Abuerean Irregular-21 Finally...sorry...

"It's been along time", thought Grasp as she viewed the riseing fortress that was Kehan. The never present residence had made great strides in bringing the former glory back to the damaged structures. She hefted her flail and erected the Defenders shield wall. It would be all the protection aside from her armor and shield she would need. A group of Drudges had claimed the town for their own and with similar strife occurring across the three continents the cries from Kehan had fallen on deaf ears, until now.

No pity for these creatures, after the fall of Cragstone what human could do naught but wish a pile of Drudge bodies was only higher?

Game Rant - Why hit points??
Once upon a time there was an argument among the paper and dice RPG players. It had to do with realism vs. playability. The entire concept of Hit Points was developed as an easy method to track loss of life and victory among players and creatures alike. The idea is that if you hit something enough it will die. If you stop short of hitting it, even by one point, the injured party in question is still totally able to function in all ways.

At one point a gaming company called 'Leading Edge Games' arrived on the scene. They had a combat system that had no hit points. Instead it was based on hit location and factored in the weapon being used, defense being used and the attacker and defenders ability.

I wish I could recall word for word the writing on the back of their Phoenix Command game. It was placed so the potential customer would flip it over to read the back through the shrink wrapping prior to purchase. Paraphrased it said "In your current RPG game, pull out a small hand gun, place it to your temple and begin pulling the trigger. Do this until you fall unconscious or run out of bullets. Then have a buddy slap a bandage on it and you're good to go. In Phoenix Command you will have two results, death or being fed by a straw because you're a vegetable"

Currently, I'm looking at all the online games and they all have fallen into the hit point genre. I don't even hear a debate about it anymore. The main problem with Phoenix Command's combat system was the sheer amount of time a combat took. If you had a game master who knew his stuff he could make it move rather quickly. My buddy, Eric, could make a combat fly. Well, this isn't an issue with a computerized system. You would have to code a bit more, but still you would have a better combat system. AC2 has really shown that a game can be very sophisticated and yet intuitive in running.

It really boils down to this. Bob has 950 health, so he can be hit on the neck with a sword 5 times. Sally has a health of 450, so she can be hit on the neck three times. We all know in real life, there isn't anyone who can take a single blow to the neck by a sword.

Boredom:
As regular readers will know, my favorite character, Grasp, hit level 50. I jokingly stated that now I would be thrust into boredom. Little did I know that this would ring true, but not for the reasons you may think. Chat problems, pure and simple. If I log in at night, the first character I enter the world with will not be able to chat except for direct chat. My friends list will not work and while I can use the /v command, I can't hear any responses.

I have been running Fahrenheit, my alchemist, almost exclusively. He is level 35 now and at this age, finding a group to hunt on Linvak is my favorite pastime. I can take out Eli and Banderlings solo, but I like the group dynamics better. Getting into a mess with three large creatures coming in to attack a group and all of us surviving is quite a rush. The alchemist can do a lot of damage if teamed with another damage class or a tank. They can whittle down creatures fast. I am running a pure alchemist which means not having encase or a vigor heal. So far this hasn't been much of a problem. I can solo the moars quest and the dillo pet quest as long as I am careful. Being able to pull with a bow makes this possible.

Darkside is an interesting skill. I have seen it debated across the boards for quite some time now. The main argument is that as a missile class, when you fight creatures, you are in melee range and using your missile skills for attack and defense. This means you get hit a lot and it becomes a race to see who dies first. On the other hand, you're attacking a melee creature who has a low missile defense. You will be hitting more often and hard, so you have an edge on the battle. I know that right now the creatures all have great defenses and melee is the name of the game. Some of the proposed changes in the creatures will only benefit a Darkside player. I can see an alchemist being able to tank a missile creature and highly damage a melee. I guess we will see.

Apologist:
I am way late on this column; I don't think I have even looked at this one for three weeks now. I was laid off my job and while this did allow me to have a lot of game time I found myself going into game less and less, aside from the chat and auth issues, I have always used the games as a way to unwind after a good days' work. Without having work to go to, I find myself not in the frame of mind to play. So I apologize for the lateness of the column.

Changes:
I had started Grasp as a Ranger in Beta. I had a great time, so I continued on in that vein in Retail. Around level 35, I realized that the bow path left a lot to be desired. I followed in my patron Caerie's path and never looked back.

