If you want to invite a discussion about it, don't post a spammy log and your rant that was removed from this forum and the bug board. Simply present why you think it should be changed.

I think everyone has had a chance to get their word(s) in on the issue at hand, and now it's simply devolving into garbage so we'll call it a day.

There are three bugs in the queue containing logs wherein a NPC casts a spell on a target it wasn't directly fighting while blind.

While that's probably not ideal, it's completely unrelated to the change people have been discussing in this thread and as best as I can tell has always worked that way.

Individual fight progs, like the ones we use to mimic classed mobs amongst dozens of others, all have their own code for picking an enemy and it's likely that we need to update most/all of them for cases where the original coder didn't check for blindness.

I still can't find a documented case of a mob dirt kicking or otherwise initiating combat with a random enemy it cannot see while blind when it shouldn't.

RANT
rant/
verb
verb: rant; 3rd person present: rants; past tense: ranted; past participle: ranted; gerund or present participle: ranting

1.
speak or shout at length in a wild, impassioned way.
"she was still ranting on about the unfairness of it all"
synonyms: fulminate, go on, hold forth, vociferate, sound off, spout, pontificate, bluster, declaim;

The log was literally only 3 rounds of combat (plus an echo from the Rip skill at the beginning, and one from Mountain Storm Kick in the middle) showing the mob dirt kicking the archon without the archon already being engaged in combat, which I posted for the sake of anyone who hasn't played a conjurer since this NPC behavior began.

And the "rant" as you called it was exactly 10 lines of text which covered exactly why I think it should be changed. The only thing that needed to be edited out of it was the part saying I wasn't sure if it was an intentional change or a bug.

So here's what I had to say, minus the one part about not being sure if it was a bug or an intentional change, and some added comments to justify each statement's purpose for being in my post, and why it's not ranting.

1.)The purpose of conjuring an archon is to allow the conjurer to actually tank something.

This really is the purpose of an archon. Therefore, not a ranting statement.

2.) It's totally legit for a PLAYER to dirt kick an archon to draw it into battle to prevent it from healing the conjurer as a tactic to PK said conjurer.

Acknowledgement of a valid tactic that I have no problems with, stated to show that I'm not asking for archons to be completely impervious to being drawn into combat.

3.) However, when common ranking mobs are doing this every fight, it TOTALLY ineffectualizes the conjurer as a tank for a ranking party, and makes archons completely useless for ranking; since the conjurer then has to flee, wait for the archon to leave the battle, and then return to keep on fighting.

Accurate description of what I have been experiencing with my recently rolled conjurer. If I was going to post solid proof of this, I would have posted the ENTIRE log of me fighting the ghasts in Eil Shaeria, which would have showed me having to flee from every single fight before the ghast could be killed.

I was there with an assassin who was a pretty solid tank in his own right (he tanked my elemental, blazing archon, phase wasp, and me earlier when he was trying to PK me, before we made peace and joined up, and was thoroughly kicking my archon's ass), but the ghasts were still beating him down pretty good. As for me, the archon was getting dirt kicked so often, we would have been better off with an angel and the assassin tanking than to have an archon along. As soon as the archon got drawn in, I'd promptly get my ass handed to me and have to flee, and hopefully not flee into more hostile ghasts.]

p.s. My original post had FAR less lines of text than this, and was more concise and to the point, but now I've had to add in more explanation of my points to demonstrate that my points were wholly valid, logical arguments, not a "rant" of "speaking or shouting at length in a wild, impassioned way."

If it is *NOT* an unintended change, then the people in charge have no clue.

But mobs bringing archons into combat has been brought up multiple times. If they give in now and change it back to the way it was (and should be) then they'd be admitting they made a mistake. Something the current bunch refuse to do.

>If it is *NOT* an unintended change, then the people in
>charge have no clue.
>
>But mobs bringing archons into combat has been brought up
>multiple times. If they give in now and change it back to the
>way it was (and should be) then they'd be admitting they made
>a mistake. Something the current bunch refuse to do.

1) I've rolled back changes before because I wasn't happy with the result and/or someone convinced me to. It may not happen often, but I can say from personal experience that you're wrong and that's all I need for my own peace of mind. Of course, I'd prefer the player base at large know it too.

2) You, and a vocal minority of others, have been making this claim of the staff for nearly two decades despite the fact that "the current bunch" has changed, sometimes wholesale, multiple times over those years. So regardless of whether it's true (and I assert it's not), it's in my opinion a ####ty and non-compelling argument because experience would tell us you're going to throw it around if you don't get your way no matter what. Then again, you yourself are a pretty good argument for the saying "people don't change".

And I don't throw around baseless accusations as my arguments. I do recall some things being changed, and then changed back when people spoke up about how bad the change was. It is my VERY strong belief that this is one of those bad changes. Conjurers are one of my 3 most favorite classes (shapeshifters and thieves being the other two). I've played so many conjurers to hero over the years I've lost count. When I play a conjurer, I'm good enough with them that I tend to accomplish things most others would likely die attempting (I still die attempting them occasionally too, but I succeed more than I fail). With this more recent change, though, things that SHOULD be simple for a conjurer to do are now nearly impossible.

Solo ranking/exploring in a place with closely packed aggro mobs is now impossible, since you have no room to flee from one fight going wrong (due to archon being drawn in) to get healed up, without getting straight into another fight, which will also go wrong the moment the archon gets hit there.

Ranking in a group with no other tanking members is now impossible. A conjurer, a thief, and an axe warrior walk into the Dark City in Organia... The conjurer's archon gets dirt kicked, and the conjurer himself flees badly hurt. The thief and axe spec can't tank very well, so one of them ends up in front. Eventually they get too hurt to continue, but the conjurer is now healed, so he takes over again. Archon gets dirted again, and conjurer flees. Hopefully the wounded group memeber doesn't get hit and killed right away and the non-wounded member takes over while archon heals the conjurer from the back. Now the non-wounded member is badly hurt, so he flees, and conjurer takes over again. Archon gets dirted again, conjurer flees, and now someone dies.

