Experiment in Storm Champion. Not a total failure, but definitely not as deadly as Elf Monk, or Elf Champion. Fairly certain Bat is Hugely WIS dependent. And Storm just doesn't have the WIS to pull of any kind of serious bat lag. PVE Tank, I was fricken amazing as long is it was Melee tanking. Sucky mana, means sucky healing, so Direct Damage.. .Well that blew.
The good, I like the new change in fort thats starting with advancing folks to Maran or Aco much faster. Sure eases some of the churn. I do wish that they had Leadered at least a couple more. I don't think I ever saw the Aco leader this time around, and Thaeden's time seemed pretty slim for the most part, at least during my play times. Now I don't know that there were any applicants who Languished very long so it might be a moot point.
The Not so good, I love me some Whiysdan, LOOOOOVE. He was great, and I should have been more prepared going in that our times wouldn't jive. Even so, I don't feel like I put my best foot forward on the religion side. Definitely have had better, and probably a few worse. I was mid paladin when they made the 2 round change to wrath. I will say, I didn't even bother trying to perfect it with this one. I can think, PvP of maybe 4 times that I actually tried to co 'wrath' on anyone. Really think that this change was kind of poorly thought out. Maybe make it 2 rounds until you are empowered... I don't know. But the Utility of wrath is severely nerfed by the 2 rounds. I'm not going to wast 2-4 rounds wrathing someone to get them cursed or track the wicked on them. Most every dedication has better options now. Maybe that's how they wanted it, but man it makes it a bit harder to play anything but monk now.
The bad. Right up to my rage delete, I really hadn't fought the imperials who had run to hell except Glik once. So then I walk into three of them, all decked with Hell gear. The fight just pretty much sucked. It went like this:
1) Staff one eaten by Healers shield
2) polearm one eaten by healers shield, get bashed by giant.
3) polearm 2 eaten by healer shield, co 'word'
4) get back to fort, look at all my gear 80% of it had damaged flags. Well crap.
5) Healer, Giant and bard come to fort and raid, I have a pocket healer so I stick around
6) Polearm eaten by healers shield, More damanged good
7) Bards Instrument sacks my containers, get bashed by giant
8) input co word, only to have the healers talisman open a pit into hell and insta kill me.
Yeah, Not sure, but that just sucked the fun out of even trying to get back into the saddle with an already lackluster build. I hope someone looks at the game balance side of this and either 1) opens an area with goodie equivalent gear for people to explore, 2) tones down the hell gear so that those of us who can't/aren't a part of those trips dont get run roughshod by three characters in a game that's already hemorrhaging.