I have been asking around a fair bit recently about the merian race, both with players in Celest and players in other organisations, and the unanimous conclusions seems to be that they are a seriously subpar race for serious combat. The reasons for this seem to stem from the racial overhaul, where the effects of stats and balance bonuses were dampened, and the effects of damage susceptibilities were not. Merian (particularly Imperial Merian) is a race that was viable because of its high int allowing massive damage output. What we have now, is a race that has less damage output, less speed, and the same weaknesses. The conclusion would be that the race is weaker now than it was before.

Looking at the specialised races for other organisations, I cannot see a way in which they are particularly comparable overall to the state of merians. Viscanti have 7 levels of damage resistance (note: full strength) and 2 influencing buffs to offset their admittedly poor charisma. They also have level 3 health/mana regeneration. Elfen have acceptable base stats that get nicely better with specialisation. They also have no weaknesses. Faeling notably have worse health than merian, though make up for it with 15% reduced balance, level 3 potion buff, level 1 herb and again, no weaknesses.

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Now for the past week or so I've been merian in order to try to get a feel for the race and assess it personally. I have few complaints with Merian Lord - the stats are all good, though the weaknesses still hurt as they are very prevalant damage types. However it is for Imperial and Seasinger Merians that I feel the problem is most crushing. Their tiny is not offset by any notable resistances or healing buffs, and is tarnished by the level 2 fire/elec weaknesses.

I think the problem is made more apparent by the fact that no serious combatants in Celest (although I will admit there are few combatants here at all right now!) are merian. It just isn't viable enough.

I want to hear people's thoughts on the topic. Personally I feel that the base merian con should go up a stat or two, and the Merian Lord con buff dropped by the same amount. I am pretty sure Estarra will not remove the damage susceptibilities, so I wonder what can be done to make merian itself a popular race again.

She should, because that is the reason the race sucks.

Or at least reduce them to level 1.

I don't believe the con should be altered, mainly because health is so easily buffed and it will not address the issue merians have.

Make it so that non-merians can't avail themselves of all the social services New Celest provides.

That's fine, not like anyone lives in that ghost town anyway.

I'm no expert, but the bard specialization for Merians seems to be especially bad. They get the same charisma as an Imperial Merian? And compare it to say a shadowsinger faeling, looks quite terribad when you consider the 10 con and no real healing bonus.

Seasinger is fine stats wise. 17 int and 15 cha? So a non demi could easily get 19 int and 18 cha? So 21/20 at demi. Great stats.

Half all resistances and weaknesses too! Both, not just one or the other.

This is really what's needed at this point. It will fix a number of other issues, including with Kepherans, as well.

That will even out races yet more and probably make high level humans with their great stats even more prevalent. I'm a great fan of racial diversion, also stat wise, so I'd rather not have that happen.
Just tune down both of the resistances to level 1, I think that would make the race overall acceptable.

Diversity. Diversion is what you got when you threw that firecracker in the old lady's mailbox.

Anyways, I'd have to agree with Xenthos here. The easy way out would be to lessen the impact of elemental modifiers. A more interesting solution might be to increase the diversity of damaging attacks to spread out the likelihood of getting a particular damage type, then adding more bonuses and penalties overall.

EDIT: Then making resilience affect physical source attacks and magic affect magic source attacks. Then probably a damage overhaul because of the imbalance that leads to. Don't you love pursuing balance?

Still trash with the two most common damage types at 10%.

Any suggestions Desi?

Well, fire and electricity aren't really the most common damage types. I mean, you encounter them but the aren't as prevalent as magic or what not. The issue is that the damage power houses (aka artied warriors) typically do electric and fire damage, and that is why it's a problem.



Ugh. Balancing around artifacts. I HOPE THE ADMIN SEE A PROBLEM WITH THIS.

edit: The Admin won't. Artifacts pays the bills so they will be allowed to exist in the state they are in, turning Lusternia's "combat balance' into total rubbish. The reality is that we can pursue balance all we want, but as long as runes (not magic runes which affect damage, and damage alone) exist, balance is completely unobtainable. It's a pipe dream, and anyone that is not a heavily artied warrior just has to learn to compete without them, albeit less effectively.

I've never seen the admin respond to complaints about artifacts. Ever.

@Furien: optimism. I've had too much beer tonight to give a crap.

Celina, throwing out numbers with buffs without comparing the results you get to anything else is definitely optimism at best These things are relative. Int doesn't do anything for a Bard as far as I know (it's all in the charisma stat), I meant to bring it up then because it seemed an almost irrelevant thing to give them, and thus not a good thing. Maybe that int should go into con? 11-12 base con would not exactly be killer.

The reason they run around with fire and electricity isn't some strange archaic mystery. It's because the majority of the races are either vulnerable or neutral to either. It also has to do with the resist buffs for either not being plentiful. Way back when most people runed up, there were a lot of mugwumps, aslarans, and merians to beat down with these. Now there are just roleplayers and loyalists to those races, aka suckers!

The only thing this will accomplish is make those races with horrid stats, but good resists, horrible races. We would need another total racial overhaul. It's fine for faelings, elfen, and humans who have nice stats and wouldn't suffer from resist changes. But Viscanti, Orclach, Krokani, and the like would just be the new "bad choices".

So you fix merian and mugwump a bit, and damn a whole bunch of other races to suckiness, and we're right back to where we were racial distribution wise before the last big change.

No thank you.

Merian should be fine tuned so they are viable. We shouldn't be using a hammer to do a chisel's job. No more broad changes, unless we're going to overhaul every race, in detail, again, or all we're doing is suffling the deck .

Wut? I dislike Celina as much as the next person but I have to call you out on this one.
Charune has said more times than I am sure he would have liked that bard damage is based 50/50 on int and cha. The only thing purely cha based on bards is song duration wich thanks to tempo enchantments isn't that big a deal anymore.
Merian bard spec is fine, the race just needs a break on the vulnerabilities. I suggest offering up something like dive that is a crazy high ranking skill with dubious practical use if you want to try and bargan them down

I could have sworn charisma was part of the calculation for bard damage. Did that get changed?