I get the idea of giving player-like tactics to NPCs, and in some situations, I'd be perfectly ok with it. For instance, super-badass NPCs like ancient dragons, the Arcanaloth, Death knight, Matron Mother, etc... are all example where I would be like, "Ok, they want those mobs to be legitimately too tough for a single character to take out. That's cool. Hope they juiced up the reward for killing those NPCs also." But seriously dude, RANKING MOBS? There are so few people playing this game as it is and tanks are already hard enough to come by. Do we REALLY want to remove yet another tanking class from the game? And if we keep this change, what the hell is the point of even bringing an archon in the first place, so you can have defensive preps on a stick just to sit in the back of group with less offensive power? Do we REALLY need almost 1/4 of an entire class just for that?

>1) I've rolled back changes before because I wasn't happy with
>the result and/or someone convinced me to. It may not happen
>often, but I can say from personal experience that you're
>wrong and that's all I need for my own peace of mind. Of
>course, I'd prefer the player base at large know it too.

So the fact that you haven't rolled this particular change back (after it has been in play for a long time and people have brought it to your attention multiple times) implies that you are happy with it. Which leads me to think that you have no clue about actually, you know, playing the game.

>2) You, and a vocal minority of others, have been making this
>claim of the staff for nearly two decades despite the fact
>that "the current bunch" has changed, sometimes wholesale,
>multiple times over those years. So regardless of whether
>it's true (and I assert it's not), it's in my opinion a ####ty
>and non-compelling argument because experience would tell us
>you're going to throw it around if you don't get your way no
>matter what. Then again, you yourself are a pretty good
>argument for the saying "people don't change".

Cool story bro.

About 95% of the stuff you post is absolutely vile disgusting angry venom that does absolutely no good for the players or the staff and is terrible for the game. When you lash out at the staff you never back up your claims with even a shred of evidence. You sound like a lunatic, and you give other players a bad name to the point that you make false claims for them when you say things like "and the entire playerbase agrees with me." The saddest thing is I am pretty sure you know you're lying when you say things like that, but you say them anyway even though you make claims saying you're trying to help the game.

You're not helping. You are part of the problem. Please drain your venom sac somewhere else.

.

That you chim in the fourth or third topic already, without saying anything on the topic's subject, but saying -- "Imms right, all others not right, topicstarter go and #### off". Did you get your imm rewards early?


As for the topic, its a horrbile, absolutly horrbile change. More, its a nonsense change. who were complaining about conjurers? NOBODY.

I see that as our imm coders broke something while fixing another problem or project. And now they can't fix it or find roots of the problem without the rollback.

>I see that as our imm coders broke something while fixing
>another problem or project. And now they can't fix it or find
>roots of the problem without the rollback.

Uh, what?

- The change was deliberate.
- As I remember it, Valg understood the implications of his change when he made it.
- I know exactly what's going on and why.
- I know exactly where in the codebase the affected code is.
- I know exactly how to "fix" it if/when I want to.

Re-read what Aereglen wrote, because you're doing it right now.

If I want to start the ####storm, trust me I'll say other things and discuss other problems rather then the discussion about the change that doesn't make sense.

If you don't want to explain why you did that change - perfect. I have no more questions. Thats my opinion and there are a lot of things that need to be fixed. If you want to standardize how mobs and charmies interact in the combat - excellent, but saying - #### off, we know what we do - doesn't make sense. Especially when it kills the whole ranking system for the class that was there for so many years.

Umiron's position (that is quite persistent and you as someone with programming background should understand it as well) is "don't fix if if it's working". Changes that went in did so for a reason (one that current staff may or effectively may not know), so they are VERY reluctant to change them back unless there is serious data underneath complains.

As for the conjurers - the only underlying data is "I can't have god mode fighting mobs as a conjurer". Well you know, I for example don't mind that like... at all.

P.S. Pissed off because he can't sweep ghasts with just conjurer and assassin? Really?

P.P.S. I back you up on Aeriglen's behavior observation though, pretty funny

again, if its a part of standartization - then fine.

Still, the conjurer is not the God mode. Most of tought mobs have area attack even with normal phys attacks. So they kill conjurers pets very easy.

Most of normal ranking mobs trip, dirt kick, bash - once in a round, which makes tanking for the conjurer impossible. Whats the point for the archon then?

Conjurers are stupid strong situationally. That should be balanced by them being vulnerable situationally.

You go with familiar/elemental/archon/mercenary - that's like 20% chance of a skill going for archon.
You have flash, which can blind and then archon will never be hit with a skill.

So I'm more of a "There are mobs that can't be blinded? So you can't set up archon keeping you alive forever in like 10% of your fights? We the people don't really mind, think of something to mitigate that, have the assassin tank ghasts and go angel if you're so absolutely sure you should do ghasts."

There are so few of them where you can use flash.

Conjurers were fine in my opinion. I still think that this change wasn't made specially for conjurers. It was a part of a different fix.

PS: I got your point.

>Conjurers are stupid strong situationally. That should be
>balanced by them being vulnerable situationally.

Strong? Yes. STUPIDLY strong? No. They're also balanced by the fact that of all character classes, they already have the most ways to self-die, and are the easiest class to self-die with.


>You go with familiar/elemental/archon/mercenary - that's like
>20% chance of a skill going for archon.
>You have flash, which can blind and then archon will never be
>hit with a skill.

Ranking with a mercenary is still not a very good option in most cases, and just fills the role of another party member. You might as well not count mercenary as part of your calculation and just calculate with party members.

Also (and this is your biggest error here) blinding an NPC does not prevent the NPC from targeting others with bash/trip/dirt kick, just like it doesn't prevent them from targeting others with spells/supps when the mob is capable of such. It doesn't prevent it from targeting PCs with such, and it also doesn't prevent it from targeting the archon with it.


