New Set Idea

[Xerties]

I thought that was Knight/Noble only?

[Faelon]

[_Clifton_]

Lion crested is a great starter set for Knights. Very balanced, pretty cheap. You can also use guild sets.

[Faelon]

I did have a question about the feathered earring and its corresponding set;
Why is it the feathered earring is rot death? Is there a specific cause behind this? Worried about abuse of the set? Or was this a bug? Just seemed a bit odd to me.

[Gadlo]

2 pieces of the titanic set are also rotdeath (the hardest pieces to get, need a group to get them) I can see why they would be since the rest of the items are obtained by request

lion-crested is indeed a Knight only set; not a set for all lightwalkers as I meant

[kammkala6]

The question about thews is if there is a neutral above the level required to gain it that uses anything other than thews? Has anyone seen such a person?

[bassball]

I've seen quite a few neutrals who don't use thews. Me being one of them. i'll admit it's pretty dang good, especially when you can get gambled and rare weapons to mix with it. But it isn't irreplaceable

[Davairus]

Its been said and explained time and again that thews is statistically a viable set. The "idiots notes version" is just , 8 items of 2 dam-1 dex, with a 4/4 hit/dam on top , essentially work the same as having 8 items of 3dam-1dex cursed noremove item, and unfortunately the usual slots to get +dex from are all taken by wood gear. The best relief we found is 4 dex belt, 2 dex poncho, candle+red stone, and then use neck/rings for your hitrolls.


What wasn't really said (and is a legitimate gripe, actually) is that this set considerably relieves the eq-dependence of warriors in the neutral alignment. Warriors trade-off for being pwnage in sets of sweet gear (which isn't going to change) is that they're also pretty vulnerable in crappy items. This isnt the case for, say, a naked illusionist. Now it looks like they just grab a set of thews, brown cloaks etc, and they're handily winning most of their fights. Its clear that warriors aren't even bothering to upgrade the set, since its solid with warcry and favoreds on top, and warriors are really still quite straight-forward to play in spite of the new combat style stuff. Just hit your hobbles and thews/nice weapon seemingly does enough to win the fight, at least from the logs.

At the moment I'm debating between a warcry/favored nerf or a thews getting packaged with fire vulns kind of nerf.

The warcry skill could come down from an "always up" skill into something which tires the warrior out, to make it more of a choice when to use it (remembering that berserkers often save their warcry for their rage/stun warcry thing, making it a choice when to use it). Something that will run you out of mana so that as the fight draws out longer a warrior tires and has no choice to stop using it. Warcry at 50 is particularly buff with both its giant hitroll and large helping of save vs spells on it. Could go something like warcrying lasts the same duration as a berserk at 50, with a mana cost that scales with level similarly.

On the other hand just nerfing thews with a fire vuln probably restores the eq-dependency. Would make the fiery fangs set a nicer complement to the other sets, also.

[Ergorion]

I don't think warcry is an issue. It helps giants make up that hitroll a lot.

[Davairus]

Speaking up in self-interest is fine, but this discussion is about overall game balance, not making sure fire giant warriors can have enough bonus from warcry to negate intentionally poor hitrolls. Why do you think we go to the bother of doing the math to give giants a damroll bonus instead of a hitroll?

I don't see warcry as a sacred cow of the warrior class. I see it as a buff that berserkers don't keep up, because they want to save it for rage/warcry, i.e. they use warcry when they want to finish off opponents, and otherwise hold off on it. Similar with rangers, they can get a pet by warcry in the right type of area. With warriors its just a constant buff to keep up on a trigger. Imagine if say, after your warriors warcry, any pvp charge you do in the next tick seconds raises your hit/dam by 4/4 for an hour. Its interesting because people fighting warriors hear the warcries and put their shields on. Its possible you could do barrage/warcry/flee/ charge, which is quite a bit more interesting than spam flee murder. At the very least, warriors might want to keep warcry down to save it for an opportunity to get the charge buff. Having warcry down because there's a smart reason to do that later is a decision for the player, in that case, instead of just a nurf, but it does affect the eq-dependency .

The skill screams for something new, in my opinion.

[Olyn]

Treant thews is definately one of the better sets, probably the best considering there are no rare items involved and it doesn't require a weapon. Vaelyn seems to be slapping everyone around in the arena right now in thews and a couple of rares, at least from the logs. Keep in mind that if you nerf it, you're effectively nerfing the entire Keeper cabal at this point since every one of them seems to wear it too. That being said, a slight fire vuln probably wouldn't hurt too much since we don't have any fire vuln races anymore and powerful fire weapons are pretty limited (1 good only unique, 1 anti-evil rare, 1 anti-good rare) maybe something else I'm forgetting.

I think tweaking warrior warcry is interesting and some good ideas were brought up. I like the shorter duration concept maybe with a choice of 2 or 3 possible effects:hit, dam, damage to particular skill like charge, allow custom warcry strings at level 50. Depending on if you're talking complete skill overhaul or just warrior class, shamans might be served better by a dark blessing than a warcry, either keeping the same hit and saves or a slight adjustment.

