Tayvu created on 21st of August 2021, and is dead and gone (23 years old, 86 hours, 6 months lifetime)
Title: the Ruler of the Dead Gender: Female Level: 50 Class: humannecromancer
Background history:
Description:
A thin, pale woman makes her presence known from the sounds of harsh
cough. Her dry, pursed lips are cracked. Spots of dried, crusted blood are
noticeable around her lips, as well as fresh moist blood in some areas. The
cuff of her sleeves is suspect for trying to wipe the red liquid from her
lips. To little avail, as the next cough brings more to replace what was
wiped away. She appears to be balding, as her scalp is very easy to see.
Albeit quite thinned out, there is yet some hair, a tangled mess of grey and
black. Except for very small black pupils, the entirety of her eyes are a
dull ash colour. One of them appears completely stationary and unmoving,
while the other moves at her will. She walks with a slight limp, favoring
her right side, and wheezing is heard as she inhales.
Not really. I just had enough of the Davarius shitshow on this class. too. Whatever idea passes through his head on his typical lonely day, during his manic episodes, gets knee-jerked, on a whim, insta-implemented into AR. Since it's his opinion, it's set in stone. Logic, out the window. Reasoning, out the window.
My love for AR is what keeps me here. I fear that Davairus as a whole, his shitshow , how he treats everybody, including the some imms...how worn me down, and is very close to surpassing my love for AR. At that point the scales will be tipped. Same reason as all the other vets...it just happened to all them a lot quicker than me. You're just too fucking dumb to see it Dav.
Like Ron White says, you can't fix stupid.
Davairus
0 , 0 , 0 .
Resatimm says this about vamp touch:
"its been needed for 15+ years. I think i am qualified to point that out. It may have gone a smidge too far (duh exploit vuln neg mobs), but it'll get fixed in the wash."
I dont mind being the villain but since youre still busy talking shit, insulting peoples intelligence, maybe you could explain for everybody how you equate a strength damned change that was decided over six months ago to a knee-jerk. Because I didnt knee jerk shit. i literally went back to Resatimm and we talked it over again for a long time
Davairus
0 , 0 , 0 .
i also assigned vanisse to druids since I realize i did not do the best job on those. and olyn contrbutes plenty. who do you think changed all the AC stuff?
do you really believe I could do that all on my own? Haha. we have scheduled patches and we look at logs to make decisions based on data instead of feel as much as possible. the only imm who is not going to get along with me is the imm that cheats or treats a player like shit
Ozaru
0 , 0 , 0 .
The obvious sentiment from the players is that you don't bring in people that actively play the class. If the immortals are playing these classes that they are working on great. But what you need to consider is that an immortal that is twice as skilled as the average player will bring a biased view about something that is overpowered. Im guilty of this and maybe other players are as well, but if you are getting ur information from an imm who played a class and did well 10 years ago without using one with all the current changes now you are getting bad info.
Tayvu you sound like a spoiled brat. Also, lobbing personal insults when trying to make a point is the quickest way to not only show your low intelligence but also have people ignore your point of view completely - even if your point could actually be true.
Davairus
0 , 0 , 0 .
It may be true that Resatimm doesn't know what he is talking about, but at least he is able to look at a necromancer doing *** DEMOLISHES *** vampiric touch and healing back 70% hp from those demolishes, for a minimum heal of 90 hp, and declare that is broken. I am sure he would not delete over a bugfix either. Logic and reason pfft. I am pretty sure Szrevan just came back after not playing for ten years too.
You know, if you don't want the Imms to sort out the bugs on their own, you could try.. reporting them? Why was this shit not reported? what kind of feedback are we getting from players? Seems like failure to disclose to me. Isn't "no info" the same as "bad info"? we might "generally" know something is wrong, but whats more likely is going to end up with two deletes when player A deletes over the bullshit gank, player B deletes over the bugfix
Resatimm
0 , 0 , 0 .
Oz that is a fair assessment.
I try to play the class, but rarely have time to do the "lay in wait" thing.
The strength damned thing was discussed at length. Based on other options on the table, this was the most palatable and logical. I did fuck up the tick calculation tho, my bad! It also made it possible for bone shatter to return for non-negative damage so necros can harm undead now.
Vanisse
2 , 0 , 0 .
