Frankly, some people are not going to have heard of all the appointed leaders in every guild in every city this early on, and it's ridiculous to assume they would. Some people have no reason to know other people, if you haven't fought them or something and you don't live in the same city, odds are you don't have a clue about a lot of people. You've heard of them now, -because- they're the leaders now.

Also, Champion shouldn't necessarily always be the -best- fighter. Frankly, some good fighters should be shot in the face rather than given any kind of responsiblity. They should be decent fighters, sure, but they also need smarts, and leadership ability. They're going to be making important decisions, muscle without intelligence is useless.

So, in conclusion-- if you think someone is a bad Champion because you haven't heard of them or they don't beat you in combat every time, get over yourself.

If I've never heard of one of the Champions, then odds are they're a bad Champion and haven't been doing a lot in terms of leading in the abundant PK.. But maybe I just haven't heard of them..

However, not only have *I* not heard of them, but people in their own city havne't heard of them. That's not a good thing, in my opinion. *shrug*

No, the Champion should be the best fighter in the Guild. If he or she is not the best, he or she should certainly be the second best, or at least the third - and that's cutting it rather close.

The bottom line is a Champion serves as a position to primarily protect their guild members. If, their guild members do not fight then it is rare that you're going to interact with a Champion unless he or she is very active in the PK world.

For example, Hartstone Druids aren't overly combative, and thus, Ethelon probably doesn't need to defend them as often as he would if he were a Serenguard or Paladin (that's just a guess). However, equally, Ethelon is an excellent fighter, the best our guild has by far, and he enjoys the PvP of the game and thus is fairly well known.

/babble off

That is a rather close minded way to look at it. It is up to the original Guild leaders to outline the full responsiblities of the leadership roles. If you relegate your Champion to 'grunt and kill', you are wasting a lot of potential. You might instead want someone who is skilled at groups strategy and can organize defense, someone who is going to be active in helping others learn to fight and can organize interesting and effect training programs, there are all manner of things a Champion can do. Not to mention just plain having the priveleges of a guild leader and thus being wasted if you never let them take part in anything but combat.

The Champion is an elected official, same as any other. They have at least some say in the way the guild runs. As long as they are an able combatant, I see no reason to disqualify them just because they are not the absolute be all and end all of Lusternian might. Because a lot of people who are primarily good fighters are -terrible- for any kind of other role involving not being a drooling retard.

I'd say the same about a lot of people who are not good fighters, as well.

I'm not expecting gargantuan might, honestly. It'd just be a little bit more reassuring if more than 3-4 people had any clue who a Champion was... Oh and if the Champion was good at fighting

Where is all of your hatred coming from? Just in one sentence, you have come out and attacked a group of players in this game for no reason once so ever. Your generalization of a segment of the player base that puts in the effort to become great fighters shows your ignorance of the work required to master combat in Iron Realm games. I really doubt that a mentally challenge person could be a good combatant in Lusternia. I do know that it does not take much in the way of intelligence to make generalizations though.

I seem to naturally pick the 'overpowered' class. Occultist over at Achaea...Wiccan here...how fantastic. Me no complaaaain.

I believe Malicia killed two guys at different times with only one hit, so she got champion...she's only lvl 13, and well...I killed HER with one hit.

That's because the simple fact of it is there are a lot of idiots out there who simply enjoy the fighting because it pisses other people off. These people should not be given responsibility because then they will just use that too to piss people off. "Drooling retard" is quite an accurate description of many of these.

To clarify, I don't hate all fighters, and I don't hate fighters because they are fighters. I just find that by the averages, there are a lot of people who are good fighters because they concentrate on nothing -but- fighting and engaging in conversation with those people is like raking your scalp over a bed of superheated rusty nails.

However, there are smart fighters, yes. And stupid non-fighters, -lord- yes. And I agree that maybe some of the champion appointments were possibly poorly done. I wouldn't really know, I've never fought some of them. I'm just saying, fighting ability by itself is not the only thing one should look for when judging who is a good Champion.

I think the assumption that people who are good at PKing are all 'drooling retards' stems simply from the existance of a funny little place called Magnagora. The general impression i've gotten is that most people believe all of Magnagora to be a bunch of highly aggressive 12-year olds with inflated egos who come onto Lusternia to slaughter the helpless between rounds of counterstrike. Mostly this is due to the actions of a few individuals, who likely don't even mean as much harm as it may appear, if any. That's just how I think a lot of people feel; not what I myself thing of Magnagora or anyone in it.

Champions don't -have- to be intelligent, in my opinion. They have to be strong enough and loud enough to proclaim and uphold the ideals of their Guild. That's the beauty of Champions; it gives those who ordinarily would have no political power a chance to shine, by doing what they're best at. Anyhoo, to date, I've seen no foolish Champions (I've only seen two to date, though, so fingers crossed), so I can't see where all this hatred is stemming from.

And out of the archtypes, probably Guardians. A good balance between offensive and defensive, and between magic and strength, is always a good thing.

