Okay, I think surge is too powerful. Tanky, hulking races are not attractive as their health, while greatly high, is stemmed by slow speeds they often come with. Why be that when you can be a small race, such as faeling or aslaran, and get the health of one of the tankier races, or atleast a commendable amount of health, through the use of surge, with none of the speed drawbacks?

Perhaps surge should be changed to up your max health by 25% pre trans, and at 33% trans(make it a bit more worthy to trans athletics) or some other such number, and not touch your mana? Perhaps this would make tinier races less attractive, or atleast put some of the sparkle back in the tanky races as they reach insane amounts of health.

+25-33% health without any drawback or cost? I think it's a crazy idea. Right now, at least it's easier to suck your mana.

Maybe if they kept the mana drain or some other drawback, but I agree with Rafael on most of his points about Surge. I had as much health as a surged Mugwump on the test server as I did as any of the other surged "warrior" races.

Maybe just tone it down, transfer just 25% mana to health and lower the mana drain a bit.

Nooo. Even with surge, Niara has more health than me! Don't kill it!

We have already established that was a combination of ingame things + titan that gave her that health level Xenthos - no go there. And just because arty warriors like Melanch can kill you in a few swings is no basis not to tone down the skill either.

Look, this is coming down to two things. "Tanky" warriors who want smaller warriors to have a downside / want their race choice to be better in comparison, and the "less tanky" races who can compete healthwise with surge saying "Uh... no, that isn't going to help things."

Discussing it more here isn't going to reach anything more than that, we've already explored most of the discussion possible on IRC.

Alternative would be just removing surge as a whole. Warriors have more health anyway due to their race choice and specializations.

Surge also seems to be an excuse for such high damage outputs for warriors, while other races are being decimated in one or two combos.

Now when I think of it, I don't really like the concept of surge as a whole.

Well, and this was the gist of my point- warriors without a means of active hindering have the choice of either surge or running away against high-damage opponents. If those opponents weren't doing as much damage, we wouldn't need it quite as much, but downgrading surge and keeping the damage as it is is not (to me, at least) a good idea.

Getting rid of surge would help balance warriors a ton, I think.

It would make it so that intelligence doesn't really factor into warrior race selection. As it is, warriors can utilize every stat. Mages/Guardians have no real use for strength, and have to choose between high int and high con.

It's not that simple. If they get rid of surge, they have to do other things as well- either looking at races, or downgrading the weapon damage formula. Removing surge the way things stand means the average speed knight will not be able to even survive against the average damage knight, much less fight back.

Asarnil commented that "less tanky" races shouldn't be trying to stand toe-to-toe with damage warriors, but what other option do we have? There are no bows, after all.

Knights in Achaea never had surge.

Knights here can achieve dragon-like healths with ease.

It upsets me.

Join the goddamn club, Xenthos. There are very very few people without surge who can stand against a damage knight, the way things are. Yes, they might want to look at Shadowlord faeling con a bit, or downgrade weapon damage. But it's BEEN like this for everyone else, and I find it incredibly amusing how blind you can be to that, since you have surge and don't notice.

Having no surge won't stop them from killing you in two combos, how would it help balance warriors?

Because currently warriors are able to be decent with damn near any race.

Mages and Guardians can't even come close to that. Surge is retarded. Why don't I have something to make my ego or strength into health? Because it would make me absurdly tanky with no real drawback in most situations. Same it does for knights.

Also, then you could maybe soften warrior damage, and not have them unable to kill warriors. As it is, you either annihilate soft targets, or barely scratch warriors. There is no middle ground. I'm not sure getting rid of Surge would help that, but it would be a nice start.

I've *been* in the club. I learned to surge to get out of it, putting in (for me) quite a few credits. I'm not blind to it. At least you *have* some way to hinder them, I don't even have that. I have no demesne, I have no ents... I could rub a web enchantment until I run out of charges, but I can't vine. All I've got are weapons I can try to hit with and hope that maybe paralysis will hit through their resilience, giving me a whole 2 seconds. Or running, during which I am doing absolutely nothing to them (once again, no demesne, no ents).

If I actively hinder them, yes, I can hold them down. If I don't, they're still hitting me. And if I'm running, my demesne is nothing by itself. It's only real purpose is to maybe split up groups or to help me stick sap.

And I have to spend a LOT more credits then you do to get out of it, and even then, you can get those same things, and have surge on TOP of that. Getting out of that is an option for you, whereas it isn't for us.

And there you go. As it is, my surge is like your hindering. It does not assure that I will live, it doesn't give me god-like power, it doesn't even tie up their offence- instead of them being unable to attack back, they are still swinging. The upside to this is that I can fight back as well.

Edit: And yes, I realize that's a pretty big plus, but it does not guarantee me victory, or even close against the extremely high-damaging knights.

On an semi-related note, everything seems to be going towards extremities in Lusternia.

- Knights can hit like 10k health with surge
- They can get over 2k damage every round for no power cost too.
- Mages also can get extremely high damage output with their standard attack.
- Level 3 speed bonuses. I believe they're unique to Lusternia, maybe there is a reason they were not put in any previous game?
- And overall, with all blessings, karma, astrology, people can get insane stats.

I was under the impression that feats are meant to be something powerful, balanced by the power cost.

But when I look at my Torture skill which costs 3 power, requires target to be bound, and does like 1000 damage with 400 bleeding, and then at some mages who do let's say 1500 with their regular staff bashing attack... I don't know anymore.

Surge is like the main reason the skillset athletics exists, I seriously doubt they're ever going to remove it, or even downgrade it, just because you think it's retarded.

Knights don't have any passive hindering effects like angels, demons, demesnes, fae, or active ones like hangedman, lvl3 eq webwhorage, fetishes, smudges, etc.. they only have their tankiness and their swords. This thread is pointless, I can't read the divine's minds, but I am pretty damn sure removing surge is not ever going to happen.