AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

Interesting point.

Cory's right. You just gave everyone with a heal spell a one shot on the Risen Lord.

It does create a severe problem with the undead forms as now they are suffering a greatly increased handicap against anything that can cast heal spells.

Dramatic_Prince wrote:

Cory's right. You just gave everyone with a heal spell a one shot on the Risen Lord.

its vampire and spectre as well, its all of undead not just risenlord.

No. He's wrong, and he's exaggerating again because he decided to build his build exclusively around th undead form and not be good in any other form. That's his problem and he needs to accept it.

Healing spells kill undead. Surprise.

Last edited by corypx on Mon, Jun 07 2010, 4:20 AM, edited 1 time in total.

TormakSaber wrote:

Healing spells kill undead. Surprise.

so if I get clerics/druids....ect to spam heal and massheal on every undead monster on the server it will kill them because healing spells kill undead?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/heal.htm
If used against an undead creature, heal instead acts like harm.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/harm.htm
Harm charges a subject with negative energy that deals 10 points of damage per caster level (to a maximum of 150 points at 15th level). If the creature successfully saves, harm deals half this amount, but it cannot reduce the target’s hit points to less than 1.

Basically saying that the spell alone is not meant to be an instant 1 cast "I win" spell against undead shifters and undead alike as it was originally meant to leave open a small window were something can be done. With it in it's current state it is extremely unfair and definitely makes one extremely wary about using the undead forms and in the case of Amia making the form unusable in certain areas entirely and with the Risen Lord form especially which was described as "an amazing tank." It would be very hard to tank anything if you can be instantly killed by certain enemies in certain areas by spells that were never meant to do as such.

You mean like a weapon master dying to implosion or a Genasi dying o Word of Faith or your summon tank dying to Wail or your lower level tank dying to Finger of Death or etc....

If something will kill your undead form, you are a shifter. Turn into one of your 2 dozen other forms. LEarn to play your class and don't complain because a cleric enemy kills your undead form. Use another form.

I thought the entire idea was that a shifter is a Jack-of-all-trades, and if one form isn't working you change to another.

Edit: Ninja'd

you dont get it, the point is heal and massheal are not ment to one shot undead. they have other spells for that.

No, I get it. And I'm telling you I knew what I was doing. Use a different form.

The Risen Lord shape is great. There's a reason I've been using it ever since I got it.

Stone Bones doesn't seem to work though. I think the shapes already get a Nat. AC?

It's a known bug atm, yeah,

Pff, what's the difference between 1d4 and zero health?

I was asking 'bout the buff thingo because that - I think - would solve the issue of weapon bonuses not showing up on an unarmed shape.

They show up already. The character sheet lies. It's there.

I mean on the character sheet. Statistics are fuuuun!

There's one thing I know about shifters in general, and that's that you should use different form in different places, if you want to be successful. Therefore, like Tormak said, if you are getting pwned in one form, chose one of 18 others.

on the other side, the problem becomes bigger when you involve ring of nine lives in PvP. It is avalible to anyone, and means that becouse of this issue and existance of such ring, autowin is not granted only to clerics and druids with heal spells, but to anyone who now knows this and will buy such ring, using it for this occasion. This completly shuts down usage of undead form in PvP.

*coughs* On that sidenote, haven't seen any undead yet that takes extra damage from Divine damage.

No undead takes extra damage from the Divine Damage from might. Its counted as other damage so it stacks with Divine Damage on weapons etc. Not sure about the other spells.

Heal doesn't one shot an undead shifter. I watched it cast on Morf and it dropped him to Near Death, presumably the 1d4 hp.

DerkDerkistan wrote:

Heal doesn't one shot an undead shifter. I watched it cast on Morf and it dropped him to Near Death, presumably the 1d4 hp.

Cory, post the battle log to prove that you've been one shotted.

corypx wrote:

If the creature successfully saves, harm deals half this amount, but it cannot reduce the target’s hit points to less than 1.

