Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

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luminier
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Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#1 Post by luminier » Sat Feb 21, 2015 4:13 pm

Don't read the following if you don't want minor spoilers about guilds.

You've been warned

Seems to me Cleric Guilds are the most efficient for PVP (player versus player combat). In my opinion, here is why.

- All clerics have a way to heal in combat, melee guilds do not. This is first because it is probably the biggest advantage.

- All clerics can either do massive damage in combat (smite/waterlance) or cause bleeding/prevent running (bone spear) or set people on fire (heavens fire) every 16 seconds or less. This is with a minor beseech deity level (around 50) and even at low favour, near 100% chance to cast.

- All clerics have a -strong- ability to deal damage in mood defend with a shield when solo. Melee guilds cant deal damage at all in mood defend when solo.

- All clerics have the ability to block every exit for every character in the room no matter how many exits there are in a room. Note: hellways and archways are not affected by this ability. Melee guilds cannot escape easily without penalty (neither can Asral Clergy, but they wouldn't really want to either, trap miracle is made to counter melee fighters)

- Clerics used to have a cooldown on casting miracles. If they asked for a miracle, they would have to wait until it was answered. Now they can just abort the old miracle with minor penalty and start casting again right away.

- There are very few options to actually interrupt someone who has begun casting a miracle. If it's a gestures miracle, breaking their arm would work, if it is a concentration miracle it is pretty much impossible. Interrupting should be a lot easier, like a body check or tackle to the ground mid cast should probably cancel the cast.

It seems to me that Clerics are certainly "the way to go" if you want a powerful character.

Does anyone else think the same? Am I wrong in any of these? Do you think Clerics are underpowered?

Maybe we can start a fair discussion
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#2 Post by Aslak » Sun Feb 22, 2015 1:39 am

Let me try to answer some of this, note I play a cleric as well, so my view is on the other side.
luminier wrote: - All clerics have a way to heal in combat, melee guilds do not. This is first because it is probably the biggest advantage.
Yes, it is a powerful thing, but far less powerful then you might think. The healing does not stop bleeding, and if you are bleeding, you barely heal more then the bleeding does to yourself. Of cause, you cannot do any damage while you heal and are hit more easily.
Bonepriests healing is even so weak (healing wise), I never have seen it in use during pvp.
luminier wrote: - All clerics can either do massive damage in combat (smite/waterlance) or cause bleeding/prevent running (bone spear) or set people on fire (heavens fire) every 16 seconds or less. This is with a minor beseech deity level (around 50) and even at low favour, near 100% chance to cast.

- All clerics have a -strong- ability to deal damage in mood defend with a shield when solo. Melee guilds cant deal damage at all in mood defend when solo.
Both are pretty much the same argument. It depends a lot if you have magical resistance on you or not. If you have, the damage done by miracles is FAR less threatening. I take like 10 bonespears without healing when my magic defences are up. In the time it takes to cast them, a warrior would have killed me twice.
If you have no resistance buffs on yourself, miracles CAN hurt a lot, but it depends on several factors still.
luminier wrote: - All clerics have the ability to block every exit for every character in the room no matter how many exits there are in a room. Note: hellways and archways are not affected by this ability. Melee guilds cannot escape easily without penalty (neither can Asral Clergy, but they wouldn't really want to either, trap miracle is made to counter melee fighters)
As you have seen today, the trap miracle is rather easy to break through for a strong warrior. It roughly takes the same amount of tries as to escape an blocked outdoor exit.
Is it nice, sure, is it overpowered, I think not. Withdrawing from combat outdoors is far too easy anyways.

luminier wrote: - Clerics used to have a cooldown on casting miracles. If they asked for a miracle, they would have to wait until it was answered. Now they can just abort the old miracle with minor penalty and start casting again right away.
We still have to wait. Casting times are rather long for combat stuff.
luminier wrote: - There are very few options to actually interrupt someone who has begun casting a miracle. If it's a gestures miracle, breaking their arm would work, if it is a concentration miracle it is pretty much impossible. Interrupting should be a lot easier, like a body check or tackle to the ground mid cast should probably cancel the cast.
I have to agree here. There are only few ways a common warrior can stop miracles. I am not sure if that is a problem or not, but I have seen other muds where it was impossible to play a mage/cleric/generic caster alone because every tickle interruped your spells.

luminier wrote: It seems to me that Clerics are certainly "the way to go" if you want a powerful character.
If you compare a nonguildwarrior with a priest, you certainly are right.
For guild warriors, things might be different. Crusaders for example can do things my char can only dream about, also PvP wise.
Also, a warrior usually remains the better warrior, as the priest will have to put quite some stats into his mental stats or he will be unable to use any of the nice priest abilities.
I admit I know little about the abilities and boosts "The Order" gets, so I cannot say anything about them.
From what I know about the rangers, they are the ones that currently have the short stick. Their bow stuff is nice and strong, but they always rely on someone else to use it. They do not have any cool specials unique to them that would improve their major fighting style.

