Heh your second point covers all of the issues, so I'll just look at the first one as just for argument's sake. Take out pooka, take out pixie and it's over for a moondancer. Shadowdancers are a different story. That can easily be two hits for one of the many demi/titans we have and the number just keeps growing.

But that's two hits for a small number of fae, leaving most of them around-- so you still have most of the little fae-things, whereas if an Angel or Demon dies-- all of their bonus is gone. The only way for it to actually be equitable in this manner is if MDs / SDs get "a cloud of fae-things" that follows them around when they summon fae. When you probe it, you see: "A cloud of fae-things is here. It is holding: A banshee, a leprechaun, a pooka, a brownie, a crone, a maiden, etc." Then its health would be dependant upon all of their health together, essentially turning the fae into Demon/Angel equivalents.

I don't really think that would add a whole lot to the game, though-- they'd lose their unique descriptions except when floating around on Ethereal. Being able to lose 1-2 fae, in exchance for (overall) the entire entourage being harder to kill, isn't that big a deal imo. Especially when people can't try to kill those fae on Ethereal very easily without risking going 75,000 gold in debt to some silly NPC organization.

Some artifacts are only for looks, neat little non combat orientated things, etc. They all don't need to have an exact combat orientation.

Which I think the rune was designed to be more non combat orientated than it is to just say look I have won an artie from the auction

This whole thread is one big proof why Malarious belongs to the "I want more upgrades for my guild/downgrades for others and call it balance" bin. And people so didn't believe me...

You know that argument entirely ignores the worth of each fae. Leprechaun, will never ever ever ever ever ever ever turn the tide of the battle. At top tier, without pooka, every Wiccan would not be able to win. One fae, one hit since we'll assume top tiers to at least have decent crits 80+ in level.

There are plenty of investments for Angels/Demons that are pretty weak, too-- so that argument would just be giving the fae-cloud some useless affs as well as the good ones. Further-- the crit rate at level 100 isn't 100%. It's closer to 50% (a bit lower), so you'd have to estimate closer to 2 hits per fae (one hit with crits, 3 hits without, average closer to 2).

Your investible powers argument fails too. I'll grant that it's better to assume 2 hits. Despite what powers they have. No Guardian will win at top tier without an angel/demon. That's one of the reasons why they're uncrittable. That's the relation that justifies making fae uncrittable.

No guardian will win without their angel/demon at top tier. No wiccan will win without their fae at top tier. Their fae, even crittable, take more hits to kill than uncrittable demons/angels (by quite a bit). Let's just take pooka/banshee/pixie/crone at 2 hits each. That's 8 hits. That's about as much as a Demon/Angel took last time I checked. Redcap/slaugh/barghest instead of crone's a bit more. This isn't even counting fae, like pigwidgeons, which are used to try to keep an enemy from leaving the Wiccan so easily, or the sprite that regenerates your mana (making it very hard to ever mana kill a Wiccan), or the nymph that pacifies enemy angels/demons (resetting their timer), and so on.

It's also much easier to resummon fae. It's cheaper and you don't spend the 6 second eq to reinvest.

If Malarious is in that bin, there are a few others who are in it with him. But I don't think he is always like that. Nor are they all always like that.

No, he is. It's a running envoy joke, especially Spawn.

Yeah, it's a pretty big bin.

Gotta agree that he's not always like that too - fortunately. But this thread reminds me of:

Okay, so I got an arty pipe for 50 credits and it ONLY doubles herb capacity in it and is always lit. That's too little for 50 creds, I ISSUEd myself already for it, in the meantime here are some ideas to make it better:
-if I put faeleaf in this pipe, rebounding is instant after I smoke it
-herb balance time cut in half as long as I have the pipe in my inventory
-ability to shoot laser beams from the pipe

What do you think?

Area-wide pinleg.

That's for the arty vial.

"Wait, how are you going to justify that?"
"Well, I pin them legs with the vial."
"But you can't impale more than one leg at a time even with a sword!"
"It ain't a sword, it's a vial."

Perfect!

And on the pipes- it doubles herb capacity?

...

You're kidding, right? Either that, or you misunderstood my ambigiously-written post. Either way, arty pipes hold 20 puffs, normal ones hold 10.

arti pipes hold 10 puffs.

EDIT: Unless you're a herbalist.

Damnit! My secret alt has been exposed!

What I said was no Wiccan will win without a pooka at top tier. That's one fae out of all of them that an opponent would have to kill.

@Xavius and the argument is not to downgrade the angels/demons, it's to make the fae uncrittable as well. No matter how much easier it is, it doesn't really matter if the person can bash your pooka as fast as you resummon it.

It does matter, really, since two attacks on a pooka means you're not getting hindered for a full 50% of your offense, minus pooka. You're never going to die in a situation like that.

EDIT: And I've seen wiccans win without heavy use of pooka. Most pooka attacks aren't all that disruptive.