About shifter changes as well a bug

[Spura]

First the bug: Harpy song doesn't affect Ogres which it should as they are monstrous humanoids.

After a long hiatus I come back and see that you disallowed druid/monk dragons. That is fine by me. However to compensate you buffed only 6 shapes(dragon was more nerfed than buffed TBH).

1.
Monk brings evasion, AC, speed, stealth.
Without monk AC, AC of all shapes is completely pitiful and results in shfter getting [censored] kicked. Try playing Minotaur at lvl 8. Your AC will cause you to get owned a lot. Also AB is total crap.

You did buff ACs of a few shapes. Problem is:
a) most shapes got no buff and are complete piece of *censored*.
b) AC buff on those that got buffed is not nearly close what I would get from monk levels

2.

You need to change so more shapes meld more items. For this reason, a lot of shapes just suck. Making golems and dragons meld items and weapon would make pure shifter a lot more bearable. Cos right now I can get 50% 10/- immunity to any golem shape without breakign sweat, as golem and dragon shapes have only physical damage of one type.

Also shapes like dire tiger and spectre and death slaad end up sucking because they only med armor shield and helm.

3.

You didn't just disallow druid monk but any multiclass(that is if we want epic shapes). This sucks because monk class was the only one that was causing trouble. Especially shifter is already restricted to only a few classes by the faction. i.e. can't make DD shifter. (which is a really good tanker build)
In case noone here noticed, druid class can not gain additional weapon proficiencies. Neither can shifter.
So pure shifter cannot use any weapon but druid weapons, which is very very few. Also he lacks lots of important skills as class skills like discipline, move silently, tumble as class skills.
For that reason I took ranger on my old shifter, got martial and simple weapons and lots of important skills, and +1 AB from levels.
So I think you should allow multiclass to barbarian and ranger.

4. I see you disabled auto fail on 1. For this reason these features of a shifter are now utter trash:

- Basilisk shape: Petrify Gaze [Fort DC=12+SL/2], (SL/5+1)/day which means that at level 40 I will have a whooping 50% chance of petrifying lvl 15 monsters. And I have limited number of tries.

- Medusa shape: see above

- Drider shape weapon DC 16 poison

- Drow shape weapon DC 16 poison. Now higher level creatures are totally immune to this.

- Kobold shape weapon DC 18 poison

- Mind Flayer mind blast

- Epic basilisk

- Epic medusa

- Epic drider shape weapon poison DC 20

- Epic kobold shape weapon poison DC 24

- Spectre touch

- Vampire gaze

- Iron Golem poison breath


You've managed to ruin all that with that change.

Ever noticed how nobody used any weapon with DC 14 or DC 16 effect before hotu? Things like poison, disease and daze weapons? Then in hotu poison weapon actually started working. In a prolonged fight it actually kicked in sometimes. Now you've ruined that too.

So basically we have bunch of useless shapes, a handful of ones that are buffed enough to be playable, weapon options are non-existant thanks to restricion on multiclassing, bunch of effects don't work cos of no fail on 1, making bunch of shapes worthless(I see no other point in medusa shape and basilisk), and a class that is hard to level and inflexible.

[Death Dealer1]

i have always agreed with the ac drop....losing 10-20ac on a shift kills you no problem. that is what makes a lvl 20 druid/shifter kill goblins all day instead of killing gaurds.

[Ragefist]

I'm pretty sure epic shapes got a buff b/c they can't be multiclassed. Anyone who was here in the reign of the cheezy dragon builds knows that it's a baaaad idea for shifter to have epic dragon shape and monk levels. Very bad. Worst idea ever, possibly. That said, non-epics were not significantly buffed, for the obverse reason -- they can be multiclassed (bard or cleric buffs, etc etc). So, pick your poison. Some very strong epic shapes that don't rely on game balance destroying bugs and yet remain viable in group and solo pvp and questing, or go the more prosaic shifter route with a few ok forms but buffs from another class' spell list or skill list.

Also, you really, really, reallllly, as a shifter don't want auto fail on 1 back in the game. Wail spam / implosion spam / finger spam / slay living spam = a bad bad bad day for you if you aren't in a death immune shape. Your Basilisk gaze and most of those abilities are the equivalent of lower level caster spells -- they aren't meant to be able to screw over an epic character just b/c you can spam harder on them.

Most of the people who have played the new shifter class to a decently high level seem to enjoy the changes, as they mostly weren't using the mostly crummy lower level shapes anyway. Try out Rakshasa form, and the Dragon, and a few other interesting ones and see how a) spells bounce off of you or b) you tear things apart with some decent true seeing and lots of dmg or c) your previously useless without bugs class becomes moderately powerful in the right context.

