Improved, Added or Changed?

[Calron]

I thought the same way as you until I actually tried it. It really takes very little saves to render sermon completely ineffective.

And, it doesn't always lag four rounds.

[Pali]

Saves only make it harder to land, by my knowledge... once it has landed, they shouldn't do anything.

EDIT: By the way, the reason good clerics aren't as potent as killers is because they are far more potent survivors.

[Jester]

My main complaint about Winter and other places is that they require a group (for most of us)' date=' which means you have to play for a long time at a stretch. In terms of having to work for it, I don't think 1.0 was particularly lazy, I just think eq was less of a factor because Winter and other gear didn't give such a large advantage.[/quote']

i think these places are very fun, i'd be sad to ever see them go.

[Tantangel]

I thought the same way as you until I actually tried it. It really takes very little saves to render sermon completely ineffective.

And, it doesn't always lag four rounds.

Yeah, well as a Healer vs. a Cleric where I had massive saves to every saves category, meaning Mals was -115 roughly, afflictive was -80 and Mental was -70 or so and that was usually after all saves vs spells were added in, yeah, it was harder for the Cleric to land it, and it also landed less, but what about Gnomes and such with mental vulns? No matter how many mental saves you seem to have as them it's a pain in the *** to get over it because it lands first try just about every time. Races who don't have the vuln but don't have any saves for mental it does the same thing but maybe will land on 2nd or 3rd try. Yeah, minister was save vs. breath at the time of my Healer granted, it still was God awful. I don't know how it's like now, but it used to be that massive mental saves and even decent mental saves weren't squat to smack it down, though I heard it lagging quite a bit less the more saves to mental you had after it landed, there's not a whole ton of mental saves out there really that are combined with other saves, and the items that are are never in anyways.

I say remove portal/minister and then we wouldn't have a class that lags on one end and survives way easier on the other.

[Ex-D&Der]

i think these places are very fun' date=' i'd be sad to ever see them go.[/quote']

I'm not proposing getting rid of them or changing them. See my first post.

As for gnomes and ogres, any complaints about the effect of minister on these two classes are moot.

[Pali]

Uh... all giants also have a mental vuln, you know.

That being said, the balance of power has always been communer > melee > mage > communer. It's when this balance is being upset that we should worry.

[Ex-D&Der]

Good point about giants.

As for balance, where do rogues fit into this schema? And I'm not sure about the mages > communers thing. Or melee > mage for that matter. You mean like a warrior has always had an advantage over a battlemage? Or a battlemage has always had an advantage over a cleric? There's nothing new about minister....

I thought it was more something like this:

mage > melee > rogue > communer

But perhaps there is some sort of rule or established principle that I'm not aware of, however.

[Aulian]

Hrm.. Its possible' date=' but it will be hard.[/quote']

Are you kidding me? Give me Ghirk and I could solo most of everything

[Pali]

Yeah, you may be right, Ex. Rogues probably fit in around there.

[Chayesh]

Yeah' date=' you may be right, Ex. Rogues probably fit in around there.[/quote']

Rogues fit in quite easily.

I have a whole shelf of them in the Underworld. They're amazingly stackable.

[Kyzarius]

My problem with sermon is its, as stated before, ability to completly halt anyone. In a game where lagging someone can truly be the key to winning battles a skill that once landed automatically lags for four rounds upsets many things. Shorten the length of the lag and you can tune the effective influence of the power. Two rounds would still be quite potent, heck, I have died on characters because I used attack spells that lagged two rounds instead of one. Four though? its insane. Another possibility would be to require upkeep from the cleric each round as it hits. Or have it land for 1 tics, but only have one round lag and make the cleric stack the lag up on it...like death grasp/phantom grasp/rust. So you have a power that once landed has minimal effect...if the cleric wants to make it shut someone down they have to invest the rounds to do it.

1 success = 1 round lag, 1 hour (dont forget the 0 hour)

2 success = 2 round lag, add another hour

3 success = 3 round lag, add another hour

4 success = 4 round lag, add another hour

5th attempt? "That persons head already swims with your demonic voices"

So in the end you could have in the span of one tic an effect that lasts 4 full tics (counting the zero hour) and still lags the four hours.

Now you would have something that is inline with other battle deciding skills like powerword, a cleric could still get you "sermoned up" in less than one hour. Though much more effort, much more time and much more opportunity for the prey to resist/escape is present.

Just a thought since everyone is being constructive.

[Calron]

Its obvious that you haven't actually played an evil cleric recently (or at all, dunno). Again, I thought the same thing as you before I rolled a cleric. If you search through my posts, you'll probably find me making the exact same argument as you.

Sermon is pretty inconsistent in terms of landing. Even against someone without saves or magic resistance you can fail many times before it lands. Also, with the saves from 3 or so select pieces of equipment you can almost negate the chance of sermon landing. Even if it does eventually land, if you haven't destroyed the cleric by this time, than sermon isn't your problem.

Even assuming hypothetically that sermon lands consistently, the lag from sermon shouldn't be a problem unless you put yourself in a bad position. It takes a cleric almost a tick to heal themselves up from 1/4 health, than add in the chance of one of their million spells dropping on the tick to further delay them. Compare that to the three or four rounds it takes to get them to 1/4 health if you are properly equipped. You are still outputing damage while you are lagged, all you lose is the use of a couple skills. The only time the lag is really essential is when sanctuary is falling, so just make sure you beat up the cleric before the tick, or else make sure you run a fair distance away.