Minister

Minister lag and steel wall was added at the same time. I'm pretty sure frm my memory the few evil cleric in 1.0 did not have lag.

What?! lmao steel wall came like late late late 2.0 or early 3.0, cant remember. But minister lagged WAY before then.

And early 2.0 I remember chasing a cleric around while ministered. It was definitely a different experience to what minister does to me now. If there was lag then, if at all, it was way shorter. But I don't have logs to back up my arguement so I will not continue to argue this anymore.

I seem to remember the lag from minister being much less than it is now, as well.

It's been buffed up before, yes. But the lag has always existed

Perhaps simply removing the buff, then. Clerics are buffed enough as it is with the introduction of DI, and steel wall.

Remove it entirely and give them portal.

Well the idea of the skill is great. The RP purposes are great as well.

It definitely lagged. I can't think of any reason why the lag should have been lengthened, so perhaps that should be looked at. I do remember getting ministered by Trigomonis, however, and I don't remember the lag being any shorter.

My opinion is that it just shouldn't land so darn easily. And as an ogre anything its seems a little unfair but i'm not sure a solution can be found for them. I think clerics are a very strong class I really respect them, and can fight you with melee, aff, men, and mal. So you must be strong in each area which is quite an advantage, maybe turn it into a spell similar to deteriorate where if an oponent has too many saves this would be their option to open them up. This might solve the problem with shamans now. By buffing up deteriorate and phantom grasp.

I agree with Iorvin (sry for the spelling).

Evil clerics are simply too easy to play. Not only are they for most classes unlagable, they dont need to worry about weapon disarm, they got spellturning+recall, but minister is simply too powerful.

As a decent equipped warrior you have simply no choice but to flee the second minister gets landed (which will be on the second or third commune at max). Minister will last around 8-9 hours and it will lag for 4 rounds. That is insane.

Any class that has just about ZERO trouble being a pk menace while they have ONE piece of eq (shield) should be toned. But that's just my opinion.

Also a good way to know wether a class maybe is a bit too much is by counting the number of pins - evil clerics must have the record there.

I was also thinking of instead of the extreme 'removing' minister, why not branch off of it. I don't know how everyone views a priest, but to me a priest is the epitome of their religion. They stand for everything that religion is. Why not use minister as a spell needed to cast more spells. What I mean is, why not make minister a completely useless spell thats only purpose is to allow the cleric to grant the plagues of his god. So once you have your sermon echoeing through their mind, and their soul in fear, you are able to use a certain prayer(s) that could do a number of things. The prayers a cleric gets could either be based of religion, or you could open skill sets, where each cleric would end up different at 50. Just an idea.

minister is nice as it is.

I agree with Iorvin (sry for the spelling).

Evil clerics are simply too easy to play. Not only are they for most classes unlagable, they dont need to worry about weapon disarm, they got spellturning+recall, but minister is simply too powerful.

As a decent equipped warrior you have simply no choice but to flee the second minister gets landed (which will be on the second or third commune at max). Minister will last around 8-9 hours and it will lag for 4 rounds. That is insane.

Minister is for 5-6 hours and lags for 3to4 rounds.If the minister is changed many tactics with an evil cleric must be changed.

Haha. Someone's playing an evil cleric right now.

No one in their right mind, even the people who PLAY evil clerics can say with a straight face that minister is perfectly balanced.

Haha now,I play a knight right now,I even fight agains the evil clerics

Actually one other thing that tilted things in favor of clerics is the change to assassinate and the abolition of Hunter. Clerics used to be sitting ducks for Hunter ninjas pretty much. I remember UC freaking out on the forum after repeated assassinations from Galadran. They may have a bit more of a comfort zone now, sort of like Vampires after the change to gate. But again, it's not because of a change to minister.

Another good class to play against clerics is a ranger. They have a choice of landing faerie fire or minister on you first. If it's minister, just camo until it wears off. If it's faerie fire, just run away. Meantime if you dual wield with vuln weapons (can't do this if it's a drow obviously--unless maybe silver arrows would hit the vuln) you can sometimes get them to pretty hurt, then hit them with a thunderstorm. (This can be pretty effective if they spend a few rounds mucking around with curse.) That's pretty much the only success I've had against clerics with a ranger (unless they forgot protective shield or you see it drop--then throw your shield). You can also dirt and then rescue, although they will run away. If it's a dwarf and you're playing a giant ranger you can dish out pretty serious damage with the spear and cube, and they will have a hard time casting repeatedly. Drow clerics are pretty tough to finish off--it's just about always been catching them unawares with t-storm with me. Humans tend to be a bit softer all around, lower hp, lower casting power b/c of lower int. I think minister will land more reliably if the caster has higher intelligence than the target, so drows are bad news. You also can try to catch unawares with a ranger (especially a tracker!), when they're fighting a mob, protective shield drops, etc. An ogre warrior you're going to have a hard time. Maybe an ogre berzerker can dish out enough damage to forestall enough casting, land a haymaker or some such. I found it pretty tough with a cleric to fight a FG warmaster just because of all the damage.

I don't see a problem with it Balinor. I don't know if I would say it's "perfectly balanced" because it's a very powerful spell, but I'm not sure what that would mean. I suppose assassinate is now "balanced" in the sense of nerfed, as is thunderstorm, cleave, etc. Pretty much everything except bash and bodyslam--although beefing clerics was intended as a balancing for those lagging skills. Remember Virigoth was going to nerf those as well, but he decided against it. Instead he beefed up clerics with steel wall to increase their chances to survive against them. I don't think every skill or spell has to be nerfed in order for the classes to be balanced. It seems to me the term "balanced" should be applied to classes, not skills, since it's the whole package that matters, not whether one skill or spell is more powerful than another.

In fact, the one thing that I think may be overpowered is a feral cleric. I remember some time ago people were saying ferals were weak, and I was the only person to say if anything they're overpowered. I still kind of think they might be, although they are not easy to play well.

Maybe this can be made relevant to this discussion. Remember, a feral can keep you from casting. Suppose you play a feral ranger with fury mastered against a cleric, and a couple of cabal skills, say a charmie, or something to reduce damage, or simply decked out with great saves and hitroll? Or say a Syndicate, with their skills and where you can do you know what to keep the cleric from running very far? If I had my old Knight ranger's kit and skills, and the ability to disrupt a cleric's casting, I would have been able to get a lot more kills against clerics than I did. (Granted, he was resistant to magic). How about a Knight ranger tracker? Find them when they're resting or sleeping and low on mana. Or an archer? Make them sleep and wait for spells to drop. Or fury them awake.

Anyway, point is I think it's important to think about how a spell or skill can be overcome before concluding that it's overpowered, especially with the example of an ogre warrior. Any examples using gnomes or ogres for this discussion can pretty much be dismissed. Getting decked, standing and fighting is not going to work against a cleric, especially with a race vulnerable to magic or mental attacks. I think that's pretty much by design. Virigoth was trying to complicate warrior tactics with the changes to clerics, and make classes that emphasize strategy and tactics like rangers and thieves relatively better choices than they used to be.

Well..you can ask festorvian about a fire giant warmaster against evil clerics...barbarians should have ZERO problems against an evil (vuln) cleric :D