The new classes are overpowered.

[Shazuko]

Up until Shyla and Kj's last posts...most of you have been focused mainly on the healing/raising aspect of clerics...but there is another type of cleric, its called a PRIEST, those who have been chosen to 'defend their faith'...as such perhaps _if_ there are any changes/improvements to be made to the class, they might be focused a bit on the combat side of the cleric. There have been many priests throughout history that have picked up a cudgel and a shield and proeeded to smite the deviants...this might make them a little more adept at soloing without tweaking the same old same old...

Shazuko Roku Ryuu
<Shazuko Six Dragons>

<~Chaos~>

[*Splork*]

Obviously the skills were not coded for a barehanded fighter or cleric in mind. We keep track of all skills and spells used ingame and I can say without a doubt that they are being used more than most. The object is to give options in different situations, not to give skills that are going to be used by everyone 100% of the time. Check any groups off lyme and this becomes quite apparent.

I like warriors wielding these types of weapons. I will continue to add skills which use them as well

This is no different than requiring a monk to be barehanded or a thief to wield a dagger. Pick how you want to play, but there are tons of options.

Enjoy,
Splork

[Mosaix]

Again Id be looknig for more group related assistance for Cleric Prime. I solo a little, but usually end up doing 2-3 man exp/eq, or big lyme groups. Its more fun, and I level/gain eq faster.

I dont expect to be a crazy solo player, its not why I picked Cleric, instead it was to have fun in groups. I ran Sloth 2 with a Thief/Mage and moved around and leveled easily. Sloth 3 I wanted something different, and I sure did get that.

I agree with Madmax, been being bumped down to 3. 4. healo while druid/necros run the heals. Doesnt make sense for a cleric prime to be pushed there. 100% Defeats the purpose of picking cleric for prime. You end up being group fodder.

I built Mosaix a very long time ago, and still dont have him near 40 avatar. It was well before the new classos, and before valk was even put in.
I have never had time to run the mud the way most do, and mostly have played for the social group enjoyment of the mud.

After I finish Mosaix, will definately choose a new player and some of the new classos, possibly even a new cleric prime again but with better order to the char.

The healbonus stuff in game is nice, however....My comment earlier about adding cleric prime eq for healbonus, sys shock etc. was to help clerics get the healbouns and sys shock in less places and in bigger ammounts. Would be nice to not take off +15mana +2regen rings just to run +5 healbonus rings. Kind of a waste to do it then. Make it easier for us to heal and not shock.

Maybe a skill for clerics could be something along the way of Mob Invis. Getting to those who need raises or heals without getting thumped to death on the way to them. Its pretty easy to go splat as a cleric.
Or maybe the mobs could sense your good deeds and decide not to kick your a** sort of skil. Free pass through death areas if your good aligned, if your evil you become a beer coaster like normal.

Again with the eq, seeing some tasty cleric prime stuff would be a lot of fun. Make it group based eq chock full of mana, healbonus, sys shock and regen. Those drachma shops need new stuff anyway Tasty tasty.

Thanks for all the chat everyone on this topic, definately appreciate it.

Mosaix

[Avatar]

I can actually see having the warrior skills dependant on the bigger weapons. It's fun to have new skills, and warriors should be using the big weapons. The negative aspect is that it breaks a lot of the synergy that players normally get from choosing classes in a multiclass mud.

Anyway, back to clerics

I agree with Mos, current healbonus eq is a little...lackluster. I like the idea of ring clasps because there aren't many clasps around for rings, plus you can keep your ma/mr rings on at the same time. 5 or even 10 healbonus is a lot less attractive when you lose a bunch of ma or mr.

[13]

That was an excellent summation Mike. Cheers brother.

[madmax]

[quote="Avatar":6s33qbq9]Max! Please don't base the new skills on forcing a cleric to maintain a good alignment! I want to actually use those evil supps eventually. Like necro's, some clerics would like to stay evil, that's the point of a cl/th!! Of course it takes someone quite insane to play a cl/th, but it can be fun.[/quote:6s33qbq9]

I don't think you read what I was meaning. If the Cleric Prime is healing, not assisting in the group, this by nature increases the alignment. In _most_ XP groups, alignment gets to +1000 easily. This was intended to be used as a group function and only in _rare_ instances when needed. Not a normal everyday restoration.

