Working fine for me.

I think there may be a connection limit though, and it could've been at it at that time.

oO-------------------------( Welcome back, Vathael! )-------------------------Oo
--> RACE CHANGE TESTING
--> Current changes: EQ/Bal/Vuln/Resist levels: 7% per. (Previously 5/5/10/10)
--> You can type RESTOREREINCARNATION to get free reincarnations. Infinitely.
--> Human knight: +3str +2dex +1con +1cha +1int (previously +4str +2dex +2con +1cha +1int)
--> Human monk: +2dex, +2str, +2int, +1con, +1char (previously +3dex, +2str, +2int, +2con, +1char)
--> Human caster: +3int, +2dex, +1con, +1str, +1cha (previously +4int, +2dex, +2con, +1str, +1char)
--> Dwarf dex raised to 11 from 10.
--> Furrikin EQ bonus now 2 instead of 1.
oO----------------------------------------------------------------------------Oo

There is no connection limit. Make sure you are connecting to port 2000 and not 23.

I have been..... wait for it *drumroll* Ninja'd

It seems to be widely acknowledged that Merian need some kind of attention in this racial revamp but there does not seem to be all that much talk surrounding it.

Merian represent 2% of the population as judged by the racial breakdown. This despite it being a race that has been around since the start of the game, being a spec race option for 4 guilds, and being possibly the most prevalent race in the game's story.

The only Merians are newbies and people doing it for RP reasons. My sympathies to anyone who plays an unspecced Merian. I think everyone knows why this is:

Imperial Merian and Seasinger Merian are a death wish. They are too squishy and their bonuses do not come close to offsetting this. The change to weaknesses helps this somewhat.

Imperial Merian's claim to fame is high intelligence but high intelligence is not particularly useful in this world of stat leveling. They used to be able to kill things with their high burst damage before those things tore their spindly little bodies apart. Not so much anymore.
Seasinger is just not a realistic choice.

Merian Lord is not particularly bad but not there are much better choices for a warrior.

I am sure others have some suggestions for helping this but my thoughts are as follows:

Possible Flavor Abilities:

Inherent ability to reach the Water Plane
Influencing bonus (maybe just for empowering to reflect some kind of inherent imperialness lighty personality)
Not affected by water currents

Adjustments:

Level 2 Eq recovery instead of 1
Level 1 fire weakness instead of 2
+1 Con for Seasinger & Imperial
+1 Dex for Seasinger & Lord
+1 Cha for Seasinger

I am not suggesting all the above changes obviously. Just brainstorming on some things that would help address the concerns laid out above.

Those wanting to make comments, Catarin's above post is the kind of commentary we want to see, with concrete suggestions and rationale/data behind them.

Keep them coming!

"Caster" still seems too broad for how it includes bards despite their stat use being so different from the other casters. If a separate evolution track were proposed for human bards, would it be considered? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd draw you up a table for it, if we knew it'd be worth the time to do it.

So I actually looked into it when running the evolution numbers, but it doesn't seem to make sense. There are a lot of non-race buffs for CHA, especially when compared to INT, to even most of the numbers out. I don't think we're going to be doing it at this present time.

Sip bonuses:
I believe that the health sip bonus was modified in the last racial rebalance.

It appears that mana and ego were not (they still seem to be 10% per level according to the numbers I ran), whereas health doesn't use the same formula (mana and bromides are flat percentages on heal, it seems).

Please check this and verify; Faelings do need a health sip bonus, but we really don't need +30% on mana and ego when (non-Warrior Faelings) have very high Intelligence and Charisma anyways, and warrior Faelings aren't hurting with them either even if they are more 'average'.

Making it 5% per level for Mana and Bromides would also help those races with sip maluses, such as Viscanti and Dracnari.

This gives a starting point for looking at Faelings as well.

I looked into this and the sip bonuses are 7% for health, mana, and ego. If your testing is coming up with something else, there may be something else coming into play.

You're all wrong. Nerf orclach! (I'm not often helpful)

On live? Mana healing when I last tested came out to 30% higher than Sojiro's, with the same max mana (faeling me, human him).

Unfortunately he just logged on / immediately QQed so I can't retest now, I will do so when he gets back.

Thought the amounts were slightly random?

I agree wholeheartedly with Catarin's thoughts on Merians, they are a really weak race.

