Shifters Overpowered? Just Right? Glaring Weaknesses?

[Shadowalker]

In the spirit of outlandish accusations... Remeber the time that Twig'nstien heading to Menzo came across an Aork raiding party in the Orc cave before hidden tunnel? And accepted an invite by the Aork raiding party, there by joining the Aork raid on SL. By your above mentioned standards of conduct, TSS must be a secret ally of Aorks.

Or could it possibly be a sign of our general neutrality in matters not directly related to TNC? Or, and this is wildly speculative, I was heading to enjoy some PvP and decided to join the mighty Aork war machine, to increase my fun and chances of liberating our beloved relic.

What most impressive about this, Masl didnt do more than send a cppl of tells expressing thier surprise. Now if givin a choice between a momentary cease fire tween my TC toons and Masl or TC and Aorks. I damn well will do so more readly with Masl on the basis that they are not so vinditive when they are on the down side of this coin. My NC toons wont help either Aorks or Masl cuase both ya need to burn like Chicago after O'Learys cow kicked over the lamp, Convert or Die .

As to the debate on what if anything to do on shifters.. I leave that to the Devs, with this one point, not a single shifter in TSS is drow focused.

[weasel423]

How about nerfing the HUGE REGEN that they get!?!?!?

We were raiding TC yesterday, and we had been slowly whacking away at GOAT for about 5-8 minutes and finally had him near death. Then he says in talk "Hit me with a regen Twig". Within a couple minutes he was back to barely injured, all while getting attacked by 2-3 of us. As soon as we saw that, we didn't even bother to fight against twig or goat as it was pointless. Just run circles around them instead. Less frustrating...

[Shhhhhhh]

Wouldnt a healing spell have the same effect as the regen?

And how many people did they kill in those 5-8 minutes?

[weasel423]

In the spirit of outlandish accusations... Remeber the time that Twig'nstien heading to Menzo came across an Aork raiding party in the Orc cave before hidden tunnel? And accepted an invite by the Aork raiding party, there by joining the Aork raid on SL. By your above mentioned standards of conduct, TSS must be a secret ally of Aorks.

That is not the issue he has a problem with... If you take a relic you pick up back to TC it is fine or don't pick one up and are just there to fight. However, with this toon it is EVERY TIME this toon raids. Have never seen him raid with TC or NC... The issue is that the TC toon is picking up the relic and running it back to AO or RK then dropping it for them to cap EVERY TIME he raids.

[Amoenotep]

sounds like your damage output sucks vs goat


we won't talk about Con....he has no sense of humor when he's picking up relics off the floor

[weasel423]

Wouldnt a healing spell have the same effect as the regen?

And how many people did they kill in those 5-8 minutes?

Don't play dumb... You can only have so many healing spells slotted and you have to keep re-applying them. Regen you apply once. C'mon, are you really suggesting that regen and healing spells are the same?

How many people did who kill? If you mean the shifters? Not that many... but they also make it so someone is in the relic room preventing enemies from resting. Why are you playing dumb here?

[BlkMamba]

I like elda's idea. I'd be curious to approach it from the other direction and see what the most uber druid/shifter would be like. That is the true test.

As far as the MA defense thing and the Syns helping NC/TC... Crazy is right, a solo enemy toon is VERY rarely allowed to help 'defend' MA or SL. And usually it's not really defense so much as just allowing them to PvP. You will rarely find them near a cradle actually defending (besides they get attacked by factional guards and epics, making it just that much more annoying). When Syns first appeared, they didn't party with anyone for raid or defense, but as time went on, they ended up aiding SL/MA, as those are the aligned sister factions. I consider this just the way the game goes as they are looking for some fun and I like to think our teams are fun to play with for them. I truly believe still that there is an exceptional line drawn between the Syns and their NC/TC counterparts, and I have to commend those players for keeping that line very distinct.