[Death Dealer1]

ok a) i love shifters..been playing with shifters since i could make an ok one. b) i like the pre epic shapes the best, sure you get rak which is spell immune, dragons for shredding, and constructs for tanking...give me the drow fighter, minotaur, kobold, or lizardfolk whipmaster any day. c) it doesn't matter how good you buff the epic shapes so that they are close enough to be almost worth taking...if you don't have a stong base to start with you'll never make it that far.

i tested a druid/shifter/ranger build offline and it actually impressed me more than any build but the infamous druid/shifter/monk.

[Spura]

I'm pretty sure epic shapes got a buff b/c they can't be multiclassed. Anyone who was here in the reign of the cheezy dragon builds knows that it's a baaaad idea for shifter to have epic dragon shape and monk levels. Very bad. Worst idea ever, possibly. That said, non-epics were not significantly buffed, for the obverse reason -- they can be multiclassed (bard or cleric buffs, etc etc). So, pick your poison. Some very strong epic shapes that don't rely on game balance destroying bugs and yet remain viable in group and solo pvp and questing, or go the more prosaic shifter route with a few ok forms but buffs from another class' spell list or skill list.

Also, you really, really, reallllly, as a shifter don't want auto fail on 1 back in the game. Wail spam / implosion spam / finger spam / slay living spam = a bad bad bad day for you if you aren't in a death immune shape. Your Basilisk gaze and most of those abilities are the equivalent of lower level caster spells -- they aren't meant to be able to screw over an epic character just b/c you can spam harder on them.

Most of the people who have played the new shifter class to a decently high level seem to enjoy the changes, as they mostly weren't using the mostly crummy lower level shapes anyway. Try out Rakshasa form, and the Dragon, and a few other interesting ones and see how a) spells bounce off of you or b) you tear things apart with some decent true seeing and lots of dmg or c) your previously useless without bugs class becomes moderately powerful in the right context.

Ok first thing.

1. Monk/shifter dragons were never the problem as shifters can't be monk, it was the druid dragons. With that said, I still think multiclassing into ranger or barb or something should be allowed for weapon choices and other things as well, like class skills.

2. Your second point that nonepic shapes can be multiclassed is valid, but I think that mostly applies to epic humanoid shapes and even then, they can't be classed with monk. I still think shapes like dire tiger, medusa, basilisk should get some buff as they are useless now even if you multiclass to cleric and buff.

I think just adding melding of weapons and items to shapes like medusa, dire tiger, death slaad and spectre would make them much more playable. And a slight AC buff to normal shapes across the board wouldn't hurt as you can't monk with shifter. As death dealer said, compared to a character with +3 armor, shield, deflection, dodge it becomes quite a large AC drop when you shift, and you get hit in various minotaur and similar shapes way too much to be playable. All that natural AC on those shapes is barely enough to cover 8 AC from full armor + 3 from tower shield.

Right now death slaad is the crappiest epic shape.

3. Maybe you are right on roll on 1. But if we play by that rule, I think more shapes with various DC effects should get higher DCs, at least their epic shapes. Problem is that in order to make high level mobs significantly resistant to spells, saves are usually very high.

I would be nice to see more variable DC effects on weapons instead of fixed ones. Like instead of fixed DC poison something like epic drow weapon slow which has DC dependant on shifter level. I am sure if devs look around toolkit a bit they can find another such effect they could use. Also as I mentioned golems and dragons have physical damage only and don't meld weapons, which is quite a big weakness as monsters/players can have 50% 10/- physical. It would be great if they melded weapons or alternatively have some elemental damage added to their hits. like 1d8 of fire/electric/acid for dragons and similar for golems.

4. Even if they don't change any of this, there is one thing I would really really ask the devs to do. It's about gloves and strength. Currently gloves are the only strength item in the game and none of the shapes meld gloves, so the only buff to str I can get is bull str. As the kobold is the only DEX using shape, I would really like to have some kind str item I can use on the shifter.

[Spura]

Also another thing about the buff of epic shapes:

Golem shapes AC bonus was buffed by meager +2(from 13 to 15), monk level would yield at least 15 AC. STR was buffed for +2 for demonflesh and stone and none for iron.

Rak got it's DR nerfed.
Dragon DR got nerfed, average damage is 6 points buffed(as most dmg comes from str bonus not claw dmg).

I also wonder if Demonflesh golem got its 20/- vs fire, cold, etc... removed as they are not listed.

This may look like whine, but really when the text says: had their properties altered in order to make them more competitive in NS4

you kinda expect more than +2 AC +2 STR.

Alternativelly there is some script on nwvault from some guy which makes all items meld and all armor types meld separately, so it makes AC scale more on the same level as equipment on the server without changing the shape stats too much.

[Spura]

Another bug.

Basilisk gaze has constant DC of 11. AFAIK it should be 12 + shifter lvl / 2.