Yeah, level 2 balance and level 1 eq recovery.. That's nothing.

Firstly, if you take a look at Nine Breaker's test you'll see that the majority of the sips fall within the medium range. Therefore it is most likely assumed that any of your sip will most likely fall in between the lowest and highest possible sips, this would mean your (maxhealth * .15 + 100) * .8 . That is the value that is most likely to occur for all races (except races without a sip penalty would have a 1.0 instead of a .8).

If you are talking about Elfen Lord, then Lash is never a tactical strategy, this is because of two things. Namely because Lash is the weakest of all mana draining skills. It is inferior to Amissio, Leech, and Succumb. Also, because an Elfen Lord has no EQ bonus, his lash would be horrendously slow. I highly doubt that an Elfen Lord lashing you for over a minute straight would even so much as bring your mana below 75% maxmana, especially factoring in sip/sparkleberry/mercy (even healing scroll too if you have one). There is a reason why no Serenguards ever used Lash in serious combat.

Lastly, there is a reason why I prefer an Aslaran, just like you prefer Viscanti and why many Serenguards are not Elfen Lords but rather Igasho, Taurian, Aslaran, etc.

As far as Viscanti goes, I think everyone needs to get a reality check.

First and foremost, Viscanti get the strongest racial ability out there: poison gas. To date, I've yet to see someone use this to its full potential, although Torak has been known to try. More or less, given that constitution does not stop poison gas in Lusternia, you are in trouble eventually. Even with Orange chakra (which is restricted only to a few), you have to burn power to stay alive (and note that Orange doesn't stop you from becoming more hungry each time, it simply causes the negative effects to stop while up so you can immediately get knocked unconscious when it fades). We've seen all sorta of moaning and groaning over gas in the Geomancer demesne. Viscanti gas is the exact same thing.

As for a reduction of the regeneration bonus and an adjust to the sip penalty, it is worth noting that liches gain regeneration at night. Thus, a lich viscanti in taint will technically still have the +3 regen only this time with a -1 sip penalty. I find that remarkably deceptive that no one bothered to mention this.

And finally, cutting and blunt bonuses own. I very much miss them from being as dwarf as I was twice as tanky as Terenas in full plate (and this is factoring in the same health value as I can get the same amount of health roughly as Mugwump as I could as a dwarf with constitution food, a truefavour, tosha, etc).

EDIT:

I'm not joking about the racial resistances either. They shaved off a good 500-1000 damage per attack from Gorgulu. That's huge. Of course, it would be far less in combat because no one deals Gorgulu damage (not even Ixion, alas)... but still, that's pretty impressive considering the difference with/without greatrobes is like 100-200 damage.

EDIT 2:

And, specialized races were designed with the class in mind:

Brood Viscanti = putrefaction (45% reduction of physical damage), full plate, level 1 cutting/blunt, +3 (max) regen in taint, etc. I think there is a reason that -2 sip is there...

Huh? Lich reduces the sipping penalty by...increasing their regen?

EDIT: Wait, nevermind, now I get it.

The idea I saw being tossed around was to give brood viscanti only a +2 regen in taint but only a -1 sip penalty. If that was the case, lich brood viscanti would still have +3 regen in taint (at night or with any other regen skill... isn't there one in athletics?) but now only a -1 sip penalty. This reason this is important is because the max regen is +3 so... if you can still get +3 fairly easily, what exactly was lost?

Narsrim get a clue. Liches get MANA regeneration at night, not full regeneration, which if you are a Brood Viscanti, or any other low race, L3 mana regen isn't going to help you much anyways against someone going for a mana instakill. And last I checked, the capping in regards to skills were only talking about RACIAL regeneration, which lich mana regen obviously isn't, otherwise it would be a viscanti only skill instead of one available to all nihilists and ur'guard.

Asarnil:

Get a clue. First, learn to read the help files as they provide useful information to erase that nasty disease known as ignorance you tend to possess. Let's examine regeneration:



Thus, athetlics regeneration and lich form, you pull +1 health/mana regen that would stack with the racial regen in taint for a grand total of +3 health/mana regen, which is the cap (assuming the regen in taint was just +2 health/mana in taint).

Athletics regeneration is just as useless for warriors as mana regeneration, as it sucks up a stupidly large amount of willpower.

I... can't even keep that regeneration going very well in shadowed forest, WITHOUT surge. And I'm a heck of a lot more intelligent than any brood viscanti. Toss in surge's mana drain PLUS the halved mana, and... regeneration is 'bout as useful as spiritbond crow.

Fine, let's assume no athletic regen is used:

Said Brood Viscanti Lich can still pull +2 health and +3 mana regen (in taint) with only a -1 sip penalty, putrefaction, full plate, level 1 cutting/blunt racial protection, poison gas, etc... that's insane.

Doesn't putrefaction override the +2 health regen? Doesn't it override the level 3 they have now?

Edit: I know the regeneration easily covered it before the change, but now they take a pretty hefty percentage hit.

Putrefaction is around level 2, yes. It is also a 45% reduction of physical and blunt damage.

EDIT:

Assume Ixion deals 3000 damage to you per combo.

With putrefaction: Ixion now deals 1650 damage to you per combo.

That' INSANE.

But... you're forgetting that the ONLY way Ixion can do that kind of damage is with elemental runes, which go around putrefaction anyways? 3000 damage, 33% of that is 1000 that is something else. So we're at 2000 cutting, which is cut down to 1100 damage. Instead of 3000, he's doing 2100.

Good, yes, but in return it kills their "bonus". Drawdown, nightkiss, numen/halo don't have that penalty (though numen does have the time limitation, I believe).

Edit: Well, the only way unless your armour decayed and you were too lazy to buy new armour / drawdown / whatever.

Athletic regeneration (with Regeneration Boost) has a conversion rate of 300 mana for every 200 health every tick. This is an extremely high payoff, it is by no mean logical for any warriors to ever use this ability at all. You are better off using Transmute, but unfortunately for most warriors, this isn't even a viable option since they barely have any mana.

Don't forget the death to willpower. Speed warriors (faelings at least) already have endurance issues... I can just imagine trying to get endurance and willpower both back to full from a low number.

I use regeneration every once in a while when I'm in the Glomdoring. Get to full, turn it off, med... saves a whole one health sip. Woo...

Poor Narsrim, all his amazing arguments shot to shreds.

So Brood Viscanti won't use regeneration. Insert Mercy/Perfection enchantments giving them better than l3 regeneration and still -1 sip penalty. You people really like to focus on one comment of an argument and push the rest aside in the hopes that nobody will notice the smokescreen.

Someone said Elfen not having a real edge:

Elfen Lords are the only warrior race with both extremely high strength and dexterity.

Pretty much. At least some people agree that the Brood Viscanti have some obvious and better advantages over Elfen Lords, especially Stags.

Was going to argue this point as well as others now that I finally have some free time. But I realized that this thread has been significantly derailed from it's main purpose. Which was to see opinions on the balance of all the specialized races. And I believe that throughout all of these posts, most of the central questions regarding the races went unanswered. So I'll repeat them as well as a few that I left unspoken.

1. Should the choosing of the specialized races be more encouraged within their respective communities?
2. Do you believe the specialized races are currently balanced well against each other?
3. If so, in what ways?
4. If not, should they be?
5. Should the specialized races be better than the other races or not?

I think a discussion regarding those questions, would be more interesting than what this thread has turned into it.