From my point of view, priests are strong, each of the three guilds having their own pros and cons, but only the undeads I see as a problem. Beside, I see crusader towers for the same reason as overpowered, just not as strong, because you can create your personal stronghold with them and kill even if you are not around, and not even endanger yourself that way.
Priests are certainly more flexible as warriors in what they can do.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#3 Post by glorfindel » Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:11 am

I will try to only give differentiated opinions here, my stance of the matter is rather colored though, as I have had too many attempts showing me that a monk is just not made to do anything in PVP. Observations to be taken with a grain of salt:
Aslak wrote: Yes, it is a powerful thing, but far less powerful then you might think. The healing does not stop bleeding, and if you are bleeding, you barely heal more then the bleeding does to yourself. Of cause, you cannot do any damage while you heal and are hit more easily.
Bonepriests healing is even so weak (healing wise), I never have seen it in use during pvp.
that is only true one on one. As soon as you have two clerics... enter holy word. Heal your allies, kill your foes, even fear them away. Also, I think the Asral heal is different to the Taniel heal, the taniel cure is rather powerful for not too much time investment.
Luminier wrote: - All clerics have a -strong- ability to deal damage in mood defend with a shield when solo. Melee guilds cant deal damage at all in mood defend when solo.
That is not 100% true. A cleric is a lot easier to hit while casting. A shield somewhat counters that, but only to an extend.

Aslak wrote: Both are pretty much the same argument. It depends a lot if you have magical resistance on you or not. If you have, the damage done by miracles is FAR less threatening. I take like 10 bonespears without healing when my magic defences are up. In the time it takes to cast them, a warrior would have killed me twice.
If you have no resistance buffs on yourself, miracles CAN hurt a lot, but it depends on several factors still.
I am sorry, but that is a clerics perspective. The common man has a lot of problems aquiring resistances unless there's some guild way providing you. Magic resistance is rare and powerful, if you got it, you will have a good chance to survive miracles, otherwise..
Aslak wrote: We still have to wait. Casting times are rather long for combat stuff.
A dwarf, human or tshahark with a two handed weapon can take up to 40 seconds
to attempt to hit you. Compared to that, 16 seconds seem... nothing. Besides, you still get the ability to perform specials and whatnot while casting, do you not?
Luminier wrote: - There are very few options to actually interrupt someone who has begun casting a miracle. If it's a gestures miracle, breaking their arm would work, if it is a concentration miracle it is pretty much impossible. Interrupting should be a lot easier, like a body check or tackle to the ground mid cast should probably cancel the cast.
This is, honestly, the gripe I have with clerics as is. I am fine with them, especially the trained old ones, being hard to interrupt. But if I knock you off your feet, break one of your legs, make you scream in agony and bleed like a pig, I would expect you to mess up channeling that miracle. I would not want to call for drastic steps here, I think a high resistance against failure makes a lot of sense for a cleric, however receiving a critical hit of any kind should be a deal breaker. Maybe falling down as well. Or maybe receiving a lot of damage in a short time... could be dependent on the chars discipline.
Aslak wrote: Also, a warrior usually remains the better warrior, as the priest will have to put quite some stats into his mental stats or he will be unable to use any of the nice priest abilities
I do not really agree here, as it only takes you 2 skills to be effective as a cleric (specific to the cleric), maybe three if you are preaching. You sure have to shove a little of your experience towards your mentals, but you can still spend all your focus on learning combat abilities. Takes a little more time then it would take a basic fighter, but still significantly less time then it would take you to make a Shaolin or Ranger.

Summary

I do not think that clerics are too powerful per se, they are meant to be powerful, they are the ones that carry most of the conflicts around our game and they are the main burning point, ofting finding themselves pitted against a lot of foes alone.