I still like the idea of the cleric not assisting, just healing thier comrades in arms. But, the XP system is not really set for this.

As Splork had said, he saw the cleric prime as a helper not a Solo character. I was just trying to offer some options that fix with that theory. Kind of like casting Moon Aura on yourself... just dosen't work or make sense.

Madmax

[12345]

Well, I definately appreciate clerics in groups, because it's where they shine. However, I was trying to come up with options that would assist with both solo and group play. I don't see much reason that clerics shouldn't be ultra-effective against undeads. I also agree that Druids being the ultimate healers defeats the purpose of being a cleric prime.

Giving better heals to clerics and making heals effective agaist undeads would solve both problems. The main trouble I see restores are a pretty good chunk of a 1x40 cleric's mana, and you need to be able to chop most of a mob down with it and still have some heals for yourself. So, a prime healing ability would solve numerous problems.

The 2 prime skills per class would be a problem... but I don't think aerial servant is so ultra-useful that it can't be a non-prime skill. I could certainly be wrong though.

I don't think clerics should be locked into groups though, because group coins completely suck. They need some solo options one way or another. What's the harm of making them hell on wheels against undeads?

[Leaf]

I only really have like maybe hum... 3-4 chars that I do like to play.
The rest are just collecting dust

[13]

I thought undeads were already heal_hurt, no?
If not I agree that a bigger self-heal and a big undead nuke would help a lot.

[madmax]

[quote="13":cjqke73k]I thought undeads were already heal_hurt, no?
If not I agree that a bigger self-heal and a big undead nuke would help a lot.[/quote:cjqke73k]

Only a few mobs in Sheol Cemetary as far as I know are damaged by heals.

Here is a Kobold zombie (BTW death by one firewind)

l zombie
This grisly, undead kobold stands by its own grave. It has blank, dead
eyes, yet it seems to see you anyway. It is slow moving and moves in an
awkward, jerking manner.
A kobold zombie has quite a few wounds.

<739hp 603+60ma 147mv> +0 <indoors - 711,919,028 XP - 372,969 coins>

You hit a kobold zombie hard.
You hit a kobold zombie very hard.
You hit a kobold zombie very hard.
A kobold zombie glares at you, chilling you to your very bones...
You stare down a kobold zombie, who cowers away!

<740hp 606+60ma 149mv> +0 <indoors - 711,919,368 XP - 372,969 coins>

restor zombie
Ok.
A kobold zombie glows with a blinding light!

<740hp 548+60ma 149mv> +0 <indoors - 711,919,368 XP - 372,969 coins>

l zombie
You hit a kobold zombie very hard.
A kobold zombie claws you very hard.
You hit a kobold zombie hard.
This grisly, undead kobold stands by its own grave. It has blank, dead
eyes, yet it seems to see you anyway. It is slow moving and moves in an
awkward, jerking manner.
A kobold zombie has some small wounds and bruises.

<730hp 551+60ma 150mv> +0 <indoors - 711,919,588 XP - 372,969 coins>

wind
Ok.
Winds of Flame pour from your hands, killing a kobold zombie instantly.
A kobold zombie is dead! R.I.P.
You received 3702 experience points.
Your blood freezes as you hear a kobold zombie's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a kobold zombie that's on the ground.
There were 250 coins.

<731hp 555+60ma 152mv> +0 <indoors - 711,927,430 XP - 373,219 coins>

You can see that the zombie was healed, not damaged.

Madmax

[12345]

Bah, not my specialty, but I'll try to explain what I mean by effective...

A restore does about 190 healing and costs about 60 mana to toss. That's about 1 mana for 3 damage. As of the leaked code, firewind was 25 mana and did about 250 damage full and 125 saved. Saved, that's about 1 mana for 5 damage, 10 if mob fails save. So, mages are about 2-3x more effective at blasting. Figure your average mage mob is also pretty thin, where your undead is going to be thicker. So, I'm going to end up burning more mana to do less damage to a thicker mob...