>So I'm more of a "There are mobs that can't be blinded? So you
>can't set up archon keeping you alive forever in like 10% of
>your fights? We the people don't really mind, think of
>something to mitigate that, have the assassin tank ghasts and
>go angel if you're so absolutely sure you should do ghasts."

As for your statement about, "not sweeping ghasts," it's not an issue about ghasts. It's an issue with ANY ranking area. Ghasts simply highlight the problem the easiest because you if you have to flee, you only have a 50% chance of fleeing safely. But the problem still exists even in other places. Frigid Wastelands? Frost giant draws in Archon and proceeds to beat down conjurer. Conjurer flees and now weak, non-tank party members have to tank and get their own asses beat while conjurer is getting healed. Same thing with drow warrior students. Same thing with Aran'gird, same thing with demons in Organia. Same thing with Maethien ruins. Same thing with skeleton warriors. Same thing with Spider Haunt. Same thing with literally ANY ranking area.

"keeping you alive forever in like 10% of your fights?" The only place where the archon can "keep you alive forever" is in fights where you're not really challenged anyway, and having the archon fight physically wouldn't even present a challenge. Even before this change, I have been killed or forced to flee while having an archon around to heal me, without the archon being drawn into a fight. They are NOT god mode, and they DO NOT make you immune to death. There are already PLENTY of situations where you can be killed despite having the archon around and actively healing, where the damage output of the enemy mobs seriously challanges or even outstrips the archon's ability to heal.

I really feel like you haven't actually PLAYED a conjurer, or haven't done so very much, certainly haven't actually critically analyzed how archons work. Archons wait for your HP to drop before they start to heal you. Luminous archons will often let your hp drop to below 60% before they start healing you. The healing they use is cure critical for non-goods, and heal for goods. That's some very slow healing to rely on when you're at 60% or lower, unless the mob you're fighting isn't pumping out damage very fast anyway. Blazing archons will also let you drop to about 60%, but they use heal for non-goods (unless their morale is low, and then it's also cure critical), and rejuvenate for goods (unless their morale is low, and then it's only heal for goods). I rarely use radiant archons, since if I am able to conjure a radiant archon, I'm also able to conjure a transplendant archon, and I'll make sure I have enough mana to just skip radiant and go straight for transplendant. As such, I'll refrain from commenting on radiant archon behavior. Transplendant archons will usually wait until your hp drops to 70% before they start healing. If their morale is really high, they might heal you at 80%. If their morale is low, they'll wait longer before they start healing you. When you start talking about transplendant archons, you've got the most amount of survivability if the archon is drawn into combat while ranking, since, by that time, you're already AT LEAST level 40 yourself and have much more HP and usually stronger groupmates as well. That's not always the case, though, and even if it is, if your own parry and shield block percentages aren't very high yet, you're still going to be taxing the archon's healing, even when the archon isn't drawn into the fight. Which means the moment it DOES get drawn in, you're now screwed.

You say they should be balanced by making them vulnerable situationally, but this change actually makes them vulnerable almost ubiquitously.

You say this only affects 10% of the fights, but it's more like 98% of the fights. The ONLY places I can think of where this change doesn't completely negate the conjurer's ability to tank are under water where bash/dirt kick don't work. That leaves Coral Head, Ship's Graveyard, Underdark Sea, Ruins of the Deep, and Coral Palace. So what do you do if the only people available to group are two shapeshifters who lack a water/amphibious form, who can't contribute anything while fighting under water? Elementals are totally useless for fighting under water, so no offensive help from that. The only familiars that can move under water are homonculous, imp, djinn/janni/efreeti, cherub, and phase wasp (via rejoin). Since we're talking about archons here, we can mostly rule out imp and efreeti since evils who bring archons are taking their life into their own hands anyway. Mercs cannot move under water unless it's a storm giant which is super weak damage at best. Silver construct can move under water and puts out a little damage, but nerfs XP gains.

So basically, if the conjurer wants to be able to tank reliably, he needs to go under water to rank and has to have a party composed of people who can actually DO something under water. Granted that most classes can, but not all, and with so few numbers these days, it's nowhere NEAR a guarantee to find a party that is under water capable. When you factor in that a growing percentage of our current playerbase is newbies who quite likely don't have much in the way of strong gear or strong skills, this likelihood of an under water capable group diminishes even more.

I challenge you to name me ONE place where a conjurer can go to rank with a party where this change DOES NOT completely nerf tanking ability, other than under water areas.

One final note. You say, "we the people don't mind..." but you DO NOT represent "we the people". So far, I have seen FAR MORE people speaking out AGAINST this change than people saying they're ok with it. And that's not counting the people I've spoken with IC who complain about it as well (albeit in less direct, less open ways).

So it seems like there's a bug there, because I've definitely seen mobs randomly targeting PCs and my archon even when blinded. I'll have to see about getting a log of it when I get the chance to play again.

I could swear that was by design. But seems no one else (you or those on the other side of the debate) remembers that.

Specifically, I thought the original design was that blind mobs could still target other creatures in the room including those not assisting. I think there may have been some attempt to change it though because I can remember being surprised when I didn't observe it with a character.

Thing is mobprogs seem to be largely zone-based (as Umiron always states that they are up to area builder). So unless there is object-oriented programming involved (which of course is not the case) there's no way that mobprogs would take special effects into account, hence occasional blind targeting.

In half the places you mention the groupmates could just flee too before getting too hurt and pull back a couple of ticks. Hell, the conjie can survive a round or two to buy them time, then flee and return so the archon tanks.

Also good conjies have minimal chance of dying to servitors, particularly if they favour archons.

