1) Perhaps readjust the grouping system so more of the 3-person exp. gain is available for groups of 2. With relatively low numbers it has gotten remarkably hard to find a group if you play with any kind of restrictions because of alignement/cabal roleplay. Especially at the lower levels. At least, that's been my recent experience where I've spent probably 15 hours stuck.

2) The invoker practice system could use a little tweaking. I frankly don't know how the hero invokers made it. I just spent 2 hours improving a spell 2%. With god-like intelligence. I know it's a listed rule about botting, but just how is an invoker supposed to improve without it at rates like that? Even when I learned from mistakes, it was usually just a 1% gain (with wisdom at sagacious).

Now I don't have problems with hurdles for making classes rarer, especially when they are so very strong at high levels, and I'm usually filled with patience playing relatively high exp characters mostly solo, but this has really been trying my patience with this character. The biggest problem has been the boredom and resulting frustration.

On the up side, the boredom results in lots of teleports for fun an adventure and lots of deaths. I'll probably end up con-dieing before I get anywhere near shields.

>1) Perhaps readjust the grouping system so more of the
>3-person exp. gain is available for groups of 2. With
>relatively low numbers it has gotten remarkably hard to find a
>group if you play with any kind of restrictions because of
>alignement/cabal roleplay.

I'm not sure this would have as much of an effect as you're hoping it would. If you have a "viable" group with only two members, then it shouldn't be hard to pick up some scrub as a third. He doesn't even have to contribute since your group was already viable with only two members. All you need is a warm body. Consider getting someone outside your PK, possibly way outside your PK. I took this approach with my last character. I'd get one guy who was 6-8 ranks below me, then another guy who was 6-8 ranks below the first guy. Then we'd rank in areas that would normally be "too low" for me, except I actually earned XP because my groupmates were ranked so much lower than me.

>2) The invoker practice system could use a little tweaking. I
>frankly don't know how the hero invokers made it. I just spent
>2 hours improving a spell 2%. With god-like intelligence.

Maybe try doing it a different way. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect spells are harder to improve at if you're spamming them right after becoming able to learn that spell. Make this rule for yourself: I will never spam practice a spell unless I'm already at a rank where not having that spell mastered is preventing me from learning some other spell. So if you can learn A at rank 10, and B at rank 18, but B depends on A, then you'd commit to not spamming A before you hit rank 18.

What are your affinities?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

the default 5's across the board.

This is the first invoker I've done in a while, so I will admit to maybe doing something wrong, but I'm frankly clueless as to what it could be.

Thanks

Is that unless you are a hardcore power mudder with hours and hours to kill don't bother playing an invoker. The frustration level for them is pretty acute. Ofcourse imms might tell you to drop 2 paths because that is what the affinities were designed for initially. But if you look at the present invokers out there pretty much every one of them (i know there are always exceptions) is a basic 5 affinity I got nothing better to do so il spam bot, script write, my day away. So for those that don't care to use spam bots, its an exercise in frustation and then some.
Chalk it up and just spam spam spam or play something more fun.

Kads

Id say drop the lightning path and go arial. This will allow you to have pretty much the rest of your affinities at 6 or 7 and you should be good.

Arial invoker with no lightning shield? I would think that would cause alot of deaths from other invokers or shocking weapons. I would rather go half-elf or half-drow and drop lightning, even then, losing pillar is pretty steep. Of all the paths, I would probably drop water.

1. lightning is no big deal. Blue dragon hide and even if you don't have one invoker damage reduction is so sick it doesn't matter.

2. Shield of Waves helps with cranial. And geyser and engulf are one round decent damage spells.

Well, we put in a system for allowing people to learn the spells faster for exactly this reason. If you didn't take advantage of it and chose the slowest possible option, it's going to take a while.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>Well, we put in a system for allowing people to learn the spells faster >for exactly this reason. If you didn't take advantage of it and chose >the slowest possible option, it's going to take a while.


I see your point and I'll wrap up with these comments:
- the default 5 is what the help file says to take if you are new to the class, perhaps something might be made clearer in the help file?
- I chose a high int race (with the exp penalty) to offset the default 5 affinity and while it has no doubt helped in a lot of learning, that one stretch was just freakin' brutal(roughly 2 1/2 hours to gain 4% being pretty efficent at casting). I have almost 50 hours in an invoker that hasn't even gotten to the third tier of spells yet.

I don't want to come across as being excessively whiny; I think you guys do a great job overall. But this was being more of a pain to play than the wood-elf druid I had, and I thought that one was pretty hard to play.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but if you are at 50 hours and still haven't got to third tier you're doing something wrong. Level as fast an often as you can. At the earliest I would stop at 15 to practice the first couple of spells and then wouldn't stop again until 25. Some of the pro-invokers may disagree.

I would go so far as to say overpowered, particularly at lower levels where you can one-shot a lot of people with call lightning, let alone beat them up with other supps.

Having not played an invoker since the affinity selection went in, can someone give me an impression about how much difference I will see?

I am very limited on time, but would love to play one again. If I take as many 10's as possible, will I notice a big difference in my learning rates?

...Rome...

Yup.

It's not linear, either. That is, 10 is more than twice as fast as 5.

As an invoker side note, in some cases we didn't disallow the mindless spamming way to improve a spell, but trying to actually use the spell produces an easier/extra chance to improve.

It's not linear, either. That is, 10 is more than twice as fast as 5.

Not only is 10 more than twice as fast as 5 in terms of improvements/attempt, you also gain two other advantages:

1) Increased affinity means reduced mana consumption. You spend a higher percentage of your practice time awake and casting, thus generating more attempts per unit of time invested.

2) You're mastering fewer spells. You've paid the cost in flexibility, but you're reaping lowered practice time here as well.

Using rome's initial example, let's say a 4-path invoker needs to master 25 spells, and a 7-path invoker needs to master 40 spells. Let's also say it takes an hour to master a given spell with baseline affinity.

Even if the speed advantage was only "twice as good" (it's better), the 7-path guy has to invest 40 hours, and the 4-path guy has to invest 12.5. On top of that, the 4-path guy is spending less mana/spell, maybe enough of a savings to get the practice down to 10 hours. On top of that, we're telling you that the improvements/attempt advantage is even bigger, so 10 hours is an overestimate.

All of these things multiply each other's efficiency, and you sharply cut your overall practice time by getting rid of even one or two paths.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>2) You're mastering fewer spells. You've paid the cost in
>flexibility, but you're reaping lowered practice time here as
>well.
>
>Using rome's initial example, let's say a 4-path invoker needs
>to master 25 spells, and a 7-path invoker needs to master 40
>spells. Let's also say it takes an hour to master a given
>spell with baseline affinity.
>

My experience has been that it takes much closer to 2 hours to master a spell with baseline affinity, if not 3. Admittedly there are probably practice techniques with the spells that I'm not aware of and I'm not sure how you'd find out without having done a few invokers.

This question might also help Rome make decisions as well as my own understanding, but how much better is the higher intelligence of elves/dark-elves/arials compared to humans in learning Invoker spells?