[50 Elf Bmg] <PK> [KNIGHT] (Hope [T]) Sir Jerrald Solarios the Scourge of the Battlefield

[EllaThePuppy]

/-----------------\/------------------------------------------------\
| Jerrald         || Praetorian of PRAETORIAN                       |
\-----------------/\------------------------------------------------/
| Str: 19(19)     || Level 50 Sex M          Age   1025(222h)       |
| Int: 25(25)     || Class battlemage        Size  large            |
| Wis: 21(21)^1   || Race  elf               Align chaotic good     |
| Dex: 24(24)     || Hp    1328/1352  (119%) Exp   47520/603680     |
| Con: 16(17)^3   || Mana  1230/1374  (110%) +Hit  14 (100%)        |
\ Lck: [|||||-]   \/ Move   519/519   (100%) +Dam  14               /
/-----------------/\--------------------/\--------------------------\
|     ARMOR       ||      SAVES         || Deity  Erelei            |
| Slash  -634     || Spell       -29    || Faith  Purity            |
| Pierce -610     || Afflictive  -2     || Weight 320/450           |
| Blunt  -611     || Maledictive -27    || Items  28/46             |
| Magic  -599     || Mental      -40    || Prac   10     Train 0    |
|                 || Breath       0     || RP     36                |
|                 ||                    || Gold   37K    CP 4.2K    |
\-----------------\/--------------------\/--------------------------/
/ You are in the prime of your health.                              \
| You are ready for a cabal promotion.                              |
| [KNIGHT] forces are aiding your healing.                          |
\-------------------------------------------------------------------/

As promised several months ago, Jerrald was my attempt to demonstrate that battlemages are quite serviceable just as they are. I don't know my exact PK record, but I know that I had a positive ratio of kills to deaths. Yes, my stats were quite high (particularly my HP). After trains from leveling and quest rewards, I had roughly 1000hp with no equipment. I did not put any trains into mana or moves.

Sorry not sorry if you don't like the fact that I posted PK logs that didn't end in kills. 😛 The point was to demonstrate how bmgs perform across a variety of fights, not to entertain your sadistic need to see wanton death and destruction.

That said, I do have some feedback about battlemages as a whole. First, as has been noted, reflective field accounted for a substantial amount of my damage in many of the PK logs that I've posted. What has not been noted is the difficulty involved with effectively using reflective field in this fashion. Here's what it takes:

• Identify mobs (either singular or groups) that do enough physical damage to charge your shield in under a tick
  • I used Crunch and his guard for when I was fighting near the castle, Crazed demons (in the Pit, where I would draw them to the entrance and they could sit for whenever I needed a recharge), and the Maelbrim shopkeepers for this
• Preferably blind the mob to mitigate damage and prevent re-engagement on flee (note that I don't believe the actual damage you TAKE matters, as the shield still charges if you block all the attacks, if you have sanctuary, etc. It seems only the potential damage matters)
• Cast your reflective shield (starting duration between 11-12 hours) and charge it up
  • Sometimes this takes more than a tick, in which case I would usually flee, cancel it, and start over. When you only have 10-11 ticks of charge, every tick matters.
• Find, fight, and kill your opponent with the remaining 10ish ticks of reflective field before the duration expires.
• Note: All of this leaves you fully exposed to laglock (when fighting an enlarged berserker, I was still taking 3-4 rounds of lag, even through reflective field lag "reduction" and my own enlarge), and dispel magic/haymaker mean you have to completely reset.

Suggestions for the class:

• Consolidate reflective field and force field. Give the lag reduction as opposed to prevention (with maybe a small buff, due to what I noted above about lag), the physical damage reduction, and the damage prevention for meteor swarm. This gives battlemages what they need to fight a melee and what they need to fight a mage, without a useless third shield in rotation.
• Improve the damage of sharpmetal. This spell is hot garbage for chasing, general damage dealing, etc.
• Reduce the saves chance of a noon sear. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to hit consistent lacerates when casting a two round lag spell at its peak power time.
• Fix meteor swarm. This spell is also junk and really could use some evaluation of how damage is calculated, as you can cast this two round lag spell and have it do absolutely nothing.
• Reduce the lag on shrink to one round and/or increase the success rate. I never once landed this in PK, and rarely landed it against mobs. It's a fairly useless spell as is.
• Change dancing blade and blades to scale with spell level. They're currently hard capped at L50 + 100% proficiency for the hitroll modifier, and they rarely hit against a well-armored/multi-defense foe.
• Give colour spray a dirt kick effect similar to blademaster's critical eyes (0-1 round blind).
• Restore a reduced charging capability for reflective shield against magic damage. With a fresh reflective field against a melee character using magic weapons, I should be able to get a reasonable charge (not a full charge) just by having reflective shield up.
• Manalock should prevent haymaker from removing your buffs, just as it prevents you from being dispelled. A battlemage without buffs is a dead battlemage, and battlemages already tool the shit out of bmgs anyway (the only two people I ever felt completely hopeless against were Ripuliina and Lecitus after he got back into WM).
• Increase the cooldown of mirror image and change it to have a blind-on-hit chance like decoy. I honestly forgot I had this spell most of the time, because I never ever really saw it as useful. The one use I did regret not taking better advantage of was the fact that it hides your HP from your opponent. That's nice, but still wasn't compelling enough to keep me using it regularly.
• Increase the low end of the healing range for field dressing. Seems like it heals for roughly 50-250 hp. I'd rather see this be more consistent with something like acupuncture is/was, especially since you can't use it blind.

Regarding Avatar... I have decided, in my personal opinion, that there is no compelling reason to go avatar as a mage in general. Especially as a battlemage, when not even the haste benefits you. Further, good-aligned battlemages are at a significant disadvantage compared to evil battlemages, and here's why:

• Goods do not have access to a single +mal level item. Not. A. One. Almost all of a battlemage's debuffs are mal spells. This stinks.
• The only cabal choice an avatar mage can reasonably make is Praetorian. The only benefit from Praetorian that a mage gets is the -AC and the defense proficiency from stand ground. This is nowhere near enough to compare to the benefits of a non-avatar Sigil, or any other cabal for that matter.
• The benefit to your stats and the powers (including the +spell level) does not warrant the sacrifices of things like ensnare (Tribunal) or Reverse Time (Savant).
• I cannot decide if this is more of an avatar RP problem, where they're so heavily restricted that they can only choose one subcabal of one cabal, or whether this is a Praetorian problem (because the skills stink for mages in general). But it is a problem and it kind of makes avatar a bore. That stinks too, because it's the coolest concept RP-wise, but in practice it feels very flat and one-dimensional.

Finally... some shout outs.

Aegreus - You were Jerrald's best bud throughout his whole life. I always loved our late night adventures to wherever the heck we wanted to go, and competing with you for who was going to take the hits, who was going to lead, etc. was an amusing little friendly competition. Definitely one of my favorite characters to interact with in recent memory, big kudos.

Talindra - I wish we could have hung out more, I always really liked our chats. You seem a little newer (if I'm wrong, my apologies), so with all that said, keep killin' it!

Treetin/Slyng - You guys were the bane of my damn existence. I never even got to experience the "full power" of an avatar because every time I would rack up some favor, the war with Watcher came back to bite me. Damn that Sylvala and her declarations of war on the Castle! 😛

Sarindel - I was... really overconfident that first time I came to fight you, and you definitely made me regret it. Most of our subsequent battles did not go my way either. Ouch. Just ouch. Shield warriors are a bitch to fight as a battlemage.

Vulghaan - Sorry I would never join the Tower, despite the immense pressure you put on me to do so from like... level 10. In addition to not fitting my RP (and not working with avatar, really), I was dead set on proving that you didn't have to be a Savant/Undead to be successful as a bmg.

Lecitus - I'll be totally honest. I came after you the first time because I wanted an easy avatar kill. Needless to say, fighting you proved to be anything but easy. I was doing okay before you got back into Warmaster, but once I couldn't dispel/trip/blind you and you had the extra defense from CC, it was all over. I don't think I got you past small/few wounds in our last fight. Ouch.

Venatrix - Our fights were probably the most hotly contested battles that I ever had. Good on you for taking a "lesser" race and making it work for you.

Ghraumvrik - Duergar blademaster is a super tough fight for a battlemage. Between the bonkers defense and the critical strikes... there were several times where I was very afraid I was dead. On the flip side, the one or two times that I was doing well against you, it's because I caught you off guard (I think).

Kiinimacho - I always enjoyed our fights. But I hate call lightning. It's disgusting. You're mean and I hate you. But good fights and I love you.