Yeah, sure the other groupmates can flee too (assuming they don't get bashed), but do you REALLY want to play a class that has to flee every few rounds in order to be the tank? One of the major draws for playing a conjurer in the first place is that it's a tanking class. Common tanking classes are (in no particular order):

1.) Warrior
2.) Assassin
3.) Ranger
4.) Shapeshifter
5.) Conjurer

I realize that some other classes can tank too in certain situations:

Shaman (with high parry/shield block, sanc, protection, & cure critcal)
Anti-paladin (with 100% parry/shield block and mobs dying fast enough)
Necromancer (with dam reduction and vampiric touch)
Transmuter (with muscular lethargy and dam reduction)
Thief (with shield block and low carry weight)

However, with this second set, it usually requires the group to be very strong and capable of killing the mobs quickly before the makeshift tank wears down.

Conjurers are already an under played class. Pre-change, they are already one of the hardest classes in the game to play. Whenever a newbie joins the game and starts asking about starting classes on the newbie channel, I've never heard an Imm say that conjurer is anything but a very difficult class for beginners. This change just simply makes it even LESS desirable for veterans, and even HARDER for newer players. Are we really going for a STEEPER learning curve here and making a class RARER? Everything else lately has been a change to make underplayed classes more desirable, and decrease the learning curve for newbies. Yet this change has the exact OPPOSITE effect.

>Also good conjies have minimal chance of dying to servitors, particularly if they favour archons.

This is only true in a comparative sense. Good conjurers may have less chance of dying to servitors than non-goods, but every other class in the game has ZERO chance of dying to their own abilities save for shifters with an air form who run out of movement or mana in the air. Moreover, even though goodie conjies may have less chance of dying to servitors than non-goods, that doesn't mean that they're exempt from dying to their good servitors. Although rare, archons can still arrive hostile even for goodies, angels moreso. Angels still require the goodie conjurer to get busy killing evil or they'll turn on the conjurer, even with max charisma and all the available edges in the game to counter it.

Even if the goodie servitor doesn't arrive angry, there are STILL reasons for it to attack you as a goodie. If you repeatedly fail to bind the archon/angel, your circle will go away (with no echo, mind you), so unless you've already played conjurers enough to know how long it takes for your circle to go away, or enough to learn to check for the presence of the circle EVERY TIME you fail to bind before trying again (read, "anyone other than a veteran conjurer player"), then you're very likely to die to your recently conjured archon/angel even though they arrived happy.

If you throw in damage to the good-aligned servitor, the risk becomes even greater. Let archons get drawn into nearly every above-ground battle, and the risk becomes MUCH, MUCH greater, since the archon is going to take damage almost every time you flee to disengage him. This is even more the case when (getting away from ranking situations) exploring and you have to contend with mobs that hit all. Previously, these mobs have always been a major headache for conjurers since it always results in the death of their elemental and eliminates most of their offensive ability. The only redeeming grace in these situations was recognition that at least the archon would still commune offensively from time to time to finish the battle, provided that the conjurer could assist in keeping his own health high enough to give the archon the freedom to act offensively (high defenses, warp dimension, other damage reduction). With this change, those mobs will now make conjurers totally useless, since the archon will get drawn into the fight, and then be promptly killed by the "hits all" aspect of the mob, leaving the conjurer sitting there for the next 40 game hours with no servitors at all. So much for solo exploration.

Either that or you lie about playing a lot of conjurers. Not having blockers mastered by 40? Having only non-water shifters as groupmates? Eating damage from EVIL ranking mobs at a pace when archon can't heal it? Drawing up a picture of not being able to flash blind a frost giant in frigid wastelands?

What kind of preconditions are those?

P.S. And yes, conjurers are STUPID strong situationally, not just "strong".

>Either that or you lie about playing a lot of conjurers.

I HAVE played a lot of conjurers, and that's why I know that the points I made are valid.


>Not having blockers mastered by 40?

I RARELY have defenses mastered by 40, conjurer or otherwise. I sincerely don't understand why you're shocked at this. Unless I'm playing an elf/drow who tanks all the time from character creation, or unless I sit down to play some day with the express purpose of mastering defenses, then it's very unlikely that I'll have them mastered by level 40. This is even more true on a mage, even a conjurer.

>Having only non-water shifters as groupmates?

MOST shapeshifters are non-water shifters, and shifters in general are one of, if not THE MOST, commonly played classes. So basically, this condition comes down to having a group composed of conjurer and two shifters. Why you think this is some ridiculous condition baffles me.

>Eating damage from EVIL ranking mobs at a pace when archon can't heal it?

Yes. Happens all the time. Granted this is mostly the case when I haven't taken the time to gather a decent set of +hp gear, but even with basic hp gear it can happen, especially when you can only get a luminous archon.

>Drawing up a picture of not being able to flash blind a frost giant in frigid wastelands?

This is you twisting words. I actually never said say anything about not being able to flash blind frost giants. I just said that frost giants can dirt kick archons as well, so it's yet another ranking area that is going to nerf a conjurer's ability to tank. When I posted that, I hadn't yet seen Umiron's post about mobs not being able to dirt kick someoe they're not already fighting. However, that being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen my archon drawn into battle even when the mob was blinded. Since I rarely log my sessions, I'll have to work on recreating the situation to get a log of it.

And since you brought it up, flashing frost giants as a goodie conjie is risky business because there are all those camouflaged trail rangers scattered around the area, and the trail rangers are all good-aligned. So any use of area spells runs the risk of hitting a goodie mob.

>
>What kind of preconditions are those?

Very reasonable, common ones.

Your answers display that even if you've played a lot of conjurers, it didn't do you any good. You deliberately neglect factors that would make your character stronger and being able to cope with things.

That taken into account, your post now sounds as "Well I'm not gonna be bothered to actually DO something to make my character stronger, so please Umiron change the code so I can be competitive".

Chances are - no, not gonna happen. Sorry.

By interpreting things in the most extreme way possible so as to take a very small detail and shine light on it as if that were the basis of my entire argument, and leaving in the shadows the ACTUAL argument which is entirely valid.