Some of the bugs we fix are YEARS old because there are a ton of reports and most are not a trivial effort. ultimately it is Dav doing the bulk of the work for the non-trivial bugs with assistance from me and Olyn where we can. there are a number outstanding that were only implemented after sitting and stewing on for months, such as the invoker shield change. Things may sometimes feel like a knee jerk on the player side but unless it is a discovery of an extreme, unreported exploit or something crashing the game (the latter is usually my fault) they tend to get reviewed and discussed internally among imms with relevant experience before changes are made.
Side note - I have to apologize to you all on the druids revisions, had a setback on my initial efforts at the end of December and have been too busy to catch up due to work ever since. I will get there eventually…
Vanisse
2 , 0 , 0 .
It’s also worth mentioning that even some of those extreme things we left alone till the character that brought it to our attention deleted or lost it naturally (e.g. augmented titanium tenor) for the express purpose of not ruining one person’s day. but you’re never going to have a natural “pause point” for class changes unless it is the closure/opening of a class, unless no one is playing them (which would be a bad sign). hence they go in patch.
Davairus
0 , 0 , 0 .
in summary
a) picked the wrong hill to die on
b) the game balance being degraded is a result of mundane selfishness and shortsighted changes often coming through the bug list as ‘my skill X is too weak’ and ‘their skill Y is too buff’. that is a much more boring explanation than there is some manic coder flipping tables and oppressing everybody, but it is exactly the reason
Resatimm
3 , 0 , 0 .
Sorry. Incoming patch. You can't flip that table anymore. Now you can only bump into it lightly.
I may not be relevant to the general rant but since you are discussing balance and player feedback and old vs new players...
As a super old returning player my first character was a necro and despite liking the character I found the class borderline unplayable. I didn't know much about the game then and I know almost nothing now. Getting to 40 and realizing that the class I picked is almost completely incompatible with the average duration of my play time windows was pretty depressing and almost caused me to vanish again.
My feedback isn't that there shouldn't be classes tailored to different experiences. I just wish I somehow knew upfront I'd never raise and use an undead army successfully if I usually play for 30 minutes at a time. Knowledge is kind of on that vein too. Knowledge should be rewarded but if something is OP because of something really specific at least consider fixing the specific instead of the general. I didn't know about these weak guys to summon and vamp. Vamp touch wasn't OP for Dreen. Poor ignorant, time limited Dreen.
I guess my main point is I have no answers but at least consider smaller play windows, more ignorant players, and different avenues of enjoyment of AR when balancing (and maybe you do. I haven't been around to see more than this patch).
Mogu
1 , 0 , 0 .
You bring up some valid points. And for those same reasons I have avoided rolling a necro knowing I don't have the time to play the class to its potential. As I see it, necro is arguably the strongest class when firing on all cylinders and by that I mean 3 strength damned zombies tearing it up. But that takes time.
Davairus
0 , 0 , 0 .
dreen the new shatter spell is geared to you and the new damage and break reqs on vamp touch calculation are much more favorable when using it on same level mobs. plus the tweak to mob tanking redirect obeying blindness. you would probably be having fun with a dirt kicking merc. it sounds like you feel short changed on zombie raises. well. strength damned zombies are good
Necros have a bunch of built in weaknesses that make them suboptimal for players with 30-60 mins to play. They really are designed for long haulers (ie get to play 3+ hours at a time). Vamp touch would be better if it was even a bit useful on low level mobs (cure serious?) vs great on equal level mobs (cure crit?) since when killing equal level mobs for zombies it’s usually better to burst with toblast so it doesn’t just shred your weak golems/skeletons.
I plan to roll with the punches and test the new things. My olay time is variable so I feel your pain too Dreen. It’s especially painful when the enemy comes at you the minute you arrive and you don’t get a chance to get a single zombie. That’s smart on their part and makes it quite an uphill battle for you.
Ozaru
0 , 0 , 0 .
Can you explain this, because what this sounds like is if you blind a mob order all rescue it doesn't redirect to you?
I think it would be neat for players like Dreen (and me I guess) if zombies in general were weaker than they were but easier to get and more consistent (ie all zombies do same number of attacks, trip/bash) and the only difference is the level based on mob (sort of like skeletons). I’m also really interested to see/hear more about the wraith idea Davairus had. That sounded really neat.
