How likely do you think the bashing speed neutralization was figured with anything other than balance and eq neutral races? Yes, sure, the crit formula favors monks and warriors, but not so much that it's worth coding a whole new skill.

I'm not totally behind his solution, but Krellan is correct about the problem he identifies.

Mages and druids used to do the absolute most amount of PvE damage with wiccans close behind and guardians gaining symbol, which is supposedly the PvE equivalent of staff. Warriors weren't far behind once they reached the upper levels and obtained exceptional weapons, and they made up for it anyway with superior tankiness and, to a lesser degree, a lack of mana cost on their attack.

Somewhere between monks, dmp, and stat curving all magic classes except bards (who were given an unusually strong and fast bashing attack) found themselves having smaller resistances and being inexplicably gimped in bashing damage (I used to think it was because str gain peaked at 14 and int at 12, but Estarra herself has contradicted that not too long ago). At the same time, the physical classes began to outright dominate in bashing. The reasons for monks doing so well are pretty obvious, but one possible explanation for the warriors' success is the rumored bug that makes strength have no effect on PvE damage. Either that, or they just seem so much better now because everyone else has been left so far behind.

Anyway, I don't think Krellan's idea of a new attack is necessary since the PvE damage of the existing attacks can simply be buffed. I realize that would undermine hit-and-run tactics that allow magic classes to win domoths, but I think that's something that should be addressed in terms of the relative tankiness of warriors to all other classes.

We aren't looking at new attacks at this time--certainly not new attacks for races! If there's an issue with attacks, it can be brought up in envoys or in a separate topic.

We are not considering monk specialized races at this time. We are considering bard specialized races so input is welcome there.

Regarding the issue on dexterity for warriors, as I had presumed, 2 points of dexterity really does next to nothing for chance to wound so the arguments there don't hold water. I've asked Roark to look into the issue and this is his finding:

Oh, definately not talking about new attacks for races. Just new attacks for Wiccans/mages/druids/guardians. A bashing attack that helps to eliminate the huge difference in bashing between physical attack and magical attack users. I leave out bards because they're already fast at the Maestro level and the classes mentioned should be brought up to that level.

Honestly, if magic attacks are beefed up without adding in chances to miss, it would make me sick. People complain about mage bashing, wiccan bashing, etc etc.... But they never miss when they attack.... while I, even as a dwarf right now and at level 96 have a 10% miss rate... I used to have a 6% but it seems to have gone up to a 10% miss rate. Either way, if magical attacks are beefed for bashing, they really need to have a chance to miss as well.

The people who complain have never had to deal with a miss.... Try fighting a garwight with a 10% miss rate... the healthleech will keep them alive forever, while magic users ALWAYS hit them, so its more of a chance to get WSC's etc on them while they are low in health....

Then don't hunt the few mobs that healthleech? Warrior bashing may miss, but you have the armour, health, and speed that more than makes up for it as far as hunting is concerned. There is nothing to complain about when it comes to warrior bashing.

Mages also work on a 4 second eq. Much slower than speed weapons. the chance for that WSC is much lower because we don't hit nearly as often

Illdrain is impractical as it currently stands. My main beef with it is that it disappears when you log out. This means that, if you want to have decent ego as an illithoid, you have to bash up an awful lot of mobs every time you log in - it takes quite a while for me to get my full potential, given that an average mitran is only like 100 ego. No other race has to do this and it seems really unfair. You're also giving up the karma/essence you'd get from offering the corpses that you bash.

I actually take back the things I said about illdrain in my last post; all it really needs is to last through logging out. I think this will help the illithoid race a lot. Could you divine people consider doing that?

The changes to Kephera/Illithoid have been very nice, and the two races are perfect for monks now. There is simply one more change needed for Illithoid:

The inflated ego needs to -not- drain when the player logs off. One has to spend a good 20-30 minutes hunting to get one's ego up to an acceptable rate (for debating/influencing). This is fine as this is how it's obviously meant to be. The annoying portion is that if I log on during a village revolt, I need to spend my time hunting instead of being useful in any way because I have to hunt. Inflated ego should stay through log-out; if this needs to be balanced, then speed up the normal drain.

But at the same time, the damage is more than 2x higher, so getting lower crit levels has more impact. FYI: Misses don't crit.

4 seconds is less than twice as slow as the fastest warrior, but the damage is more than double.

If you're really curious, send me the number of no-crit hits it takes for you to kill something substantial, your weapon balance time, and the miss rate, and I'll go (try) to kill one to get my stats, and we can get hard numbers on who is likely to bash faster. I'm very confident that you'll come out on top, even if I had your crit rate, but I'd be amazed if it's more than 10%. I bet it's more like 3%.

Sorry, but missing is nothing. Not only is it fairly infrequent, but you recover from misses twice as fast. That means that at the standard warrior bashing speed of 2.5 seconds (neutral balance, 290 speed weapons, and combatstyle lightning) a miss will cost you 1.25 seconds. Consider this: even if your luck is so awful that you manage to miss every other attack, you'll still be hitting at 3.75 seconds, faster than most magic users. Also, I wouldn't try to imply that warrior (and monk) criticals are somehow less effective; it's definitely the opposite on anything but lifeleechers.