I don't think he's pointing the finger at manakills here. He's pointing it at races that are made very undesirable for not many other reasons besides a pitifully and quite painfully low int. It's not a stat anyone can afford a dump, while most classes have at least one dump stat (strength). He's saying that a lot of the good warrior races are blocked by having low int and are therefore not seen outside of cameos. Mages on the other hand (for instance), can afford to dump both str and con, if they have enough cha for forcefield.

Manakills are an issue ONLY to low Int races.... which nobody plays for a reason. How many Krokani (an otherwise pretty good warrior/monk race) do you see running around? A low Int race is at too much risk of being splatted by Swoopspam or DoubleHaegl -> Any mana kill or CrowCaw -> Toaded to be viable as a permanent race.

Perhaps introduce a Athletics skill that lets you transmute Health to Mana, Cannibalize-style. That would make manadrain an effective tactic without it being devastating to low Int races.

I'm not suggesting nerfing manakills as a whole, only make them less ridiculous against low Int races in some way. If you have another suggestion I would be pleased to hear it.

So you'd like those races to preserve their bonuses, while have the manakill suspectibility alleviated? I think you'd need to tone down their bonuses then (otherwise this'll be some iffy 'balancing').

Why isn't Hod a solution? You're saying that as if vitality is useless as well then - it's definitely not. Neither hod nor vitality are supposed to grant permanent insuspectibility, but they do grant you more time to get out and fix your situation.

Vadi. Nobody. Plays. Those. Races. For. A. Reason.

It is because they are UNDERPOWERED. Therefore, they do not need to balance reduced susceptibility to mana drain with weaker stats/advantages. That's like suggesting that we nerf Tae'dae racial resistances because we want to make them slightly faster SO THAT PEOPLE PLAY THEM.

What you are suggesting is akin to asking that any improvements to warriors coming from this report be 'balanced' by removing their useful Athletics abilities.

I didn't say Hod is useless, nor Vitality, so don't you dare try to strawman me. Hod is simply insufficient to make low Int races viable, otherwise they would be in use.

To summarize, if no one uses something, it needs to be fixed.

Make some exra defense against manakills to WARRIORS ONLY sounds like a much better idea then across the board, which would be silly. This defensive mode would probably not be useable in conjunction with surge. Generally, I feel that outliers aside, warriors are supposed to be a longer phase attrition class (which does have issues in burst based Lusty combat), which is why they get a bunch of special defenses. Especially if warriors get normalized (outliers toned the heck down, everyone else brought up), this warrants consideration.

Warriors do have to spread their stats across more then any other class, I wouldn't be against mitigating having a low int for them. I do not think this will necessarily make manakilling them impossible, or invalidate another archetype.

As for Hod: Not all warriors take Highmagic, they shouldn't have to.

Perhaps this discussion should be moved to another topic, as it is more or less on the topic of Race Balance.

I don't really think low int warriors being bad is a major imbalance. You can envoy athletics if you wish.

You don't believe that Int is not a major reason some races are virtually never played? Then pray tell why there aren't more Krokani/Orclach running around.

foolofsound:

You don't believe that Int is not a major reason some races are virtually never played? Then pray tell why there aren't more Krokani/Orclach running around.

You act as if he hasn't already added a review to some races on the list.

foolofsound:

You don't believe that Int is not a major reason some races are virtually never played? Then pray tell why there aren't more Krokani/Orclach running around.

Strictly because Aslaran or faeling are better? Which I hate to tell you, has nothing to do with Int, it was to do with speed. Speed is King

That's pretty much it.

Maybe one time in the very distant past, warriors were slow balance races because they could damage out robe wearers. That definitely isn't the case now, so speed is king.

Also krokani remains a solid race for BC's, and I remember an igasho BM or two. Akui for instance loved playing orclach.

If you don't feel that it's a problem...
In that case I suppose we should focus on Balance/EQ bonuses/penalties, which are, admittedly, a larger problem.

Yes, that's more of what I was thinking of when we talk about the races, assuming it gets voted on to be a major imbalance.

I think we've got a good pool of issues now, so I'm gonna be opening a new thread soon (probably tomorrow) so we can chop it down.

I think I'll want to take out at least half of the proposals, but we'll see.

