Posted by Diarmuid/Graatch on October 14, 1999 at 16:38:54:
In Reply to: Recent posts posted by Lachdanan on October 14, 1999 at 04:53:09:
I'll write where I respond to specific things below. > I figured I'd put my $.02 in on some of the recent posts. > First off is the Hasted Berserking Rager conundrum: If you need an external source, that means the class is not enough by itself to do anything. That means there is no longer balance. Each class should be able to affect/fight every other class, at least to some extent, and be able to harm every other class, at least to some extent, even if it's not easy. As it is now, not a single spell, nothing, will hurt the rager. Instead, even attempting to cast it, will harm the invoker. Ie you could get your earth elemental, your water elemental, even that creature from Drizzt. You could get those abishai things that Zendrac ran around with all the time. Also, you can simply run away from the ragers into a bunch of mobs. I realize Invokers can't summon, but there are mobs aplenty in the Old Thalos area. Also, there is the quicksand factor. Remember that spellbane and bloodthirst and resist are like 3 tick powers. Slap down some quicksand and a conglaciation, and the rager in question (unless cloud or arial) takes around a MANGLES every so often for the time it takes them to struggle out of the quicksand. You obviously haven't done this very often. First, notice that every rager assassin hero, for example, is an arail -- taishanrawr, veshiko, etc. And lots of cloud giants -- who all fly right over quicksand. But even so, I did exactly what you suggested. The conglaciation did lower case damage on them, Lachdanan. In two ticks of them being trapped in quicksand, I got a decimate! MASSACRE and devastate!. Two lower case damages and one upper case. Not even mangle. That did, well, pretty much nothing to them as you can see. And another thing, saying that bloodthirst and spellbane are only 3 tick powers is misleading. Unlike invoker shields, or transform or other things, ragers can thirst and spellbane *in battle*. That means they don't have to walk to you while thirsted, they can just thirst right at you, making it no real threat for them to walk around thirsted beforehand. And it means even if they were stuck in the quicksand they don't have to be without area spellbane. When it runs out, they can just redo it, right then and there, in the middle of the fight. And since there is no outward sign of them losing it, it's not as though I can even exploit that one moment of weakness. If I just keep casting trying to get that moment, I'll die to all the free hits he is getting on me, plus the spellbane damage. I'm certain there are more things an Invoker could do against a single thirsting rager. However, in almost every fight I saw you die in, there were more than one foe (dishonorable DOGS! :P). If you are going to complain about not being able to defeat two or more of them, sorry, I'm not with you. The issue I spoke to regarding multiple foes was completely separate from the bloodthirsting/area spellbane one. The issue there was one I've had all four years I've been here, which is that many people break/leave their roleplay, they break the role of the char they have chosen to play, in order to get a pk win. In the last case, the last log I posted, four battleragers were not just working next to, but in group with, a sylvan who uses magic and groups with mages so often that the entire world knows it. And, of course, five or six people against one invoker -- without cabal powers -- shows just about zero courage, which is supposed to be the staple of the rager philosophy. So let's not confuse the two issues. That's right, no mobs. One on one every single class should be able to fight every single class with just the skills/spells that were coded for that class. If an invoker has to go get mobs, something is wrong and things are not well balanced. But having to word is quite a bit different than dying. > Now that I've droned on and on and on about THAT, I'd like to point out that I, too, faced foes that I had NO chance of defeating. An evil shaman was able to tool me like nobody's business. Dispel, weaken, plague, poison (oops no swords no matter how much +str eq I had) and then bust out the demonfires. No bashie for me, no trip (if the guy was smart), etc. I can't complain about that, however, because I know that if _I_'d been a shaman (Knight shaman with FD? Nasty) I could smack those shamen around. However, I wouldn't have been able to beat up those axe-spec warriors as well, then. Or thieves. Or outlast a hold person like I could with Lachdanan. Each class isn't able to defeat EVERYONE. After playing Lachdanan I got really up for the idea of being a shaman. After getting tooled like that, I thought yep, I'm going to kick some ass. I did kick a fair amount of ass, but I was still meat against certain things, at which point I simply had to run. I don't have enough information on your playing lachdanan and what you faced, to comment. I am sure all of that is true, you would know best. > My point is, even if it is true that Invokers can't do ANYTHING against a thirsting rager with spellbane up, this isn't unbalanced. Invokers can pretty much tool anything else in the game. I've seen an Invoker kill a Lich solo using buffet. I've seen Invokers dish out UNSPEAKs once a round with pillar, when levelling. Well, again, I am surprised at your misinformation. Pillar has a full two round lag, so an UNSPEAK every round is impossible. Not only that, but it is not nearly as strong as it was a long time ago -- nor is geyser. As an example, I pillared a non-thirsting rager arial (exploiting a vuln) and got only a DISMEMBER. I mean come on. Pillar is the pinnacle of years and years of study of electricity, it is one of, if not the single most powerful damage spell in the arsenal of the invoker, and when used on an ARIAL (and my hands were charged with electricity, btw) it got a DISMEMBER. Another time it got a MASSACRE. That they can't always kill a rager that's thirsting doesn't make me too sad. And no, I'm not playing one right now. > This post is already entirely too long, I'll comment on some of the other things I wanted to later.
> Diarmuid's complaint is, if I'm understanding that there is "nothing an Invoker can do" to these berserking rager types. Of course there are things you can do, and I think you realize that, but there's nothing you can do without an external source.
If you have to go get elementals that means the powers of the invoker are not up to the fight at all.
Now yes, many many times I'm sure you had to word from a single rager who had bloodthirst and spellbane up. Likely when you didn't have all sorts of mobs to smack them around with.
Geyser, the pinnacle of wate magic, got lower case damage sometimes against arials and felars! Now, I expect geyser to be a little less powerful than pillar, because it can be cast every other round, rather than every third round, like pillar, but still, that's just weak and I think you know it.