Posted by Nepenthe(IMM) on August 3, 2000 at 16:05:51:
In Reply to: Ok, agreed... no sort of this time (lots of off-topic text) posted by The Arcane(VIP) on August 3, 2000 at 07:39:36:
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> Not really with snare, which was what spawned this argument initially, but overall, yeah. I've personally done the "snare a group, set a wall, kill one at a time" thing... well, once, anyway.
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It's strange to say it considering how long snare has been around, but snare countertactics are (in general) in an appalling state of infancy. It's excusable (if not in line with the elite paradigm) to get caught off guard by a snare walking around Strange Island, but walking to the Sylvan cabal when a Sylvan ranger in your range has been visible? Yet I've seen that again and again. There have been only a handful of rangers so far that have used snare (at least more than once ;) ) with any degree of cleverness -- as there are more and more, I assume we'll see the rangers opponents begin to deal with them better.
On the other hand, some of the simplest and most direct strategies call for a very small degree of group/cabal cooperation -- and while that seems trivial, with my last Master I was let down on that count by the other members of the cabal literally every time I dealt with snares, despite coaching them with very, very simple instructions beforehand.
Moral of the story? High on the list of "mistakes that kill you" is counting your groupmates to not do the stupidest thing possible in any situation.
> Eh... Sylvan has a LOT of targets. Sure, you can't necessarily smack that Dawnie elf for his cool eq, but you've got Masters, Imperials, and conjurers by default to kill. Throw in the duergar/drow who don't fit into the above. Basically, throw in almost any evil, though this isn't iron-clad... but really, most of them defile at some point in the course of ranking. Apparently, there are arguments for adding Scarabs to the list, though I don't buy them. I can make good ones for hunting Arbiters as a Sylvan, and obviously if you're wanted.... I dunno, that's a pretty long list.
Fair enough. I wouldn't personally pick fights with a lot of the people on that list as a Sylvan, but others might.
> Random anecdote... I'd intentionally never killed nature-stuff while ranking/practicing as Dhaevor, because I wanted to get along with Sylvans, since Battle wasn't doing too well initially. It sort of worked, but sort of didn't. Turns out that when I was level 16 or so, I'd tripped a random elf named Dharlome to death, and then taunted him, commenting on the sensation of iron searing weak elven flesh. I'd totally forgotten about the episode, until months later, when a hero Dharlome was chasing me around with Culhwch and Asicrom (gee, go figure). :P
I'm tempted to start a thread on how as an elite solo maverick maddog killer type you need to be prepared to fight and survive perma or quasipermagroups of 3-6. . .despite the fact that they're technically not allowed by the rules.
> Hey, don't knock Battle. :P I still say that Battle is really, really good for honing your pursuit and (probably more often :P) your escape/avoidance/hiding skills, especially as a warrior, and for coping with death. I probably died 20 times as Dhaevor, and always managed to get myself a brand new sick suit within a day... I still hated dying, obviously, but getting used to it happening is an odd and comforting thing, and I took a lot more risks as a result and thus had lots more fun. Also, in the absence of preparation, tactics become paramount (obviously not in the case of some of the "call bloo;bash;bash;bash" folk, but among those who are more successful).... I think some of the habitual Rager players don't get enough credit in terms of skill... while I was playing Dhaevor, I saw some really, really impressive shit from Iolanthe and Ludi in particular. Ludi in particular taught me at least two things I can think of about warrior tactics, just when I really thought I pretty much knew everything about them.
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I definitely think that everyone should try playing a high level Battle warrior at some point. There's a lot you can get good at when you can't take the easy/standard methods. Some of the recurring Battle players have definitely come up with some interesting twists on the skills they have to work with (Picapleitos, for example, would easily make my above ranger list for some clever uses of snare I saw him do). . .though in many of the cases of the most extreme die-hard Battle there's a certain amount of specialization at the cost of other skills, and in some cases what I almost want to call idiot savantism. Others, like anyone, have good and bad days -- as a concrete example, I also saw some impressive things from Iolanthe, but I also saw him (for example) decide to sleep alone in the Master cabal in scanning range of the inner guardian with several transmuters in his range standing at the inner guardian (he was promptly held/halted and easily killed).