We are currently playing a game with a much higher ratio of newbies to veterans than ever before. Newbies are NOT going to have outfits of +400 hp gear unless a veteran has compassion on them and helps outfit them. If I just gather up a full set of polished mithril gear (not always available), 2 rose rings, 2 topaz bracelets, a snow worm shield, 2 sandy cloak, and a snow leopard skin, that's roughly +200 hp. Does that help? Absolutely. Is it enough that it can't be occasionally overwhelmed while ranking even when the archon is not fighting? No, it's not. Is it so much that if the archon is drawn into the battle and stops healing that the fight could last longer than my available hp? Not even close unless I'm trying to rank up on "perfect match" or possible "few lucky blows" mobs.

If you want your arguments to be effective, stop trying to overlook, diminish, distract from, or distort the arguments of those you disagree with. Make logical arguments to support your side instead of manipulative arguments designed to make your opposition seem like a crackpot or an idiot.

"We are currently playing a game with a much higher ratio of newbies to veterans than ever before"

This is just not true. And conjurer is by no means a newbie-friendly class.

>And conjurer is by no means a newbie-friendly class.

This is exactly my point. And this recent change only makes it even LESS newbie friendly, at a time when we're trying to lessen the gap between veterans and newbies.

And making conjurer newbie-friendly would require reducing its power peaks, which would make you complain even more.

P.S. And talking about "stupid strong" conjurers, a couple of quotes from Kaer's PBF.

Feb 18, 2016|Lv 18|Northern Foothills|vs 1: <26> Zulus (100%, pillar of lightning)
Feb 23, 2016|Lv 18|The Past Grove|vs 1: <32> Telentar (100%, pillar of lightning)
Mar 20, 2016|Lv 23|The Tower of Sorcery|vs 1: <34> Niandre (100%, magic missile)

Long story short, this is a story of a lowlevel powerhouse (notice the distention) killed by conjurers solo. Each time I was the one attacking. The only thought I've had when suffering these deaths was "OMG conjurers are ####ing OP". And once again, the character was really terrorizing his range in what at times seemed like god-mode. There was no other time when I've felt so much helplessness having my ass handed to me. Other times, even the 18-20 level difference didn't feel like much of a problem.

nt

>And making conjurer newbie-friendly would require reducing
>its power peaks, which would make you complain even more.

I'm not sure how your logic concludes that making something newbie friendly inherently means making it weak. There are several classes that are widely considered very newbie friendly, and none of them are weak.

>P.S. And talking about "stupid strong" conjurers, a couple of
>quotes from Kaer's PBF.
>
>Feb 18, 2016|Lv 18|Northern Foothills|vs 1: <26> Zulus (100%,
>pillar of lightning)
>Feb 23, 2016|Lv 18|The Past Grove|vs 1: <32> Telentar (100%,
>pillar of lightning)
>Mar 20, 2016|Lv 23|The Tower of Sorcery|vs 1: <34> Niandre
> 100%, magic missile)
>
>Long story short, this is a story of a low level powerhouse
> notice the distention) killed by conjurers solo. Each time I
>was the one attacking. The only thought I've had when
>suffering these deaths was "OMG conjurers are ####ing OP". And
>once again, the character was really terrorizing his range in
>what at times seemed like god-mode. There was no other time
>when I've felt so much helplessness having my ass handed to
>me. Other times, even the 18-20 level difference didn't feel
>like much of a problem.

This is a level 18 character getting owned by someone 8 levels higher, 14 levels higher, and 11 levels higher. I don't care how much of a "powerhouse" you think you are. And distention doesn't mean crap about how much of a "powerhouse" you might be. It just means that you fragged the crap out of a bunch of low hanging fruit without bothering to level up while you were at it. A level 34 conjurer SHOULD be handing asses back to level 23s, or a level 32 to to an 18.

Distention at very low levels like that is WAY worse than distention at higher levels where you have more power of your own to call on. You attacked a level 32 conjurer as a pre-20 warrior when all you could hope to do is BASH or TRIP. Why would you even expect to win this fight? With that level difference, I could have kicked your ass with nearly any class in the game, except maybe healer. OP gear + bash does not make for a powerhouse. All this shows me is that you're a moron for thinking that you somehow had a snowball's chance in hell of killing someone so much higher in level than you. The only way you could hope to pull that off, against any class, would be to catch someone either unprepared, hurt, or just plain clueless about how to PK an overly aggressive attacker.

Without having been witness to Kaer at low levels to know for certain, but based on what you've written here and my knowledge of low level warriors plus your obvious overconfidence in your own ability, I'd say you probably had a pretty nice set of +dam gear early on, and used it to terrorize your lowbie PK range by bash/tripping people to death when they had only fine leathers, or guild gear (or similar equivalent). Doing this repeatedly will EASILY get you distended if you don't level up every so often. I know because I've done the same thing as a thief, assassin, ranger, warrior, and anti-paladin. I've also gone well into distention pre-20 with unshifted shapeshifters, transmuters, invokers, and necromancers by using some choice wands and carefully selecting my targers. None of that, however, makes me a powerhouse. It just makes me smart about choosing only the targets who I know I can defeat and leaving alone anyone who I can't. You clearly lacked that distinction and bit off more than you could (or SHOULD be able to) chew.

Because conjurers were like the only thing that I could not chew

Easy to claim something like that when PBF doesn't show the level of your victims. Show us logs, and be sure to include things like whether or not that the person 14 levels higher than you when you were pre-20 was fighting something else, blind, already badly hurt, or still wearing fine leathers and a practice weapon.

Here's what I found from your PBF (and some comparative data mining in a few places):

Mon Jan 4 12:21:31 2016 at level 15 (38 hrs):
Kaer moved to Ancient Emerald Forest (Outlander induction) <PK: 0-0>

Mon Jan 4 12:21:31 2016 at level 16 (38 hrs):
Inducted into OUTLANDER by Tanzer <PK: 0-0>

Pledged at 15, inducted at 15 which advanced you to level 16 from the Induction XP. No PKs yet. Now that you have Windwalk to move rapidly through wildnerness, you begin the PK hunting.

