I have thought about blademasters for a long time, and I feel that they are entirely too strong for what you sacrifice. There is no matchup where a blademaster is on their back foot if they prepare correctly. Factor in mag resist blademasters and you run into some extremely powerful possibilities. If anyone would care to intelligently debate this topic I urge you to please post your reasoning, for or against. I would like to kindly ask if you disagree not to start being an abbrasive *** about it, but to state why in an adult manner. Im so tired of threads becoming places for people to wave their e-penis and flex their e-nuts. Please keep this civil.
Blademasters: Level 30 qclass
I suppose after you commenting on the fact that we are maturing I should have seen something like this coming.
From your post, I understand that you wish to address magic resistant blademasters as "entirely too strong".
I will try to give my point of view based on my experience, and some of you might argue that I have a bias against Blademasters. But I assure you that I like the Blademaster class. I resent some of it's mechanics, but on the overall, blademasters are a great addition to the game, and provide interesting skill chalanges.
I don't like that Blademasters can do magic with no saves. Blindness, telelock, paralisys, etc... But they cannot lag you through protective shield effectively. Which means you can act and counter. Most of that counter comes from, either outmeeling them, our outcasting them.
Magic resistant blademaster affect little non C/C or hibrid classes in comparison with non mag resist blm. It's just the option of using a non magical weapon.
But if you are a C/C or a hybrid, it changes a lot. Hybrids can try to outmeele a BLM, it can be done. Using magic as support and melee as offense.
Halfling: DK's from my experience can handle them. It can be a challenge depending on skill level, but bash allows them to capitalize on mistakes.
As a Paladin, I hardly ever fought them because alignment restriction make it an unlikely event.
C/C with exception of invoker will have a good match up, due to Halflings lower STR and medium HP. Sure they can go 25 STR, but they lose other stuff.
Dwarvers/Duergars are for me the main problem. 21 base STR, high HP from CON and a Vulnerabily that cannot be easily exploited.
The introduction of a good water mace would make things more interesting for Clerics/Paladins/DK's. But it would not aid Battlemages or Invokers.
A Dancing water axe could aid BLM, but it would make all other Dwarven combos suffer. Sure it would downgrade Dwarven Clerics, but also Dwarven Zerkers and Warriors, which already have a bad time vs other giant meeles.
Rebalancing the class would harm the other BLM combos which are quite balance atm.
Ît stand that the most adequate solution would be to remove Dwarven Blademasters from the field. Something I am reluctant to suggest. Even although Dwarves quadraplegic dex starved frame should never been considered for a highly dextrous class, from a RP point of view. The fact is that there have been Dwarves BLM for years, and taking them out now would ruin some people fun. Perhaps only Warves BLM could be made into a Qrace.
If you disagree quadraplegic Dwarves inadquacy, just think for a moment why there aren't any Dwarven mages. Imagine a Dwarven Paladin, or a Dwarven Invoker.
Also, if someone more experienced from the BLM side could post, it would be more interesting.
I suppose after you commenting on the fact that we are maturing I should have seen something like this coming.
I've only fought Blademasters with giant sized Warriors so I can't offer much input.
My opinion however, is that they should've never been made, and they should be taken apart and added as selectable skillsets to the warrior class.
What's gonna happen here is this:
People who play BLMs often: They're not OP! You have no idea how much work goes into them!
People who get owned by BLMs often: Remove them! Say goodbye! They're way too OP and they're too easy to play!
Me: I can't play BLMs worth a ****, and I wish, honestly, that I could. I bow down to any BLM player who have mastered the class. However, BLMs that strictly go into WM, you'll notice that most of the hype is from WM skills being used on an already well-rounded class making them appear to be over powered.
IF ANYTHING, BLMs shouldn't be allowed to join WM, or at that, any cabals. They're fine without cool cabal skills/spells to beef them up even more.
Personally, I don't think there is enough RP background to make them a Qclass. I also think that blademasters are badly balanced.
Back when I wasn't familiar with them, it was common for people to say that in order to beat one, one must use attrition due to their dependency on mana. Once I began playing some blademasters, I found that this statement is quite funny. Yes blademasters are very dependent on mana, but they also have some huge means (via meditation) to regain mana. It's funny that a melee class can regain so much mana so easily. Not just that, but later, a blademaster can transform that mana effectively in HP, via acupuncture. It's also one of the reasons why blademasters in gladiator are so strong.
There are certain things that make blademasters strong, then there are others that are just wrong. Meditation is one them. Another is counter, double counter, vigil, snakespeed. Those are FOUR skills that effectively shut you down from starting a battle with a BLM without eating damage. Huge damage too. With those skills it can become quite a pain to kill one, who doesn't want to be killed. Some people here will say that there are ways to avoid being countered via fireball potions or area spells for example. That's just funny. Counters (snakespeed included) should simply have timers like charge and one should not be able to counter attacks if his attacker is at condition less that quite a few wounds, just like it is with mobs.