Wow, I didn't expect my comment to generate so much conversation!
I wouldn't say I felt short changed by zombies Dav. I understand not everything is for everybody. And I didn't expect to roll in and be Quazark or something. That's not reasonable. But I did find it both intimidating and unworkable. Everybody who helped me learn was very clear that zombies are the deal and I was just looking at the timers on raise and the chance to fail and whatever altars and decoration is and knowing what to get and then coming from scary places I've never even been. Being game poor and game dumb it just made me go "wow, it doesn't matter how many maladies I've mastered. I'm not going to be a sub-optimal necro, I am going to be a garbage necro". Now I fully confess I didn't hang tough and try to confirm or deny that assessment. I just got intimidated, fell off, and eventually tried again as a different class.
For a player like me, something that smooths that curve between 3 perfect zombies and none would have probably made all the difference. For example, just an example not a suggestion, say I had an abomination spell where I could pile up 3 dryad corpses real quick, bring it up, it takes all 3 zombie slots but is only half as good as all that, and then imbue it with dirt or bash. I would have been like, ok, I'm not great but I'm not trash. I can play like this. Maybe I'll figure out zombies later or someday have a half day to play and try to swing it like the bad boys.
Random other notes, ton of quality of life improvements from when I originally played. Yay rend life! Dreen hasn't timed out so I'll try to check out that new shatter thing you're talking about.
Yeah that's fair. I never really revisited skeletons. That's on me. I also didn't realize you could use minions in groups without penalty now so I kind of had forgotten about skeletons long ago. I should see what I can get done with just a Skeleton army and a dirt merc like you said. That said I don't even know which mercs dirt but I imagine I can guess and check that.
I really like how some of the quests are borderline tutorials now. Getting more of those tricks in there would be cool. But I that understand that probably isn't worth dev time with relatively few total newbs.
Davairus
0 , 0 , 0 .
Also zombies are not that complicated, lately we have seen people using the giant thief to get the innkeeper, which seems pretty esoteric, but that is honestly way overkill. You will find great zombies in the ford for all levels of necro
Ive been the one crying necros OP more than anyone. Cure crit vamp touches on guards and zombies that dirt/disarm/bash/trip. You dont need all that to kill someone. A nerf was needed
Resatimm
0 , 0 , 0 .
Haha im pretty sure you've taken more acid blasts than anyone in AR history
ronk
1 , 0 , 0 .
You calling her a hippie?
Ceridwel
1 , 0 , 0 .
Druids need a new spell called Mushroom Trip. Offense spell similar to Ecstacy :)
Tayvu 0 , 0 , 1 . Not really. I just had enough of the Davarius shitshow on this class. too. Whatever idea passes through his head on his typical lonely day, during his manic episodes, gets knee-jerked, on a whim, insta-implemented into AR. Since it's his opinion, it's set in stone. Logic, out the window. Reasoning, out the window.
Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . Resatimm says this about vamp touch: Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . i also assigned vanisse to druids since I realize i did not do the best job on those. and olyn contrbutes plenty. who do you think changed all the AC stuff? Ozaru 
0 , 0 , 0 . The obvious sentiment from the players is that you don't bring in people that actively play the class. If the immortals are playing these classes that they are working on great. But what you need to consider is that an immortal that is twice as skilled as the average player will bring a biased view about something that is overpowered. Im guilty of this and maybe other players are as well, but if you are getting ur information from an imm who played a class and did well 10 years ago without using one with all the current changes now you are getting bad info. Oxil 0 , 0 , 1 . Tayvu you sound like a spoiled brat. Also, lobbing personal insults when trying to make a point is the quickest way to not only show your low intelligence but also have people ignore your point of view completely - even if your point could actually be true. Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . It may be true that Resatimm doesn't know what he is talking about, but at least he is able to look at a necromancer doing *** DEMOLISHES *** vampiric touch and healing back 70% hp from those demolishes, for a minimum heal of 90 hp, and declare that is broken. I am sure he would not delete over a bugfix either. Logic and reason pfft. I am pretty sure Szrevan just came back after not playing for ten years too.
Resatimm 
0 , 0 , 0 . Oz that is a fair assessment.