I noticed the heal thing as well, and even with the danger of heal I never seem to have another form to shift into that gives me a good chance of surving the harder areas in groups at this point, and trust me I really want to use my other forms too, but with a 35 ac max and no epic damage reduction I get ripped apart.

I finally found a group with a goo tank, was in the manor so I tried azure form, but as soon as 1 mob started hitting me I fell to quarter life pretty quick.

There are alot of forms though and I have not tried them all, I think since I just leveled I will bank my cash and see what the survivability is with each form.

I run a LARP so I know how it feels when the player base nick picks something my team spent months on so let me add

Awesome wicked job on all of the stuff. I really love how you group the mobs so that it is hard for 1 build type to destroy them all solo, and the shifter changes are very very good and appreciated.

It seems that Kobold form is automatically bangin' with nothing more than mage armor and an empowered cat's grace with concealment.

AC wise, anyways.

EDIT: And Haste.

EDITEDIT: Heal does one shot on a failed save right now. It reduces them to 1d4 hp, and then they take an additional amount form vulnerability, which kills them. Either way, two heals at the most will blow an Undead shifter too smithereens. On a save, it's 50% hp, plus whatever the vulnerability is at right now, which could very well drop someone too near death even on a save.

Drannok wrote:

EDITEDIT: Heal does one shot on a failed save right now. It reduces them to 1d4 hp, and then they take an additional amount form vulnerability, which kills them. Either way, two heals at the most will blow an Undead shifter too smithereens. On a save, it's 50% hp, plus whatever the vulnerability is at right now, which could very well drop someone too near death even on a save.

yeah and I assumed the not being able to chug heal pots was the major downfall that balanced out undead form, seeing how when people made threads to nerf heal pots to make druid,clerics and the skill heal more usefull or PVP not a battle of who dev crits first

monsters on amia were built with fact you will have like 100 heal pots on you to chug, its also why most DM events monster have to be golems or undead to be immune to dev crit and DM slay people who chug to many pots.

I still think "use another form" applies here.

I believe undead and construct shapeshifting is absolutely ridiculous in the first place, but that's neither here nor there.

I also think the healing vulnerability is needlessly harsh, however, given the Vampire forms spell-like abilities, I can see some extreme shenanagins there as well, so it balances out in a sense.

In my little bit of testing, there is a HUGE difference between undead forms and the other forms that you need to be higher level for or need wisdom for.

I mean I can walk around in risen lord shape and take 0 damage from everything or at least the damage I do take cant outpace my regen.

If I choose any other form I need to chug a heal potion wihtin about 15 seconds.

I might not be clear enough on the difference

I walked over to the ice giants in riden lord shape. I walked into a pile of 8 of them and took 0 damage and attacked them until 1 was left. I then began shifting into other forms. Each form had about the same AB, about the same AC but without the undead immunities required a heal potion after about 15 seconds against 1.

My thought is, the other epic forms should be able to hold its own against 1 ice gaint at level 26. I dont need crit immunity, but some higher AC/AB in the other epic warrior forms would be awesome.

Then again it might be an equipment problem. Assuming plus 5 is the max on this server then I could get a potential 11 more soak which would put my epic drider to 50 AC which is not too bad actually.

Being new to this server though I am still getting a feel for everything.

I was hunting the Abyss as Risen Lord today and there were no problems at all. You get a 1-2 second warning window to move the hell away when a witch is going to cast mass heal (which she does never on you anyway, only on herself).

I should add that risen lord on the other server I played takes 0 damage as well, but after level 23 could not hit ANYTHING, and considering here on Amia I can still hit things in the Abyss I am pretty happy with risen lord, specter, and vamp. My thing is I want to feel situationally cool in other forms as well.

tearin4242 wrote:

My thought is, the other epic forms should be able to hold its own against 1 ice gaint at level 26. I dont need crit immunity, but some higher AC/AB in the other epic warrior forms would be awesome.