Eledhwen - The very polite, relatively pleasant tongue lashing that Aegreus and I got about showing mercy was like getting called to the principal's office. But it was also a good reminder about engaging with both the Knight and avatar side of my RP. Also, I was super sad that I joined just after the big fun with the rest of the Knights. Ah, well. Next time! Knight has always been my favorite cabal, and this was no different.

[Mmm Coffee]

You proved that an avatar elf casting dispel magic with 25 INT and +1 Mental level can do ok.  Did you even get 20 kills bruh? 

Any BMG can do well but it requires organization of spell upkeep.  Once you figure out how to manage that best for yourself, staying alive is a breeze.  Getting that final blow is the tough part.

If your point of this character was to de-prioritize BMG in the catalog of IMM class overhauls, then I agree.  There are other classes in more dire need.

Edit: Also, you do have access to plus mal level as a good via +spell_lvl from at least one commonly known item.

[Trick]

Fantastic character! Enjoyed my interactions both on your side and against it.

Avatar COULD have really helped with the plus spell level if you gained levels in it instead of just killing every neutral. Adhering to the Avatar RP a little stricter could have helped your mal spells.

Edit: I am pro avatar Sigil. This one done specially because of @Chesta6384 Elf Avatar Sigil BMG back in 2.0 and is no longer applicable in today’s FL.

[EllaThePuppy]

3 hours ago, Mmm Coffee said:

You proved that an avatar elf casting dispel magic with 25 INT and +1 Mental level can do ok.  Did you even get 20 kills bruh? 

Any BMG can do well but it requires organization of spell upkeep.  Once you figure out how to manage that best for yourself, staying alive is a breeze.  Getting that final blow is the tough part.

If your point of this character was to de-prioritize BMG in the catalog of IMM class overhauls, then I agree.  There are other classes in more dire need.

Edit: Also, you do have access to plus mal level as a good via +spell_lvl from at least one commonly known item.

I appreciate the not-so-thinly veiled attempts to diminish someone else's character. 👍 If you weren't one of the two people to get a kill on me, do you even have a basis to ride me about it bruh?  

As to your "points":

1) Elves always have 25 intelligence. It's the one stat where avatar doesn't help them.

2) Intelligence of the caster does not factor into dispel magic, at all.

3) I literally said in my post that I never had any avatar levels to speak of. You need at least three to get any spell level. So talking about how "an elf avatar casting dispel magic with 25  int" is a pretty meaningless deflection.

But frankly, I feel very satisfied that I proved my point that BMGs are perfectly serviceable the way they are. People were saying BMGs can't get kills. I got kills (a number of which are posted under PK logs). People were saying non-undead BMGs can't survive. I survived. If you have a problem with how I got them or think you could do better, by all means. But if you can replicate my success or do better, then there's really not much point in talking about how the class isn't functional, now is there?

I didn't say they were perfect. I didn't say they couldn't use some tune ups. In fact, I offered nearly a dozen simple, well defined suggestions as part of my thread that you evidently didn't bother to do more than skim. The staff can take them or leave them, it's no skin off my nose. Regardless, my work here is done.

1 hour ago, Trick said:

Fantastic character! Enjoyed my interactions both on your side and against it.

Avatar COULD have really helped with the plus spell level if you gained levels in it instead of just killing every neutral. Adhering to the Avatar RP a little stricter could have helped your mal spells.

Edit: I am pro avatar Sigil. This one done specially because of @Chesta6384 Elf Avatar Sigil BMG back in 2.0 and is no longer applicable in today’s FL.

Thanks. Not sure who you are now but I always enjoy our interactions (liked the few chats I had with Avrael) and you usually end up being one of my biggest nemeses, so I'll take that as a meaningful compliment.

Spell level honestly isn't a big point here for me, and I don't think it would make a huge difference either way. But having the OPTION to try to scale the mals would be important for a different playstyle than mine. As it is, a BMG can be successful, but they're forced to be a bit monochromatic to do so. More spell scaling options would open that up for a bit more variety IMHO.

I'll be honest. I hate the corner Avatars have been backed into and I'll probably never play one again. This was my first one and I always enjoy playing goodies/Knights. Didn't really love playing in the Avatar box, and I don't agree with leaving vendetta'd enemies alive to heal up and come back at me in another six ticks. My preference was to finish the job and take hit. Not really against the RP, but certainly doesn't support the mechanics of the qrace. It's all good, just not my flavor.

