Tae'dae: The sip bonus increase is a good start, but definitely not enough. The trouble with the bears is that it's hard to do anything to them to make them viable in terms of stats and penalties without killing the concept of the slow lumbering bear warrior, which is a cool one. Perhaps some of these might be useful:
Magic penalty 3 -> 1 (seriously why do they even have this??)
New racial skill: BURST - destroys webs and ropes like tipheret/summer with a burst of herculean strength but on a shorter balance; alternatively, does it with no balance at all but has a cooldown (or a power cost?)
Alternative new racial skill: PULVERIZE - takes no balance, has a power cost or cooldown; next two hits (or one hit with a 2-hander) use strength instead of dexterity to determine wound afflictions... this might be too much of a game-changer for a racial though

STR matters for wiccan toad stomp, and kind-sort-of-a-little for shield stun. But yeah.

I forgot about the stomp bit. God that's an annoying skill. I adore the flavor, but it's ah really, really awkward kill mechanically.

Ya ya I am back and I hate to be coming back into this (topic) but I have some questions. And before I get witty answers I did not troll through the dozens upon dozens of pages of things like soaking your beard in beer for stat increases:

• It seems that human stats took a drop from a total of 10 to 8. With being a 2 point drop (if the stat drops and the redistribution of stats are pretty set in stone) Would it be feasable to play with the idea of giving them something helpful like lvl 1 bal (monks/warriors) lvl 1 eq (casters). Or something universal to all of them like lvl 1 cutting resistance or something on par with that

(Note to playerbase who do not agree; Please don't start making snide comments right off the bat before pondering the idea for a little bit.)

People who choose human do so mainly for the incremental stat increases. The only other thing they have is a small xp advantage which when you are under level 50 is really nice but it isn't a super noticeable thing much later on from what I had seen.

While Mugwumps will get a pretty good boost in another 6% equilibrium, but they're still very squishy with few stat points and a major weakness to electricity. With electricity now being a very accessible damage source in the form of Aeromancers, would it be too much to ask to reduce the electricity weakness to level 2?

Orclach and the other weapon specc races are more viable now, but even with the additional point of intelligence, I'd want another point, either in Int or Cha, preferably in cha. By increasing Cha to 9, you make it possible for them to reach Cha 14 through buffs, which is a decent stat for influencing, and they'll only need a Karmic Beauty blessing, Netzach and one other Charisma buff to get Cha 12, which seems to be the minimum if you want to influence without counter-hits.

Give Taurian an unweighted bonus to dexterity when they rage. It was suggested before, but it's a good idea. Raging is the Taurian unique, so I've nothing against it being boosted.

If furrikin won't be getting another level of equilibrium (and I can see that level placed in balance too. It could be fun to have em level 2 in both but eeeeeeh) they're certainly going to need something. More constitution and/or charisma. A sip bonus. Something.

I second Kiradawea - I still don't think Mugwumps will get a lot of playtime.

Also, the main reason I played a Human caster was for the con and decent intelligence, both of which took a hit. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but I don't see any race that's going to be good for casters.

I think you'll basically be choosing between very mediocre bashing as a human, or a lower int and high con race that is viable for setting up whatever non-damage kill method your class has, and by doing so be terrible at PvE. The problem here is that survivability and constitution (or something really good to offset a bad constitution, like a sip bonus) is important no matter what class you are. And I don't see any race being great at caster PvE.

I think a couple of viable solutions is to add survivability to the caster races and slightly lower their intelligence or equilibrium bonus (level 2 instead of 3, etc). Or make some races have higher int and higher con, and no equilibrium bonus.

edit: I understand (or at least think I do) that the reason Human's took a nerf was to temp people into diversity. But I'd like another race to be decent enough to tempt me.

I apologize if I'm being considered trolling, but on the issue with Tae'dae and Igasho being so underplayed due to their slowness, why not have Size affect how fast your equilibrium and balance regains.

Have the baseline timer be something like... 3 seconds (plus or minus appropriately for certain skills), and have size be a modifier onto that. Obviously, the larger your size is, the slower you regain balance/equilibrium. Would that be an effective idea? I haven't put too much thought into a possible equation to be used to determine regen time, but I'm just throwing the idea out there, just in case someone else had the same idea.

Perhaps I am misreading this, but I'm seeing EQ/Bal sped up, and resists left the same (definite yay on the latter), but with vulnerabilities left the same, and no changes for Mugs, and a rather marginal change for merians (largely moot for knights), I worry this will end up in one or two results:

1) The races that were immediately brough up- mugs/merians, will either go back to the old "must be" status prior to the racial changes that slowed everyone down, OR
2) They will continue to be too soft to be counted as viable (which will probably be the case for Merian knights anyway )

Personally, I'd like to see shaving a bit of the vulnerability levels off of both of them.

Alternately, if the EQ recovery bonus is considered strong enough to balance things:
-For merians, add a balance bonus in such that knights have a similar dynamic/incentive to take the race. At the moment, knights have the penalty without gaining real benefit for what they are paying for. If necessary, tie this to the knight specialization- make the EQ bonus become a balance bonus! Then knights would be getting equivalent gain to their malus.

Also, regarding Kira's idea about Taurians getting dex when they rage- thumbs up! They would be a pretty solid race with JUST a little more oomph to them.