Vanisse 
2 , 0 , 0 . Some of the bugs we fix are YEARS old because there are a ton of reports and most are not a trivial effort. ultimately it is Dav doing the bulk of the work for the non-trivial bugs with assistance from me and Olyn where we can. there are a number outstanding that were only implemented after sitting and stewing on for months, such as the invoker shield change. Things may sometimes feel like a knee jerk on the player side but unless it is a discovery of an extreme, unreported exploit or something crashing the game (the latter is usually my fault) they tend to get reviewed and discussed internally among imms with relevant experience before changes are made.
Vanisse 
2 , 0 , 0 . It’s also worth mentioning that even some of those extreme things we left alone till the character that brought it to our attention deleted or lost it naturally (e.g. augmented titanium tenor) for the express purpose of not ruining one person’s day. but you’re never going to have a natural “pause point” for class changes unless it is the closure/opening of a class, unless no one is playing them (which would be a bad sign). hence they go in patch. Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . in summary Resatimm 
3 , 0 , 0 . Sorry. Incoming patch. You can't flip that table anymore. Now you can only bump into it lightly.
[reply to Ozaru]My love for AR is what keeps me here. I fear that Davairus as a whole, his shitshow , how he treats everybody, including the some imms...how worn me down, and is very close to surpassing my love for AR. At that point the scales will be tipped. Same reason as all the other vets...it just happened to all them a lot quicker than me. You're just too fucking dumb to see it Dav.
Like Ron White says, you can't fix stupid.
"its been needed for 15+ years. I think i am qualified to point that out. It may have gone a smidge too far (duh exploit vuln neg mobs), but it'll get fixed in the wash."
I dont mind being the villain but since youre still busy talking shit, insulting peoples intelligence, maybe you could explain for everybody how you equate a strength damned change that was decided over six months ago to a knee-jerk. Because I didnt knee jerk shit. i literally went back to Resatimm and we talked it over again for a long time
do you really believe I could do that all on my own? Haha. we have scheduled patches and we look at logs to make decisions based on data instead of feel as much as possible. the only imm who is not going to get along with me is the imm that cheats or treats a player like shit
You know, if you don't want the Imms to sort out the bugs on their own, you could try.. reporting them? Why was this shit not reported? what kind of feedback are we getting from players? Seems like failure to disclose to me. Isn't "no info" the same as "bad info"? we might "generally" know something is wrong, but whats more likely is going to end up with two deletes when player A deletes over the bullshit gank, player B deletes over the bugfix
I try to play the class, but rarely have time to do the "lay in wait" thing.
The strength damned thing was discussed at length. Based on other options on the table, this was the most palatable and logical. I did fuck up the tick calculation tho, my bad! It also made it possible for bone shatter to return for non-negative damage so necros can harm undead now.
Side note - I have to apologize to you all on the druids revisions, had a setback on my initial efforts at the end of December and have been too busy to catch up due to work ever since. I will get there eventually…
a) picked the wrong hill to die on
b) the game balance being degraded is a result of mundane selfishness and shortsighted changes often coming through the bug list as ‘my skill X is too weak’ and ‘their skill Y is too buff’. that is a much more boring explanation than there is some manic coder flipping tables and oppressing everybody, but it is exactly the reason
[reply to Davairus]
As a super old returning player my first character was a necro and despite liking the character I found the class borderline unplayable. I didn't know much about the game then and I know almost nothing now. Getting to 40 and realizing that the class I picked is almost completely incompatible with the average duration of my play time windows was pretty depressing and almost caused me to vanish again.
My feedback isn't that there shouldn't be classes tailored to different experiences. I just wish I somehow knew upfront I'd never raise and use an undead army successfully if I usually play for 30 minutes at a time. Knowledge is kind of on that vein too. Knowledge should be rewarded but if something is OP because of something really specific at least consider fixing the specific instead of the general. I didn't know about these weak guys to summon and vamp. Vamp touch wasn't OP for Dreen. Poor ignorant, time limited Dreen.
I guess my main point is I have no answers but at least consider smaller play windows, more ignorant players, and different avenues of enjoyment of AR when balancing (and maybe you do. I haven't been around to see more than this patch).