Viscanti face a somewhat similar problem in the opposite direction; they look like they're meant to be a race that trades a little bit of offensive power for a little bit of tankiness, which is fine except that the sip penalty really counteracts the tankiness they gain from their resistances, and 14 con is not particularly exceptional considering unspecced Lucidians have it and they don't have a sip penalty thrown on top. I would consider dropping the sip penalty for Viscanti from level 2 to level 1, perhaps cutting one resistance veeeeery slightly to compensate (eg. magic from 2->1). This would probably bring the mage/guardian and warrior variants in line, although Irontongue Viscanti are still just hilariously bad (12 cha and 14 int for a bard race?!) and probably need a substantial charisma boost (perhaps +3 cha, -1 con?)

For health, yes.

Mana and bromides... back when I ran this I did 10 sips in a row that were all the exact same (excepting one that hit a regen tick).

Which is odd, because now I am getting random-ness on mana, and that last test was just a couple weeks ago when you put up the first post. I am quite confused now, I will admit.

Thanks for looking into it!

Edit: And Sojiro's, on a couple of sips, also did not change; and mine was exactly 30% higher minus 1 mana point (rounding).

Non race specific idea:
Make sipping levels 5% in either direction in all 3 stats. (since he says its 7% but used to be 10ish I thought).

Merian
Merian seasinger is not that bad statistically, the main issue is con for the fishies.
*+1 constitution to all specs
*-1 con gained by warriors (+4 instead of +5)
*No comment on influence request.

Taurian
Taurian is somewhere between a normal race and a tank race.
*Either +1 dex and make enrage +1 unweighted or just make enrage +2 unweighted
*Possible racial skill: Tackle or Barge, whichever seems more fitting
*Changing the dex issue would probably help a fair bit. They would be a fairly mundane but not overly penalized race that way.

Tae'Dae
Slower and less resistance.
*Add a level of sipping bonus, this will increase sipping 5% (if changed) while resistances drop 3% per level.
*Lower speed penalties to not be crippling (lvl 2/2?)

Igasho
Similar to Tae'dae to a lesser extent.
*Consider raising some of their resistances to meet the changes.
*Lower balance penalty by 1.
This will make them faster but based on resisting damage instead of the Tae'Dae tanking version.

Orclach
Mana and Ego kill bait, that took a heavy hit to resistance. I think any 1 of the below would help considerably. The differences are if they are supposed to be really low and offset or if they are better off taking the damage but being able to recover better.
*+2 int +1 charisma
*+1 int +1 charisma +1 lvl sipping bonus
*+2 lvls sipping bonus
*Possible new option: Wounding resistance (7% less wounding taken) to mitigate the fact they have to sip move often even while wounded.
*Open to thoughts on Orclach since we cannot specialize them.

Viscanti coming later

EDITED FOR FORMATTING

I think the biggest thing Taurian have going against them is that they are bull people, really. We can't help that. I would like to make note that the STR bonus under enrage is unweighted - if you are going to suggest a DEX boost and stick with it, I'd rather that be unweighted as well, to reduce confusion about how enrage works. This game is confusing enough as is.

I'd be hesitant to give igasho a sip bonus, since it'd be nice to keep them somewhat different from tae'dae instead of making them more similar, so I had some other ideas in mind:

* Natural faster endurance regeneration (which matters for people with low skill levels who want to hunt, at least)
* Innate Blocking, with a bonus for warriors that learn the blocking skill in athletics to BLOCK FIRM at no power cost

We might pitch natural faster willpower regeneration to one of the lacking caster races too.

Cacophony hearing Vileblood get a special +3 bonus to charisma that nobody else gets. Add in bardicpresence, netzach and karma, and viscanti bards have perfectly reasonable charisma.

Iytha's comment on vileblood is interesting, I want to see what stats an Irontongue has then with all those buffs now. People keep on hammering the need for cha, but if vileblood makes irontongue good enough (for the class which needs cha the most), then there doesn't seem to be an issue there anymore (unless vileblood needs taint or something).

Is 14% less sip compared to regular races worth 14% more protection against cut/blunt/magic, all of which are popular damage sources? Eh.

I like Catarin's suggestions on merians too.

Losing 9% in resists (and since weaknesses matter less with the change anyway...), then giving 5% more sipping isn't really better survival. Then there's the matter of becoming 6% slower which actually hurts quite a lot. If Tae'dae are *supposed* to be slow, then at least make it so they can actually tank better than other races. As is, they can only really tank physical damage - anything fire or magical makes them explode, even when you throw in Trans Magic, etc.

Regarding Vileblood, although it gives +3, it's still weighted, meaning CHA is capped lower for Irontongue than other bard races.