Refusal, An Explanation.

[Lauriert]

One of the newbies who fought Luminier I think was Kian, the other one was a female who began with A. Skragna called them striplings ICly, so I'm not sure what that makes them exactly. I'm not accusing anyone of cheating of exploiting a bug. I'm saying that the Order provides a heavily unbalanced advantage.

I'm going to be blunt. Delmon is not strong enough to beat those 4 regardless of preparation, if the game is balanced. Everyone probably remembers Delmon before he joined the Order. In those days, he wasn't terribly impressive in open battle because that wasn't his thing. He was a sneaky, crafty rogue who defeated his enemies with cleverness and skill rather than brute force. And you know what? I respected the hell out of that. Delmon was successful while being a standalone character who didn't need guilds to spread chaos. But now that he's in the order, he can seemingly brute force parties of 4 well experienced characters with some help from a deathpriest, probably in the form of 20 seconds of darkness and the deathpriest buff (which should be removed, but that's an argument for a different topic.)

[Brand]

If it was Kian and Avisa I can assure you they were no newbies. Avisa was a female human that hails from Brands younger days. Kian is another human I dont remember age and such about though. I will say that neither one of them were lowbies.

Evils in Geas have always had a few advantages to balance the inherent aggression they usually face in the world. Nadie, Delmon, Mogwai and a couple other characters who were Order were simply able to maximize every benefit and combined with experience and LOTS of playtime made for very formidable enemies.

I would not want to see Lauriert stop playing, nor would I want to see Delmon or Nadie stop playing. Mogwai is an absolute blast and my only issue there is that we cant engage IC as freely as I would like.

Again, I get the frustration as I feel it too. Killing delmon, or Phelan, or Abe, or just about any character can be done with good coordination, tactics and a little bit of luck never hurts either.

[Lauriert]

I'm not sure when this was in terms of the development of Kian, Avisa, and Luminier respectively when this happened aside from what Skragna said IC. I also know someone personally (won't mention names) who had a history of fighting Nadie who's fought her with and without the Order buff and assures me it's every bit as insane a difference as I think.

This is in no way meant to demean Delmon the character. All I'm saying is that he's succeeding at a far different approach than I would expect based on how the character seems to be built and was played historically.

I've been a pretty vocal critic about how the game is balanced currently. I think a far better approach is that both good and evil have the same level of power available to them, but that the power simply be different and do different things. As a tradeoff, I proposed to make evils much more accessible and present in the world so it wouldn't feel like they're being oppressed if they're not insanely powerful.

[Delmon]

Lauriert, please stop making assumptions about your characters relative strengths or assumptions about strategies I have used in the past. Because you just spreading misinformation. Everytime I appraise Laur its says something about your character dying.

[Lauriert]

Lauriert, please stop making assumptions about your characters relative strengths or assumptions about strategies I have used in the past. Because you just spreading misinformation. Everytime I appraise Laur its says something about your character dying.

When I appraise Delmon, it says "You think he'll be tough." Which usually translates to "Yeah, you'll kick his ass. Go ahead."

No player character besides Delmon has ever gotten that appraise result and come anywhere near beating Lauriert in a fight. Most of them can barely even hurt him.

That said, Delmon's performance thus far would suggest an appraisal more like "You know he will kill you if you fight him" if that was the character actually being that strong.

[Delmon]

Let me ask you this, what happens when you appraise something and it looks like they are likely to die" Do you get destroyed by them? Or is "think they will be tough" easier? I forgot, it works special for Lauriert, in which case appraise results are completely backwards.

I don't know how else to discuss this with you, but please stop using my character as an example of before/after getting into the guild. I am not going to recount all my previous tactics and chronologically explain the improvements I have made to my char. Go to Louis. Claiming that I cheat, that I win fights by default, that my char is so weak without the order when it wasnt, and coming to the forum to attempt and adjust the mechanics of a guild to fit your perceived strength of your guildless character is just... meh

[Lauriert]

I'm not claiming -you- cheat nor is this an attack on you. I can use other examples if you don't want to be cited personally, but I'm not accusing you of cheating or winning by default personally. I'm saying there's a problem with the Order as it relates to their guild buffs that make them heavily unbalanced. The appraise thing is important because there are people who appraise as "tough" that I absolutely school in a spar, even with the iron will buff. I have experience that would suggest that the tough result can be deceiving.