Mogu 
1 , 0 , 0 . You bring up some valid points. And for those same reasons I have avoided rolling a necro knowing I don't have the time to play the class to its potential. As I see it, necro is arguably the strongest class when firing on all cylinders and by that I mean 3 strength damned zombies tearing it up. But that takes time. Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . dreen the new shatter spell is geared to you and the new damage and break reqs on vamp touch calculation are much more favorable when using it on same level mobs. plus the tweak to mob tanking redirect obeying blindness. you would probably be having fun with a dirt kicking merc. it sounds like you feel short changed on zombie raises. well. strength damned zombies are good Linisan 1 , 0 , 0 . Necros have a bunch of built in weaknesses that make them suboptimal for players with 30-60 mins to play. They really are designed for long haulers (ie get to play 3+ hours at a time). Vamp touch would be better if it was even a bit useful on low level mobs (cure serious?) vs great on equal level mobs (cure crit?) since when killing equal level mobs for zombies it’s usually better to burst with toblast so it doesn’t just shred your weak golems/skeletons.
Ozaru 
0 , 0 , 0 . Can you explain this, because what this sounds like is if you blind a mob order all rescue it doesn't redirect to you? Linisan 0 , 0 , 0 . I think it would be neat for players like Dreen (and me I guess) if zombies in general were weaker than they were but easier to get and more consistent (ie all zombies do same number of attacks, trip/bash) and the only difference is the level based on mob (sort of like skeletons). I’m also really interested to see/hear more about the wraith idea Davairus had. That sounded really neat. Dreen 2 , 0 , 0 . Wow, I didn't expect my comment to generate so much conversation!
Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . that is what skeletons are for. Dreen 0 , 0 , 0 . Yeah that's fair. I never really revisited skeletons. That's on me. I also didn't realize you could use minions in groups without penalty now so I kind of had forgotten about skeletons long ago. I should see what I can get done with just a Skeleton army and a dirt merc like you said. That said I don't even know which mercs dirt but I imagine I can guess and check that.
Davairus 0 , 0 , 0 . Also zombies are not that complicated, lately we have seen people using the giant thief to get the innkeeper, which seems pretty esoteric, but that is honestly way overkill. You will find great zombies in the ford for all levels of necro
[reply to Dreen]I plan to roll with the punches and test the new things. My olay time is variable so I feel your pain too Dreen. It’s especially painful when the enemy comes at you the minute you arrive and you don’t get a chance to get a single zombie. That’s smart on their part and makes it quite an uphill battle for you.
I wouldn't say I felt short changed by zombies Dav. I understand not everything is for everybody. And I didn't expect to roll in and be Quazark or something. That's not reasonable. But I did find it both intimidating and unworkable. Everybody who helped me learn was very clear that zombies are the deal and I was just looking at the timers on raise and the chance to fail and whatever altars and decoration is and knowing what to get and then coming from scary places I've never even been. Being game poor and game dumb it just made me go "wow, it doesn't matter how many maladies I've mastered. I'm not going to be a sub-optimal necro, I am going to be a garbage necro". Now I fully confess I didn't hang tough and try to confirm or deny that assessment. I just got intimidated, fell off, and eventually tried again as a different class.
For a player like me, something that smooths that curve between 3 perfect zombies and none would have probably made all the difference. For example, just an example not a suggestion, say I had an abomination spell where I could pile up 3 dryad corpses real quick, bring it up, it takes all 3 zombie slots but is only half as good as all that, and then imbue it with dirt or bash. I would have been like, ok, I'm not great but I'm not trash. I can play like this. Maybe I'll figure out zombies later or someday have a half day to play and try to swing it like the bad boys.
Random other notes, ton of quality of life improvements from when I originally played. Yay rend life! Dreen hasn't timed out so I'll try to check out that new shatter thing you're talking about.
I really like how some of the quests are borderline tutorials now. Getting more of those tricks in there would be cool. But I that understand that probably isn't worth dev time with relatively few total newbs.
Resatimm 
0 , 0 , 0 . Haha im pretty sure you've taken more acid blasts than anyone in AR history ronk 1 , 0 , 0 . You calling her a hippie? Ceridwel 
1 , 0 , 0 . Druids need a new spell called Mushroom Trip. Offense spell similar to Ecstacy :)
[reply to Ashlyn]