However, there are certain points, when it seems that it is rather easy to become a powerful cleric, whereas other paths take a lot longer to master, plus the drawback seems nearly irrelevant these days.

I feel that there is a need for some revisiting of some cleric features, but I do not have significant enough data to suggest anything at all, given that every clergy has at least one miracle that will render a monk completely useless within the first 16 seconds of a fight.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#4 Post by Aslak » Sun Feb 22, 2015 12:59 pm

glorfindel wrote:
that is only true one on one. As soon as you have two clerics... enter holy word. Heal your allies, kill your foes, even fear them away. Also, I think the Asral heal is different to the Taniel heal, the taniel cure is rather powerful for not too much time investment.
Might be true for Taniel clerics, but Asrals heal takes as long to cast as offensive miracles and the heal provided by holy word is rather insignificant and also it does not hurt any or makes them flee.
glorfindel wrote: That is not 100% true. A cleric is a lot easier to hit while casting. A shield somewhat counters that, but only to an extend.
Yes, it is a really noticable effect, even NPCs that normally barely ever hit you, suddenly get heavy hits against you.
glorfindel wrote: I am sorry, but that is a clerics perspective. The common man has a lot of problems aquiring resistances unless there's some guild way providing you. Magic resistance is rare and powerful, if you got it, you will have a good chance to survive miracles, otherwise..
Can't say what the secondary guilds have to offer in total, but Skalds have a song that gives magical resistance and alchemists might have potions that do that.
Crusaders I think have some kind of special that grants them quite a bit of magical protection.
Mages might be able to create trinket items that grant magic protection for a short time after activating. If not, might be an idea to be introduced.
glorfindel wrote: A dwarf, human or tshahark with a two handed weapon can take up to 40 seconds
to attempt to hit you. Compared to that, 16 seconds seem... nothing. Besides, you still get the ability to perform specials and whatnot while casting, do you not?
I am a human with a twohanded weapon and I do not even take near 40 seconds per attack. Also, I have fought tshaharks who were rather fast with their weapons as well, beside, a high strength tshahark has a very good chance to end the fight with just one attack, something that never will happen with a miracle.
I know a common tactic to fight clerics is to run in, get a single attack + special on them and bet on a crit, leave if you do not get one. Miracles won't help much there, and I think it was also the reason trap miracle was introduced.
glorfindel wrote: This is, honestly, the gripe I have with clerics as is. I am fine with them, especially the trained old ones, being hard to interrupt. But if I knock you off your feet, break one of your legs, make you scream in agony and bleed like a pig, I would expect you to mess up channeling that miracle. I would not want to call for drastic steps here, I think a high resistance against failure makes a lot of sense for a cleric, however receiving a critical hit of any kind should be a deal breaker. Maybe falling down as well. Or maybe receiving a lot of damage in a short time... could be dependent on the chars discipline.
Well, I can agree here to some extent. There really is not much you can do against miracles other that critical hits.
The problem is to balance a chance of failure on miracles for different fightingstyles used against them. Either it will lead to miracles getting always interruped by strong warrior types or it will lead to many fightingstyles being useless on interrupting.
I personally are a fan of unequal balance, like rock, paper, stone. So, maybe give mages or shaolin something to interrupt miracles.
glorfindel wrote: I do not really agree here, as it only takes you 2 skills to be effective as a cleric (specific to the cleric), maybe three if you are preaching. You sure have to shove a little of your experience towards your mentals, but you can still spend all your focus on learning combat abilities. Takes a little more time then it would take a basic fighter, but still significantly less time then it would take you to make a Shaolin or Ranger.
Without getting into too much detail, with this tactic, you will not have any of the good miracles at your disposal and those you know will have very little effect.
You need to learn a lot more mental based skills to be effective as a cleric.
I for example still do not know all miracles that would be available to me, and I put quite some effort on it already.

Summary
I feel that there is a need for some revisiting of some cleric features, but I do not have significant enough data to suggest anything at all, given that every clergy has at least one miracle that will render a monk completely useless within the first 16 seconds of a fight.[/quote]
Maybe that should be looked into then, though I must admit I do not know any miracle at all that would render a monk useless, but have not fought them yet. I more had the idea extra heavy armours make monks live hard.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#5 Post by luminier » Sun Feb 22, 2015 5:50 pm

Just as an aside, I have played an Asral Cleric, Taniel Cleric and Sathonys Cleric all for around 30-40 days play time. I think the Sathonys Cleric even longer!

by the way, this response is really long... sorry... I really did try to condense as much as possible. I just have a lot of things to say.