Then again it might be an equipment problem. Assuming plus 5 is the max on this server then I could get a potential 11 more soak which would put my epic drider to 50 AC which is not too bad actually.

Being new to this server though I am still getting a feel for everything.

chances are its not a equipment problem or crit immunity, its just Garg,Risenlord and Stonegolem are DR based forms so thier crap AC wont matter, but all the other forms are AC based and still their AC is not far off from the DR based forms, tumble class for a dump at last level helps, will give you near 1/4th of your AC

I cant I went barbarian already as I wanted the extra AB, faster movement, taunt, and no flat footed penalty to AC.

In the end I am going to loose 3 ac from not getting full tumble which should not break me as it seems some forms need about 10ac more than they have or increased damage resistance of somekind.

Maybe 1 form is piercing, another edge, and a 3rd bludgening??

Dramatic_Prince wrote:

DerkDerkistan wrote:

Heal doesn't one shot an undead shifter. I watched it cast on Morf and it dropped him to Near Death, presumably the 1d4 hp.

Cory, post the battle log to prove that you've been one shotted.

corypx wrote:

If the creature successfully saves, harm deals half this amount, but it cannot reduce the target’s hit points to less than 1.

I don't really care if he got one shotted. IT's not changing.

If Enemy: Cast Heal, Then You: NOT UNDEAD FORM.

Ok I did some more testing and changing my stance abit if I came off to harsh

First: I might have found a bug. The bonus echantment ac to armor does not merge on any shape, though strangely enough base AC from shields do. If this is as intended cool, but wanted to make sure you knew.

Risen Lord: ac 35--great tank and can dish it out some too we all know this

Gargoyal AC 40 has GREAT tanking ability I was getting hurt by the cold damage not their weapons so that is cool. Cant hit the broad side of a barn which is fine.

Basilisk AC 40was curious and cant really tank, but that is fine as I see it as a support character.

Drider AC 42 got beat up a bit against the warrior but did all right against the storm caller. Plus this guy can knockdown giants which is neat

Mino: AC40 this guy has a bit more damage resistance and with added gear he did all right as well. Infact I had a guy run past me while I was writing this up. I ended up killing 5 giants 1 at a time without a heal. He could not get past the storm callers magic so I switched to drider. His damage output though I felt was better than the risen lord as things went down pretty fast. I thought the damage I was taking was comparable to what I have seen other characters take.

edit: I forgot to include Azure. This guy has 37 AC and I thought performed aboutt he same as the mino, well perhaps marginally better as the Azure was able to take out the storm caller. Currently I would have to say my only dissapointment is probably the Azure though it was hinted that the AC is probably not where it should be.

In the end I think I just need to test more. I still feel AC might be a "tad" low on some of the shapes, but at the same time you have to account to a tumble dump. If the armor enchantment thing is truely broken then I could be looking at the 5 ac I really need.

Thanks!

Hellwenches in the Abyss do mass heal, and all the shifters in risen lord i have seen always get reduced to 1d4 HP by Mass Heal

Perhaps, just guessing but Corypx is taking extra damage due to divine vulnerability from an item?

TormakSaber wrote:

I don't really care if he got one shotted. IT's not changing.

If Enemy: Cast Heal, Then You: NOT UNDEAD FORM.

Please suggest which form you would use in that situation which would give you the survivability needed. While I agree with your general sentiment, that shifters should adapt forms depending on what they encounter, I find your argument to be invalid on the basis that there is no other form which offers even a fraction of Risen Lord's survivability while still remaining somewhat useful.

The other supposed "DR" shape stone golem for instance, while it offers similar immunities and native resists has several serious problems.

First off, it takes a massive hit in it's vulnerability to an extremely common damage types on the server, severe equipment restrictions having only the most basic merges and an extreme lack of offensive power, to the point of it being simply unable to hit any epic spawn with an AB topping out at low 30s and for little damage when you connect.

