> Why is it a cleric spell that ONLY works against against undead and ONLY stuns them does not actually work against a lot of undead and an empath spell does?

Turns out most undead are immune to stuns.

Critter stuns are pretty buggy. There are stun immune creatures that respond to stuns from some spells/abilities while being immune to others. In 2014 core magic was adjusted so it better checked for those immunities. PS was neutered. The fact that the empath spell (and other stunners) does is a reflection of the bugs still in the stun check. IIRC there are critters that mental blast and dazzle should be able to stun that don't, and some things they shouldn't be able to stun and do.

http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Clerics/Magic%20Talk%20~%20Current%20Cleric%20Magic/view/1841

http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Clerics/Magic%20Talk%20~%20Current%20Cleric%20Magic/view/1958

PS is on the radar to get revamped and probably rewritten at some unknown date in the future.

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Once I saw that PS was undead only I pretty much marked it as Pass. I know not everything needs to be useful to everyone, but that just seems extremely niche.

It would still be more niche; PFE/Bless are buffs, you cast them once and they grant their bonuses over a large duration, so there's very little opportunity cost. HE/HH are DFA and armor-ignoring attacks, making them the hardest-hitting option in the game against undead. PS is... a stun. Which is certainly a nice thing, but in order to cast it you give up your ability to be doing anything else with magic while casting.

I'd be using my mana for HE/HH, personally, unless there's something about PS that I'm not getting. Isn't it single-target, too?

PS is area effect, it will hit the whole room. It would be worth having even being a niche spell if it actually stunned all undead instead of so many of them being immune to it. That being said, as a Cleric of Phelim, I have to take the signature spell for him even if it just grants me better basket weaving.....

So, is this a complaint about this spell in particular, or just the realization of just how good of a selection of spells clerics have altogether?

:)

>I'd be using my mana for HE/HH, personally, unless there's something about PS that I'm not getting. Isn't it single-target, too?

I don't see why it's really an either-or, as clerics have more than sufficient mana to go around. TM can lock easily, debil as well with HYH, so it's really a matter of how to use your tools. Since weapons will certainly lag behind TM/Debil, PS serves as a great additional means for hitting stuff you may struggle with, though yes, Soul Sickness may work better.

Rate of killing isn't an issue, 'ability to train a skill' is, and anything that brings more skills to train into range (or expedites them) is a good tool.

>So, is this a complaint about this spell in particular, or just the realization of just how good of a selection of spells clerics have altogether?

I'd say it's kind of funny actually, because Clerics, the games penultimate undead murdurizers, have a completely defunct anti-undead tool that's a pretty solid one in concept, but due to a mechanics bug does nothing. I agree, Clerics have a staggeringly good selection of spells, against the living and undead actually, but I do think the tools that they have shouldn't be borked simply because of mechanics bugs.

If anything, I kind of wish PS was more powerful - maybe some kind of AoE pulsing effect that proc'd every 10-15s, and could be reinforced and sustained, somewhat similar to the way Fissure used to operate insofar as being expandable by a Warrior Mage. And, you know, obviously work against the undead.

>Because you can only be casting one thing at a time. For maximum effectiveness in killing undead, PS's effect would need to make up for not spending that time casting HE or HH. Bearing in mind that while casting that HE or HH, you can also use various means to inflict a stun or balance loss - including HE and HH themselves - its usefulness just seems limited.

PS would allow you to hit with weapons. I already said the point wasn't about 'time to kill' or 'kills per unit of time', but 'does this ability let me train a skill'. Since PS would let me stun a bunch of undead, I could hit them with weapons, and train weapons before my weapon ranks would let me easily handle that undead.

Say a critter has 100 life, and each swing with a weapon does about 20 damage. That's 5 swings to kill. If I blast the enemy with a 50 pt HE and stun them, I can only swing 3 times, reducing the XP I get with the weapon.

>As for training, running a cyclic like HH for debilitation is going to be more time-efficient than training everything with regular casts and ignoring cyclics, I think.

I presume you mean HYH? Yes, again, I'm not talking about training DEBILITATION, I'm talking about using PS to help train WEAPONS. Using HYH-MALE would be a prudent ADDITIONAL aid here.

Also, if PS worked better (or at all) it could also be used to help group mates by keeping them safe and able to hit things too.

>If you're spending time casting anything to allow yourself to hit with weapons, the go-to solution would be SICK, wouldn't it? And presumably you'd already be running HYH with MALE to debuff them, so if you need an additional stun on top of that to hit something...

I don't know - A ) Does SICK work on Undead? B ) Is it easier to hit something that's on it's knees or something that's stunned/immobilized? And yes, I'm talking about bringing as many tools to bear as possible, and remember, I did say that I felt PS was, assuming it even worked, underpowered.


>Well, I'm just wondering if you're making a smart decision on what to train your weapons on. Maybe that's required for efficient training higher up the critter ladder, and I just haven't gotten there yet? Is that a strategy you have to use later on?

Not really - I don't mind running between two different areas to train, say, primary weapon and TM and then another area to train secondary weapons. But some people may not want that, or might need just a bit more of a push to hit stuff with your backtrained weapons.

>I suppose this could work, but right now we're down to 'it could be useful in multi-target undead situations where they're stunnable you're high enough to hunt them without dying but not high enough to hit with weapons after exhausting other buff/rebuff options and primarily concerned with training instead of attempting to kill with TM attacks'.