@Aslak
Bleeding/healing - You still get a larger effective health pool. You still are able to get another round of combat in. As a fighter-only character I would either be in worse shape, or have to run, or be unconscious. Berserk helps against bleeding too. Bleeding as an Asral cleric also makes your armour more effective. This is all things that a fighter-only guild doesn't have access to.

Also while you are casting, your combat time-counter doesn't "reset". Lets say it takes you 20 seconds to swing your weapon. Casting flame renew doesn't reset that counter. So you can swing, cast, then maybe 1-8 seconds after the cast you swing again.

Bone priest healing is pretty weak, but it is still healing. It also has to be weaker because it deals damage to the opponent as well. You can also drain yourself into a friend, it hurts you a lot but heals them quite a bit.

High damage in combat - It's true magic resistance helps. But Crusader resistance degrades over time and hard to replenish. Clerics have no such restriction. The damage is still threatening. Instead of deaths door to 3 bone spears or heavens fire, I am deaths door to 4 maybe 5. 10 bone spears is pretty much unheard of. I've never heard of someone taking 10 bone spears without being dead.

Also being able to do damage in mood defend is huge. Fighter-only chars can't do any damage in mood defend. Clerics are still able to do full damage with all miracles.

trap miracle - one of the biggest defenses the fighters have against a miracle is to just move away. trap miracle blocks every exit in a room. It works better if there are less exits. I honestly think I got lucky. I've been in situations where the trap miracle has been the cause of my death. And this was outdoors. It's simply too powerful against a fighter only char.

Casting time - Fighter swings dont take quite 40 seconds as Glorfindel said, but it is quite long maybe 20 seconds or more with a big 2handed weapon. Also fighter-only is not guaranteed a hit after those seconds, clerics are guaranteed a hit with a successful miracle, which are rare to fail with decent skill and non-0 favour as I mentioned earlier. If Luminier was guaranteed a hit every 20 seconds, I would be quite happy.

Interrupting - perhaps something we all agree on. that is good. I definitely agree with you that I wouldn't want tickles to interrupt miracles either.

Crusaders - To be honest, if I were to remake Luminier from scratch all those years ago I would have been an Asral Cleric. They are by far the best cleric in my time playing each cleric. There is nothing the crusaders can do that an asral cleric cannot, except maybe ride a unicorn.

Experience - Also it was not my experience that I needed to put any effort into learning mental stats to be a good cleric when I played. Eventually just learning combat skills was enough to push my wisdom up that I got every miracle except resurrect.

Rangers are definitely the weakest of the fighter only guilds. I agree.

I agree priests all have pros and cons. But this isn't a game of only priests.

As for the Crusader towers, I can only have so many at a time, they cost the guild money, they shoot once every 15 seconds and rarely are the bolts deadly. My towers do not block you, prevent you from moving, you can see them from a room away no matter what your scout skill is. They are strong though.
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#6 Post by isengoo » Mon Feb 23, 2015 5:24 pm

I like being strong so I vote for no changes.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#7 Post by luminier » Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:14 pm

isengoo wrote:I like being strong so I vote for no changes.
Im down for keeping clerics the way they are if the fighter guilds are brought up to snuff as well
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#8 Post by mazarmormuk » Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:17 pm

i did read your notes and thought wow, yep, clerics are really powerful, and after rethiunking i still think they are.
and asrals are by far the ones with the biggest bandwidth i think

then i think of what my char fears most..not npcs, not other casting clerics,
most my char fears is a pure fighter with a twohanded weapon.

i can agree with you, luminier, and still i cant decide clerics are overpowered.

if i encounter phelan we cast forth and back and the one losing runs or some circumstances make a lucky winner pulling the other into death.
if i remember fights against luminier or other "twohanders", it was each millisecond the chance to die instantly.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#9 Post by Arsicas » Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:53 pm

luminier wrote:Im down for keeping clerics the way they are if the fighter guilds are brought up to snuff as well
I kind of disagree. People without guilds are already far underpowered compared to those in guilds. If the cleric and warrior guilds keep getting stuff added to them, the poor guildless folks are going to be left in the dust.
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#10 Post by luminier » Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:23 am