I see 17 solo kills when you were level 16. Almost all of those were in typical pre-20 ranking areas, suggesting that the victims were close to your level and were probably already or recently fighting something when you showed up. Ten of those 17 are in wilderness areas where you have vastly superior movement due to Windwalk. Of the remaining 7, 3 are in areas adjacent to low level, wilderness ranking areas where you used your superior movement to chase them down after catching them off guard while they were ranking. Of the remaining 4, 2 are in Voralian where they were likely fighting Commoners; and the area is pretty small so it's very easy to step into town, see PK nearby, rush in and trip/bash. The last 2 are Galadon and Hamsah, with Hamsah also being right next to Araile where someone was probably killing bandits leaving them hurt and nearly out of movement. None of these 17 appear to be any higher than level 20.

I see 5 solo kills when you were 17. Three of those 5 were in Arkham and back-to-back where the group was likely killing undead in the crypts and you caught them sleeping after a pass through the crypts. One kill was in Voralian City where the dude was probably fighting Commoners. One was on Eastern Road (not enough information to discern anything about it). You also had a couple kills where you had help from someone much higher in level (Darvoderis, Imperial Shaman. You jumped in on someone else's PK and landed the killing blow; Suustus, who I can't find out anything about when searching battlefield forum) and they did well over half the damage (not to mention potential tandem lagging (Suustus???) and someone else to tank for you).

So far, nothing to indicate you solo PK'ing anyone of a much higher level than you.

I see 6 solo kills at level 18:
Feb 18, 2016|Lv 18|Azreth Wood|Grahln vs 1: <18> Kaer (100%, molten smash)
---------Hunting taglos or female tresnores. Wilderness allows rapid engagement via Windwalk
---------to catch them while hurt or already fighting. Nothing to indicate higher level
Feb 18, 2016|Lv 18|Gol'Galath|Zulus vs 1: <18> Kaer (100%, wrath)
---------Mountains are EXTREMELY draining on movement w/out pathfind/Windwalk. A problem you
---------did not have. You probably caught them sleeping/exhausted, possibly hurt if they
---------were previously fighting in either Evermoon, Velkyn, or the orcs in the dwarven camp. Interestingly, this is a conjurer.
---------Still nothing to indicate much higher level.
Feb 20, 2016|Lv 18|Balator|Shevrath vs 1: <18> Kaer (100%, wrath)
---------Not enough information to go on.
Feb 23, 2016|Lv 18|Akan|Adhros vs 1: <18> Kaer (100%, caustic smash)
---------Hunting dwarves. Probably hurt or sleeping after a pass. Nothing to indicate much
---------higher level. Low 20s at best.
Feb 23, 2016|Lv 18|Hidden Forest|Jarnis vs 1: <18> Kaer (100%, blast)
---------Hunting trolls. Wilderness Forest allows rapid engagement via Windwalk while victim
---------has slower movement. Probably hurt from fighting. Nothing to indicate much higher
---------level. Low 20s at best
Feb 23, 2016|Lv 18|The Plains of Arendyl|Adhros vs 1: <18> Kaer (100%, caustic smash)
---------Hunting elves. Wilderness allows rapid engagement via Windwalk. Victim possibly hurt
---------from fighting. Victim was either low to mid-20s, or even lower but part of a group
---------of much higher level.


I see 4 solo kills at 19.
Feb 23, 2016|Lv 19|Galadon|Vra vs 1: <19> Kaer (100%, cleave)
---------Not enough information to go on, but a small area and easy to rush someone and catch
---------them off-guard
Feb 23, 2016|Lv 19|The Past Grove|Ameenotep vs 1: <19> Kaer (100%, cleave)
---------Ameenotep was level 24 here based on your PK deaths for the same day. Also a thief,
---------so a 5 level advantage at this point is trivial.
Feb 27, 2016|Lv 19|Galadon|Hrugl vs 1: <19> Kaer (100%, infernal power)
---------Not enough information to go on, but a small area and easy to rush someone and catch
---------them off-guard
Feb 28, 2016|Lv 19|Outskirts of Galadon|Mauibach vs 1: <19> Kaer (100%, frigid chop)
---------Mauibach was level 37 on April 9th, which was 6 full weeks after you killed him here.
---------If he's only level 37 six weeks after this death, it's pretty reasonable to assume
---------that he was near your level at the time of your win. You, by contrast, were level 31
---------on April 7th, and we know you were leveling slowly for PK and possibly other reasons.
---------He only out-paced you by 6 levels in all that time, and anti-paladins have little to
---------gain by level sitting pre-unholy, meaning there's a good chance he could have actually
---------been of a LOWER level than you.


I'm sure I could go on, but I won't. The point is, you claim you were some powerhouse PK'er at low levels and offer that as evidence that conjurers are overpowered because 3 conjurers of VASTLY higher level than you handed your ass to you on a platter. But I see absolutely nothing in your PK record to indicate you were successfully mowing down people of equally high level to those 3 conjurers. On the contrary, I find in your PK death record an equal number of deaths to non-conjurers of similar levels as those three conjurers, and ample evidence in your PK win record that the majority, if not all, of your wins were vs characters of similar level to yourself, who you very likely caught while they were ranking and unprepared for a fight.

Moreover, the damage types indicated by your PK win record suggest that you did indeed have some very strong gear that you were using at the time, giving greater weight to all the arguments I have made thus far against your claims of being a low-level powerhouse. In case you forgot, I'll restate it: Uber-strong gear + bash pre-20 (in common ranking areas) does not make for a powerhouse, or give reason to believe you should have any chance at killing someone 14 levels higher than yourself.

