If someone cures well enough you won't have them with all of those afflictions to be able to kill them. Soulless is good but the thread wasn't started about soulless or toadcurse. There's a major problem I think when you can drain someone down to less than 200 mana and they're statistically guaranteed to get up over 50% before you can use wrack if they don't have afflictions on them, since a good fighter will get neither the afflictions nor that low on mana.

So, to get a bit more complicated, one can assume that a nihilists' opponent won't be going down on mana while they're shielded besides the mana it takes to shield. While I suppose it's not a guarante (more like a 75% chance), with 10 seconds needed to get the wrack off and sparkleberry on a 6 second timer, you can add 10-20% to their mana gain over that period of time on top of the two mana drinks. So instead of getting back 34% mana they're getting back 44-54%, minus the 60 mana it takes to shield twice.

I don't think saying "soulless is good" is a good reason for this other skill to be so bad. Celestians have judge which is a lot like soulless except it can be started at any time, the thread isn't about these kinds of things.

What is up with people who want skills that make it impossible for someone to avoid? I guess some people really do not desire challenges, they just prefer to win. Let's just give them all a ribbon and call them the champion.

It's not like a half mana kill without extra requirements is impossible to avoid.

Actually, I was not referring to your request Jello. I was talking about what Amaru and Ceres were initially asking for.

Apparently their holding ability that they obtain from novicehood isn't stopping people 100% of the time. People that bitch about their abilities don't even consider how some classes -don't- even get access to those kind of abilities. All four guilds that have rituals have access to carcer, Wiccans get pigwidgeon, Aquamancers get currents, Geomancers get stonewalls/rubbles, and Hartstones at least get briar walls, Serenguards get -nothing- to hold people in. And here you have people like Ceres and Amaru complaining how a novice ability isn't keeping enemies in.

Serenguard are knights. Try envenoming mantakaya.

So what's the point in it? Sorry.. confusion.. Skills aren't meant to do anything. Silly me.

Make it not a novice skill, if it's such a big issue.

Carcer stops people often enough for me. Carcer+Fall is about 2 minutes of me having some control over when a person leaves the room.

Wrack seriously sucks. I don't see why wrack needs them entangled as well as half mana, while absolve only needs half mana. Increase the power cost to 6/7 for all I care, just make me have a chance of using it. For example, I had either Narsrim or Tuek down to 20% mana on Nil and before I could wrack they were almost up to full.

If I were a Celestine, they would have died the instant they dropped below half.

That last anecdote might be just the Moondancers' faults, mind you. Sprite + Moon Totem + Perfection + Mana vial + Sparkleberry = tonnes and tonnes of regen, there.

(We still suck, but at least we can do mana regen, yay. )

No, I've seen it happen to a lot of people.

The only people I've wracked in 1v1 combat are Gregori (who got disconnected), Gwylifar (who I'd just spent two minutes stinging) and maybe Munsia.

Every single other person has managed to writhe from web/hangedman/shackles just in time.

Oh, and don't forget the people who use tipharet/summer? making them impossible to wrack.

Maybe you could offer that advice to Ceres? Last time I checked she was a Knight as well who is complaining that Carcer isn't holding people when some other classes don't even have anything to hold people in.

He was just joking, Terenas. He's not dumb enough to think that a mantakaya-covered sword is actually even vaguely a way to keep someone in the room.

Wrack probably does need an upgrade, but I am really tired of people saying that an attack that you can't get off consistently is useless. This is basic theory here. Even if you can't ever get it to work, the fact that your foes are using up curing and balance resources preventing you from getting it off, instead of curing other things or attacking you, is a value.

Whether it's worth the resources you are using up to put the threat in front of them or not is an open question, and if someone wants to post an analysis saying it's not, that's one thing. But simply saying "I can't pull off the instakill reliably" is not saying "it is worthless". It may be necessary but it's by no means sufficient.

I had no trouble getting off wrack. I didn't even use quickening.

I must be special.

The thing is, most people can just keep attacking while we try and wrack them. The only time they'll stop is for the web/hangedman and, even then, its not for long.

Fact is, we have an instantkill which is not only incredibly difficult to pull off, but incredibly easy to stop if you even try curing.

And someone using 3 seconds to shield, before drinking mana and eating sparkleberry, means my chance for wrack has gone.

I changed it to when the person is at less then 20% mana I get an echo telling me to web/wrack and, even then, I have to -hope- they don't writhe out before I wrack or hope their mana sip doesn't cover the gap between their current health and 50%.