No changing the scaling of racial weaknesses/resistances for all races. As stated by Rainydays - it would just put all races that rely on racial resistances to compensate for weak stats back to where they were before. Just look at poor Tae'dae: when the balance penalty got reduced the admin decided that made them too powerful along with their resistances, so they reduced the sip bonus by 2 levels AND gave them a new weakness (to fire, of all things! Way to create weakness diversity). As is after the changes, they still suck. Now you want to make them suck even more by taking what extra tankiness they have left? No thanks.

It worked for Viscanti during the racial changes. Nobody in Mag played one, they were substantially improved even as the nature of their sip penality was decreased. It worked for forging, eventually. If you hammer on the merits long enough, and not this:



Which is a line of thinking that we should never ideally operate on, because making mechanical changes based on nonmechanical arguments isn't going to end well. e.g., the clock is broken. It must feel bad. Everybody hug the clock.

We do not need to have a full overhaul here to make the race playable again. Merians are taking too much elemental damage to be played. Remove the elemental penalty. They are debilitated as it is, so there is no need at all to give up something to get something- after all, that is the whole problem. They gave up too much already, and didn't get anything in return.

The racial changes made Viscanti very solid, and made illithoid arguably obscene. In the same stroke, it wrecked mugwumps, merians, and to a lesser extent aslarans, and put shadowlord faelings from "unstoppable stun monster" to "could probably use some STR".

The reasoning that made these changes, slowing down these fast, but vulnerable races, is entirely sound. However, aslaran and faelings had manageable weaknesses (fire, and middling con for Aslaran, low con, str for faeling), and so we still see them. Even at demigod level. It isn't the resist/vulnerability system that is a problem- it doesn't determine all of combat the way speed did. However, it IS siginificant enough to debilitate races who's weaknesses were high vulnerability penalities/low-middling con. Rather than making a sweeping change that would certainly put a slew of races that depend on high resists to offset lower stats (orclach, viscanti, krokani) on the undesirable list, we can fix this by directly tweaking the races that are mechanically unwieldly at the moment.

In other words, drop the vulnerabilities of Merian and Mugwumps alone. Drop them completely- they still have relatively lower con scores, which now offsets their relatively meh speed advantages. Their elemental vulnerabilities made sense when balance/eq bonuses were king- a high penalty to offset a high advantage. Since those have been changed to be almost-but-not-quite inconsequential, the vulnerabilities of these two races specifically should be examined.

I have a new signature, woo.

By all means lets put in a hard code that until merians are buffed everyone must emote some form of pity when you enter the same room as them. Thankfully it won't be spammy since there aren't any.

If I check the report list, are you going to be the envoy people are complaining about?

Llandros is somehow missing that Merians already gave something up. Their speed bonus for equilibrium was already cut in half. They received no compensation for it.

Apparently we have pointed this out so many times it has become wrong.

Report #911 Skillset: New Celest Skill: Merians
Guild: Cacophony Status: Unsubmitted
Problem: Merians suck, yo!

Solution #1: Buff Merians, Magnagora needs moar fish sticks.
Solution #2: mandatory envoy arms race comment - nerf trees!
Solution #3: Nerf Xavius, just dooo eeeet!

Neither did any of the other races and it's not like this was a recent change or this is the first time these concerns have been brought up. I'm cool if people want to take the forging hope and pray tactic.

Plenty of them received compensation. Playing this "lolwut" card is getting old, honestly. I've rarely (1-2 cases over 2.5 years) seen these things be instant-response. Forging, Aetherspace, original race overhaul, monks, and various others have all taken multiple forum topics over the span of 5m-1y in order to receive attention.

Races who got their speed and extreme stat curve nerfs while having vulnerabilities(both of which were merian, mugwump, and aslaran related) and did not receive compensation (faeling has no weakness) are all seen to suck. Roleplayers who can't part with the Celest spec race, people who can't afford a dagger to get off mugwump/aslaran/merian, and masochists still play these races. Hooray for them.

Also worth nothing that Viscanti's penalty, the sip malus, was reduced in the changes IIRC.

As a note, Faeling DID receive a buff as part of the overall balance nerf. We presented a lot of numbers and such and got +1 str. Various other races received bonuses for their loss as well. It may or may not have been enough in the case of Faeling (arguable), but to say that no other races received anything in compensation is demonstrably untrue.

..err it would seem i'm an idiot

Go Merians!
Down with oppressive elemental vulnerabilities!

I would LOVE a combat merian. I miss them sooooo much. It was fun RPing a stuck up. Oh wait, I never quit. I just liked being blue and scaley...Wait. Hrm, why was I merian? Oh yeah, the dream sequences? I liked being served for dinner.

I... I just don't see how these vulnerabilities are so devastating...

It was mentioned that the worst offenders are artie-runed warriors, who deal half their damage as elemental, so with 20% weakness it's an overall 10% increase in damage (or so), right? Ten percent. +1 con would give merians more than 10% additional health, but that idea was laughed down, saying con is nothing compared to this horrible weakness. But I just don't see it.

Adding to max health doesn't decrease the damage done via %-based attacks, which I would assume most PK attacks are, at least partially.

Artied warriors generally hit every 2ish seconds (or slightly over). You can sip every four. Sparkle every 6. Scroll every 8. Doesn't really balance out, does it.

Involve yourself in combat and you'll understand, otherwise just trust those that know.

No, warrior attacks do not scale (well) in PvP. You two-shot young people and don't really damage kill people at 9k+ HP.

Sorry if this is necromancy, but I read this and I agree that Merians need to be looked at seriously. I really want to go Merian for the RP but can't because they're just so awful.

So, why do Merian need fixes or say, the Mugwump? That aside Merian was rather OP before the changes. this brought them to earth but they didn't get their face dragged through the dirt like the Muggies. Could always fix the Taurian too /hum. But I think fixing Mugwump is more essential then fixing Merian is. I guess others don't see it so. Or maybe they just want to be "fixed." which means buffed, then "fixed" again for classed Merians?