Latest batch of cabal changes

[Resatimm]

I just wanted the 100th post in this thread because Im an asshole.


You know, I had a dream sort of about Abandoned Realms the other day. I dreamt that we the immortals were actually some sort of SWAT or ERT team. All I really remember is that Burzuk was the tech guy, and he wore glasses and was anti social. A guy I work with was the bomb disposal guy. Stu was the leader of the force. But the weird thing was, he was like the neighbour on "Home Improvement". Whenever he was speaking you couldnt see his face. Groq was there but was drunk. I imagined him as a french black guy. Stu argued with Burzuk all the time. No one died, so its not that exciting, just a little weird.

[Soldier]

Wtf does that have to do with anything?

[Vertas]

He just wanted the 100th post, I always picture the imms to resemble whatever current professors I have. I think of Dav as my history prof because he is scary and he looks like he might've been in the army or something and wants to kill me. Eld reminds me of my english prof because he enjoys a laugh now and then but can be serious when it comes down to it... I don't really interact with any of the other imms...So they're like my old highschool teachers.

[Slade]

[Xerties]

Pretty much as it stands right now the only way to avoid getting abducted as uncaballed is buy protection.

[Vertas]

In my opinion the only reason there should be to abduct or anything like that is to remove number advantage. It is a risk and it is nice to get the occasional loot every now and then...I like the idea of contracts being removed if they beat the legion, it gives them incentive not to do crappy and it gives contracted people incentive to fight back instead of running. However if you do fight back that legionnaire is more likely to wanna make it personal.

[Davairus]

[Burzuk]

That's not a particularly good example. As I mentioned in a different thread, shamans have done and continue to do quite well for themselves. You only need to look at the list of some of the Legion shamans (Rolf, Txivnezjwo, Khrath, etc) to see that a shaman using abduct can fight just fine in tight spaces, thank you very much. (Or invade despite facing confinement, etc.)

The other issue is, Neejard was completely equipped for hit-and-run fights (i.e. tons of hit/dam for concentrated impact, no hp for staying power whatsoever, no savebreaks for long mal fights). In a confined situation, he's not going to out-berserker a berserker. A better alternative would've been to take advantage of Rigwarl's poor saves: go pure hp/breaks (high +hp makes the -hp from breaks irrelevant), land weaken and poison, and suddenly the tables are turned: nobody, not even a fight giant, can wield the vast majority of weapons at all with those two mals, especially with a shaman wearing enough +hp to stick in battle to land those and other mals as needed (adding dispel/hysteria on top of that would've sealed the deal, and it'd only take a handful of rounds at most to do all this given poor victim saves and high caster breaks). Rigwarl would've had nowhere to run as he gets wiped out by affbreaked flays topped by cause continual'd crit/harm. Rage would only make matters worse, as no weapon = no parry = no defenses while raged. And that's just using a fraction of the mals available to a shaman.

Or you can, you know, just lament that shamans can't out-berserker a berserker while abducted, nevermind the fact that a berserker has a much tougher time earning levels and eq to compete against the shaman to begin with.

On a side note, I would've thought that Voravith had already taught people to fear poison by itself, even without the weaken stacked on top of that too.

As for abduct itself, keep in mind that movement is always stilted in favor of the person getting away. Skills like abduct help prevent people from being near-unfinishable in one-on-one's just because they've played AR long enough to cross a certain minimal threshold of "being able to run". In fact, it's still much too easy to get away in one-on-one fights IMO, and we'd hate to stilt toward group fights as the only way of determining lethality. At the end of the day, abduct is far, far more fair than a gangbang. It's a straight-up one on one fight (with both parties at roughly full health 99% of the time) AND the aggressor takes a 2 round penalty for initiating the abduct -- what more can you ask for?

And that's assuming you didn't just simply prevent it to begin with, of course.

[Davor]

[Davairus]

Well you have no real point other than to agree but disagree with examples?

More changes for you:

1) Application approval/disapproval has been touched up a bit. We're giving votes a weight based upon cabal rank, and allowing low ranked members to induct people with sufficient "votes".

2) Cabal powers can now be drained by bringing them close to your hometown's nexus. This replaced the "free nexus" perk for hometowns, as that works out a bit stupid with word of recall. I do endorse uncaballeds getting in on the cabal action in a group-co-ordinated manner, and not just by standing at recalls ready to gank or opening nexus (both sort of lame).

3) There are some (two) new Legion skills. You should find both of them very useful with suitable drawbacks to be considered when using.

Re 2: Before you complain that youre not protected by Justice, I'm just going to say that we already know about it.

[Smotpoker]

2) Cabal powers can now be drained by bringing them close to your hometown's nexus. This replaced the "free nexus" perk for hometowns, as that works out a bit stupid with word of recall. I do endorse uncaballeds getting in on the cabal action in a group-co-ordinated manner, and not just by standing at recalls ready to gank or opening nexus

so if your knight and a justice goes through nexus and you attack does the justice cabal powers be drained or what im alittle confuesd on that.
and are legion no longer protected?

[Davairus]

Sorry, I meant to say "with the cabal item". You may go to your nexus while holding a cabal item to drain that cabal's powers.

[Smotpoker]

so does the whole return to your cabal guard does that drain their powers still? or do you just go to the nexus and stand there?

[Vertas]

I'm pretty sure they still want you to capture the item, its just that now when you're near the nexus they get their cabal powers drained. So in the off chance your door guard is killed you can stand next to the nexus so they still get drained.

[Davairus]

That's right - this is just something that uncaballeds can use together after raiding cabals, or do for other cabals if they want to. The idea is, uncaballed has something they can do with a cabal item instead of just skip around with it. They have to go through the gauntlet of raiding and confining just like everyone else - they may not have the problem of a cabal to guard, but they do still have to deal with the effects of a cabal's powers.

[Davairus]

Off-line raids:

As of now if you secure an item with the enemy cabal offline, you will incur their flag. e.g. contract, anathema. I guess if you already have it, this won't matter to you, or to me. I don't want to discourage the practice completely - obviously if you already have one of these flags, you're in more need for doing it than if you're just ganking while they're offline to take advantage of an easy opportunity.

In addition, you will find that cabal guardians are not strengthened at all by capturing an item with the enemy offline. That means they stay low level and don't gain any hp bonus.

[Vertas]

I actually didn't know about the bonus..

[crazyhorse]

lol. neither did I.