Now, it's entirely possible that there's a multiplier to damage done through heals that I don't know about. I'm just saying, at face value, the heals_hurt thing sounds cool, but doesn't look like it would actually be practical in actual gameplay.

As a means of backing this up some: In the quest the other night, we managed to get the mob down to BNW in 1 run using some mana to heal tanks and other mana to blast the mob with disints and such. Using all our mana to heal the mob we had to be restored several times so we could continue blasting it enough to kill it. That would seem to support my argument.

My conclusion from this is that heals_hurt is not effective and needs to be relooked. Since we're on the topic on clerics, it would seem appropriate

[Rodek]

I have made characters with the new classes and played my old ones. I had been gone for about 5 years, and was pretty impressed with the balancing that has been done with the classes -- its obvious to me that a lot of thought went into this and many tweaks were made.

Not all classes are going to be good at the same thing -- its called variety. Not all class orders will be good at soloing -- why insist on trying to come up with something to make a cleric prime better able to solo? A cleric is intended as a grouping character. A better choice would be mass healing spells that cure an entire group.

Not all classes will be great in a group. Stand-alone, a cleric is much more useful in a group than a druid, a necromancer is great solo but again not as good as a cleric in a group -- aside from weakness and crimson scourge they are not strong in a group setting when the situation prevents them from using undead (which is nearly every large group ive been in)

There is certainly room for new skills and tweaks, but my feeling is that it is pretty good right now.

[marchessa_the_red_witch]

Yes, the new classes are overpowered, particularly necromancer, but this is as much because of the mud, and dikumud, as it is because of a design flaw.

The basic flaw that necrotars exploit is built into the game, which is suppose to encourage groups, not soloing. This means that larger mobs yield more experience than a similar difficulty of smaller mobs. In old old school - pre-avatar, soloing characters hit smaller or runs of smaller mobs, and go less experience and gold. Gearing a character class to kill larger mobs, by definition, doubles their rate of experience. Necrotars are unbalanced, because of the same flaw that made old old theives unbalanced, they can do damage without spending anything to do it. For old old thieves this was "stab/flee/repeat". Stab costs mvs because of this, to stop the thief from spending a few mvs, and getting a firewind worth of damage from it, while avoiding any in return.

What is wrong with current necros was seen before, old old school clerics could summon large numbers of undead, and soloing clerics would do that, rather than run healo. Which in old old school meant no group. Several prime clerics exploited this until it was closed. So the new necro is really the same problem as the original cleric, and the original thief combined.

Now how to fix this is more in the side of the mud than in the side of the class. Necros are range limited in moves because of their entourage, and dependent on corpses. Right now embalm is too powerful - and corpses are plentiful. If embalm were more limited, and mobs wer emore aggressive about removing corpses from circulation, one of the big flaws in necro blance would go away - suddenly necros would want to group, because one thing that warriors do well, and groups do well, is generate corpses. If pets had a much reduced chance of robbing xp - then necors would be more welcome in groups, and would have more incentive to join to get access to precious raw material.

This way the life of the solo necromancer would be to spend lots of runs hitting "easy to kill juicy corpsing mobs" and then blowing it on a big run. Right now, the big runs are more or less self perpetuating. Instead, like most classes, necros should have to shuttle between different kinds of run. For warriors, between blast mobs and tank mobs. For mages, between thin mobs that blast down well, and mobs that debuff easily. And so on.

The other problem is that the mud is not "necro-aware". Consider that clerical mobs should turn undead when facing a necro-mancer as a matter of course - even low level ones could blast away at undead with the cleric advantage in that area. We have nostab flags, we have untossable mobs, caster mobs know to debuff their targets, and blind procs come aplenty - caster mobs should make stripping the necro followers off a priority. Necromancers should live in fear of the eirok that slabs followers and disappears, the clerical wandering mob that turns one into dust, and the devout mob that sends bodies onward.

