Updated Entrance Requirements for Knights

[Phostan]

Thought I'd help out and rewrite the Knight helpfile, save someone the trouble.

Entrance Requirements:
1) You must be a Paladin.
2) Admittedly, invokers do have hellstream, but it'll be easier to just be a Paladin.
3) Human or elf, as long as it's a Paladin. If you have an inactive dwarf paladin, even better!
4) It's a sausage fest right now at the castle, so you get bonus points if you're a female Paladin.
5) You must be capable of typing co 'wrath'. co wr works too, as long as it's wrath, it'll do.
6) Did we mention you need to be a Paladin?

[Slade]

Paladins are both one of the best (self-explanatory) and most convenient (sanc, prot, heroism[my favorite], summon, detect invis, cure blind, cure crit) classes in the game, what can you do? Btw, what is with everyones wrath obsession? Charge, dispel evil, and good ol cure crit don't get enough love.

[Louis]

the issue i think is not that some of these paladins are doing well (obviously some have great skill). maybe the issue is that you feel you can't defeat a certain paladin who seems to be less than your skill level on other terms. that might be the source of your frustrations. that has to do with a number of things though -- obviously with the matchups, your own understanding (or lack of understanding) of your class/knowing how to utilize the new changes to defeat the paladin, and the fact that paladins haven't see any changes to throw a wrench into their rhythm recently.

does this sound like what you're experiencing, or is there something else?

[Davairus]

Wrath is spammed because people dont realise a simple flee/murder will do. Its a bit too skill focused... a lot of fight comes down to run around/murder and let your passives do their thing.

edit- if you get a paladin into a situation where he can't flee, e.g. dirt or hobble, he'll most likely either spam cure or spam wrath, since disarm takes energy

[Louis]

you mean paladins can't counter, shield block, parry, or dodge a flee murder, with their 20 to 23 dex (or is elf now 22) and not being dirted/hobbled before the murder?

but i can see where you are saying flee/murder would be effective -- the lag from your opponent fleeing might stack up with the lag you're using with wrath or cure.

[Phostan]

Actually, though I have had some small problems with paladins lately, I just thought it was a nice way of summing up the state of Knights. Paladins are the best align restricted pk class for good aligns. Not only at 50 do they have real good skills, especially for solo pk'ing, thanks to heroism, but they have no problem getting to 50, being able to tank from level 1 to level 50. I'd say shamans are probably the best pk class for evils, and they have trouble up to around level 23 or 24 usually. I can't prove this, it just seems the way it is to me. Admittedly paladins have a 350xp bonus as compared to shamans 0 xp bonus, still, from what I've seen they can hit 50 from 1 in no time(Arkni or Gunther for example). Meriando is obviously not restricting how many of each class he allows in, because the paladin abundance has been huge. I remember a month or so ago when Groq actually had more then one or two active Legion that he'd sent a note giving priority to inducting certain classes over shamans, because at the time, he had an abundance(by abundance, I mean 2). Seeing how that on the MoTD it says how many cabal positions are open for each cabal, I'd like to see it expanded, and have only a few of each class allowed in at a time. If Knights can have 10 members, limit it to 3 paladins, inactive or not, and split the other 7 openings between the other available classes. Same goes for the other cabals. It'd cut down on inactive deadweight, because if someone was an inactive paladin, and they could only have three, and they had a lot of paladins applying, they'd be quicker to can the inactive ones, since paladins are the backbone of Knights. It'd also make things more interesting as far as pk fights went between cabals, some invokers would find themselves getting gunned down by the warrior classes of the other cabal, paladins might get fragged by invokers, so on, so on.

[Davairus]

Counter doesnt work dirted. The flee/dirt lag dirted situation also turns a paladin off flying -completely- because of the lag on head smacks. Then there's air charge lags.

I've also changed counter to allow the rest of the round to go in, and just counter the first hit of the round, as well as reduce its damage to the same as a regular hit. So its nowhere near as good as it used to be (like returning an unanswered MANGLE through sanc). So I think it is much less cheesy now.