To pull this back towards, ya know, the topic, someone once mentioned to me (a someone who now takes great delight in repeatedly killing me) that they were fearing an inevitable surge of powergaming Aslaran, Ur'guard Blademasters with tarot.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention that.

I think all the classes are more or less balanced here, more so than any of the other IRE games. One thing that makes this especially so is Trade skills being seperated from Guild Skills. It used to be that if you had a Trade skill, you had to sacrifice some potential guild skills. Not so here.

Everyone has different opinions on different classes in all the games. The argument about Moondancers being over-powered is in some ways true (they are certainly an -easy- class to fight well with) but are they really the best? There are ways around their strengths, and everyone has an achilles heel. People with lots of entities are good to use Disloyalty effects against. Of course, yes, this is a simple matter to cure, but more or less every single cure in the realms can be cured easily. Its all a matter of setting it up so that it sticks with them -long enough- to do some damage.

And although a Tae'dae myself, I must say, Tae'dae are not the most powerful race (though we may be the coolest ). Our balance restrictions are severe (and entirely neccesary in my opinion), and Level 3 magic susceptability hurts! The few times I've fought Visaeris, his Cosmicfire has done me damage in the realm of 1.4k. Thats -Huge-, but not unreasonable. Its our weakness.

Lots of people will go on complaining that something is too powerful, or too weak, without looking in to ways to overcome it. This is what seperates the average fighters from the truly feared (Who have, as yet, not quite been revealed in Lusternia, as everyone is still too new and raw to adapt yet). A good fighter says "This is my weakness, I must do such and such to avoid it. This is my opponents weakness, I'll do everything I can to exploit that".

The Archetypes here are all very good. I do not believe there is a single class that is decidedly underpowered in combat ability, and they all have quite interesting roleplay aspects to come from. From what I can gather, Knights are offensively strong versus most people, especially the Wiccan, and perhaps Mage archetypes (who are inclined to take races with less hitpoints, and thus get far more worked over by the HUGE bleeding of a Blademaster). Knights are defensively weak against anyone who uses a magic based attack. Our strength, as it is, is being a complete TANK in physical damage. We also deal in a good deal of afflictions.

Pretty much every single other Archetype, except the Wiccans, and the Guardians for the most part (Except those that take hexes), are far more reliant on "Nesting", that is, setting up a location for their purposes and drawing their opponents into it. This is acceptable, and they are strong within their locations. They need to capitalize on that, and its a huge advantage in a battle where you're protecting something (or someone) and the enemy essentially has to come to you. These classes need to engage opponents on Their terms and thats their weakness that more "Versatile" opponents, such as Knights, need to be aware of.

The point is, of course some classes are more powerful than others, its not possible to have perfect balance. But every last class has the potential to produce top-class combatants, given patience, a good supply of curatives, a half decent trigger set, and a rounded set of skills.

There are already some good "Household names" arising in the Combat World, such as Visaeris, and the other people high on the combat rankings. From what I can see, none of the real Top class combatants are drooling retards yet, and although they are certainly any less than my enemies in-character, I can see that they are at least not ignorant of roleplaying.

P.S. I am impressed, on the whole, at the quality of Roleplay, Skill, and Attitude of people in Lusternia. I hope it keeps up.

The thought of a Mugwump Moondancer scares me. You won't have the high int of a High Elfen, but 15 is plenty, and the faster equilibrium more than makes up for it. I can't think of a class skill off the top of my head that isn't eq based.

but the question is...who wants to be a frog?

Well I've been thinking Fae isn't the most powerful race for me as a Celestine... but it does work nicely. Seem to be many many Merian in that class and they're doing all right. I'm only playing it because I like Faeries... *grin*. We're just sooo squishy... The amount of health we DON'T have is astounding.

I've been trying to involve myself with pvp a lot, I've not had much experience with it before. Mostly I seem to have the best luck against melee types.

I think there's a pretty good balance overall, better than most systems I've seen... and I'm a game developer so I've seen a few *laughing*.

*cough*

Sorry for bringing another IRE game into the Lusternia board, but did you see what happened to the Mage class on Achaea when they made Magi armor-spells intelligence based? The deathsight spam from four guilds committing simultaneous ritual suicide must have been amazing.

Well, I exaggerate a little, but the point is there are definately some Moondancers thinking about going Groo... sorry, Mugwump. So fear.

I've heard a few complaints about the way Lusternia races were set up, but thinking about it, the racial specialisations did exactly what the designers wanted them to do. These are not cosmopolitan cities. Each city was home to one particular race, and the advantages given to the races on those terrains naturally leads the population to fall into the ratios you would expect if that was the case. It's really quite clever, actually.

Anyway, what I'm really hanging on is the guilds we haven't seen yet. I can't help but wonder if we'll eventually see the return as Aero and Pyromancers, as well as some Dark forestrals in the Glomdoring.

Yeah I've thought of reincarnating to mugwump very carefully... the main sticking point is the fact that it'd somewhat screw over my IC RP and the fast eq is not worth it (though it comes very close).

Bau would not be Bau if she were a frog. If I can bash now as a faeling, well, I'll be happier to bash as one with higher levels.