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The event "The Assault on Taekir" is beginning in 1 day, 11 hours.

The emasculation of the giants.

 
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Davairus
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Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 10344
Location: 0x0000

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 1:38 am    Post subject: The emasculation of the giants.

By this I refer to the whopping great mental vuln and the huge effigy weapons that came into the game. And there are abundant mental weapons.

I remember one of our most frequent players, career Warlords, and often favoring a giants, remarking the day after the emasculation something like: "Wow. Giant is the new gnome." Of course, the player saw what happened for what it was right away, but little did he know that the defensive changes to wis/int had quietly made gnomes much better and giants defences much worse than he even realized. I remember the sickness in my stomach that I felt but couldnt fully process when that phrase was uttered.

Giants, with their high strength and con, and their brute force and power and its obvious ancestral connections to anger and destruction makes it a very primal, and very masculine race to play. It had simple appeal. The pain of training always weeded out the weak.

Nowadays giants play nothing like they did. They roam around as big squishy targets with mental vulns that are quite stressful to live with. The self-assuredness of their strength and power is removed. Their appetite for destruction is replaced by a concern for being raped by frankly anyone with a mental weapon or arrows or whatever bullshit we came up with.

I now think the emasculation of giants was more than just a minor error. I think it was actually an enormous blunder to make this change to the game. I think their dominating presence used to be an important force in the early development of our playerbases overall social dynamics. People who played giants were the same people who commanded Warlords and led people to Winter. I think we should fully restore the giants to their former glory and tell anyone who encourages nerfing giants again to just shut the fuck up. But then again, I'm somebody who used to play giants. Fire giant shaman Legion, stone giant warrior Justice, storm giant healer in Knights. I don't know now I could ever roll one again - I could just play whatever is the most giant-like thing of whatevers left though...

Not really saying anything needs to change, but just looking to see if anyone feels like-minded, and to hear the opinions of those who dont share my view.
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Dogran
Immortal


Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 1794

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:00 am    Post subject:

Giants are terrible haha. I say do it.
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Kedaleam
Immortal


Joined: 25 Mar 2006
Posts: 989
Location: Michigan

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:18 am    Post subject:

I loved Giants before, but yes, I've lost almost all interest in them as well. The only ones that seem any bit worthwhile, from my perspective, are the zerkers that have racial legacy to help with some of the negative sides. Not all, but some.

I'm not saying they are completely terrible, but if I was thinking of making a tank to go to Winter with, I would just make a monk now, instead of a giant warrior. Haven't played a giant in ages now, so I don't know how they do PK wise, but just from the outside, that's how I see them in a PVE state.
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Vertas



Joined: 17 Jan 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Ewa Beach, HI

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:54 am    Post subject:

I think a great indicator on playability is how common is it to see these characters. Giants are pretty rare these days even with the changes to vulnerabilities with weapon material vs damage type. That was an excellent balance change but it still doesn't appear to have been enough of an equalizer to some of the very vulnetable races like giants.

I don't really have any solutions that you would find feasible, just pointing out what I see. I see a lot of underrepresented races, classes, and race/class combos and it's obvious that the player base doesn't play them because we either aren't able to find viable tactics for them or lack the understanding of mechanisms to play them effectively.
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Faelon
Emissary


Joined: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 938
Location: Your moms house.

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 6:28 am    Post subject:

Giants aren't what they used to be. It used to be a giant tank was the sought after person. Everyone got happy when someone else had a giant third. Honestly, I've been wondering if it wasn't the change to lag that did it. Used to be the tactic was, get started out damaging, when that happened you chain bashed.

I'm not suggesting it be changed back, simply pointing it out.

With the decrease in the playerbase, monks are needed to fill the void left by a total lack of healers. That means Giants are weakened as well, for end game equipment tanking.

A few nighttime random thoughts.

I won't play Giants anymore. The changes hurt pretty badly.
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Lorne
Immortal


Joined: 20 Jan 2004
Posts: 456

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:41 am    Post subject:

I'm also pretty bias for giants, my first ever 50 was a stone giant ranger. Obviously had many successful giant cabal characters and although the nerf is bad...I think they are still playable at an elite level. The effigies are gone and the only one is the rod left, which if people stick to you can easily counter with the correct weapon/combat style advantages.

It's not to say I don't agree with everyone they have really fallen from their previous glory. They use to be the king at PvE till monks took over. I think as Faelon mentioned, the lag skill nerfs was a bigger hit to me playing a giant then the mental vuln. I don't mind duking it out head to head with someone with their rod of mind spectres, but if I can't chain bodyslam them a couple of times, it kills my strategy. With their large size, bash and bodyslam was critical in winning fights against the smaller races.