Does anyone solo manakill without some kind of lock? In groups, everything is a problem, yeah. Solo, it's not like you're just going to pop on a Succumb and wait, or spam Lash. I'm not seeing the issue.

foolofsound:

Vadi. Nobody. Plays. Those. Races. For. A. Reason.

It is because they are UNDERPOWERED. Therefore, they do not need to balance reduced susceptibility to mana drain with weaker stats/advantages. That's like suggesting that we nerf Tae'dae racial resistances because we want to make them slightly faster SO THAT PEOPLE PLAY THEM.

What you are suggesting is akin to asking that any improvements to warriors coming from this report be 'balanced' by removing their useful Athletics abilities.

I didn't say Hod is useless, nor Vitality, so don't you dare try to strawman me. Hod is simply insufficient to make low Int races viable, otherwise they would be in use.

To summarize, if no one uses something, it needs to be fixed.

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but just for curiosity's sake, I'm interested to know where you got your statistics, if any, from. I'm well aware that low int races are not popular, but the magnitude of the low popularity has never been clearly stated before, and to make sweeping statements based on it is probably unwise at best. If any admin reading this could check and release a list of what the current race usage in the game is like amongst active players, it would help. It still will not be enough to make statements that point to specific cause and effect of low popularity, but hard numbers would be a start.

Lerad:


I'm a bit late to the discussion, but just for curiosity's sake, I'm interested to know where you got your statistics, if any, from. I'm well aware that low int races are not popular, but the magnitude of the low popularity has never been clearly stated before, and to make sweeping statements based on it is probably unwise at best. If any admin reading this could check and release a list of what the current race usage in the game is like amongst active players, it would help. It still will not be enough to make statements that point to specific cause and effect of low popularity, but hard numbers would be a start.

Nonspec numbers were posted in the last racial revamp thread, I believe. Referred to in this post here: http://forums.luster...ndpost&p=787963

Though, I don't think that's of active players. An update would be good in any case (possibly of just active players within last month or ranked in experience?)

I really believe that it's painfully obvious that some races, even ones with minimal (Orclach) or no (Krokani) speed malus rarely get played, at least by active combatants. I will be the first to admit that I'm not a top tier combatant, in fact I would probably call myself a lowbie, but even I notice that there are VERY few low Int races taking part in combat.
The only reason I feel that we should address this issue it that it's a relatively simply fix (give warriors the ability to sacrifice Health for Mana) that would take a single line in the report, while making at four races (Orclach, Krokani, Igasho, Tae'dae) more playable.

foolofsound:

I really believe that it's painfully obvious that some races, even ones with minimal (Orclach) or no (Krokani) speed malus rarely get played, at least by active combatants. I will be the first to admit that I'm not a top tier combatant, in fact I would probably call myself a lowbie, but even I notice that there are VERY few low Int races taking part in combat.
The only reason I feel that we should address this issue it that it's a relatively simply fix (give warriors the ability to sacrifice Health for Mana) that would take a single line in the report, while making at four races (Orclach, Krokani, Igasho, Tae'dae) more playable.

Mugwumps also have pretty large weaknesses that don't really make up for them, I know at least 2 people that roll around on Mugwump and I've changelinged into them before as well. You also have to remember that with caster type races, sometimes speed isn't king and you more want to be tankier (roll as viscanti/dracnari/illithoid) or you want to play something like faeling with high int, but few maluses. Again, people don't play mugwump because there are better races to play out there. The same goes for warriors, Krokani -is- a solid race for BC, There's been Igasho rolling around, but the fact is, Aslaran and Faeling are plain -better-.

I'm with Sidd here. I switched from Orclach to Aslaran (as a pureblade warrior) and concluded that Aslarans are offensively superior to Orclach because of their speed and high dexterity. As an aslaran, I can build wounds faster, and I get the high end afflictions easier. Aslarans also bash faster.

Even in the (health) tankiness department Orclach cannot seem to beat Aslaran. Orclach have good health and natural regeneration, but do beter in pvp to not use surge and athletics regeneration because they need all their mana for clots and focus minds and such, and they have good health anyway. Aslarans, with their high intelligence, can get a great surge and still have plenty of mana.

So, top tier Orclach cannot outclass Aslarans even in things that Orclach are supposedly good at. No wonder there's so few of them around. Orclach was wonderful for low level bashing because of the high health and natural regeneration. Aslaran is more difficult at low levels.

Nerf aslarans and you'll see the other races popping up again everyone running for the next best race.