Dilute?

YA LIEK I M A BARD SO I PLAY DILUTE!

Dilute was an old Aquamancer skill. Every single vial you had now has half-strength. Only cure? Empty them all and get them refilled. Yay!

Also: See old shieldsmash.

Rofl.

Also, the point is that the Administration doesn't exactly say 'well, this skill is gonna be considered lame, let's not put it in' - or they innocently don't realize it. It's one the faults and problems I claim is inherent in the problem of Gods being unable to participate in the combat system first hand. They can't tell if it will or will not be considered cheap or lame, so it's almost a crap shoot - and it really isn't their fault. That's what the envoy, classlead, or report system is honestly for - removing lame skills and getting new, interesting utility for combat or out of combat situations.

EDIT: Also, holy ess, are you serious Xenthos? That is single-handedly the most retarded skill I have ever heard of. Cool in theory if it was, perhaps, an affliction that wore off on death or a duration (such as manipulating the water in the target's body to dilute the elixers they drink)... but a permanent, one-shot to the inventory? Dear god.

Completely off the subject, but I saw a Comcast commercial that made me nearly choke on my dinner cause of laughter. It was these travelling minstrals and they were all playing medieval instruments, including one guy playing a lute. Well, this man ran up to the lute playing guy and tried to steal his lute, but the minstral hung on. Then the caption and voice-over said "Hang onto your loot"

Reminded me of Bards.

Anyway, what's... nevermind Xenthos answered before I finished. It lasted beyond the fight? Then yeah... ok. Dilute is lame. But I still think hunger and sleeping can be legit... I mean, if you're a Dreamweaver, getting them to sleep is kind of important, isn't it?

Hunger and sleep both last beyond the fight, too.

And yes, Dreamweaver in dreamform can't do much unless they get the person to sleep-- but even then, if the person gets away they need to sleep for ages just to get cured. Yawn. Further, they do it even outside of Dreambody-- see: that dream mist. Just being in their demesne will make you start falling asleep. Then add onto that that dreamweavers aren't the only class who can make someone more tired by simply casting a spell. Any bard can do it if they have glamours, and any Spiritsinger can do it with ecology (or have any of their allies do it with poisons on their weapon, too).

It's rather annoying all around.

Note: These are skills that make you more tired, NOT skills that strip insomnia/make you fall asleep. There's a difference between the two. The first makes you passively fall asleep, while the second is more of a strategic use of sleep.

Well, yeah, but hunger and sleepiness are easily fixed after a fight. Unlike the aforementioned Dilute, which just sounds icky.

edit: Maybe it's just a good thing I don't try to fight. Apparently, I'd be a lamer!

Hunger is fixed more easily than tiredness-- sitting around unable to do much of anything while your character sleeps back up is hardly fun. (Hey, there's a reason people want that level 80 no-sleep bonus so badly!)

I use sleeping time to go get a drink or make a quick trip to the bathroom, myself. Or to read help files. Seriously. There are so many of them, I still don't think I've read them all!

And then you get killed by the dreamweaver!

Irony is fun!

Id rather be called lame than dead.. seriously.. if i can do it.. id do all the tricks in the book.. calling people 'lame' because you got defeated is..uhm.. lame..

It's not that you got defeated, it's that it's using lame tactics (which generally get modified by envoys when they're abused). Losing for most reasons isn't "lame"-- you got outplayed. Something that there's nothing you can really do anything against, though? That's a bit of a difference.

The argument against that is 'hungerwhoring is lame, yet I can carry around tons of food to counteract it'. I know that the generalized 'lame' term means something unbeatable - but it's also just something overwhelmingly disruptive. I'm surprised Lusternia doesn't have a rules of engagement policy like Imperian had for a while (it still exists, just unspoken, and the teaming part got nixed). Then again, the playerbases conflict concerning interest, so..

What else is considered 'lame', just so I'm on the ball here?

Just to clarify, what do you mean by disruptive? It ends the fight? Isn't that going to happen in a fight one way or another? Keep in mind that I don't actually fight, so when you say that something's disruptive, I'm honestly not sure what you mean.

Xenthos already covered what I said about hunger and sleep - which no one actually fixes, despite Rodngar's thing about the envoy report, and both things have been around since like 0-6 months into Lusternia, because two entire skillsets revolve around sleep now and you can't do anything about it because if someone vetoes your suggestion halfway through you're stuck in limbo with a half-useless skillset because you can only change two things at a time - but I just wanted to note that he was underestimating dilute. Emptying the vials and refilling them didn't cure it. You had to actually replace the vials altogether, since said vials were the ones that got "cursed" or whatever - any further elixirs put into them got halved in effectiveness too. It was freakin' insane! Luckily Shamarah (I think) got rid of it at one point.

Several other 'lame' tactics revolve around the use of dominate abilities. Pooka-ing Focusspirit, for example, was considered to be lame and promptly envoy-fixed.

By disruptive, I mean anything that would severely skew the flow of combat. Sure, this is achieved by many things - but something like hunger simply spikes your actions around until you are literally immobile and helpless, really. It's disruptive not only to your combative flow, but to the 'fun' or focus involved in combat. If it makes the fight not fun or really kind of a 'ugh, lame, i'm going to be sooo upset in about 10 seconds when i die' feeling.. then it's kind of disruptive. Some of it is unavoidable - but something as deliberate as hungerwhoring is lame because of that (in my opinion, anyways).

Xenthos - you CAN attack yourself as a mage.

Point staff me here.

You could try playing around with fleshstone if you can get someone down on health with claws.

I also recommend just using mindblast. I have a difficult time killing anyone outside of my demesne, but inside mindblast is better than psychicvamp IMO (by yourself, at least). I honestly just find myself going for mindbursts most of the time in fights.