@Xenthos: The reason why I made the switch about two months ago to Orclach from Aslaran was, in fact, for the resistances and extra con. I guess it was a little bit of a premonition of things to come. I was sick of having crappy hp and not being able to absorb damage. Also, my only weapon at the time (and still is) a 360.270ish.181 waraxe. I'll readily admit that I have very limited knowledge on the formulae and mechanics that determine things like balance and equilibrium recovery times and damage based on str/int, but when I compared Orclach to Aslaran, my thought process was basically "beatstick tank." And as I've said before, that's what I've pleasantly come to find is true.

Really, the rest of you guys are just now jumping on the bandwagon because your favorite speed races are apparently no longer 'viable'. Apparently the nerf was so dreadful that some of you are daring to move outside of being speed whores and are gravitating towards slower races with higher con and more resistances.

And like you said Xenthos, it's the "current setup" that has caused the resistance factor to begin catching people's attention. Why are we in this "current setup?" Because both the Admins and the player base felt that speed was causing combat to become skewed. So if the Admins seriously look at lowering the effectiveness of resistances (and weaknesses to be fair), what we'll see is the tougher races losing their damage reduction. In that kind of situation we now have people taking more damage, but it's occurring at somewhat slower pace.

We could go around and around in a vicious circle over whether or not this class or that skill is balanced, so instead I present to you this suggestion: If you really want the game to be fair and balanced, then there should only be one race, one class, and no special stuff whatsoever. Now we're all fair and balanced!

Or, you can accept the fact that maybe certain races have those advantages for a reason: THEY WERE DESIGNED THAT WAY. A game without flavor is boring, and the more you try to push things towards an ideal of 'balance', the more you end up taking away things that are truly unique to the original design. The only reason for an advantage/disadvantage to undergo a change is if the ability in question is unfair or unbalanced in a majority of comparisons and/or situations. And this isn't an argument against the changes being made. I completely agree that there are just some things about the game that make combat unfair and I support any positive changes towards solving that problem. I DON'T, however, support people throwing the nerf word around as a way to soothe their own bruises.

We have not let the players adjust to the recent changes, and most of what is now being posted on these forums or discussed elsewhere is more or less knee-jerk reactions. Why do we need to be considering MORE changes before we figure out whether or not the CURRENT changes have been steps in either the right or wrong direction.

@Malicia: Nice numbers, I'm impressed. You've more or less confirmed my original argument: speed warriors win overall in the damage race because they have more chances to apply their bonus damage from strength. This frequency in attacks eventually outweighs the minor bonus damage that a stronger but slower race possess. It's my hope that eventually once the Admins get through making adjustments to the changes they've already made they can stop turning out all this new crap in order to address some core game mechanics.

I haven't tested extensively, but I have to say experimentally the downgrade in effectiveness to racial balances made it quite even with L0 races regarding wounds over time. (I did a distribution at 10s/20s/30s intervals)

What I'd like to know is this:
Why did two identical attacks with identical precision/str, against identical robes/resilience yield two different wounding levels where the only difference was target race? We wanted to test if res to cutting, e.g., effected wounds, but what we found was race or perhaps max hp effect wounds in a small way outside of all the wounding factors I knew about.. Craziness!

Yeah, from my testing, I think max health does affect wounds as well as health. Currently testing strength with Bashara. Will have results soon.

Yeah we thought maxhp.. though it's such a small diff that it isn't worth a mention really.

Yeah, it was a difference of like 12 wounds from a change of I think 800 or so in max health. It doesn't seem to matter very much.

Ok, here are the results of testing. This was against Bashara with no armour, no defences. He is an orclach, so has lvl 1 blunt resist as well as trans resilience. However, this shouldn't change the %s much. My morningstar is 77/245/x and flail is 190/106/x. First number for each is damage, second is wounds.



So, there is obviously an issue with strength at 12. Also, it seems like it is a linear increase from 10 (and maybe lower) to 20, but then there is a huge drop from 20-21.

So I've been poking around with races as well, and I went Illithoid, with their new stats:



That is with me fully deffed (with throne) and surged as an illithoid demi, with a TF. I have essentially all the good boosts that a warrior needs, good strength, great dex, great con, and good intelligence. And what do I have to pay for it? A weakness against magic.

This is a bit too good given the relative lack of disadvantages given illithoids, not to mention that the low cha can be fixed by illdrain. And we won't even bring up the fact that only 2 orgs in the game can even reasonably (in an IC sense) use them.

Yeah...they really do kinda need some tweaking. With that amount of INT too, it borders around the same amount for me as a Trill and I've got a TF and the Knowledge domoth blessing working for me right now.

That TF isn't a minor blip, but from a caster perspective, I'd agree that 14 int and 16 con is too much.

Speaking as someone who actually played as an illithoid for a length of time, it's not the amazing race you are making it out to be. You vastly underestimate the charisma. Illithoids are utterly destroyed by telepaths. The psychic resistance only reduces the health damage from mindblast. Illdrain is a nice fix in theory, but it requires an hour or more of hunting to get it to full for me at level 85. Then you have debating. Illithoids are absolutely abyssmal at debating. Even with these buffs they are mediocre at influencing.

I had several instances where I would log in to a fight, run to help only to get 2 shotted by Forren because I had no chance to inflate my ego. The Magic weakness is huge. Even with their con, they drop like bricks to MD and bards.

Illithoid are fine. Humans still make better warriors.

ELFEN LORD: (Sojiro buffs)

Strength : 20 Dexterity : 19 Constitution : 18
Intelligence : 17 Size : 1 Charisma : 16

Pardon me for suggesting that you aren't exactly crippled for options, here. We'll call it even between the level 2 psychic resistance, and the vastly more useful faster herb balance that elfen get. Even then- once you're not underground, Elfen would rock the clock of an Illithoid. Don't even get me started about influencing/debating.

Not saying that Illithoid Demigod Warrior wouldn't rock, because they clearly would. But a little perspective, please.

I wasn't saying I was crippled, just saying that Illithoid are great, the question is, are they too great?

Also, bear in mind, elfen lords are a spec race and deserve to be pretty awesome, in my opinion, I'm not even specced for Illithoid.

Are Elfen Lords too great?

WHAT NO THEY'RE NOT. AMNESIA DUST.

^ That was definitely unbiased.

On a serious note, they're about as great as merian lords and humans as always.

But Celina was an Illithoid before the racial changes though, I thought? Unless you're one right now, I'd still argue that I think Illithoid have been beefed up too much and they're not even a spec race as Elfen Lord are...thereby making it available to any class combination with hideously large stats like that as a warrior, or even as a caster as Xavius suggested. So, my points, Elfen Lord are limited to one class combination whereas Illithoid are pretty much the go to race for anything now.

I was, and the crippling fact of existance for the illithoids is still the same. You are looking at this from a combat only perspective. Illithoids are essentially useless in any influencing/debating. And the magic weakness. You really just don't know what it's like to have a weakness to what is already really high damage from bards.

I don't know, but I think if you think illithoid make good casters, female kephera are insane.

And someone needs to comment on my tests.

Trill Racial language please.

Well done Rika, keep up the good work - Teacher.

Happy?