I have personally decided to lay off of caballed characters due to a single very frustrating counterattack:


Lowbies retrieving.

There's two issues with the lowbie retrieval defense that is too good and makes cabal raiding essentially a waste of time if neither side takes any casualties and puts one another closer to con death.

One, depending on your cabal and playing times, there may not be any appropriate uncaballed or applicant lowbies to hire or call for aid against lowbie retrievers. And this is in addition to the fact that the cabal is extremely strong with say 3-5 heros on and this one lowbie walks up, whips the outer's ass because there is no help to call on, and UTTERLY HUMILIATES the 3-5 heros in about 5 minutes. (Given that, depending on resistance it usually takes heroes 5-15 minutes to raid a cabal)

Two, if the lowbies really are sufficiently beat off, clerical classes are the only ones that can put the outer back up to snuff due to it's massive HP amounts and ridiculously slow HP regen. However many cabals due to circumstance might only have bards or rager defenders available, if that.


A few ideas to make retrieval indirectly more challenging should cabals decide to use the lamer tactic of sending lowbies to do their dirty work for them due to the OOC PK range tool:

Make bard songs do double, triple, or quadruple healing on cabal inners and outers. All the rest of their songs affect the mobs properly as near as I can tell, but I can spend a whole 600 mana spamming 'Life to the Dying' and the mob will not change from convulsing on the ground. Ditto for bandages, the outers need to get a boost in HP regen from this ability due to their massive amount of HPs, crappy melee combat ability (they tank worst than most thieves for their level and hit like healers) etc.

Let warrior-type cabal outers berserk every few ticks even out of combat, please. We all know the skill subtraction doesn't affect mobs very much, let them have the hit/dam/healing from berserk if they are hurt.

And finally the biggun:

We DO NOT NEED heros infringing on lowbie PK ranges, as much as most people would like to drop a pillar of lightning on that level 26 drow AP and laugh as they full sac the corpse. Instead, the cabal guardians have no business being as weak as they are with cabal elders about. How about indirectly beefing up their strength depending on how many level 40+ cabal members are standing in the room. Like this:

Assume cabal outer base level is 30 with their current stats. If a 40+ is standing in the room beside the outer, tack another one or two levels onto said outer, with included hit/dam/hp max gains. (possibly not dam) So if there are 5 heros standing next to the outer guardian providing it moral support of some kind, the outer will gain from level 30 to level 40, hit that much harder, more accurately and gain the extra HP's. If that group of level 26's wants to retrieve now, they damn well better have heros scattering the opposition away from the room or else they will get eaten alive by the outer *as they should right after the opposing cabal just got stomped and demoralized by defeat by due to the 40+ forces raiding*

I would like to see something similar to one of these things happen because it's rather silly that the ####ing groups of 2 or 3 sit there mouthing off to heros because they are protected by OOC PK range, do as much damage as they like and then if they have to, flee and sleep up just to hit the half-damaged mob later because it can't possibly heal it's hundreds of HP fast enough. The #### tactics of lowbies retrieving against a mob that is sorely obviously weak for it's level is turning me off of playing capture the flag and then bothering to stay logged in once the item is taken, or concoct ####ing retarded plans to kill their inner right when our outer drops so we have the item again then hopefully return to our cabal before our outer repops so we can keep them from having an outer to kill to retrieve BECAUSE THE OUTER IS JUST SO WEAK...

It causes undue frustration and my suggestions allow lowbies to participate, but at a reasonable cost to their life and limb even if there's no immediate PK threat.

>I have personally decided to lay off of caballed characters
>due to a single very frustrating counterattack:
>
>Lowbies retrieving.
>
>There's two issues with the lowbie retrieval defense that is
>too good and makes cabal raiding essentially a waste of time
>if neither side takes any casualties and puts one another
>closer to con death.

It is? Have you raided the giant lately? If there's any defenders, it's a ####ing nightmare for any midbie mage involved. If there's not any defenders, it's still often a problematic thing.

1. The mage most likely won't be able to raid you back faster than you can take the item.

2. in this respect you don't need the beefing up.

3. As soon as a defender shows up, if the mage knows what's good for him, he's out (no-recall is scary)

>One, depending on your cabal and playing times, there may not
>be any appropriate uncaballed or applicant lowbies to hire or
>call for aid against lowbie retrievers. And this is in
>addition to the fact that the cabal is extremely strong with
>say 3-5 heros on and this one lowbie walks up, whips the
>outer's ass because there is no help to call on, and UTTERLY
>HUMILIATES the 3-5 heros in about 5 minutes. (Given that,
>depending on resistance it usually takes heroes 5-15 minutes
>to raid a cabal)

One lowbie? How low are you talking?

>Two, if the lowbies really are sufficiently beat off, clerical
>classes are the only ones that can put the outer back up to
>snuff due to it's massive HP amounts and ridiculously slow HP
>regen. However many cabals due to circumstance might only have
>bards or rager defenders available, if that.
>
Many cabals? Buddy, I'm going to call you out and say that you're talking out your behind. Play a Scion lately? I suggest you try one some time just to see it from the other side of the fence.

