with the tweaks going into dragon form, I expect there will be renewed interest in shifters as a whole. I know my next toon will be a shifter so that I can enjoy the new dragon form.
With this renewed interest will also come renewed confusion. Shifters are fun and all... but.. well, they're screwy. One of the most confusing aspects of shifters is their AB. The armed forms are pretty straightforward.. the feats that you would expect to work, do work. But, the unarmed forms are a bit trickier. (FYI - all of this discussion is based on 'actual' AB from the combat window, not character sheet).
A few examples:
-it appears that weapon focus: unarmed works for unarmed forms (ie - Iron Golem), however, EPIC weapon focus: unarmed does not seem to be effective
-Blaskor and I were trying to run a few tests. He has a lvl 40 druid build with dragon shape. When he shifted to dragon, his AB was 57. The script tells him that his weapon merged, which seemed accurate. The damage was appropriate for the equipped weapon. When he un-equipped the weapon and shifted, his AB remained at 57. How is this possible if the weapon is shifting?
There are other examples, but those are just a few.
There is also a lot of misinformation (some of which I may be responsible for) floating around out there in between "here's how it works on the dojo" and "in the PnP game, it works like this" and "well, I think it worked on this one dude this one time" and the custom scripts that we don't really have access to. Because of all the confusion and because none of the players have an efficient way to test all this, I'm asking the devs to lay it all out for us.
Specifically, here's what I'm after. I understand that the forms are still in flux and not finalized, so any testing I could do now would be moot even if I could level that many toons. All that I'm after is for one of the Devs to comment on how they intend for shifter forms to eventually work. I realize that this is asking you to break Software Development Rule 1: Don't claim to do something until you've actually done it. And tested it. 6 times. However, I promise that if things don't end up the way you indicate in response to this post, I won't get all bent out of shape. If you just don't feel comfortable posting something like that on the public board, I'd be perfectly happy with a PM
(and no, I won't repost the PM info!)
Here are the specific questions I'd like answered:
1. Will weapon focus unarmed increase the AB of Iron Golem?
2. Will weapon focus unarmed increase the AB of Dragon Form?
3. Will epic weapon focus unarmed increase the AB of Iron Golem?
4. Will epic weapon focus unarmed increase the AB of Dragon Form?
5. Will attack bonus from weapons merge to all forms?
6. Will attack bonus from gauntlents merge to unarmed forms?
or, alternately, a detailed discussion on how AB will be calculated for Iron Golem and Dragon based on Base AB, weapon modifiers, stat modifiers, feats, etc.
I'd really appreciate it if someone "in the know" could comment on this subject. I think there are a lot of other players who would also like to have access to this information. It would save a lot of people a lot of headache, heartburn, and wasted feats!
Thanks!