Risen lord suffers under a low ab as well, (though not quite as bad) but your damage output is slightly made up for with the occasional nice crit. Risen lord lost it's +5 enchantment, gained a vulnerability to bludgeoning, but gained a little more damage output and overall toughness, a fair and balanced change overall I'd say. I'd even say the issue of heal one-shotting undead shapes would be acceptable if there was an even remotely comparable shape to use instead.

Although in the context of PvP, it's pretty clear that as it stands, undead shapes are completely invalidated by the positive energy vulnerability, given the ability of any PC to spam mass heal, severely hurting the undead shifter, while fully healing themselves, with a ring that is equipable by basically anyone and drops in infinite supply.

I'd argue that the best way to address this would be restrict the prevalence of mass heal rings, leave the positive energy vulnerability, and enhance other forms to act as viable alternatives.

Warning, much shifter balance feedback below, if you're not a Dev, you probably won't care. (Or maybe even if you are one, lol)

On another note,

Having finally gotten a shifter almost to level cap, I'd really like to take a chance to discuss the various shapes and how well I feel they are currently balanced, overall I like the majority of the changes, but I feel they could still use a few refinements, particularly in terms of cost/benefit.

Wyrmling: Good stuff overall, the shapes have appropriate power for their level, and have some nice diversity in their abilities. On the other hand, I don't know if you've fully achieved your goal of pushing people away from using exclusively red wyrmling and spamming his breath attack, it's still by far the most useful of all the abilities.

In fact, the majority of the early shapes are overshadowed by the AoE damage output of the red wyrmling, although this is nicely balanced by the wyrmling's breath attack only working at the fullest potential when you have party members to draw aggro.

I haven't played around with the epic versions enough to say for certain, but I suspect the situation is much the same.

Manticore form could use some help, while it does indeed fill the role of a long-range attacker, it's damage is anemic and it keels over if you so much as look funny at it. It could really use a little sneak attack damage, to help supplement its limited damage output, while remaining a party support shape. Oh, and giving it another nifty spell or ability might be nice too, maybe spike growth to support its role as a long-range attacker, fits with the flavor too.

Minotaur, Gargoyle, Harpy, Drider, Basilisk, Kobold and Drow all perform their roles decently well, although about the time you get humanoid shape, you really start to notice that your AC is falling behind what's needed of melee characters. This is especially pronounced with the drow shape, with your meager hp pool, and since you neither have the kobold's hiding, nor the spawn disabling ability of the lizard.

And speaking of the lizard man, he's good, really good, maybe almost too good. Hammer of the gods is not a bad spell under normal circumstances, but having an infinite number to spam can really make some areas trivially easy to hunt with a party. But at the same time, perhaps that's fair, since you have little to offer a party beyond spamming fire breath until epics.

Since I didn't get any epic shapes until level 24, the lizard man really saved me from being a party leech.

Mindflayer and Medusa do what their supposed to, the medusa form could use maybe a little more damage output and damage reduction. I could see it maybe playing the role of a tough, ranged archer, whereas the manitcore is the sneak attack damage archer.

Dire tiger is pretty cool, I love its blinding speed ability, just for the sake of traveling, and it would really benefit from getting a full range of item merges. As it stands if you use it in pre-epic areas, it's fairly good, if you don't, meh.

Haven't got the epic version of any of the greater wildshape IV shapes, since I wanted to preserve some semblance of a decent base attack and get 4 per round. Getting 19 shifter levels requires having a base attack of 15 or worse, (usually worse).

Now for the epic feat shapes, I will be comparing only undead, outsider and construct. Why am I not talking about dragon shape? Simple, because any PC that plans on getting dragon shape has to focus their entire build around getting the necessary wisdom, but most importantly, you don't even need to take the shifter class to get dragon shape.

There is basically no situation in which a dragon-shaper benefits by taking shifter levels. In terms of melee fighting, going with just druid gives you more base attack and much better multi-classing options, you get druid buffs with nice durations and your spell casting is far more potent and versatile than any shifter. Plus you can even get a burly epic summon to boot.

