Lend a hand, take an arm. Gg.

Viscanti might be one of the better races for Geo/Nihilist with the changes and the fact speed races suck right now. However loss of speed could mean major issues. Then again no one ever seems to see them coming until they actually see and try it. cutting speed boosts in half means some guilds will be in trouble.

Anyways, since I got the lolz@Titan out of my system, I'll put on my big boy pants and step into the ring to really address these changes:

I'm really confused by these changes. Like. Really.

I'm sure you guys are content with the way things are, and want a light hand and all that, but I'm still perplexed.

Racial rebalancing has been called for in the hopes that all the races could be brought in line, and all of them put at a relatively similar baseline for utility, usefulness, and combat function. Instead, the changes you're implementing offer no meaningful alterations that will address the real shortcomings of a number of races(dracnari, viscanti, trill, etc) and simply serve to add a few frills to some races without substantially altering the shortcomings.

Trill: +1 cha and a seduction influencing bonus? Please. That change does not make the race any more viable in combat compared to specialization races.
Igasho: Err.. Ok?
Dracnari: Get drunk and resist some small damage? Again. That doesn't really address the issue where the sip penalty cripples them with no real upside compared to a specialisation race.

Furthermore, the Titan/Demigod changes basically neuter the reason to bash. Demigod is useful for its special bonuses in the form of havens and divinefire, but titan is now a worthless level that confers no real bonus. It's the easy way out of fixing the issues.

I don't know, I just walk away from that list feeling you guys looked at the pages of concern players voiced and went "neh, s'all good" and are offering us these changes to satisfy us.

Edit: And that's without even touching the concept of Mugwump/Faeling/Aslaran. +12% speed for a huge shortage of Con? Squishy and slow? Come on.

Will we get a Rune of Alcohol Tolerance?

I'm not knowledged about the stats and stuff, I don't really care all that much. The important matter is the Rune of Alcohol Tolerance, all three levels of it.

QFT.

Sip penalties are bad, but they're not THAT bad. You'd see a lot fewer aslarans if they were. Brood viscanti could use some love, but master viscanti weren't all that bad before, and now I seriously hope the crying stops.

I could understand if the faelings got some soft of weakness, but basically, the speed is all we have. If we go for physical classes, we'll never be close to anything else in terms of damage. I've seen how much damage I do, it's rather pitiful. I get one or two-shotted quite a bit by warriors as well. My only chance at even surviving a battle with just about anything, is that speed. If that's going to be taken away, we should get extra con or strength to help us have a chance of surviving.

And by 'we' I mean all lightningbolts, not just faelings.

Alright I am off to sleep. But this is what I found out


Being a dwarf is alot better now, I have 2 logs one win 1 loss I will set up tomorrow (Have to do that charbal crap)

As far as the drunk thing goes. It seems pretty balanced. I was taking 100-500 damage from linked bulls while being almost dead from drinking. It changed when I got more sober.

BUT and the key word is BUT.... it balances out because of the missing, the stumbling, the falling down, and not being able to sip, stand, etc, etc. I had to fly so many times it makes being drunk a huge liability. It won't be something you will see commonly used in the whole PvP or PvE arenas.

As for the removal of the bal penalty, the str change, etc. I tested a fight with a Manifestation (while sober) and I think I was using a normal bashing axe 120/xx/280. It was a normal fight, I got hit hard, hit light, almost died, all the same stuff that would have happened if I was fighting as a human. So all in all I think the change is fine for the dwarf race. And actually. I liked it. It was fun being a dwarf.


Bah ok here is the 2 fights they are in one log... the first is a loss, the second is the win.... Its to show how a MD AL Dwarf is.... and yea Nydekion I think that was your axe I was using the first time... don't ask me how... it just is



edit - I have an effervescent heart arti, so this is a little higher than a regular level 95 dwarf would be h/m/e wise

I have a question, Ildaudid: does your character have a high alcohol tolerance?

Alcohol tolerance can actually be developed by drinking heavily month after month. Eventually, you might be able to drink a whole bottle of whiskey and be only mildly drunk while a character with 0 tolerance will be puking their guts out.

If the ability is going to be tested properly, then it should be tested using a character with a high alcohol tolerance, similar to what a character's tolerance would be after drinking heavily over the course of several Lusternian years.

I just have one question.

Are damage warriors viable now?

Won't this change make Furrikin go from average to below average? :curious:

No I don't drink normally IG. But I noticed the level of damage reduction dependant on the status of inebriation, so if it does take alot more for someone to get drunk, then they would have to drink alot more to reach the level I was when testing it. And during those spars I wasn't drunk anymore.