Arsicas wrote:
luminier wrote:Im down for keeping clerics the way they are if the fighter guilds are brought up to snuff as well
I kind of disagree. People without guilds are already far underpowered compared to those in guilds. If the cleric and warrior guilds keep getting stuff added to them, the poor guildless folks are going to be left in the dust.

thats true good point. it is harder to power up the non-guild folks than it is to power down the guild folks i think
mazarmormuk wrote:i did read your notes and thought wow, yep, clerics are really powerful, and after rethiunking i still think they are.
and asrals are by far the ones with the biggest bandwidth i think

then i think of what my char fears most..not npcs, not other casting clerics,
most my char fears is a pure fighter with a twohanded weapon.

i can agree with you, luminier, and still i cant decide clerics are overpowered.

if i encounter phelan we cast forth and back and the one losing runs or some circumstances make a lucky winner pulling the other into death.
if i remember fights against luminier or other "twohanders", it was each millisecond the chance to die instantly.
that is also a good point.

I feel the same way about miracles though. If i get hit by a miracle once, my chances of getting a fight ending crit go from about 10% of the time (or less) to 0%. maybe im just not meant to fight one on one or by myself. seems unfair that clerics can do very well one on one still. or even one on two.
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#11 Post by Delia » Tue Feb 24, 2015 4:01 am

Most things seem bit off or unbalanced if you think one on one only. Personally I think that going one on one is highly undesirable situation in Geas. Many things such as shaos or other
light fighters can be more powerful in a team than by going solo. This requires bit of skill, luck and coordination from players though.

One on one again clerics as both a legionnaire and shao both always ended with unable to break shield defence and eating miracles. Two miracles and vbf with status effects. I never used a big weapon, so I guess that was the missing ingredient. With a team mate things were different. Also, at one point I was so accustomed to Phelans and Mazars running amok all over the place, that when I unknowingly destroyed a newbie satho I thought to myself:"OMG DID I JUST BREAK THE GAME?!?!!"
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#12 Post by Delia » Tue Feb 24, 2015 6:06 am

I have to agree that Asrals look very good on paper though. I do not think I have ever fought against a team using their abilities to the fullest. Thankfully enough. A team of self-healing tanks that can turn light armours to living torches and break casters sounds pretty dangerous. Luckily enough Geas is a game where a bit of luck and good planning(if you have the resources)can get you a long way.

I do not have any personally experience playing a priest so it is hardly for me to say other than that they seem rather darn tough, until they aren't. Also there are so many HUGE characters and good players out there that it is very hard to maintain any perspective, balance-wise, IMHO.

For example, you could say that Delia is quite tough as a mage and that the amount of things
she can do with her different skills and abilities is too much or too powerful for a mage and use that as a point of balance, but you would be left with very iffy and very frustrated mage-apprentices, hedge wizards and other mage masters.

Two things though:

A light armour non-guild character not packing a long weapon, missile weapon or a twohander is basically a non-combatant in PvP.

Miracle interrupts could be looked into somewhat. In exchange there could be spells criticals? Dunno, just throwing stuff here. Anyhoo, a way to interrupt a cleric without a massive critical could be good for the game. Clerics should have things better than mages in this regard though, no matter what happens.
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#13 Post by Mogwai » Tue Feb 24, 2015 10:56 am

Thoughts and observations having played the clerics and fighter guilds.

Crusaders kits are meant to be played with others. There are buffs that literally apply to anyone in the room with decent with 0 extra costs for using an ability like that on an ally.

When the crusade was at it's best and strongest it had charismatic leadership. When the Legion fell it lost the support of the people. The strongest resource will always be powerful supporters.

Use protection from evil '10 and sanctify? buff as many allies in the room (good alignment ofc)
Crusader battle cry? (instant buff to all crusaders in team)

They're team fighting specialists from what I understood to be the strength of their kit meant to work in conjunction with others.

I think the only way I escaped against Phelan with a 10 day old crusader is using the ability that makes opponents flee.

Aging.

POLuminier might be feeling the sting of age on a character that relied primarily on physical stats. I know I noticed the difference for some time as you no longer hit as hard. Sure my character didn't hit like he used to but I guess at some point you have to rely on guile and charisma to recruit followers than just raw stats and power.

Stats appear the same you realize as the encumbrance numbers change that over time your character gets weaker with age and mental stats begin to phase out. You see your crits begin to disappear.