So, as far as a PC who is focused on being a shifter is concerned, the pinnacle of your unique ability's power lies in the epic shifter forms. Sadly however, your power pretty much peaks with undead shape, despite it being by far the most accessible set of epic shapes.

Risen lord: As I talked about above, it's really quite a decently balanced shape, it tanks really well against the majority of stuff you'll come up against, while dealing a fair amount of damage, with the occasional nice 4x crit. But there are plenty of circumstances in which you'll want to find other shapes, against anything that can deal bludgeoning, or really huge amounts of damage per hit and obviously against anything tailored to kill undead. Overall, quite well balanced, kudos.

Vampire: A bit less obvious in its role. Doesn't have enough ac to really tank anything for long, and unless you've got monk levels, its damage output doesn't really match the risen lord or the specter. But despite that, I'd say it's not all so bad. The domination gaze and harm is nice, but where the vamp really shines is when you can find other shifter buddies to team up with to form your own little mini coven. Being able to drop harms on each other while dealing decent damage makes the vampire a blast to play with other shifters!

Specter: Nice, very nice. I'd say it's pretty much perfectly balanced. Lost immunity to knockdown, but gained hips, sneaks and improved invisibility. Only merges the basic items, but has so much going for it, it's only fair. Oh and odds are it'll have the best AC out of all of your shapes!

Azer: Does everything it says on the box. Hits hard (well for a shifter anyways), has a +5 weapon! (hats off for giving the outsiders this nice perk!) and is beefy as heck. A couple of points of concern though, first, and this is a problem that faces any shifter using melee forms, the ab is a little lacking. Some forms have other things to offset that, risen lord tanks super hard and can land nice crits, kobold and specter can use hips to mitigate damage and catch some enemies flat-footed.

Azer doesn't have these tricks, and thus you're reduced to chugging heal potions like crazy, since you won't be dropping enemies nearly as fast as a barbarian or even a goob with 30 levels of fighter. Any strategy that depends on heal potion spamming is stupid, and hopefully heal potions will get nerf-batted soon.

Another issue with Azer form is your lack of AC, I'm looking at around low 40s, high 30s AC with good gear and buffs. Now with a huge pile of hp, low ac might not seem so bad, but you're going to get eaten up by critical hits and being hit a billion times a round by that horde of epic baddies that you're supposed to be "tanking" for the group.

So, Azer could use two things, a touch more AC, to keep it out of the complete pwn zone of crits, and a decently better ab. (shoot for mid to high 40s I'd say) The damage output could stay about the same, (save that for true barbarians and weapon masters) but you're not filling any role if you can't hit epic monsters reliably.

Rakassha: Pretty cool, SoV is a neat spell, and is surprisingly less broken spammed against epic spawns than you might think. Flame strike is kinda meh as a third spell, but it does round out your damage types. Delayed blast fireball would be a much cooler spell instead, and would lend itself to some neat tactical applications.

Death Slaad: Well, I guess I don't know what do with this guy either. Umm, maybe he could be a nice party support character? In any case, he could use some more AC, perhaps a new spell ability. I'd say Finger of Death or Weird would fit the flavor well, though the dev team might have ruled out any save vs. death for shifter abilities. Though I'd argue that finger of death, being single target, and weird requiring two saves keeps it decently balanced. As the Slaad stands right now, he doesn't really have a role and dies pretty quick to most mobs by the time you get him.

Iron Golem: I was really looking forward to getting this shape, even so far as to get improved critical greatsword, with the intent on it being my primary melee combat shape. So, I'll admit I was really disappointed when I finally got construct shape. But lets address the good points first before delving in the bad ones.

Of course all constructs have a nice range of immunities, this makes it actually viable to run around in some areas without needing a high-level caster to buff you. With iron golem you get a decent amount of hp, which fits the role of melee attacker, your sword is fairly decent, and I think it being +4 is appropriate, considering the other advantages of the form. You hit reasonably hard and have the best AB of any shifted form.