Also when I tested the drinking thing, I had a bottle of something and about 10-20 sips of absinthe. When I checked "stats" it said something to the effect about me being lucky to still even be alive. When it had fallen to the reading of "You are definately drunk" or something like those words, I noticed a change in the amount of resistance as well. Also using performance sober did not effect the reduction at all. All it let me do was speak a bit clearer on tells/market/clans. So people worried that the drunk thing could be bypassed by this situation, don't worry.

That's not my point. What I'm concerned about is that once players who switch to dwarf or new players who create a dwarven character and begin to drink regularly, they'll begin to build up an alcohol tolerance. Once they've built up a high tolerance, they'll start to have fewer missed attacks, stumbles, etc while still experiencing the full benefits of being drunk.

Obviously that's the whole point of the ability, but it would be nice if someone could test it with a character with an already high tolerance.

It'd make more sense for tolerance to work so each drink will cause your level of drunkedness to increase to be lower rather than how much you are affected at each level of drunkedness, so I don't think regular drinkers would benefit more. I may be wrong, though!

I didn't understand a single word of that, except for the last bit. I blame this ing cold and the non-non-drowsy medicine.

I could be wrong too. And it's highly probable that I have no clue wtf I'm talking about. I'll just trust you guys to make sure that this actually balances out the races, instead of 'rebalancing' them in favor of a select few.





P.S.: I think I just heard the sound of a million babies screaming...

I'll try to be more clear. Here's how I think it works now.

Each drink has a different amount of alcohol. Let's say one particular drink gave 100 points of drunkedness. Let's say here are the alcohol points needed for each rank of drunkedness.

Sober - 0
Drunk lvl 1 - 100
Drunk lvl 2 - 200
etc.

I believe tolerance works by reducing the amounts of alcohol points you get per drink. So, the drink in our example may only give 90 points to a particular character who has a bit of tolerance. That means while two drinks would give a normal person (at the same level, as that affects tolerance a bit), 200 alcohol points, for lvl 2 drunkedness. However, our person with tolerance would only get 180 points, so only lvl 1 drunkedness.

Now, with the new alcohol tolerance resistance, each rank of drunkedness will give a set amount of DR, like 0 for sober, 1 for lvl 1, 2 for lvl etc. At the same time, each rank of drunkedness gives exactly the same chance for stumbling, screwing up etc. So, no matter what, you will end up with the same amount of DR for the amount of failed actions you make.

In other words, no matter how high your tolerance, you'd still need to drink until you were "lvl 3 drunk" in order to achieve the same damage reduction as someone with 0 tolerance.

For some reason, it makes both perfect sense and absolutely no sense at the same time

Quick question, what with the inevitability that people would be moving out of the 'speed' races (mugwump/faeling/aslaran) in favour of races which are considered more balanced in regards to advantages/disadvantages and stats, would we be seeing a corresponding tweak to the stats of the aforementioned races to balance them out, as folk view them imbalanced, or will it be up to the envoys to dabble in that as well?

Also, because of what I've mentioned earlier about folk moving out into a spread of other races, a majority of the player base has been capable of taking their own class specialized races into consideration as opposed to any other race to see if it would be more favourable of a choice to reincarnate into. This brings me to ask if bard and monk specialized races would be released as well to even out the capability of choice for the rest of the player base relatively soon, or are we stuck to our current choices with the possibility that the spec races would be more appealing to us and would cause us to wish for another costly reincarnation?

Lets see.. I tried out kephera, viscanti, human, and mugwump to start with. I decided to stay away from tae'dae since its basically guaranteed to be insanely tanky.

Heres my notes:

-Bard with lvl 2 magic damage rune attacked with damage attack while I was undeffed with 6600 health. I took 2K damage undeffed. As a Viscanti I took 1500 damage. With defs I took 1300 (again had lvl 2 rune or 15% more damage).
-Slamming into guards a few times Viscanti was one of the tankiest (kephera had lower con and fire weakness.. was hitting archons). The sipping for 6600 health is about 800 as a Viscanti.
-Kephera seem better but could still use poison weakness.
-Demigods are still getting +3 on the server.
-Mugwump is slow enough you even notice it deffing being slow. In quickenined (which halves eq time after checking racial) I could not get someone with 4300 mana below half when they used sparkle scroll and sipping, taking 800+ mana per use.
-


Summary of biggest points:
*Viscanti are much tankier, still lacking if attacked at mana and ego but not bad for geo/nihilist.
*Affliction/drain guilds will need to be looked at. I am most concerned (in order) for Moondancers, Nihilists, dreamweavers in active combat form (dreambody), Celestines, Bards. Explanations below
*Races should be moved to be 'along base par' with variations and things to equal them out.

Reason for concerns....