I notice the shift in discussion that is taking place and see a lot more of the sentiment: 'everyone else plays cross faction and that is fair... don't like it, then do it yourself too'. That is utter BS. It makes me just think higher of the teams who actually have some level of commitment to their factions and RP Deities. As far as SL/MA... we don't chug in combat, we fight against insane odds and keep fighting, and now it seems that staying within our factional boundaries can be added to the list of 'honorable' things we do. Not everyone on this server is here to outright win. We are here to have fun and we like to think that the server itself has some semblance of a code of ethics that we all adhere to. I may be speaking out of place, as much has occurred before my time here, but this seems to be the problem that the MDs had previously. Once the majority loses sight of this code of ethics, then the factional boundaries fall to pieces and balance gets lost entirely. I would like to see balance this restored rather than torn down further. If DM/Dev intervention needs to be considered, then so be it.

Now that I reread a bit more, I would say that this all stems from the core AO/RK team being displaced from LA and not having any sense of pride in their current factions. You rarely see them shout, post, or RP at all (with a few players that are the minor exception, all from RK). This furthers my sentiment of their goal being 'to win' and nothing more.

On another note, I noticed this weekend that the 'new improved Con Moi' - Conabus, has better/same hide as previously, but can now spot a 100+ hider. Just curious if that top tier SD that was being tossed around before had the feats/skills available for this and whether they are still comparable. And yes Crazy, Conabus raided TC this weekend.

Even when i was in LA i never shouted
but yes, that was fun last night in RK, i got a chuckle when i stunned you and what happens! Thorac stuns me
we both sat there boggled but i ended up with the short end of the stick that fight
its not a matter of goin out to win, its a matter of having a chance at all
thats the main argument

as weasel seems to be on this point, back to work


Mamba...

[Shhhhhhh]

Wouldnt a healing spell have the same effect as the regen?

And how many people did they kill in those 5-8 minutes?

Don't play dumb... You can only have so many healing spells slotted and you have to keep re-applying them. Regen you apply once. C'mon, are you really suggesting that regen and healing spells are the same?

How many people did who kill? If you mean the shifters? Not that many... but they also make it so someone is in the relic room preventing enemies from resting. Why are you playing dumb here?

This is a perfect example of why its difficult to argue balance on the forums, You are argueing that a spell should be nerfed when you have no idea what the spell actually does. You simply noticed someone used it once against you in game.

The 'playing dumb' is a nice touch tho

1 Regen spell of a golem heals max 300 hit points if they have 30 shifter lvls.
60 per round for 5 rounds.
Surely a heal spell can manage that too with 1 spell.
Ofcourse regen and instant heals arent the exact same thing, normal heals help a lot better with spike damage , while regen you could apply to someone at full health and it still helps out some during the fight.
The only real advantage that is impossible to copy for cleric builds would be that you have unlimited uses of the regen abillity, so yeah you can keep casting and have one running for 10 minutes or 1 hour.
Tho for a healing cleric if they cast 1 healing spell every 5 rounds, it might take a while before they run out also.

Either way, proposing nerfs because of something you saw in a fight really is a terrible idea, people's perceptions can be so different.
For you it sucked to fight golems which are quite difficult to kill. ( I hope you focused fire at least) but maybe for them it was just as annoying standing there and never or hardly ever killing anyone.
Golems don't exactly kill quickly.

[TheEdge]

I see that something must be done so I offer this product for the low low price of your soul.....



May also be used for those players that hold a deep seated hatred for Tep

[Blystos Re]

I'm glad they finally nerfed Re's avatar - I don't have one, and I was tired of geting pwnd.

Ceterum autem censeo, NC esse donatum rogues! (cool show about Hannibal on the History Channel last weekend)

Let this be a lesson to those who think they don't have to log in to photobucket to keep it active!

Also:
- Random Number Generators Aren't!

Also:
- SPAM!

[Rufio]

This cross-faction talk reminds me of the time I noticed some pvp happening in Garagoth, so I ran in a toon and started attacking both sides hoping I could get in the middle of things and grab a relic for myself.