Ancient Mage > Ancient Warrior. Slow and steady wins the race as the consistent DPS of clerics begin to shine over the aging warriors random number generated crits.

I've seen Delmon manage to give people problems with few resources such as a mithril spear. Yes simply a mithril spear. Surely a simply darkelf with a spear cannot exceed the best crusader's (arguably all time) effectiveness with towers, orb lines, and a unicorn. Admittedly none of these really help the 1v1 offense.

Admittedly I haven't played against clerics since the trap miracle introduction but if POLuminier favors a to buff ALL the fighter guilds that is okay with me n.n

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What it is, is the power is allocated in a manner that may not fit the current meta. If the crusade wants more 1v1 power I suggest removing/limiting it from excess resource pools like the unicorns or towers (What do they really add to rp/gameplay? besides allowing you to impede movements of opponents)

As a young crusader/fighter essentially the biggest thing you lack is offense but the issue is as you scale you gain then in droves until you succumb to age.

I think for luminier to go around killing people in the same manner he did for in game decades when his character was younger, he will need either an artifact or some sort of melee buff realistically in the crusade abilities.

Using one handed weapons is simply not viable in pvp without the ability to crit consistently you will not have much success in pvp as a fighter.

The problem is if you do crit you can 1 or 2 shot people.

Perhaps bleeding should lower agility to a degree.

I do not recall people moving at the same speed after sustaining deep cuts and wounds. This would allow successive hits a greater chance for all parties.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#14 Post by ferranifer » Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:15 pm

Hmm, I am not convinced age has any actual impact on stats whatsoever. I know this gets thrown around a lot but I have yet to experience this in game and when I look at some of the big and ancient characters out there, they hit and do damage just like 10 years ago.

I've always thought that the core balance issue with clerics is how strong physical stats are and how little impact mental stats have. This leads to clerics building up for melee combat and becoming total beasts since they are basically as strong as a warrior at being a warrior, and on top of that have miracle buffs which work just fine with minimal mental stats.

An Asral cleric can max out all their combat and casting skills and still have plenty of space for dumping everything into physicals at their leisure, either through quest XP or by pushing even MORE combat-related skills.

When you compare this scenario with a thief or a mage, which are forced to invest heavily on support skills to even operate at a minimum level of efficiency at being thieves or mages... well, clerics get to be both warriors and clerics essentially for free.

As for the fantasy of what clerics should be, I liked the Taniel Clerics and some of the old school "caster"-like Sathos the most in this regard, but well... they get destroyed in combat and need support in the form of a team or undead to do well. The ones that do well without the support are built as warriors and are also in fact warriors with buffs too. Let me repeat this: the clerics that do well in combat are those that are built first and foremost to be warriors.

There are a couple of things that could be done here:

A) Buff the impact of high mental stats so they become a valid character development choice. This will help with pushing clerics into more of a caster role and will also help with the development of Mage characters (which in case you didn't know, are in dire straits).
B) Force clerics to invest heavily on more mental-related support skills to operate as clerics. Make them pay the opportunity cost. Ideally this should be done through the current "multi-class control" mechanic: add more cleric skills. This works well with thieves, shaolin and mages currently. This solution was discussed in the other "clerics are OP" thread too.

If mental stats were impactfull, attractive and necessary, we would see more clerics developing as casters and less like warriors with spells.

Right now, if I was to reroll into a combat-oriented or PvP-oriented character, it would be without a shadow of a doubt an Asral Cleric. I don't really think there exists a better option. They are just too damn good at everything they need to be good at.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#15 Post by Mogwai » Tue Feb 24, 2015 12:50 pm

They are meant to be a standalone guild due to the lack of innate allies such as rangers, taniel clerics, and crusaders. Since they completely lack any innate allies I see why they are the well rounded guild.

Age definitely has it's effects, what you do is you see your character fighting things such as ogres over time and you start realizing you no longer crit certain opponents in some ways for example. Mogwai in middle-aged was capable of splitting an ogre skull whereas somewhere in the advanced age it simply no longer occurred.

Although it may not seem like a big deal you have to realize that this is the difference between killing and maiming a foe vs. being buried in miracles till you are dead.

IF you are playing a pure melee fighter long enough you can see these impacts and understand them.

Your analogy to thiefs and mages is interesting because both get a great deal of benefits financially both of these age extremely well with stats compared to a fighter who does not age well. Even if you invest into your core play style you will fall off eventually.