Now, for the downsides. When I say the best AB of any shifted form, keep in mind that this means that at absolute max, with a build totally focused on greatswords and fully buffed, you're talking about mid 40s. Which, especially when you consider the impossibility of having dev crit and the inviability of weapon master, makes you pretty poor for what is supposed to be the ultimate melee shape for shifters.

At the very least you should be able to hit something, like I said before, go to the true fighters and barbarians for damage output, but anything that is supposed to play the melee role should have a solid AB. (Fully buffed you ought to hit 50s, in normal circumstances, mid to high 40s).

This wouldn't be so bad by itself if it wasn't for another big issue, your lack of AC. Now ok, I'm guessing the balance discussion for AC went something like this:

"Well, the iron golem is going to be the offensive form of the construct shapes, so that means it won't have DR nor any important damage immunities. Plus it has these really nice immunities, I mean, it's immune to crits! So I don't think it's really going to need any AC, after all, you can just use heal potions, unlike undead shapes."

Now I agree with many of the points of this argument. Yes, save the big DR and physical immunities for stone golem. A little bit wouldn't hurt, since you're going to be mixing it up in melee, but that's up for debate. What is far more certain is that having a really, really low AC for a melee fighter that can't resist damage either makes it almost impossible to survive fighting any epic mobs.

Why you might ask? Well because any even half-decent melee attacker is going to do at least 20 or 30 damage a hit baseline, even some the "sneak attacker" creatures in epics can do this without sneak attack damage. But more importantly, they are going to be attacking at least 4 times a round. When your AC is in the low to mid 30s, like the iron golem, even with good equipment, you're going to get hammered. Each guy you're supposed to be tanking is going to do about 100 damage a round and you've got, at the most about 500 hp. That means if you're taking on only 2 guys at once, you're downing a heal potion every 2 rounds, that is asinine.

Any strategy that relies that heavily on heal potions is rotten, and should be minimized. Now I'm aware that the current balance of construct shapes is based around their ability to use heal potions, but heal potions in their current state are broken for many different builds, why else would dev crit be considered nearly essential? The matter of heal potions being unbalanced should be handled separately. Preemptively nerfing all the construct shapes because heal potions are currently broken doesn't make sense, nerf the source of the problem.

Other thoughts on the iron golem, the special abilities are pretty marginal, which, in all fairness makes sense, your primary role is to hit stuff with that huge electric sword. The chain lightning ability seems to be broken at the moment though, I think it's just using your druid levels as the spell caster level, since I've never seen it hit for more than mid 20s for damage.

Stone Golem: Well he's your super-tank. Basically conceived as a counter-part to the risen lord, with increased immunity to bludgeoning and slashing and weak to piercing. But sadly in practice, he's quite a bit less useful than risen lord. For a shape that requires 27 wisdom and being at least level 26, it's unfortunate that he is outmatched by old boney in almost every way.

The first and biggest issue is the disparity between having a vulnerability to piercing, versus bludgeoning. Now I fully appreciate the reasoning in giving each of these shapes a weakness to some kind of physical damage, in addition to balance, it makes a flavor kind of sense too, although a giant stone hulk-hogan being weak to arrows is a little harder to rationalize. But in practice, while a weakness to bludgeoning is something it is occasionally problematic and requires you to work around it when encountered, piercing damage is extremely common, and it can, and will tear you a new stony arsehole. This means that almost any area you could hope to do some hunting the stone golem is a liability instead of a tank for the party.

The second issue is the extreme disparity in damage output between the risen lord and the stone golem. Now, the risen lord by no means is a damage machine, but it makes sense to compare them as the two tanking forms and the stone golem certainly got the short end of the stick. Its AB is quite bad, actually I'm fairly certain it has the worst AB of any melee-oriented shape post epics.