>Still, the conjurer is not the God mode. Most of tought mobs
>have area attack even with normal phys attacks. So they kill
>conjurers pets very easy.
>
>Most of normal ranking mobs trip, dirt kick, bash - once in a
>round, which makes tanking for the conjurer impossible. Whats
>the point for the archon then?

....../\
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....THIS!!!

The only issue I have with this change... is that it pushes fun and play-ability to one side for the sake of realism.

Valg has a history of this, and a majority of his changes (though they make the game more realistic) have an impact on the overall fun factor by beating down players with the repetition stick or the useless pain ball.

But hey, a lot of people have said that for a long time in a far eloquent manner than I care to bother with and for all that it has been ignored.

But to just go about and spit venom and curse people is all together useless and will get you nowhere.



Now if you guys wanted to go back and review some of Valg's FUN MURDERING changes and slide them back down the scale away from realism towards play-ability... I'll pen up a dissertation to influence it appropriately.

For what it's worth, I tend to agree with most (not all) of Valg's changes and "realism" has nothing to do with it.

The fact that mobs are not slightly less stupid and sometimes require a slightly more strategy to fight is a good thing to me.

I also consider the fun aspect, but I don't think that "harder" automatically means "less fun".

This change in particular might make conjurers situationally less dominate than they were before and it might even make certain (but nowhere near all) things harder or even impossible, to say it makes them unplayable borders on hyperbole in my opinion.

"I also consider the fun aspect, but I don't think that "harder" automatically means "less fun"."

You also don't play mortals.

...is when they do things PCs can't do.

I'm sorry, but except for big bad bosses, that shouldn't happen too often.

What I mean is this. I'll have a mob dirt kick, disarm and bash all in a 2 round period. It's not that I have a problem that the mob AI is smarter than most players (though I kinda do), it's that it happens QUICKER THAN ANY PLAYER COULD EVER DO IT pisses me off.

I'm not talking about level 51 mobs either. I'm talking about guys in the new Ruined Keep and ####.

It doesn't matter what the topic is. What I'm addressing is the tact and poise, or rather lack there of, that Bemused uses to address practically any topic about the game. Since you care to butt in, I'll mention that you do the same thing. You fly off the handle, you blame everyone but yourself, your completely uncivil, and occasionally you drop a flat out lie. You constantly say it's the imms that are the problem, but you scoff even at your fellow players when they disagree with you and say things like "Did you get your imm rewards early?" by the way no I have not. You don't actually take advice, and you become vindictive when you reply to those who disagree with you. I don't agree with the change valg made, but I'm not going to harp on other imms because of it. Also to note this thread was started to address bugs. Bugs that are being addressed by the staff you still continue to flame. So it looks like you are the one who is actually off topic.

If you really honestly want to help the game, stop talking on the forums and just play.

We were discussing the change. But you came here to explain how imms are great and we are not. Thank you, we don't need your insightful explanations. We were discussing the change.

Now you say that you didn't start the offtop. But three of your posts here - OFFTOP. Strange, strange.

Now you say that you don't chim in the third thread already just to defend the current crew no matter what.

I got your point. Good luck with that.

Let me share with you what Umi said about this thread, since you appear to not have read it.

"There are three bugs in the queue containing logs wherein a NPC casts a spell on a target it wasn't directly fighting while blind.

While that's probably not ideal, it's completely unrelated to the change people have been discussing in this thread and as best as I can tell has always worked that way.

Individual fight progs, like the ones we use to mimic classed mobs amongst dozens of others, all have their own code for picking an enemy and it's likely that we need to update most/all of them for cases where the original coder didn't check for blindness.

I still can't find a documented case of a mob dirt kicking or otherwise initiating combat with a random enemy it cannot see while blind when it shouldn't."

Do you see the word "bugs" in there? Bugs are what this topic was about, not the actual change itself. I saw a lot of complaints, people making assumptions, and jumping to conclusions about things that they do not fully know about. Umi said he has rolled back changes before, and Bemused used that as ammunition to say Umi doesn't have a clue what it is like to play the game. People, that's one of the guys that's trying to fix bugs in code he didn't write. Bemused has harped on the imms a lot, he is known for it, and he was doing it again. He wasn't talking about the bugs, he was complaining about a change to an imm that did not make the change. You saying that I was the person to derail the thread with OFFTOP is laughable. So I don't think you did get my point.

Its a first time in your post you used words in your sentences that we were discussing in that topic. So your post now is only for 99% offtop. Very well done. I hope soon enough you'll concentrate on the topic subject and not on your righteous defence of Imms. I can even give you the idea: You can code the new text game "Righteous defence of Imms" where the player should defend his Imms from the Army of Stupid Users using invalid nonsense arguments. Sell that game to the Google store and Apple store, become rich, leave CF. Simple.

"Bugs" which came into this topic AT POST NUMBER 38 in the thread, and AFTER I posted, are what this topic is about?

You idiot.

Dest said for him to explain his case instead of posting on the BUG BOARD.

The conjurer explained himself and also said this "So here's what I had to say, minus the one part about not being sure if it was a bug or an intentional change,"

Before this thread ever started, people have been talking about mobs attacking and redirecting combat while blind. They have received responses by the staff saying they shouldn't be able to target while blind, and if it is happening it is a bug. Then they ask for more information and logs of it happening, so they can fix the BUGS. Umi clarified that for those like you who seem to forget all the times the staff helps out.

You idiot.

Beront there is no use talking to you, and I'm sure you will read this, so consider it your response.

gr

gr

I'm not about to go posting evidence for your sake. I've taken it up with the imps. Yhorian and Umiron are big enough to handle a little bit of criticism. Well actually Umiron's ego is incredibly delicate.