Looking at the player pages, there is way overload of monks, and people pick them for good reason. Easy PvE, good survival in PK and after getting the hang of it, you can usually do relatively ok in PK situations as a semi-competent player. Haven't seen a fire shaman in ages, the lack of shamans overall is a bit disheartening.
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Flyndance



Joined: 07 Apr 2016
Posts: 35

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 11:01 am    Post subject:

Warriors, berserkers & shamans. In the extreme scenario if their mental weakness is totally removed, would you find it a huge threat to fight a stone berserker? Without the weakness, can an elf warrior match them in melee combat? I find that the weakness acts as a form of compensation for their superior strength, ability to wield oversized weapons in one hand, and a generally higher base hit/dam coz of their strength.

Before any changes are made, i think it's worth considering some of these points
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Olyn
Immortal


Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 3244
Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 11:47 am    Post subject:

Effigies and mental arrows are long gone from the game IIRC, leaving an avg 17 and avg 14 exotics as the (only?) mental weapons. It's no coincidence that their vuln weapons are a type of segment that every character gets proficiency with and their favoured weapons, mace and polearm, get advantage against it. Additionally, there's no way to get a two-handed mental weapon (I think), so they will never be fighting against mental vuln and style disadvantage simultaneously when they dual wield. We can consider if we want weapon mental weapons dual wielded together and adjust their weights if needed. Stone zerker and fire zerker seem okay to me, due in no small part to their racial legacies. My preferred approach is to come up with fun legacies for the other combos to help make giants great again.
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beia



Joined: 18 Mar 2006
Posts: 920
Location: Texas

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:57 pm    Post subject:

Yeah. I think some of yall are exaggerating the SUPERIOR MENTAL WEAPONS. They are trash and can be easily countered.

My opinion: Giants no longer have a valid place in Serin. Monk's are the superior end game tanks. No one wants to play Berserkers. Warriors have better options with other races. Giants are just some sort of fun RP and for some reason everyone that plays one makes them talk like a retard. Giants are no longer scary to fight, but then again neither are dwarves.
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Lorne
Immortal


Joined: 20 Jan 2004
Posts: 456

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:08 pm    Post subject:

Dwarves were never scary to fight...

I mean if you want to count all mental weapons, you're forgetting the solar grasp 2-handed unique.

I agree the strength of monks coupled with their superior defenses and self-healing really makes the combo of tank/healer obsolete.
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Olyn
Immortal


Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 3244
Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:55 pm    Post subject:

The solar grasp is energy damage.
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Ergorion



Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 2156

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 6:16 pm    Post subject:

Dwarf warriors were diesel when they had that extra strength point. I think Trogm might have been the last dwarf to run train with that.

Re: giants, I've always been a high dex warrior player myself and I've always felt the game was more geared to the higher strength warrior classes. The bash lag change nerfing big races was balanced by the removal of the dirt kick flee lag.

Since the playerbase is now smaller, the prevalence of various race/class combos will not necessarily show accurate skews of over/under power so much as what people felt like playing at the moment. There are a fair amount of paladin players (players who like and enjoy rolling paladins). And the monk is still fairly fresh from release. We'll see how druids do in terms of numbers.
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Nycticora



Joined: 09 Feb 2013
Posts: 2277

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 11:53 pm    Post subject:

a mental vuln is more than just taking extra damage from mental weapons guys

it gives you a hefty penalty to all saving throws against any mental spell
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Olyn
Immortal


Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 3244
Location: Pennsylvania

PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 1:32 am    Post subject:

Our giants have always had that afaik.
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Ergorion



Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 2156

PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 2:55 am    Post subject:

I don't think I've ever seen an illu pwn a giant. Although hysteria ftw.
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Flyndance



Joined: 07 Apr 2016
Posts: 35

PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 3:30 am    Post subject:

What did Sevaush do?
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Merlandox



Joined: 31 Mar 2016
Posts: 258

PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 7:58 am    Post subject:

Illu sucks.

While we are on racial vulns. I've been thinking for some time about smth for gnomes. Since gnomes currently are like the RP class and their racial vuln is digustingly bad, what abt giving them this racial legacy.

If gnomes have a favored reputation in a city such as seringale, timaran etc (includes gnome village) gnomes in the area will assist them when they get attacked. Then sort of add in a gnomes npc that are of an emerald forest nymph equivalent. They die relatively fast but they will slow the enemy for the player to potentially get a few free rounds here and there.

Everytime a gnome npc dies, he loses reputation. And the mobs will assist until reputation drops below favored or the player leaves the area.
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ottif



Joined: 08 Jan 2015
Posts: 310

PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:49 pm    Post subject:

It isn't hard. as said the mental save vulns for giants plus spells like slow etc. to make them wimpy
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