The changes required wouldn't be large, and would not even be noticed. Make more mobs that hate corpses, and hate pets, make more mobs turn undead, and add a few mvs to areas that otherwise are feeding grounds for the necrotars "army of one" effect.

Another simple problem with necrotars is eq - they don't need much. This again is from game balance considerations. In a group, the warrior 10% advantage from armor class over other character classes is huge - it means that two healers have, effectively, another restore or two between them, and the warrior can survive more rounds of "double lost conc" on the heals coming in. But solo, this advantage does not amount to much, because solo the warrior isn't doing much damage. The necrotar has, then 90% of the ac of a warrior, and 4 times the damage. Since the optimum solo balance is to run out of mana just before you run out of hps - the warrior having 300hps left over after blasing out means... he heals up and has to sleep mana. Mages have the reverse problem, they run out of hps long before they have blasted out.

The solution is to nerf pets, but give it back with eq - so that a tricked out necro will have the same pets as the current necro does, merely having to pop eq on nasty mobs - and thus have to group - to get there. Just the way warriors have to group to pop several key pieces of eq, or cycle small mobs endlessly.

With these changes - reducing the damage taking capacity of necros, changing mobs and areas to be more necro aware - and requiring necros to get eq that is as difficult and time consuming to pop as warrior or high level mage eq is - and the class will snap back into proportion. Fix the xp stealing by pets in groups, and people won't want necros to "self nerf" in a group to avoid the horror of xp loss.

The addition of classes was a brilliant thing to do - because it stopped the oversupply of warriors - now people often have to beg for enough tank to start a group, rather than always beggin healo. Now what ought to happen is that new classes have the same problems as old ones - have to pop eq, and have dependencies on grouping, and but also more to give groups. There also needs to be more "new school" awareness on the part of mobs and areas so that these areas don't restrict old classes, but allow new classes to work everywhere unencumbered.

The reason I write this is that necrotraas, as stand, violate the long standing philosophy of diku mud:

1. Characters should be more powerful in a group than solo.
2. Characters should want to kill lots of different mobs and not just be able to cycle a few areas.
3. The mud should prevent winning strategies from working everywhere.

[Avatar]

I don't disagree with most of Marchessa's points. There are a few though that I could add some discussion points to:

1) Necrotar. Does anyone use that term? Seems kinda silly to me. I've never seen the term 'warriortar' or 'thieftar'.

2) Cleric mobs should "blast away at undead with the cleric advantage in that area", "stripping the necro followers off". I don't know if you play a cleric or a mage, but I don't think clerics blasting undead have the effect that you imply.

Other than that, I wonder about the general objectives that you state for dikumud, and whether sloth even tries to follow those objectives. The old style of using liches / charms wasn't necessarily broken. Some people enjoy the challenge of soloing larger mobs. If the setup time and cycle time takes an hour, some of the players here will spend that hour to cycle one mob. Sure, a group could do 4 runs in that time and gain more xps / coins for the time, but that's not the goal of everyone who plays. The endless group grind is fun at times, but a lot of the character base has more diverse interests. I consider this one of the strengths of sloth that the admin here, whether purposefully or accidentally, have implemented features that support various play styles.

All that said, players can migrate to the charater types that they enjoy.

[Ditheca]

People are going to be upset when the stats come out for this week and they see all the xp I've gotten with my "Necrotar"

Sorry to disappoint, but my xp runs involve lots of deathgripping, lots of striking, and zero summoning of undead pets.

Why do I completely ignore my prime class of necromancer in favor of my monk tert skills? Because monks XP faster than necros. Why will most of the monks on the mud disagree with that statement? They don't have powerful eq (which you claim is useless to necromancers)

Having played every classo on the mud except druid prime, I think i've got a pretty good grip on the balance of power among the classes. That leaves me more or less free to ignore Marchessa (who plays a strictly old school classo) and her comments about new classos.

Marchessa, when's the last time you actually watched a "necrotar" xp? Oh wait, you can't get to lyme; guess your post is entirely based on hearsay.