[Stiehl26]

Don't berserkers save the warcry because of the stunning shout, which adds to their accuracy, saves AND does not an insubstantial amount of damage? I dont really see how comparing a warriors warcry always being up or whatever to a berserker who could have warcry up all the time...no one is saying they cant...it is just much more valuable the way they are using it. Also, if this is what you want to discuss, a nerf warcry thread, lets get it in its own thread and deal with the fact that treant thews is THE best non-rare (and pretty much top 3) set overall.

[Ergorion]

The giant comment was an addendum more than the main point.

The main point being that I think the status quo is fine.

Regarding the whole don't stand in the way of progress schtick, if you have everyone following the lemming off the cliff with every new suggestion, they're more likely to end up making things worse than if you have people questioning the suggestion. Questioning is good.

I'm not saying that you're a lemming, or that all ideas that promote change are bad, I just want to get concrete reasons as to why changing something like warcry will make it better rather than just having something new for the sake of something new. If you want to go down the let's get some fresh stuff rolling path, I think figuring out how to change warcry would be really low on the priority list.

Back to the whole deal with giants. Since giants can't be rangers, there are only two warrior-classes that giants can choose. As you said, berserkers tend to save warcry to get that nice stunning warcry to help finish their targets off. So for giant berserkers, their hitroll will stay nice and low for the time until they use warcry. That leaves one warrior class giant with a perma-cry. (How this suggestion would affect shamans, especially fire giant shamans, is another matter entirely).

First of all, let's take a look at the numbers on the giant side of things. There are 19 fire giant warriors, 6 stone giant warriors, and 5 storm giant warriors out of a total of 94 warriors, and a total of 533 characters at the moment. Fire giants are the most popular warriors by two characters. They are overly represented in the warrior population, but then again so are humans, and half-elves, and slith. The reason those races are overrepresented is because no one plays any avian warrior, there are only two halfling warriors, two gnome warriors, two elf warriors (though those numbers might rise), and three drow. All of which are significantly underrepresented.

So it looks like this warcry/hitroll issue is concerning primarily fire giants. Yes, obviously someone did the math to make sure fire giants got a certain amount less base hitroll and more base damroll than your two halfling warriors. First of all, if all warriors have warcry, there is parity among the warriors fighting each other. Second of all, a dearth of hitroll is not a fire giant warrior's only weakness. The ice vulnerability is quite substantial. True, it's not dwarf water vuln, but it's not to be overlooked. Fire giants need that warcry hitroll so that they can hit there targets a decent amount of times in order to offset the vuln. Finally, someone probably crunched the numbers in deciding what to max warcry out at so that it doesn't give fire giants too much of a leg up.

On to the subject of change. If you were intent upon changing warcry, I would stick with changing the hitroll amount. A warcry is a morale booster that makes warriors more confident in battle, and thus, in my mind, the saves seem logical. If you are more confident, it is less likely that your opponent is going to land his spells on you. Perhaps, this could be changed to only mental though since confidence is a mental thing.

One thing I just thought of that seems kind of shaky would be involving warcrying and then having your opponent flee. Again going down the confidence vein, a more confident warrior will gain confidence if he sees his opponent fleeing from him. So perhaps, warcry can give a modest boost to both hit dam, say 3/3 at fifty, but if a warrior warcries and his opponent flees from battle within a round or two after the warcry, the warrior gets some kind of bonus. Perhaps extra attacks as the opponent flees. Perhaps a boost to saves. Perhaps a boost to hit/dam.

[Davairus]

Stiehl: seems like you managed to get the point and miss it at the same time. Smarter buffs, and using skills at the right time, not mindless ones. That's the idea.

Ergorion: Your original statement was based on giants needing warcry hitroll which you have just tried to develop on that now instead of admitting you were just wrong about it. I've mentioned in other threads that hitroll is a lethal stat.

The idea isn't really to just directly nerf warcry, but to consider (like berserker) a tradeoff between having and not having warcry up. Like a 1 tick opportunity to do unblockable murders. Or something. I don't know if that's entirely wise, but something to consider saving up and use at the right time. When you are overgeared you can always fall back on oldschool dirt/bash, that isn't going to change.

[Ergorion]

[Davairus]

I can easily admit to being wrong. Maybe that is because even in the simplest cases of studying angular momentum and circular motion, I have been humbled by getting things wrong all the time. However what I have learned in my studying of quantum mechanics is that with enough thought I can conquer all problems at my present level. Somebody who cannot admit to being wrong has intentionally pulled the wool over their own eyes. I would feel sorry for you, but you seem to be happy with it. Don't be offended that I don't respond to your posts anymore. You'll know why.

[_Clifton_]

Ergorion: my god you are stupid.

Edit: stupid is the wrong word. what I meant was I can't believe that you'd really want to give warriors another berserk or didn't realize the similarities.

[Ergorion]

Well Dav, you are a greater man than I. Admitting that you're wrong and knowing that you're wrong are two different things. While making my case that warcry is in no need of change, I have also put ideas out there as to how it could change were it to change.

Edit:

True, not even started freshman year (but that means I have a whole four years of the college experience ahead of me, that's right).


Damn it Clifton, you're right about the similarity to berserk. Let's just overhaul all of warriors now so that we can make sure warcry isn't too powerful.

[_Clifton_]

[Ergorion]

Considering it was my thread to begin with, derail away.