>A few ideas to make retrieval indirectly more challenging
>should cabals decide to use the lamer tactic of sending
>lowbies to do their dirty work for them due to the OOC PK
>range tool:
>
>Make bard songs do double, triple, or quadruple healing on
>cabal inners and outers. All the rest of their songs affect
>the mobs properly as near as I can tell, but I can spend a
>whole 600 mana spamming 'Life to the Dying' and the mob will
>not change from convulsing on the ground. Ditto for bandages,
>the outers need to get a boost in HP regen from this ability
>due to their massive amount of HPs, crappy melee combat
>ability (they tank worst than most thieves for their level and
>hit like healers) etc.

Ridiculous. Like I said, play it from the other side of the fence. Bards should not outheal any communer. They have huge utility otherwise (often they're the best way to kill any giant PC).

Like I said, it's a nightmare for mages to raid the village if there's a defender, especially pre-45th level mages (that's when the shifter gets his big form, the invoker's comfortable with their shields, the necro might have their mobs and the conjie with decent archons). By then they're raiding into defenders which they cannot recall from. Easy? I don't think so. One deathblow changes things for a lot of classes.

>Let warrior-type cabal outers berserk every few ticks even out
>of combat, please. We all know the skill subtraction doesn't
>affect mobs very much, let them have the hit/dam/healing from
>berserk if they are hurt.

Then the nightwalker should acid blast every so often for an oblit/annihilate or claw/poison. And on top of that be beefed up huge.

How many healers can you count Scion having lately besides Restraal?

Get one of them to raid with you and the problem is solved.

I have no pity for lowbie mages because that's lowbie magedom for you, they're supposed to be that weak.

I'm talking when a level 26 drow AP or a level 20 giant PC can solo or tag team an outer like that or any outer in fact, without repercussion because there (for every cabal there's times like these) are no lowbies to defend, there's a problem. Especially when the mob regens so slow that they can hack at it, come back after an RL hour and still finish the job easy.

A waste of tie the sooner CF will improve.

Item swapping! WEEEEEEEEEEE!

Seriously, what the hells the point?

>A waste of tie the sooner CF will improve.
>
>Item swapping! WEEEEEEEEEEE!
>
>Seriously, what the hells the point?

Confrontation. People avoid it enough as is.

Cabals force interaction of all kinds. Roleplay, PK, exploration and questiness.

.

>.

It's the only one that seems to have any bearing for me.

>It's the only one that seems to have any bearing for me.

I know its frustrating... Do you think only bards heal low amounts. But anyhow I think its good the way it is. If you beef quadrupple healing to bard song you must do the same to the other classes who heal (and this I would rather not see in the game). And I have fended off lowbies with low healing before. Thing is if there are no lowbies in your cabal that might be something your leader should look on, since that will mean the cabal will be weak in time.

If you beef up the outer when several heroes are on it would make it more or less impossible for that lone dude in a weak cabal to retrieve and that is bul####t. Confrontations will not happen because you know you cant succeed.

Use your tricks, use politics, its easy enough to get that lowbie handled in most situations.

The whole game isn't meant to take place at hero.

If lowbies are raiding your cabal, induct some.

It's a bit silly when they regen HP that slowly, and a bard has a healing song that does nothing or a ranger's herbs don't even do 10% of the outer's HP.

Thats because they have a LOT of hitpoints hehe... Even a healer have probs with that. They heal normal mob rate it seems.

It seem to me like you want to be able to hold someones item forever. If the game were designed for that it would not even be a fun game. Luckilly the outclassed dude can hit and run today... Use tons of time to get his item back. If you get your changes through this would no longer be possible.

And all in all the game is more fun for all parties.

I might have a look at those healing effects and how they interact with cabal guardians, but I wouldn't expect any drastic changes. Just as out-of-range people raiding was something we were expecting when we imp'd this raiding system, so are hit and run or attrition tactics.

Ultimately, if you have half a dozen heroes and the other side has one or two but does have a mid-level character to send and get the item back, you probably still can re-take the item faster than the mid-level can recover it.

Recruitment is essential for a cabal to survive the on-going wars. The only cabal - the battleragers do not have means to protect the outer. However, the outer compared to the others of other cabals is the strongest.

Imagine if the Imms make the Outers stronger and nastier, players will complain that they are unable to retrieve, which will lead to more forum complaints. So think this is actually a dog-bite-tail kinda situation and can go round and round in circles.

One man's meat is another man's poison.

Anyway, if your cabal takes another cabal's item, be prepared to lose it.

You seem to be writing this from a Battlerager's perspective since that's the only cabal that doesn't have the possibility of really beefing up their outer even more. The massive giant is the last outer I want to retrieve from, as a lowbie or as a hero. The norecall village is a MAJOR problem and the massive giant can take forever to kill. Your idea is to beef them up even more by having rank 40+ villagers stand next to him while the lowbies fight. That's no fun for anybody involved. If I'm that rank 40+ I can think of a thousand things I'd rather be doing than standing idly next to the massive giant.

I might be in favor of allowing outer guardians to do more as far as combat skills are concerned when there are 3+ heros on, but I don't see pumping them up just because a rank-sitter is logged on and standing there.