I'm not attacking you the player. I'm not really attacking your character either. Just saying that direct confrontation, from what I know, was never Delmon's preferred style. If this is wrong, feel free to say so. But you're taking this way too personally when my intention was never to attack players or characters of the order. I was just hoping to show the contrast between someone with and without the order buff.

[isengoo]

Just to clear something up - Avisa and Kian didn't suddenly get strong when they joined the Order. They were already very big and established characters.

[Delia]

Appraise results are often very wide. You can get beaten back by things that it says are easy and you can beat stuff that it says will decimate you. Friendly spars tell very little of actual combat and only work to confuse appraise results further. As a rule of thumb what works for mobs well does not work against players as well. Geas is an online game and as such bigger beats smaller. Bigger can beat groups of smaller. Bigger usually wins. You can tweak that with preparation and planning and luck will steer results in some direction.

[Lauriert]

More accurately, I suppose, I should have said I've fought other players that represent a much larger gap than Delmon and Lauriert, and did much better than what I'm experiencing now from the perspective of my 1v1 experience, since that seems to be what people are interested in. A while ago, when Lauriert was a whelp compared to what he is now, he fought a powerful taniel priest in a spar. The priest didn't use miracles, but didn't hold back from a martial combat perspective. Lauriert did pretty well despite the big gap. I've known Lauriert to do fairly well against things and people stronger than him as long as he sticks to what he's good at. A character like Delmon beating him badly, I get it, it happens sometimes. But this seems to be a consistent trend despite the fact that their comparison would not suggest such a consistency. That's part of why I believe there's more to it. Sadly, Lauriert and Delmon never fought before he joined the Order for rp reasons.

[Delia]

As I said, spars tell very little. It can all go bad real quick when bleeding starts.

EDIT: to be more accurate, in spars you can eat a ton of crits when in real fights the first crit often decides the outcome.

[Lauriert]

The times I can think of where a real fight would end differently from a spar is if someone gets a heavy hit early on that would have normally caused a ton of bleeding. This admittedly has happened, but it didn't in the occasion I mentioned.

EDIT: That's true about spars. But if the exchange of meaningful hits is fairly balanced, then it does suggest you'd perform at least alright in a real fight unless you get crit right away.

[Delia]

I assume your character uses some real armour too? That just puts you in a huge disadvantage in 1v1 situations against light armour. Evils are often pretty big in this game. No matter how big you think you are, they are probably bigger. It is very ill advised to even try 1v1. You will just die.

And sure, it has been similarly for evils in the past. Oppressive big good characters around, hard to do stuff, much dying, feeling unfairness. It is a cycle.

[isengoo]

If it isn't in killmode, it's not a real fight. Spars are a terrible way to test your character's strength.

[Lauriert]

I mostly wear chain except more vulnerable areas are covered with plate instead. Medium armour 100, heavy at 90. Some people would probably tell me my problem is that armour isn't protective enough which, yes, I agree with that and I'm all for making it better as it would make pvp as a whole more fair for tank builds. But what I'm more concerned about as it relates to this topic is how rare it is that an order member's attack is parried, by anyone, and how hard they hit on average. As I've said, I've observed more deep hits or better than attacks that failed to deal damage for any reason, be it armour deflection or dodging/parrying.

[Delia]

That armour puts you in a huge handicap vs light armour in 1v1 situation when your enemy is already faster than you. That is good for pve, not pvp. And for the record, light armour fighters clear most pve content much faster too... Currently light armour is king.

Heavy is good for end game pve which favours much armour + shield + healer tank combos.

[Lauriert]

The armour discussion has a thread. Within is, someone proposed a model for armor to scale with the character so that it's more viable against opponents with a lot of STR. This is relevant also for fighting huge enemies in pve, such as Falseyr or Trolls. Worth noting this was part of a thread written by Abbharsair in 2010, so the armor issue isn't new. Armor is balanced to be realistic in a world full of characters with unrealistic strength. So, this is almost to be expected.

[Delia]

Trolls are hardly huge enemies. Also shaos make for best troll slayers in the game so light agi builds rule there too as things are. When you overlevel and outspeed your enemy, you hardly need armour for 1v1.

[Lauriert]

In theory, tank characters rely on counterattacks to deal damage, which assumes you're fast enough to parry your opponent. You definitely don't need to be faster for that, I've enjoyed lots of success parrying people much faster than me. And while this remains true, armor not being... great exactly at high levels doesn't give the mistake forgiveness one might expect.

[Delia]

If you want to widen your perspective, go light armours and learn deflect. Deflect is not a bad choice for a talent either. It will help when you use medium armours too. Also improve that DIS