Being a Defender suited me well. It was a Paladin, combat and healing. I could take on big nasties, even if it took awhile. Well, my tried and true Defender went under the knife this month. I followed the discussions prior and went into it eyes wide open. No Vigor heals was a bitter pill. I logged in my re-set Defender and began looking over how to propagate my character. I used the skills calculator and slowly developed a battle plan. My goal was a lot of healing and the armor, ignoring attacks.

When I started propagating my skill sets in game, I found that it wasn't going as far as it should. This lead to another reset and then a discovery.

In all the notes Citan posted, Lay Hands gets 'fed' by Benevolent Leader (or benevolent patron in one write up) and Bring Peace. This means if you max those two skills out, Lay Hands will get an 11 'free' points, which in turn will pass an additional one point up to Righteous Fury. By my new design, I would take advantage of this and get 10 free points in Righteous Fury.

Due to an error someplace (Thanks QA) Benevolent Leader doesn't feed Lay Hands. Further, Turbine thinks this accident is better then the designed tree that Citan worked on all month. I sent a message to Keth and was told that it was going to stay this way. And the June change log has been updated to reflect this.

So I'm now several million xp in the hole and as a choice, the expulse RF section of the tree sucks too much xp making the Might Blow section the only viable option. So now it was back to the skills calculator.

How to set up your character... again...
You need an offline skills calculator. I would highly suggest Treeasy. http://arlo.pair.com/treeasy16.zip It has an auto-update feature and its all rolled into one exe bundle (always scan for viruses anything you're putting into your computer).

With a Calculator, make sure you're set up for the correct race and then bump your level up to 50. This is to give you a future path. Your focus is going to be based upon the character visions and your personal play style. In my case, Defender is a Tank so I put emphasis on healing and armor, bypassing damage. After you get your final path sketched out, copy the finished trees and paste them into a word processor and print it out. Now to plan your path, start a new session and put your character at your current level. Using your level 50 printout, raise up your skills, advance a couple of levels and update your character until you get to level 50. Pay careful attention to your use of experience. Sometimes there is a less expensive way to get to where you want too. A good skills calculator will let you know this.

My plan:
Okay, so after trying a dozen or so different itinerations and play testing two of them, I came upon two templates that I think will work for me.

The first one is a Hybrid and my choice for the Monday reset. Righteous Fury is no longer an option as its too expensive now for too little pay off. Mighty Blow will bypass armor and that's the name of the game now. Smash and Swipe are decent when using a decent shield with EoM on it.

So here is my level 50 defender hybrid Template:
________________________________

1 - Portal Recall
1 - Summon Portal
40 - Bulwark
50 - Benevolent Leader
50 - Bring Peace
50 - Defender Adept
40 - Ease Suffering
40 - Emblem of Might
30 - Flame Bolt
42 - Inner Calm
45 - Interpose
45 - Lay Hands
50 - Melee Grandmaster
50 - Melee Master
50 - Melee Paragon
50 - Mighty Blow
43 - Rushed Recovery
42 - Scourge
50 - Shield Wall
45 - Smash
45 - Swipe
________________________________
Man, I'm going to miss expulse..

Okay, my next Template is for a pure defender. This is because they state the hero class game will be better for Pure characters. My only problem will be in keeping Scourge at 41 until I figure out if I'll need to untrain all my magic skills to get pure. Ill probably put the xp for scourge into ease and rushed.

________________________________
Level 50

1 - Portal Recall
40 - Bulwark
45 - Bash
50 - Benevolent Leader
50 - Bring Peace
50 - Defender Adept
40 - Emblem of Might
43 - Expulse
45 - Interpose
45 - Lay Hands
50 - Melee Grandmaster
50 - Melee Master
50 - Melee Paragon
50 - Mighty Blow
41 - Scourge
50 - Shield Wall
45 - Smash
45 - Swipe
________________________________

So there you have it.

Rant time:
Well, those Game Designers at TurbineMS went for the Graphics end. It was too easy to level up to 50 and no interesting nooks and crannies. I think your map should have been blacked out until you explored an area.

Now we are enduring a massive re-write of the game with the payoff being a Hero level game for those above 50. Most of the time you can't chat and its more and more difficult to find a group of people to hunt with.

Well, they have good cause to swing the nerf bat and it's obvious that a goodly portion of this mess shouldn't be put out in front of the general public. I think there is one hell of a good lesson out there for future companies who want to enter the fast-growing MMORPG market. Don't put out a product that needs another years' worth of work.

Closing thought:
I keep thinking that if the game was released November 2003 (when it should have been IMHO), the vast majority of the complainers (me included) wouldn't be on about any of these issues.

-Eeriest Elk (new improved, now with Healing!)