Sprinkle salt around Xavius-alt.

(They even gave a mechanic to give it to someone else )

You can't stay shielded all the time when gearing up for a group fight because your group is moving around. So, staying shielded all the time isn't a feasible way to counter it. Being instantly killed from across an area with no reasonable means of preventing it really isn't cool and I don't think it makes you look good to be defending it in such a crude way.

Still, I knew the demi's etc. were overpowered when I signed up... I'll get over it

Well, at the time in question, the group was not moving around... and hadn't been for a good 10+ minutes. If the situation was different, sure, but in this case there wasn't a whole lot of reason to not be shielded. You have to be for any number of other things (chain yank, rad, wisp...).

Unless they're all OP too. Their main stopper is also shield, so it's important to get used to using it.

Not true, more like 10 seconds. How you profess to know that when you weren't there puzzles me. Maybe my group had joined with another group you had been watching, though.

It's not really relevant... touching shield isn't a reasonable defense here because groups move around and all you would have to do is wait until they're moving and then zap (which probably happens all the time, I'd guess).

Uh... I wasn't there? Pretty sure I was. Scenting the group and all that. Which hadn't been moving for a while, and could easily have sprinkled salt if they wanted to. I don't recall seeing another group enter the area shortly prior to the zap, but can re-assess once the log's up.

Also, no, it doesn't usually happen; groups (when moving) usually have the advantage because they know when they're moving (and can thus take appropriate actions on the other end). Unless they move into a pit at which point all bets are off.

Same thing goes with Rage & Terror covens, really (which function the same as a zap-team excepting that it takes Trans Night / Moon instead of being a Demigod and only works at night).

Edit: I suppose I should say that I'm not trying to downplay it or say it isn't nasty, but that there are any number of other effects which are blocked pretty much only by shield that can be every bit as nasty (rad into group, chain-yank, Terror coven, and so on and so forth).

Just shield. The only difference between dying instantly at range or in the room to three+ people is that you can 100% stop it at range.

No offense, man, but it's combat. If you don't like being hurt, don't fight. If you nerf Zap to not be able to be done at once, you'll have to also stop staffcast, cudgel, ninukhi, TK choke, and a whole number of things.

I'm sorry, but those analogies are flawed because if people are in the room with you, they can be hit back either by you or your team mates.

And you can get your demigods to zap them back?

Wait wait wait, what?

His examples are ranged attacks too.

His examples include some vastly weaker, line of sight attacks that he is comparing to same-plane (or maybe same area? Still far more flexible either way) attacks.

Rika, it really just goes back to the concept of fairness. I don't think anyone really expects the demigod players like you to have a problem with it, but as a normal player who's trying to contribute, being instantly killed because I was on the same plane as the other team and my team had been moving recently does not make for good gameplay and therefore it should not happen.

Same area.

PS: Terror-coven and Rage-coven can be plane-wide under the right circumstances!

Also, since when is staff-cast weaker than zap? Especially vastly weaker? While there will be some differences based on staff-cast damage type, by no means is staff-cast laugh-off-the-damage whereas zaps can be (especially in the hands of low-int classes, which make up a lot of the Demigod population).

I'm not sure you really know what you're talking about here.

Edit: Though the above is not entirely serious, stacked zaps do obviously hurt... but man, stacked staff-casting is vicious.

I'm not a demigod, but I think your deathrage is going to be upheld as a standard of oversensitive noobness for months to come if you don't let this one go.

Well, I wasn't really expecting this to be an argument. I'm both amused and a little disappointed that so many people want to defend it, even if half-heartedly in some cases. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that it was a bad idea to let the demis chain zaps to kill the little people from beyond their victim's range or ability to fight back. I guess I'll try not to walk around as much!

The point is that it is not just Demis who can grab an unshielded person and torture them to death. If you fix one, you kind of have to fix them all, no? What's the point about complaining about one and ignoring all the rest? Including one that actually works plane-wide (and not just local area).

It really is seeming more like you're upset you died, so you're just complaining about what hit you, rather than actually having a reasoned and thought-out suggestion / improvement.

See, it seems like a no-brainer to me that PK involves awareness and coordination. The first rule that we teach the barely graduated newbies about group combat is stay shielded. I'm sure you can handle PK to the degree of the web spamming meatshields.

You lot shoo off the pretty thread with your combat ideas.

<--still wants his Butcher/mannequin idea to go through.

It's not that I defend it. I've NEVER had a demigod character, and god knows I've been on the recieving end of a zap or staffcast flurry or twelve. I'm just saying that A) we don't nerf things because we don't like them/they hurt too much, and Balance matters. How would you code it? Make it to where only one demigod in the game can zap every minute? Seriously, come up with a viable, common sense answer and I'm sure the divine will ponder it. Realize though that these people who are able to zap don't want to be hit with the nerf stick any more than you do about your skills.

Think about it. Where does it stop? No multi zapping, and the next person complains that multiple demigods shouldn't be able to hit them, it hurts too much. Next thing you know we're all throwing pillows at each other until someone loses an eye.

Also, this is true, but I laughed.

I actually imagined Xenthos saying this out loud.

Meh, how could it be difficult to code? It doesn't seem like you've actually thought about it at all. Just have it say "you cannot zap that person for 1 second" (sic), or have it delay the zap landing for 1 second, so that the person can sip health between the shots doing 40%+ of their hp. It isn't as necessary for weaker line of sight attacks as it is for an area-based zap because those things have more limitations as well as being weaker (as I already said really, but you guys seem to have chosen to ignore that part of the argument).