[Mmm Coffee]

Sorry if someone has to knock you off your high horse.  Like I said....you did ok.  You didn't do great.  You didn't showcase the BMG spell set.  You basically used dispel and sear....often poorly timed.  So to come here and say "oh look what I accomplished!"  and not expect a reality check is well....*shrug emoji*

And I'm pretty sure INT does factor into dispel magic.  At least that's what has always been told to me. Can we get an Imm to validate this?

Also, yes elf avatar getting a higher CON and like you said 1000 base HP.  That's pretty frikkin buff and not something a non-avatar can pull off save a gnome possibly.

Edit: I did read your skill suggestions and they're ridiculous.  Lower the save check on sear? Are you for real?  Combine reflective and forcefield?  Honestly? 

[Shagarh]

The original post said that Jerrald was an attempt to show that battlemages were serviceable, I didn't see anyone bragging about his accomplishments.

In any event, this thread is not a forum for people to "knock each other off high horses".

If you don't like a post you are free to ignore it, or at least disagree in a more constructive way.

[Mmm Coffee]

Whoever suggested BMG's aren't serviceable?  There have been plenty that performed at least as well as this one. And that was way before all the juicy weapon choices they have now.

[Shagarh]

2 minutes ago, Mmm Coffee said:

Whoever suggested BMG's aren't serviceable?  There have been plenty that performed at least as well as this one. And that was way before all the juicy weapon choices they have now.

It has been a common view on Discord, at least from my observations, that they are considered underpowered and lacking in a number of areas.

I don't really have an opinion as I don't play them (and I haven't looked into them in detail), but that is what I have seen.

[Mmm Coffee]

Ahh, I don't really use discord.  Can you comment on INT factoring into dispel magic?  I was always informed that it does.

[Gifnab]

54 minutes ago, Mmm Coffee said:

Ahh, I don't really use discord.  Can you comment on INT factoring into dispel magic?  I was always informed that it does.

The caster’s intelligence does not factor into dispel magic. Intelligence does factor in for the victim as a saves mechanism (as it does for all mental spells), but it is not a differential check against the caster, merely against a static baseline.

[Magick]

2 hours ago, Mmm Coffee said:

Also, yes elf avatar getting a higher CON and like you said 1000 base HP.  That's pretty frikkin buff and not something a non-avatar can pull off save a gnome possibly.

 Elf BMGs get 461-559 hp, average of 510.  Avatar gives elves +20 to +35 extra HP or about 3 trains worth.  For what it's worth, elf blademasters get the +CON boost, too.  More actually, as they get it from L1.

Which means at most, he would have had 594 base hp from class/avatar levels.  The rest were likely gained from using all trains gained throughquests, converting practices and trains gained from leveling and using CP to increase stats instead.  About 450 HP (from average) this way, which anyone can do.  This means being an avatar made up for less than 10% of the buffed value.  Not a small amount of the total, but one outshone by knowledge and minmaxing.

[Mmm Coffee]

Well yep....+35 hp is about how you go from high 800's (possible on regular elf) to low-mid 900's.  And he probably knows a quest or two I don't.  I'm guessing his base HP was mid 900's not high 900's.

[EllaThePuppy]

1 hour ago, Mmm Coffee said:

Well yep....+35 hp is about how you go from high 800's (possible on regular elf) to low-mid 900's.  And he probably knows a quest or two I don't.  I'm guessing his base HP was mid 900's not high 900's.

1020, actually.

You're kinda making a fool of yourself jumping down my throat (and often being wrong while doing it) when I did exactly what I said I set out to do, which was nothing more than to prove that the class was serviceable. I never said I was the king of battlemages. But I do know how they work, and I was able to make it work for me; many people don't, my hope was to help change that. You spreading misinformation about HP and avatar benefits and how dispel works isn't helping. Maybe go work on your own high horse before you worry about other peoples'.

[Mmm Coffee]

Dude you're so sensitive.  Nobody is jumping down your throat.  Sorry that I don't think you proved anything that many BMG players haven't done before you. 

[Kassieti]

We're coming awfully close to a locked thread.  Play nice and shift gears.

[hotspring monkey]

Bleh shift gears

 

 

[egreir]

Jerrold sucked. Ella sucks.  King suck!! 
 

 

 

['tarako]

The idea behind pressuring you to join was to make sure the Tower cant fall into a singular line of thinking. Being completely opposite each other I felt would make savant more fun and interesting. I can agree about avatar for a mage. As a template it's kinda geared towards melee for sure.