Now obviously it's supposed to be the tank in a group, but I don't know if you've noticed, but when the enemy AI realizes that the giant rocky guy is flailing at them repeatedly and never connecting and the little guy with two daggers is tearing them apart it's going to switch targets to the runt. The AI on Amia is smart enough to do that, I've seen it before, so it means that if your tank isn't at least hitting for meager damage, it isn't doing its job at all. Moreover, your damage is so anemic that its actually lower than before the shifter change and unlike the risen lord, you don't have the occasional big crit to help you out. The problem is further amplified by a lack of stat-boosting equipment and other utility equipment due to limited item merging.

Suggestions: Give stone golem full equipment merges, drop the piercing vulnerability, I'd consider changing up the style of the immunity bonuses, maybe try going to 25% for all physical damage types, with a spot more of DR, that would make it more unique, instead of just being a counterpart for the risen lord, and more like a counterpart of the demonflesh golem. The stone golem really needs a little more offensive ability, he doesn't have to match the risen lord's damage output, but he should at least be able to contribute something.

Demonflesh Golem: This guy is Tormak's favorite, and for good reason. He's well designed and executed. His abilities are all nice and relevant to his purpose, dealing with those pesky mages. The only thing that's lacking a bit is his damage output, which makes it hard to actually kill casters, though he can annoy the crap outta them with unlimited breaches and mantles. I'd suggest just giving the demonflesh golem a full equipment merge to give it the little stat bonus push it needs to deal a little more damage. The full range of item slots will also let you equip the elemental resists you'll need to tackle whatever those finger-wigglers are going to throw at you.

So those are my thoughts on the changes, sorry I got so long-winded and if you made it to this point, thanks so much for reading, please give me your feedback, even if it's just to point out a stupid grammatical error. (Of which I'm sure there are at least a few.)

Re your posts:

Wyrmlings: The breaths are actually broken and will be fixed.

Manticore: I am unsure how the damage is anemic. If you're comapring it to an AA, yes, it will be, but it's not meant to be directly be competing with AA's. You simply can't so I didn't try and that's not the point anyways. It should be doing longbow damage with infinite +3 arrows and mighty as well, so it shouldn't be terrible.

A Bunch Of Forms: I suspect there are problems currently with the AC merging. specifically shield AC, which means that the Drow, Azer, and Lizardman are losing a LOT of AC. Again, Terra has been alerted.

Spectre: It had KD immunity? Hrm... it could get that back. i didn't know it had it.

Re: Azer specifically: It is supposed to be acting as if it holds a +5 Tower Shield. And that's apparently not merging. So you've lost +8 AC there. Your AB requests are unrealistic because a shifter is decent at all but master of non, and migh igh 40's is what you average dedicated meleer can expect to be doing, so.

Rakshasa's spells are chosen specifically for a reason I won't elaborate. But it's there. It's a good reason.

The Slaad is supposed to be a dexy regen tank with some interesting slaad abilties and a lot of elemental resists. As I recall I also gave him a Confusion Howl ability whoch should be fun to spam?

Golem: Mid40's is good. This is what dedicated rogues are doing. If you want WM melee, you need to roll a weaponmaster.

Quote:

(Fully buffed you ought to hit 50s, in normal circumstances, mid to high 40s).

Absolutely not. This is what a WM hits. You are not a WM, you are a shifter, you're the melee if you can't find the melee. If that's not the role you're willing to accept, don't roll a shifter. The forms are purposefully not as good as the real thing, because you can access all of them at a moment's notice. The golems were not balanced around Heal potions. Looking at my spreadsheet, the Iron Golem has 10/+5 DR, and that's before you add in any damage resistance items from the shifter's equipment. That's a permanent stoneskin, and not to be scoffed at. Re: Stone Golem's piercing weakness, it is a bit of a stretch, yes, but it is taken from the idea that if you're going to jam past a rock, it's not going to be with a hammer or a blade, it's going to be with a drill. Or a crossbow bolt. Or etc. Concentrated piercing force. That's why crossbows were so effective against mounted knights. I also suspect the Stone Golem does not currently have the correct creature weapon and this may also be causing issues, but you do also get your hel weapon in form (you get it in every form), so.

