Shattered Kingdoms

I have seen a ton of one shots, while suffering being one shotted, and out seems to me that it's very difficult to gather the needed saves to survive these attacks. Thoughts?

These concerns were brought up before the forum purge, but I don't recall seeing an official answer. When you factor in things like alignment, factions, RP and racial enmity the who list for the last few months just isn't up to snuff for doing any of the harder areas to get the better gear. It is like trying to raid on a low population server before cross server and flex raid groups. =)

I have actually located a lot of new gear in a new zone, which I can't really mention here. But I am going to assume it is similar to areas like the Iron Citadel and the Nightmare Temple, which are gated behind quests, keys or random spawns that are difficult in their own right before you even get to the point where you fight the encounters that have all the goodies and gear.

I have been to those places once, each time took four real life hours, I was with some of the most skilled players in the game, and we had charter items, I doubt anyone is going to gather the needed group to get those items.

That being said art is easy to come by, it had crossed my mind to tier art 1-6 1 stat point 7-10 2pt 11-12 3pt and 13-14 4 pt.

That our rework the save stack system

It is not just a question of difficulty, but also of design. The new design is a tier system, with the better gear in areas that are more difficult. It is similar to raiding on your favorite MMO, but with none of the safeguards that an MMO has to limit and/or reduce the time required to complete a raid or to recover after a wipe. This would have been interesting on SK a decade ago, it just seems cumbersome and artificially gates content today.

3 words

magic resistant barbarian

The ridiculousness of Mr is another topic. ;p

If it can be done now then kudos to the group that does it, but it doesn't help that some staff members have it out for the players that like to do that sort of thing.

It was also related to someone posting a log of them enchanting a weapon and Dulrik going off of the deep end because someone spent time getting a ridiculous amount of enchants on something.

I think it was supposed to address the imbalance of warriors versus casters, since warriors like the ranged weapon specialized mercenary had become really too good, and the massive weapon spec could drop someone in a single round.

The problem with spells in SK is that spells that do damage to hp are laughable. The general consensus amongst players is to completely ignore the reflex saving throw to stack massive willpower and fortitude. I can't blame them. Damage spells like magma spray can be shrugged off rather easily while spells like petrification, charm person, weaken, etc. come with completely debilitating penalties. It's practically suicide to go against a caster without a good chance that their most powerful spells, the ones that target willpower and fortitude, are going to be negated.

"Going off the deep end" sounds like a flame to me, especially if it's based on some third-hand story. The reality is that it became clear that bonuses which I believed were impossible to get via the system at that time were actually quite possible. The bug was located and fixed as part of the latest enchantment update.

The rest of your analysis is good. We already have plans for reflex save to make it more valuable.

I say going off the deep end because you tend to overdo it when making changes.

I didn't like the changes to necromancers, and I don't like these changes because they favor spells like petrification which cheapens the "tactics" portion of SK.

It's like when I started playing the game, people slung spells from weak scrolls and petrified left and right and summon killed because it was too much hassle to be inventive with tactics. That and warriors used 2-handed weapons because they could kill things faster with them. The landscape simply looks eerily familiar to when I first started playing back in 2001.

The saving throw itself is not the problem, so whatever change you are planning will likely be inadequate. The reflex save is quite good because it reduces damage versus reflex based spells by 50%, which is extremely powerful. The problem is the damage of reflex based spells or rather the damage per cast, since some reflex spells like acid blast are fast and others like magma spray allow you to run to the kitchen, make a sandwich, and get back to keys before it finishes. =)

Then of course there is the issue with the supposedly strongest reflex based spell, magma spray, only being able to cling one time so reflex becomes useless after you fail a saving throw. One of the many, many problems with magma spray. It is problematic enough to deserve its very own thread so I won't go into further analysis of why it is an awful spell.