 

The frequency that you blew through spellturning and 50+ saves was staggering lol. I didnt even bother casting some buffs. I was asked a while ago during the discord di balance if i felt that i had bad matchups and i said a well played bmg would be my worst. Kudos to you for playing it so well, and being adamant.

[Anume]

Mages profit a lot more from + spellevel than melees at avatar max power. This avatar had a Watcher problem though so no avatar max level.

[mya]

I liked Jerrald. BMG's aren't an easy class, specially as Avatar, and Jerrald was quite sucefull.
I also loved that you didn't just mercy neutrals. I'm of the opinion that Avatars should kill neutrals who attack them, least it becomes a risk-less endeavor for a Watcher to try to kill an Avatar.
 

That said, let me address your suggestions, before this gets locked.
I play BMG's diferently. I don't use reflective shield and I play more defensively focusing on attrition. Not only of HP, but of consumables and mistakes.
As always, this is my personal opinion, grown from my own personal experience from playing the class.

 

Quote

Consolidate reflective field and force field. Give the lag reduction as opposed to prevention (with maybe a small buff, due to what I noted above about lag), the physical damage reduction, and the damage prevention for meteor swarm. This gives battlemages what they need to fight a melee and what they need to fight a mage, without a useless third shield in rotation.

I disagree. I like the balancing factor that you have to choose to be 100% protected from lag and meteors using force field or to do more damage and take meteor damage with reflective shield. BMG's gained flexibility with being able to cancel their shields as kickback to reflecting shield losing the ability to recharge with magic damage. The class used to be more committed on the shield choice.
These kind of tradeoff also happen in other classes like with clerics spell turning/steel wall, and in my opinion are a great mechanic.

Quote

Improve the damage of sharpmetal. This spell is hot garbage for chasing, general damage dealing, etc.

The spell isn't hot garbage. It's a 1 round non magic damage spell that strikes at all targets engaged with you, without provoking AoE. And it costs only 8 mana per target. BMG's have auto melee damage, are unlagable and can cast spells. While I agree that it could deal more damage, I never seen my BMG's as a class who could win PK by spaming AFF spells. I always looked at Sharpmetal as an "extra attack" for 8 mana.

Sharpmetal at L50 does 83 to 125 damage, with equal probability of each value, and deals 80% of damage on a save. Comparatively most spells tend to only deal 50% of damage on a save.

Quote

Reduce the saves chance of a noon sear. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to hit consistent lacerates when casting a two round lag spell at its peak power time.

I think Sear used to do a lot more damage. But the main benefit of sear for me is the high level blind, not the damage.
Sear does 120 to 240 damage, with equal distributed values. And on noon does +50% of damage. It also saves for 50% damage. So you are looking on a save through protection/sanctuary during noon at 33 to 67 damage. It's the same as for other spells. A noon base value of 180-360 for a 2 round spell isn't that low on a spell that will always try to blind the opponent at L53 +  (noon). Even at non noon it's not casting at L47, it's casting at L50.

Quote

Fix meteor swarm. This spell is also junk and really could use some evaluation of how damage is calculated, as you can cast this two round lag spell and have it do absolutely nothing.

There is nothing wrong with Meteor Swarm. It's an spell with high variable damage that can deal huge amounts of damage or do nothing. It divides the room in 4 areas, and then distributes the PC's & NPCs through them, and then rains 4-16 meteors randomly on the cells. If the meteor hits your cell, you get mauled for 60 to 195 damage. That's for each meteor that lands at your location.
A char can theoretically be hit for 3120 damage (extremely unlikely). There is no other spell in the game that can burst this much. Sure it sucks when your opponent location isn't even hit, but I have taken ppl from 400 HP to dead with a Sanctuary drop + Meteor call.
If I average the spell damage for my BMGs the math goes into something crazy like 350+ base damage on average. Of course you will never see this on the field as each metor saves individually for 50% of damage, reducing overall damage by a lot most of the time.  In my opinion Meteor Swarm is one of the most ingenious spell on FL, and there is nothing wrong with it. That said it's not an easy spell to use and requires some skill on how and when to cast it for. It would be a shame if Meteor Swarm would lose it uniqueness just because players don't understand how to potentiate the use the spell.

Quote

Reduce the lag on shrink to one round and/or increase the success rate. I never once landed this in PK, and rarely landed it against mobs. It's a fairly useless spell as is.