Thank you for the feedback. I will take the liberty of copy pasing this entire post (and my reply) directly to the testers and scripters.

Last edited by xordae on Tue, Jun 08 2010, 9:41 AM, edited 1 time in total.

No problems encountered with shield AC merging at all. Every shape I've tried so far adds base AC and bonus AC for the shield I'm using. Just tried it on the Epic Drow, Azer and Epic Lizard. If they're meant to have extra AC for the shield on top of that then yeah, that's not there.

Deleted my second point. As AC has seen some improvement over the levels.

Last edited by tearin4242 on Tue, Jun 08 2010, 6:35 AM, edited 1 time in total.

If you fix the AC on the forms that are suppsoe to have more AC that will go a long way.

Quote:

10/+5 DR, and that's before you add in any damage resistance

Damage resistance and Damage reduction do not stack though so it is not a compound effect unless amia has something different going on.

Oh and I think the reason we keep thinking something isnt right is when we compare shapes to risen lord which is a level 21 feat with no wisdom requirement. I just spent all night in a party with 4 shifters and 1 cleric/DD all had undead form, 1 had outsider, and 2 had golems. We were in the Abyss and the shapes choosen were 2 risen lords and 2 vamps or sometimes 3 risen lords and 1 vamp. I personally, when it was just 2 shifters and some warriors tried out EVERY shape I had, but the party got wiped while I was playing so I shifted into risen lord, cleared the rest of the spawns, raised everyone, and we all moved on.

Beholder cave: 2 risen lords 1 stone golem and 1 epic wip master to haste spam natures balance which heals risen lord. Honestly this was a novelty as the risen lord could run around with impunity the heals were for the DD, the stone golem that hid in the back as he was getting ripped apart, and the wip master who healed and hit something now and again. The Dwarven DD the piller of admantium, doesnt hold a candle to risen lord, but that was brought up in another topic. Oh and Demon Flesh golem..great to have when fighting the boss mob.

When I hit 21 I would litterally run around grab a bunch of mobs then go drink coffee come back when the mobs were dead. I never had to worry about anything until you fixed the healing spell thing that woke me up, and was a good change.

Damage resistance and damage reduction do stack.

tearin4242 wrote:

the stone golem that hid in the back as he was getting ripped apart

Actually, I just did that because I was too big and getting in the way. They only dealt a bit more damage than they would have if I was a risen lord.
The iron golem is what gets ripped apart.

The Slaad I have tried to use several times but can not seem to find a place where it really fits well.

Chaos spittle, is a rather average ability.
Confusion Howl, I have not really used that ability much so I can not say too much about it.
Summoning other Slaads, due to the level of the summoned creatures they do not seem capable of doing much in the high level areas.

TormakSaber wrote:

The summon is intended to be weak. It's flavor.

yeah if I had a junky summon fodder, I would IC use it to set off traps and do scouting or place it like a walking alarm, I think I did that for a DM event once.

yeah but I want something that will keep enemies busy for abit longer while I flee =(

Chaos spittle isn't all that bad, it's useful on things that are resistant to damage/have a really high flat-footed AC. Confusion howl, on the other hand, like many other Shifter spells, has far too low a DC to be effective...

Yes the DC on alot of the abilities does tend to be rather low, your only hope is to use it on lower level enemies or hope that whatever you are trying to hit with it rolls a one for it's save.

DCs are specifically lower because they are infinite use. When they were higher they were broken.

Yep. Spamming of abilities is something that was taken into account. As in, it's not illegal, and probably a good idea. If a WM can whack away until whatever he's hitting rolls a 1 vs. dev crit, then you can spam an ability until X critter rolls a 1 too.

A Shifter is never late.

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