I immediately got some nasty tells from PWnD for helping out MA

[LunarSquirrel]

I notice the shift in discussion that is taking place and see a lot more of the sentiment: 'everyone else plays cross faction and that is fair... don't like it, then do it yourself too'. That is utter BS. It makes me just think higher of the teams who actually have some level of commitment to their factions and RP Deities... I would like to see balance this restored rather than torn down further. If DM/Dev intervention needs to be considered, then so be it.

I will jump on this boat 100%. I really can't add anything else just due to the fact that it's already been said as well as it needs to be. I think the Devs/DM's really need to take a look at how players of a certain faction exploit the use of their own non-factional toons to aid their home faction, and enforcement really should follow.

With that said (and moving back to the original topic), I don't think the drow-specced CoN will be any more of a game-changer than a well-built ghostwise SD would be. The build did about 25/hit which really is negligeble if you're playing smart, although I didn't get a heal when I was expecting one and I fell victim due to my own cockiness. Honestly; it's an annoyance at best. There are far more dangerous SD builds out there...McNinja springs to mind.

If this build was employed in AORK I would not be crying about how overpowered it was. I would actually sit down and figure out what to do with it, within the confines of what the factional ideas of server pvp was actually meant to promote. That's what grownups do.

[Blystos Re]

Pr'apps you weren't taking my propensity for sarcasm into account.

Let's be honest, when was the last time, on any of my accounts, that ANYONE has seen me playing anything other than NC?

I like to talk about building a CLAD rogue, but I don't. My intent would be to push the issue of cross-faction building to cover for an alliance weakness (i.e.: no arcane casters in NC) into the forefront, because like you, I think it's kind of a crappy thing to do. Unfortunately this would resolve nothing because I know that Tep would only nerf mine, and only when it got to 40.

[mining]

137 max hide, 50 cap, 43 ranks, 4 size, 15 feats, 4 class boosts 21 dex (capped) <=== self buffed is possible, song makes it do more damage than drow. Has EDodge.
142 is highest spot. 50 cap, 17 feats, 43 ranks, 23 wis, 7 FE, 2 race.

Now, considering 'uber' ABs and ACs. I suppose some 'real' examples would do nicely here. Sancreed gets 60 AB self buffed. He gets 82 AC. his damage is ~30-50 normal hits, ~200 on crit sneaks, around 150 on crits.

As to regen, I suppose it might be better... if there are no clerics. Last count I made, Roz can pump out 30+ heals/massheals/GRs a rest, which is ~6000 + 10x(HP-200) healing, which is certainly over 9000 HP. Thats 150 rounds of regen. 900 seconds. 15 minutes is a long, long time.

Finally, Gold is a forgone toon. She doesn't see much use any more, as Roz is just so much more fun to play, getting stuck in doors sucks.

I would say RDD > Shifter Dragon due to not being autoencumbered 9/10, and having a token you can run use, as such.

[Korr]

A lot of discussion about this in other topics unrelated to the subject.

I used to be of the mind that the epic/ancient forms for shifters should be nerfed. Having fought against them a lot lately, I believe that is an erroneous position. Shifted forms have glaring weaknesses that can be exploited if you use the ol' nogin.

However *puts on benedict arnold hat*, I do think that it should be more difficult to get them. More should have to be invested in order to get these shapes. Maybe increase the amount of shifted levels required to have epic shifter forms, make it a blanket 25. Also, make it so that their ability stats are set. So instead of a 50 str 40 dex Kobold set his dex at 18 so you have a 50 str 30 dex char. Instead of a 52 dex 40 con HiPSer drow, you have a 52 dex drow 30 con.

I think leaving the ability stats to be the same as the shifter's original form was a neat idea, but resulted in some very powerful builds. I think you should maybe allow that for the epic feated shapes (construct, oustider, dragon, undead), but for the free shapes(greater wildshape/humanoid shape), it should require a greater investment to acheive the epic forms as they are now.

Other ideas on how to nerf/fix/change shifters and druids?

I'm of the mind that druids have taken enough of a beating and are perfectly fine just the way they are, elemental shapes, hellballs, dragons and all.

I havent played in months (and months) but I bet my kitty could eat almost any of your chars with same buffs!!!