I agree with this reduction of cast lag, but disagree strongly with it being useless. I use it a lot on mobs and it serves me well. And please, bring back being able to shrink ourselves without losing 50% of our mana, as it aids vs trip lag duration and has an use in trip baiting opponents.

Quote

Change dancing blade and blades to scale with spell level. They're currently hard capped at L50 + 100% proficiency for the hitroll modifier, and they rarely hit against a well-armored/multi-defense foe.

In my personal opinion they apparently scale a bit with BMG prof in the relevant spell, with it affecting the random roll to decide the offensiveness of the weapon vs parry/twohanded. I don't think hitroll should be the tweaking point, but rather this already existing mechanism on weapon offensiveness.
Currently it rolls a value from -2 to 5 for weapon offensiveness, but in my opinion prof should improve the -2 to a higher value, like raising the floor to a 0-5 roll.

Regarding hitroll, I think well armored targets should be dealt with the spells that BMG's have to increase AC (blind/rust/Faerie fire) instead of just improving the hitroll of blades.

Quote

Give colour spray a dirt kick effect similar to blademaster's critical eyes (0-1 round blind).

The real problem with colour spray is that it cast blind at "level/2". This means that you will be looking at 1 in 20 chance of ever landing the blind.
An elegant software engineering solution to this would be decouple blindness casting level from duration and affect level (curing) with a wrapper on the function, as it would solve both high level sear problem and other blindness problems. But it's a more complex than your dirt kick idea. Basically it would allow the spell to be casted at L50 with a blind duration of 2 hours for example.

But I really like this idea of 0 hours blind that bypasses saves. It would be great for BMGs as it would potentiate blades+Dancing landing rates.

Quote

Restore a reduced charging capability for reflective shield against magic damage. With a fresh reflective field against a melee character using magic weapons, I should be able to get a reasonable charge (not a full charge) just by having reflective shield up.

I have no opinion on this, as I don't use reflective shield.

Quote

Manalock should prevent haymaker from removing your buffs, just as it prevents you from being dispelled. A battlemage without buffs is a dead battlemage, and battlemages already tool the shit out of bmgs anyway (the only two people I ever felt completely hopeless against were Ripuliina and Lecitus after he got back into WM).

I once rolled a Gnome BMG and fought a Werebeast Zerk at L35 several times. He completely overpowered me because of Haymaker. I think that Manalock being sacrificed for a successful Haymaker is a good compromise. As the Zerk can just lag the BMG.

Quote

Increase the cooldown of mirror image and change it to have a blind-on-hit chance like decoy. I honestly forgot I had this spell most of the time, because I never ever really saw it as useful. The one use I did regret not taking better advantage of was the fact that it hides your HP from your opponent. That's nice, but still wasn't compelling enough to keep me using it regularly.

Mirror image is fine as it is. It doesn't need to blind and please don't increase the cooldown on it. It's a sacrificial spell that you can cast during PK, to prevent openers. It has saved me many many times and would aid me even more if the cool down was smaller. I'm amazed how you use reflective shield so well, but miss out on Mirror Image? If anything, the reason I don't use it more is because it hides my HP and I NEED my enemy seeing my HP so I can bait them to stay in battle.

Quote

Increase the low end of the healing range for field dressing. Seems like it heals for roughly 50-250 hp. I'd rather see this be more consistent with something like acupuncture is/was, especially since you can't use it blind.

I agree, field dressing sucks for all the penalties it has. In my opinion it should heal for 150-350 (250 average, same as acupuncture) as BMG HP drops fast.

 

[Cephirus]

I thoroughly enjoyed our PK battles. I do not believe either of our characters saw a victory/defeat throughout that time. Although the last round of bouts overall you had me on the ropes. I had started to prepare for our future battles by up'ing my strength so your plumbum wouldn't cause me to drop my warshield right away.

My only regret with your character is that I should have liked to have more RP interaction, but it was difficult for me to start those conversations because I was so focused on chasing or running and catching some ticks.

Personally I think your approach with using Reflective Shield as your primary damage source (even against pure melee characters) is interesting. I have played a few BMG's and my approach was more around attrition, similar to what Mya mentioned. It is always a good thing for us as players to explore different styles and one thing I did not realize about Reflective Shield is that once it is fully charged, it maintains that charge for the duration. I assumed based on the discharge message when it damages your opponent, that it needs to refill each time it damages and therefore is not useful against opponents whose damage is magical. However I am glad to know that is not the case.