I see what you're saying but you infer that the Crusade is alone in their guild presence whereas implemented play never meant them to operate as a lone wolf guild like the Asralites.
Some design planning was to make the Crusade the frontliners, the rangers-ranged support, and taniel clerics support casting.

Asral clerics have neither of those allies and because of this need to be well rounded to fit those roles and the past has shown there have been a variety of asralite cleric playstyles.

IF you were to roll a character that did not have a multiple of other guilds as allies you would choose the Asral Clerics.

It simply is based off of allies to accentuate the strengths of the Crusader in playstyle. Maybe it is inherently not ideal or maybe it's meant to have the crusade work in conjunction with other good organizations.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#16 Post by ghalt » Tue Feb 24, 2015 1:04 pm

For whatever it matters, as I'm not really a worthy pvp combatant at all: for a rogue vs. a cleric--snatch or steal or shoot and then run like hell seems to be the list of my options. Trying to actually stand and fight is just dumb, as we have puny one-handed weapons, light armor, and no guild skills that really work once the fight's started--we have to rely on normal specials like anyone else then.

Also: darkness is a portion of a cleric's miracle list, and kind of destroys most of my skill list, just hard countered by one miracle. ^^ (Because the counter to darkness is light, which also counters stealth, which also means no I don't get to do sneaky things to you. >>) And I get the feeling that this is kind of a theme with cleric miracles: there's a lot of tools in their toolbox, and there's a decent chance one of them screws you over pretty hard. I mean, heck, holy word screws me over when I'm trying to help Taniels.

And honestly all it seems I've ever done against clerics is shoot with a bow and run run run, because the meta cost of my guild skills are a bit immense. Add in that most clerics seem to have shields and ehh. The most luck I've had has been when Phelan was, you know, trying to get someone's gear out of the automatic death zone for them and didn't have his shield ready or darkness up--and then I just forced him to run. (Which was frankly a pretty good outcome for ghalt + unguilded halfling vs. phelan, but still.)

(I've only fought sathonites, because well, fairly good meta reasons. Hitting a tanielite can mean banishment from elvandar, hitting an asralite means getting set on fire and the same for arborea. Is it worth bringing up that clerics also have tremendous social power here? I'm not a huge fan of the arguably most powerful in combat guilds also having the most social power. ^^)

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#17 Post by luminier » Tue Feb 24, 2015 8:47 pm

I agree with a lot of what was said so far.

My one gripe with what Mogwai said, Crusaders have rely on numbers to be effective in combat. I feel like that isn't appropriate in a game where the Crusaders are a guild with big RP restrictions (you can really only RP a crusader one way) and you need to focus on specifically combat skills to even be relevant in PVP. Not everyone wants to do that, and if they do they get bored over time because it gets stale.

This kind of extends to other guilds as well, whats the attraction to limit the strength of your character and limit roleplay as well? Though rangers probably have quite a bit of flexibility there in the roleplay.

EDIT: also clerics are good with numbers too! (though Mogwai didn't say that they weren't, he just said Crusaders were good with numbers)
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#18 Post by mazarmormuk » Wed Feb 25, 2015 6:49 pm

i guess mogwai specifically talked of asral clerics missing allies.

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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#19 Post by luminier » Thu Feb 26, 2015 12:19 am

mazarmormuk wrote:i guess mogwai specifically talked of asral clerics missing allies.
I feel as if the roleplay of the Asral clerics is "glorious battles". That is fairly flexible roleplay, no? The more flexible your roleplay is, the easier it is to get people to ally with you.

I recall not long ago, maybe more than 8 months ago, Asralites in particular had many Arborean allies that includes thieves, Order, and mercenaries in Arborea.

All my opinion of course
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Re: Clerics, Too strong? (minor spoilers!)

#20 Post by Aslak » Thu Feb 26, 2015 6:27 am

luminier wrote:
mazarmormuk wrote:i guess mogwai specifically talked of asral clerics missing allies.
I recall not long ago, maybe more than 8 months ago, Asralites in particular had many Arborean allies that includes thieves, Order, and mercenaries in Arborea.
There is a huge difference between people you go to hunt a few ogres and giants and true allies who would join a war.
The Taniel side has 3!! full guilds bound tightly together by the gameworld, that is a huge pool to draw people from.
Give us the dragonguard as a guild on our side and we would be quite happy.

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