Valg said it best when summarising Aarn's departure but in this case swap Aarn for Destuvius and Umiron:


1) Aarn was spoken to about spending an inordinate percentage of his active time hounding one player. The gist of that was basically "We get it. Not a great character. But there's a lot of other things you could be doing that would be more useful than pounding on him more, and you're usually great at those, so do those." The overall drama attached to that strikes me as more than slightly overwrought, even considering other situations I had been keeping tabs on.


FWIW Aereglen go #### yourself.

I'll make you a deal: you stop being a cheater and then the staff will stop "harassing" you. If you can't stop with the shady business then you will continue to be "harassed" (read as held accountable for rules violations).

Thanks for the explanation without that "IT WAS MY RP" - ####.

So I am the cheater now. Ok.

nt

This post needs likes

Wow, you said a whole lot of nothing with all those words.

FWIW Bemused go fist yourself.

Since Devils will continue to both cast and dish physical damage when brought into combat, why don't Archons (assuming they aren't blind) continue to heal, especially since this behavior used to be PC only, but is now common to NPC's as well?

I mean Archone conjie (or any conjie at this point) isn't exactly tearing the place up these days...

It's also important to note that "not tearing this place up" is the target state for the game balance.

From fleeing and returning before your archon flees and letting your archon tank?

Mob AI is pretty crazy smart these days.

At first, that's EXACTLY what I did. Until it resulted in my archon turning on me after only a couple fights.

Archons don't defend themselves as well as angels do, even though they all have perma-sanctuary. They also don't have the option of chaotic regeneration like angels do. This means archons get beat up much more easily than angels do, and when their hp goes down, so does their morale. When they get down to around gushing blood, their morale has dropped enough that they heal less even when not fighting, they stop communing some things that require a higher morale, and if they stay that low long enough, they'll actually turn on you, even if you're orderly good.

Take a blazing archon for example. When blazing archon morale gets low enough:

As a goodie:
Archon takes longer to enter room after moving
Archon waits until conjurer HP is at a lower % before healing
Archon waits longer to renew preps when they fall.
Rejuvenate drops to heal
No commune of Fly


As a neutral:
Archon takes longer to enter room after moving
Archon waits until conjurer HP is at a lower % before healing
Archon waits longer to renew preps when they fall.
Heal drops to cure critical
No commune of Fly


If you are fighting in a situation where Warp Dimension is possible and useful (i.e. no other non-aggro mobs around to hit with it, and not fighting something that's immune to it like undead), and if you have parry and shield block at 100%, AND if the fight you're in isn't already taxing the archon's ability to keep you healed, then it might not be so bad to have the archon engaged in melee and not healing you. When I'm well prepped and fighting the ice drake, I actually prefer the archon to get engaged, because it makes the drake die much faster, which means less chance of an annoying dragon bite. In that case, though, I also know that I can flee if I have to, since I've usually already dealt with the ice para-elemental by that time.

Gr

Fair point as I never had to contend with seriously hurt archons.

Setting aside the issue of NPCs randomly dirt kicking / whatevering your archon, I feel like part of the problem here is that your expectation of what a conjurer should be able to do (and at what relative levels of ease), regardless of whether those expectations were met in the past, is considerably different than what mine are.

I'm not ready to say I think conjurers are perfect as-is or speak with finality on Valg's change to NPC "AI" yet, but for what it's worth I do think you and I have a lot of ground between us on this one and no matter how things go you are likely to end up disappointed. The only question being how much.

On the bright side, shapeshifters are still absurdly powerful, especially for their effort-to-power ratio, so you've got a win in that one still.

Not that my vote has any really direct impact the whole conversation, but this is about where my stance is. Hell, I've had active PC Ragers of mine fight archon-conjurers, and not be able to make headway. Random NPCs have no shot at that point.

That said, I do understand the sort of nuisance of having the whole point of an archon be negated by everything you come across. I'm not really certain where the balance should be, but I do tend to agree with Umiron that it was probably too far in the conjurer's favor, though this may be too far the other way. I'm still debating on how this might end up somewhere in between.

As far as someone else's comment on devils and how attacking them just ends up with an angry devil killing you AND still casting spells at you...booo. That's no fun as it is, as far as I've seen.

Maybe save the dirt kicking to the serious PVE Mobs. Things where the risk should offset the reward. The mobs that generally draw everyone into combat anyway.


Leaving it off mobs that are generally used for ranking. Or lower the success rate of dirt kicks.

I'm not a coder/IMM so I understand this may be stretching far. But just something that I think would make sense.

I completely agree with the tactic of someone doing that PVP but as much as it happens PVE seems a little offset.

n/t

nt

gr

Honestly at first it annoyed me but after a while I realized it was a non issue. It did make a handful of places more dangerous but good conjurer was already absurdly low risk and are still one of if not the lowest risk build at hero ranks in the game after the change.

It was also a time saving feature more often than it was a risk.

It would be cool to diversify archons in a way like demons. Maybe one is a bard that does group stuff, perhaps one that doesn't do dam redux but does tons of healing, life shield best death, and flips maldicts against your enemies, a traditional archon, and something more akin to a devil.

I believe it was bug boarded that NPC targeting logic didn't follow the same as PC, so now they have to see the target to use a skill on it.

Wouldn't the use of flash mitigate the NPC ability to target the archon?

Or is the real argument I can't rank on things that can't be blinded anymore, like undeads? Since he is using ghasts as his example and ghast ranking is one of the most stupid easy forms of ranking there is.

I've ranked with conjurers post change, they do just fine. Maybe they require a little more attention to play now, and god forbid there be a little risk in ranking, but that's far from making them unplayable.

NPCs should not randomly pick a target they cannot see. If that's not the case then I'd like to see a log of it breaking.

I was remembering a different bug board post, where it was a person outside the group that got hit. http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=17&topic_id=21228&mesg_id=21228&listing_type=search

I have seen a scenario where the targeting logic broke and an NPC actually attacked a different NPC in the room that was just sitting there, I think it had to do with my merc being in the room. I think I logged it, I'll see if I can post it for you.