That being said, some of their stances are quite useless. Doomsinger for example. I've played a few BLMs and I've never even bothered training it, except for my first couple ones. Kairishi could use a bit of tweaking. Deathweaver could be made two-handed only (just because it's stupid for a BLM to be able to negate both dirt and bash). Shadowdancer needs to be tweaked so low dex BLMs also gain something from it (if low dex races should even be allowed to be BLMs, I agree with Mya here).
Criticals overall seem fine, except that the duration of the lockdown critical needs to be made longer.
Weaponlock needs to effectively disable predicting for the duration of the lock. Shieldbash should also disable predicting for length of the tick.
Those are just some random thoughts of the top of my head.
PS. I had great fun while reading Mya's post - quadraplegic dex starved frame... oh my 
the problem with blademasters is they have an answer for nearly everything. this game is very rock, paper, scissors in my mind when it comes to classes... i dont really see the need to have dynomite.
Foxx makes some great points. In addition I had an issue with the ease of which they can utilize caltraps. On a whole, I find blademasters to be in the top tier category, in which the Imms deserve great respect for getting them implemented. Instead of us looking for ways to tone them down, perhaps we can look at the classes that have the hardest time going up against blademasters and look to ways of making them stronger against them? I was never a fan of toning everything in the game down simply because it looks too strong. It usually breeds results that aren't as exciting or replayable as they could've been.
The class in general is pretty bleh. You only ever really see two races play them and 9/10 they are in the same cabal.
Monks are no where near as strong and they longer to gain full benefit from anats due to no inherent race mastery. I usually agree Tass about toning up rather than down, but here we have a situation where a class just doesn't work. Almost every other class doesn't have a cookie cutter race you 'should' pick from a power gaming point of view. Blademasters are basically that, and it's hard to judge if they are OP when you are basing it almost entirely off of one or POSSIBLY two different races playing that class.
I like the idea about changing up stances to actual benefit different races. Something like a quick formula that takes strength and dex into account for death weaver. And yes, some of the others need tweaked as well.
. Almost every other class doesn't have a cookie cutter race you 'should' pick from a power gaming point of view.
i disagree.
i disagree.
Great, why don't you give some examples then.
Great' date=' why don't you give some examples then.[/quote']
ogre ranger
drow shaman
dwarf bard
elf/drow ninja
slith thief
illithid necro
if you want to inclue qrace/class then:
undead monk
demon warrior
storm crusader
gnome psi
ogre ranger
drow shaman
dwarf bard
elf/drow ninja
slith thief
illithid necro
if you want to inclue qrace/class then:
undead monk
demon warrior
storm crusader
gnome psi
Halfing Ranger
Duerger Shawman
LOL Bard
Avian Ninja
Hmm Thief... dont know much about em.
Necro... same as thief
A lot of the "power" picks for race/class depend on what you're planning to use them for. For instance, I'd say that ogre is the strongest race for a Nexus ranger by a fair margin, but a halfling ranger is significantly a better bet for WM due to the increased numbers of magic-users the latter will be fighting.
I agree with f0xx on this one--he nailed the correct points and gave very good balancing suggestions that the staff should really take seriously (none of which require more than a second of coding). BLMs are very imbalanced.
Halfing Ranger
Duerger Shawman
LOL Bard
Avian Ninja
Hmm Thief... dont know much about em.
Necro... same as thief
i've killed nearly every class in the game with 2 of my bards... you'd be surprised. I say nearly because i don't think i ever managed to finish a cleric.
A lot of the "power" picks for race/class depend on what you're planning to use them for. For instance' date=' I'd say that ogre is the strongest race for a Nexus ranger by a fair margin, but a halfling ranger is significantly a better bet for WM due to the increased numbers of magic-users the latter will be fighting.[/quote']
the point i was trying to make is that there are clear picks for most situations from a power-gaming prospective, but yes they are all dependant on who you will be fighting.
Ok, so name a race change a blm that will factor into what he is playing? The only real exception is if you want a blm nexus.
All blademasters races and cabals are viable. I honestly think the class is what makes the race not the other way around. Dwarf warriors are not super strong. Blm allows dex races to melee which is cool but it's arguably the strongest class in the game
.. followed by shamans.
I like blademasters, I feel much has already been done about making them more in balance with our current game. Playing one in their beta phase and then having Chrinchton when they became available to everyone. I can tell you that they were much much harder to fight before. Now having said that I still feel perhaps some cabals should be off limits to them or perhaps cabals entirely might be logical. Some timers on their counters and such may work, or it may give the other melee classes an unfair advantage(lets test this). Tweaking stance like FOXX said does however need to be done. Two of their stances are laughable and why even have them if most everyone won't even practice them. Making them a Q-class isn't needed. There are a bunch of Race/Class combos that can make a blademasters life hell. I will say this, life at lvl 50 for a blademaster isn't always what its cracked up to be. Perfect example is a sports car, they drive well straight and fast, but throw in a few speed bumps and some obstacles and look out. My only other advice is to be careful with whatever we decide to do. If it is the removal of the class, please make another to replace it.