=Moondancers: Hexes will not really be hit but the slowed down lash, waning, dark, moonburst and such will see an effect. Mana drains will be severly injured in the speed vs healing race. Toadcurse may become largely inviable outside of an extremely secure sleeplock (though impossible on some entirely).

=Nihilists: Mana draining speed will be majorly hurt still as above. Astrology has been largely nerfed to being a skill purely of buffs and less use for rays. Crucify as a whole is now largely unusable as its 6-7 seconds to use which means at least 5.4 or so for a mugwump, this is more than it takes to cure it by a fair amount. We dont use hexes. The major loss of speed currently will result in soulless being the main kill method as it would be more reliable than trying to wrack across the board.

=Dreamweavers: THey wont be looking at quick motes or attacks to nearly the same extent as before. Embedded will take longer to do but tends to be done precombat anyway. health and mana attacks wll be largely useless, the slowed offense means they will be even harder to use than currenltly (ignoring the void whoring, which will be slower but isnt even real skill for combat, its generally for support in groups).

=Celestines: Mana drain speed and astrology are the main items on this list. Inquisition will be much slower to pull which may or may not be a bad thing, soulless will be the main if not only viable and reliable kill method. (Absolve is possible without eq boost, but rather difficult especially with a fully aware opponent).

=Bards: Damage will be slower (which might be a good way to balance passives but we will see). It is still possible to after image someone without an eq bonus barely. Illusions use will take a hit as all skills in there will greatly slow down.


My recommendations are as follow:

+Fix the races balanced by being slower
+Races with eq speed boosts should see a minor reduction in weaknesses and/or a boost to stats. For instance lower fire and electric weakness of mugwump and/or increase their con by one.
+Prevent unmatched tanking. Kephera have been fixed but while dwarves are one again usable.. while drunk they have a higher reduction threshold than most any other race, we dont need dwarves to become omni tanks.

Once the changes are in I would also recommend reports on any 'speed guilds' about a week after ward to give time for envoys to get together information. Primarily aimed at the guilds listed above, though this will result in a fair bit of suggestions going in this would also open the door for both fixing them to the racial changes and fixing some of the problems that need be address in a cluster instead of solo (cant change A because its either unusable or because its OP with B, which needs be changed but cant because of C, etc).

Changes should largely consist of (for guild skills):

#Speed alterations
#Formula changes
#Some new skills to handle problems requiring speed, that is outcured easily at base speeds, etc
#Power changes for skills that lose effect over time (crucify is a prime example).
#Duration changes (if deaf and after image stay the same a bard will have less attacks total on that person even against those already largely unslayable)

I decided not to post exacts race by race until theres more feedback. Also decided not to post a fair number of changes that are better left to envoying/reporting.

Theoretically, if Serenwilde were to get a specialization for the Spiritsingers and Shofangi guilds, it would probably be for elfen considering the whole "Serenwilde is supposed to be predominately elfen" schtick the histories have going.

Okay, now that we have that established, I'm going to examine the bard side of the equation. If I remember something a certain someone told me correctly, in general, the important stats for bards are supposed to be DEX, INT and CHA. DEX being for that lovely (read: infuriating) thing we call your dodging rate and such in Acrobatics, and I could've sworn bard damage was supposed to be determined by a combination of INT and CHA. But I could be completely wrong on both fronts.

Anyway!

So looking at your basic elfen, we have 11 STR, 14 DEX, 11CON, 15 INT, 15 CHA, and 11 Size. That's not all that bad for a bard. It's not stellar, but it's not horrible. Not as squishy as a mugwump as it has no penalties, especially if they take Low Magic ( Yellow), and it has more DEX and more CHA so if the affects of these stats are correct, they would dodge better then a mugwump and hit harder than a mugwump. The problem then is, if an elfen bard were to get a sleight boost to DEX, INT and CHA, the only stats I can see in this situation that could take a hit are STR and CON, maybe Size, but that doesn't make much sense, and they may as well be a faeling at that point, and then faelings have the whole +++Bal and ++Sip thing going for them.

And another thing to think about: STR is a stat that isn't all that important to bards except possibly for that one Acrobatics skill that stuns(?), and the second is a bit more valuable as it affects your survivability, and even high elfen don't get a penalty to CON with their specialization, just -1 STR (which is fixed with Bear in Totems) and -2 DEX, which I can't see hurting them unless it affects parrying/stancing and toad stomping accuracy.

Sure, an elfen bard spec to set you apart from other elfen would be cool and have a nice RP flavor (I even have an idea for the perfect thing to call it), but I honestly don't really see how it would work without it being a little bit too strong, unless you feel like just giving Spiritsingers the high elfen spec at the cost of their DEX, and then Shofangi the elfen lord spec to make it line up with the Serenguard.

Er... just some food for thought while I'm being an insomniac.