Shattered Kingdoms

That's the problem with you, Edoras. You're perfectly fine with the following two statements.

1.) "No caster...should be killed by a melee character in a 1v1 situation."
2.) Melee characters may be killed by a caster character in a 1v1 situation.

That is imbalanced. It should be the same for both.

1.) Casters may be killed by a melee character in a 1v1 situation.
2.) Melee characters may be killed by a caster character in a 1v1 situation.

In this small scenario, that is balance.

I read all that but my main concern is this: Are you calling me Styles? If so, why?

Edoras, you have passed the point where you were at least entertaininlgy funny to read and laugh. Now you are a plain boring Moaning Myrtle.

Could I just write this off as it being his own fault for not being prepared enough to withstand a petrification?


I don't understand why this is relevant. Yes, these things have lag, but they can also be used to great effect while the undead army is handling damage output without being ordered.


I guess all of this business about etherealform (which started this entire discussion) doesn't apply? The ethereal necro will destroy the poor scout. Even without it, appropriate buffs make ranged damage no real threat. And to say necromancers have zero ranged damage is hilariously wrong. Do I need to remind you of their entire skillset besides "order all bash" for you to find ways for them to use ranged attacks?


How much damage is call lightning going to do to a buffed necromancer? Why would a necromancer group all of his controls with him? I wouldn't, but that's just me. What is the necromancer doing while the shaman is spamming call lightning? He's not doing something useful?

All of your examples rely on the necromancer being [REDACTED]. Both parties get to use tactics, here, not just the other guy.


No. I'd rather see some new logs with the new stuff in place. I don't care about Tarconus or anecdotes from yesteryear. The change happened. We must now see how well it works.


Why do people keep citing this ancient gnome example with no log so that we can see for ourselves how the necromancer so royally screwed up this encounter? The present day logs are more relevant. In the log you refer to, both parties did a lot wrong. The paladin was lucky to escape with 1% life. The only reason he kept getting away was because he was a Hammer guy with a scripted flight item. It had nothing to do with him being a paladin. At no point did he have any shot of victory. That is a consequence of his newbie tactics, and generally should be the consequence of poor tactics. To me, everything about this encounter seems fine. If the necromancer had tried harder, he would have bagged the kill.



I see you're still content to totally ignore PvE. I'm not. It was completely broken, and your hypothetical that Alaric could have beaten Surrit is pretty meaningless. My counter to that is, "no." I'm waiting for some new logs of barbarians taking on necromancers to see how it looks now.

All that said, I do appreciate that you are making an effort in this discussion to move towards game balance. We just obviously have different opinions. One aspect of my position is that necromancers should not be able to single-handedly steamroll two cabal guardians in 30 seconds. Another is that they should not be able to 2-round the toughest scout pets or barbarian PCs. I am in favor of longer, more tactical battles as opposed to over-the-top damage output 2-round killfests. I personally think that neo-necromancer PvP seems a lot more interesting than the old way. I think the enchantment changes have also made things more interesting.

I'll definitely concur on all of the points at the end of your post: necromancers should not dominate cabal guardians or properly buffed barbarians. I like longer battles too, and the fact that neither of those things happened pre-change are also neither here nor there.

However, if we're going to protract battles, then we're going to have to buff animates significantly. If battles should go longer than two rounds, undead shouldn't be vulnerable to mass annihilation in two rounds, which can be done by anyone who has access to scrolls.

Styles, you have never posted a single statement of fact, only conjecture. You remind me of that episode of South Park where Cartman takes over the school radio and turns it into the Glenn Beck program, asking a bunch of leading questions that have no answers.



Let me shine more light on my insight here then, because this is actually a really important concept that a lot of people miss.

There is a big difference between winning a single engagement and securing a kill on a PC.

