silly by a non thug thief while with scales, stone and shell of the armadillo... and I mean I was going down fast. Thats not defensive at all.

The regen is awesome, but for my other forms, not for the komodo. From that point of view it may as well be a utility form instead of a defensive one.

Oh well, I dont hold much hope, as I do understand that changes take time, often much more than we players wish, but I would love to be able to use my defensive form to fight and have it be defensive at this. I dont need it to beat people up, or even win a fight of atrition, just to be able to survive longer than forms from other focy.

Thanks,

Jamie

... just take hide deflection from Komodo and Crocodile. Since those are really the only two forms with significant dam reduction and significant regen.

FWIW Komodo was (is?) stupid powerful. Maybe not against players, but against mobs it was INSANE. Ranks a close second to cheetah on my list (and honestly a gnome Cheetah/Komodo would be the greatest explore character ever).

A SVIRF cheetah/komodo would be the greatest explore character ever. Svirf shifter has easily surpassed gnome imo since edges have come into play.

Gestalt metamorphosis is nice on a svirf, but I don't think that it's that nice.

Why would there be that much of a difference?

Keep in mind svirf WIS is almost as high, and they also have higher CON. Other than the extra practices spent on things you practice twice it's roughly a wash.

Gestalt is a HUGE boon in exploration, an extra 20% dmg redux against the elemental stuff is a big deal. There are also things like resist arcane edge, and I may be off here, but I *think* (keyword is think, I don't know for sure) that the stonekin edge carriers over to shifter forms. I am also pretty sure that gnome con is not high enough to pick thick veined where svirf con is. And I also found that the hp difference was closer to 100, not 250 because you gain better hp/level as a svirf (even if its only around 1 more per level) and you still get a lot of extra trains with a svirf.

Now give me Komodo/Cheetah

Nah but seriously now I want to roll a svirf shifter and check the edge out as well as some of the other things you mentioned (Plus...hook horror disembowel love? yep, svirf it is).

Does that stone skin edge increase the overall dam-redux of all pill/spell stoneskin? Or just its duration?