As for the enforcement of classes in cabals, it sounds spookily like affirmative action. I don't think we should go there. Like I remember I made a 1 shaman in Legion act, and then what happens is the decent shamans just ranked and played out a Legion shaman without being Legion, while one shit Legion (Quexis) hogged the spot thinking he's godly the entire time. They didnt care to be forced to make duergar berserkers to play an idealized model. Stupid idea. Diversity cannot be enforced, it has to be cultivated, and that begins with balancing the classes. Stuff like racial legacies has broke a dwarf berserker into Knights, and bow skills has broke rangers into warlords, which were totally unthought of before. Its true.

[LABruinCub]

Hi, I see everyone is picking up what I already put on the table.

http://abandonedrealms.wolfpaw.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1651

[Davairus]

I remember an elf paladin with godly knight skills, like a stallion that does maims through sanc twice a round and bashes, and who can pull an ave 28 5/5 weapon out of his butt, as well as pixie dust thieves. And I remember a guy or two cruising around with a 950+ hp dwarf paladin. That ridiculous bullshit isn't in the game anymore. In fact paladins have a harder time than they did, because of the effect of new combat skills. Take an elf paladin for example. Because he is low strength, you can easy hobble. Because hobble strips dodge, his 23 dex is rendered useless to him for defence. Because of his 18 str, his parry is dog shit. Because of his low con, he lags almost without fail when he flees from that situation. In other words, he's 500 extra exp, to be garbage. Can we make it worse? Sure we can. But whats the big fucking hurry all of a sudden? Just confuses me after saying paladins are too good and hearing in response that they suck, and for years, to suddenly start hearing how great they are after some serious problems have been introduced.

[Quiet Wanderer]

[Louis]

well i'm in this discussion because i like to analyze things and understand them.

going on, so you say you want to flee/murder a dirted paladin to get rid of his counter. that would mean you dirt him for 2 rounds. then you flee, giving yourself and the enemy a split second lag. you come back and he will have 1 to 2 rounds of dirt lag left in him. This is assuming your dirt/dex is landing consistently on the paladin, who is likely to have a much higher dex rating than you. You murder him for 1 round lag and he rubs dirt out of his eyes, then wraths you. Then you have to hope your next dirt connects against his dex or he will wrath you 1 or 2 times. You can't pull off a very good sized round on opening dirted flee/murder unless you have advantageous weapontype or combatstyle. Looks like a difficult strategy to me. now if the paladin was dirted, an elf paladin would be less afraid to flee because of high dex rating and less head smack lag time. might even be back up and running before warrior's dirt lag is up. If dirted and you don't want to flee, they will cure critical instead and wait for dirt to rub out -- they can Last through a dirt. hobble will last even less than a dirt on average and they can last through that even easier. Bash on Hobble is Not anywhere close to a Bash on a 1 tick Dirt.

Dirt used to be way powerful, maybe too powerful. But now its the bane of some peoples' existence while not an issue anymore for others.

[Sebryn]

[Louis]

ah sebryn, you are probably right.

[Davairus]

[divsky]

Paladins only? Knights always have had and always will have a token female healer/sex-toy. Duh.

[dashpunk217]

Bah you don't need to be a Paladin to rock evils asses. I watched Prastin own some people just the other day, I love watching berserkers work...

[pip]

Even though it's not much, I'd like to put my two cents in.

I've noticed that these paladins at 50 mainly rely on their hit/dam eq when fighting mage classes (Etso dispelled Navatar like cake) If you want to bring the big guns at then, someone put time into a necromancer.

Or, since you don't like wrath, someone make a duergar berserker. Headbutt works wonders on them.

Like Dav said, the game is balanced, so there is always a way to return the "cheese" back to them. They just put it on us to think of the ways.

[Amdorin]

[Soldier]

Duergar Berserkers rock see the pot smoking berserker Savalion I forgot his pass so I haven't been on with him if hes still even on.