Finally, regarding faelings, keeping in mind that all SL faelings by their very nature have spiritbond bear, I still don't feel that faelings not being weak enough is ever the issue. The problem to me is that their entire "down side" is pushed into the extremes of their low con, which can arguably be mostly counterbalanced (if Akui was an SL faeling, I'd have 13 con with no defs at all. 14 with the inept athletics skill, weathering. Not high, but hardly crippling), and also with the sip bonus. (leave out the awesomeness of drawdown/nightkiss DMP- I mean, Xenthos is Crow and stuff. It can happen!).

Rather than slap some malus on them that would hurt and put them in the same field as merians/mugs, I feel it would be much more prudent just to make them more mainstream. Reduce the balance bonus, eliminate or set to level 1 the sip bonus. Drop two points off of dex (leaving a still very high 16).

In return for such a hit, give SL faelings, if not base faelings, +3 strength. (giving them base 10, and 14 for SLs. Still on the low side, but much, much more workable as a knight stat). Give them +2 CON, meaning, base 11, 13 for SLs, an easy 16 for demi-knights.)

We'd still have the flavor of faelings, without the problematic extemes of crazy sip bonus + crazy balance bonus, balanced by a stat issue of low STR/CON that is for some, a nonfactor, and for others, very noticeable.

Because every caster and monk would be size one the next day.

Ah yes... Point taken, I thought of that too late. Nevermind then, carry on!

Why should size have something to do with how fast you regain equilibrium, and while it may make some sense for balance, it would still create a lot of trouble, what with Furrikin then ending up faster than Aslaran, who would lose their speed with nothing regained.

And humans needed to be nerfed, as they were a no-brainer choice for any class due to their high stats, in addition to the experience bonus, and the more nebulous but still highly valuable fact that you could change into any different class and remain just as viable. This latter option is still apparent within Humans.

Though it is true. Caster PvE is terrible, and not just due to class imbalances, but races too. If you want to be good at hunting as a caster, you're limited to nonspec Lucidian (spec Lucidian lose con, which is very valuable to hunting) and Female Kephera. The other casters are highly squish.

Bear in mind that with these faeling changes, you would have absolutely no reason to ever play Furrikin, as Faeling got better stats (except 1 point less in dex), still has that delicious sip bonus, and leaving the only bonus to furrikin that cute little level 1 eq bonus.

It's 20%, which applies to all EXP gaining methods and stacks with everything. And I would argue that it is at its least value under level 50, since everyone can fly through that stretch easily these days. It becomes more and more valuable the faster you are able to gain exp, and with demigod changes as they are, there is still strong incentive to stay a human even at demi.

You can make a case against stat changes, but I don't think you can do it on the basis of the exp bonus being "small".



What? Furrikin have more STR, not more DEX.

People also keep forgetting ROLL, which would indicate to me that it's not seeing as much use as it should be, and the last time magic resistance was mentioned, bards were totally forgotten from mention. I'm pretty sure tae will tell you their magic weakness is very noticeable, in that regard.

They are made pretty awkward due to the advantage set up, though - they're way more situationally useful, much like how trill are.

Did you even read the post I quoted?

It was suggested to give Faelings a boost to Con and Str that would put their Constitution equal and Strength at 10, one more than Furrikin, while lowering their dex to 16.

Ooh, oops.

Please consider the suggestion to change the Trill level 2 flying regen to cloudy terrain. This is mainly due to the fact that flying regen is basically useless other than just sitting around. There are hardly any places where there are flying creatures to hunt so it's not really any help for bashing. As Trill only have 11 constitution (13 for Storm Trill) the cloudy regen would be helpful for hunting. I don't think it would be overpowered in an Aeromancer demesne with Westwind as Merian Aquamancers have their level 2 racial regen in their demesne in addition to Healspring. Also, the only naturally cloudy terrain that I can think of is Clarramore and the Plane of Air.

Along with this Dracnari should really have their level 2 regen changed from volcanic to burning. There are hardly any volcanic areas in the game outside of Mount Zoaka and a few other random areas. This would bring Trill/Dracnari more in line with the other specced races as they all have regen in their terrain made by mages/druids. Lucidian's level 2 regen could be changed to clouds as well but I think more people prefer the outdoor daytime regen as it is way more prevalent. Granted, it is a bit of stretch to go from daylight regen to cloudy but it could make sense as the clouds refract the light better.

Hey, Sior: is tweaking the high-end strength/intelligence/dexterity damage formulas something that's on the table, or is that completely out of the question? I think adjusting the high-end for str and int in particular would help balance a lot of races.

As in making higher stats more or less effective?

Chances are it's to make high end str/int/dex more effective compared to the baseline since many of the races were originally balanced to have that particular advantage but when it was largely removed...those same races ended up being pretty awful.

My turn to quote it!

Bandwagon first:
o Furrikin lost their lvl 2? That was a good change for them though.
o Mugwump still need a weakness reduction
o Give orclach +1 cha please.
o Dracnari and Trill, change regen to their meld type

Other Changes:
o Faeling... lower sip bonus, up str, and keep their balance (move to lvl 2). Sounds ok to me, specifics others can argue as I do not even want to start looking into dps and wps (wounds per second).
o Yay tank races might be more useful

Not noted or mostly ignored now:
o Bonus dex to enrage please.
o As Xenthos said early on, might be time to adjust kephera.
o Do aslaran need "adjusting" or are they fine with weakness back in place?
o I think Viscanti may still take the lower penalty and +stats and reduce their resistances.. they really are that bad still.