A well-prepared and buffed melee character has a very high probability of winning a single engagement against a well-prepared and buffed caster, because no charm can come close to the survivability and damage output of a kit out PC warrior. Charms do not have enchanted armor, charms cannot spam quaff heal vials, and charms do not work autonomously, so if you want to keep someone prone, you have to spend your time ordering bashes, meaning that you're going to be spending 1/3 of the fight doing that. The only exception to this rule (That well-geared and buffed melee characters can easily win single engagements against casters) is necromancers, although a well-built melee character could still all but guarantee a win if he played his cards right (See: Pilnor v. Kythroghalas)

However, it is also true that there are not many ways in SK to guarantee a kill. Unless you can knock someone prone and keep them prone until they are dead, taunt someone, BoG someone, petrify someone, charm someone, or curse someone in dangerous territory, then you cannot truly guarantee a kill on them unless they screw up. For this reason, a melee character should not seek out 1v1 fights with casters without one of those mitigating circumstances, as most casters fighting against solo warriors have the opportunity to reach at least one of those conditions without running the risk of any of those conditions being true for themselves. A sorc can just cycle through charms while spam casting petrification and recalling as soon as the charm dies, for example, and even if the melee character wins 5 times in a row, he'll have never had the chance to land a kill. The flip side of this, however, is that NO ONE can "force" an engagement on neutral 1v1 territory. As such, there is no reason to complain about how melee characters cannot land a kill in neutral territory in 1v1 situations with casters: They should never happen in the first place. It would be just as fair to complain that sorcerers cannot land 1v1 neutral territory kills on melee characters because they keep running away instead of just sitting there and dying.

In a groupfight, the better enchanted and prepared everyone is, and the shorter the time in between successive engagements, the more powerful melee classes become. Over a long fight or over a serious of closely-connected smaller engagements, caster ME gets low, charm HP gets low, and charms/controls/elementals cannot quaff their own heal vials mid-combat, and they also don't avoid or deflect damage anywhere near as much as an end-game PC. Melee characters, however, can continously quaff heals and as long as they don't die, they deal constant, high damage. Casters do not deal damage passively, they have to recite scrolls, cast spells, or zap wands, and once their charms and front line weakens, they have to get out or die. A caster has to give up precious casting/reciting/zapping time in order to quaff heals. If a melee character quaffs heals, he still deals the same amount of passive damage.


I don't think that any of these things are bad. I think that they make good sense. Yes, it is true that in 1v1s in neutral territory that casters have the upper hand against melee characters: SO DON'T ENGAGE CASTERS 1V1 IN NEUTRAL TERRITORY. Yes, a necro can 1v1 engage a melee character in neutral territory and carry very little risk. SO DON'T ENGAGE NECROS 1V1 IN NEUTRAL TERRITORY AS MELEE CLASSES. You may call that unbalanced, I call that just plain old common sense. Take the exact same necro, let him add one more person, and then you add a paladin/lighty priest to your side, and you can turn the necro into a crappy version of a shaman before the first round of combat even begins. Complaining that you can't kill a necro 1v1 in neutral teritory as a melee character is like running your head into a brick wall and then saying that it's unfair that the wall hurt so badly.

tl;dr:
Edoras' game balance summary:

Casters are not very vulnerable against melee characters in 1v1s in neutral territory.
BUT Melee characters never have to engage casters in 1v1s in neutral territory.

Casters are very strong against unprepared, unbuffed, and poorly equipped PCs.
BUT Casters are weak against well-buffed, well-enchanted PCs.

The shorter a fight, and the less well-enchanted people involved, the more effective a caster is.
BUT the longer a fight and the more well-enchanted people involved, the more effective a melee character is.

I see balance here. No, it isn't cut and dry. No, not every class has an equal chance of killing every other class in neutral territory in a 1v1. Who cares? I've played on both sides, and I didn't go out looking to solo necros in Teron as Pilnor. Stop trying to define whether a class is imbalanced solely by whatever 1v1 matchup you can spin up and start thinking about the bigger picture.

You've failed to see the big picture for a week, over four threads, Edoras.

I actually just stopped reading his posts, majority of them are "If this and that", "worst case scenario" and "Holy Word this and that."

Let me know when he actually starts adding constructive material to the thread.

Some are. Some aren't. And there are ways to make them tougher. If you go one-on-one against a guy and let him get a string of holy words off against you, that's your own fault. There are definitely ways to prevent this from happening. If you're up against multiple opponents, well, too bad you can't super easily risk-free solo groups anymore with your overpowered class.

It is a fact that you have repeatedly cited an example of your gnome mercenary beating a necromancer 1 on 1 but that you have not provided a log for this encounter for us to look at. So, there's one factual statement that I have made. I won't bother reiterating the dozens of others.