Right, but again, I'm not talking about 'maximizing kills'. As a magic prime, the solution to doing so is clearly to use TM. Personally, I think Clerics have a lot of options for hunting, but PS would be another good tool if it got some tweaks.

>A ) Does SICK work on Undead?
No, it does not.

> Was it? I don't think calling something niche has much bearing on it being over or under powered, does it?

I don't think it does.

DR light effect is niche, but when you need it then you need it. And it does it well.

PS is niche. when you need it, you probably won't be able to get it off. And even if you do, it does what it does fairly poorly.

The latter half is what I think the problem is. I think holy stuns/imobilizations should bypass all undead immunities. Maybe require more mana, but it should still work.

Eh. All guilds should want something another guild has. If not, we should just disband the guilds and let everyone pick skill set placement and spell asthetics.

Besides, clerics already have one of (if not the) best and versatile aoe debilitators in the game with HYH + Male/COZ/Uncurse. I think it's a bit much to give them AEWO too

> But PS is undead only. It's the only stunner available for undead, and it doesn't work.

I agree. It should always work against undead. Currently it fails a lot because of special undead bonuses.

> It should be the spell that other guilds pick up for when they want to hunt undead,

I disagree with this. There are better spells, depending on what you're fighting. PFE, MPP, MAPP, SB, Holy TM spells, etc...

A spell doesn't have to be the best in a toolkit to be useful.

> and Clerics, if they want to hunt the living, should pick up Thunderclap or DMRS.

I also disagree with this. I can think of better spells to pick up, depending on what you're fighting.

> I'd wouldn't call it the best - HYH-MALE is similar if not identical to DALU

I think a strong OF penalty, or a strong DF penalty, or a moderate DF + OF penalty is better than a -STR/STAM/AGI debuff. Stats don't seem that significant in PVE. They're good, but they're not game changing like a blanket debuff.

> what is the context that you'd even want to use HYH-Uncurse?

I don't know if there is a use, but the dispel is a practically free ability since you need uncurse to get HYH.

> and Clerics, if they want to hunt the living, should pick up Thunderclap or DMRS.

>>I also disagree with this. I can think of better spells to pick up, depending on what you're fighting.

What non-cyclic AoE stuns/immobilizers are better than TC or DMRS?

>I think a strong OF penalty, or a strong DF penalty, or a moderate DF + OF penalty is better than a -STR/STAM/AGI debuff. Stats don't seem that significant in PVE. They're good, but they're not game changing like a blanket debuff.

I could be remembering incorrectly, but I believe Kodius has stated that a -STR/-AGL debuff was identical in every way to a -OF. A -REF is the same as a -DF. I'm not sure how you're comparing stats being equivalent in PVE, but IIRC, there was a push with 3.0 to remove 'things that buffed/debuffed OF/DF' and instead move towards 'things that buffed/debuffed specific skills/stats'. A few spells lingered that still buffed/debuffed OF/DF, like RAGE and MALE, but they are in all respects identical to spells that buff/debuff offensive/defensive stats/skills.

To that end, I'm under the impression that DALU is actually superior because it always debuffs offensive and defensive capacities, AND sleeps the target you're facing.

>I don't know if there is a use, but the dispel is a practically free ability since you need uncurse to get HYH.

I guess as an anti-magic defensive cyclic that can be pretty good for keeping debuffs off you. Means no GhS or HYH-MALE/CoZ though.

>>Also remember that stat debuffs are plentiful in the game, But df and of buffs /debuffs are not

Agil/Str/Ref debuffs are indirect OF/DF debuffs.

>I, personally, wouldn't use one of two scroll slots on aoe stuns in most situations. YMMV, but I think it's better to disable one and kill the other.

Sorry, I misunderstood - I thought you were saying there are better non-cyclic aoe stuns, not that there were simply better options than aoe stuns.

>I would love to see this post. I would also be interested in knowing how this compares to a flat male, and whether male off or male def are stronger than the individual components of DALU. Also remember that stat debuffs are plentiful in the game, But df and of buffs /debuffs are not That said, you just pointed out an interesting though. I wonder how much a bard + cleric could overhunt. Dalu + rage + name + male off + mpp +mapp + rob in addition to the individual toolkits. I want to try this.

I would too - I wouldn't begin to know how to search for it. What I'm remembering is a discussion about how OF/DF was calculated, and what Kodius confirmed is that OF ~= (Weapon or spell used * offensive stats) and DF ~= (Armor + Shield + Parry + Evasion * defensive stats). If OF > DF, damage is dealt and some other stuff is calculated. If OF < DF, it's a 'miss' insofar as being a dodge, a parry, or a shield block. To that end, if something 'buffs OF', that's identical to something that buffs STR/AGL/Weapon Stats/Offensive Skill (Weapons or TM), and something that 'buffs DF' is identical to something that buffs Ref/Armor/Evasion/Parry/Shield/and I suppose Stamina. I have no idea how they've been balanced, if RAGE's OF buff is identical to a STR/AGL buff, or an AGL buff, or an AGL + Weapon skill buff, etc., but I think the gyst is that OF/DF buffing/debuffing is identical to stat/skill buffing/debuffing.

But you're point about how they stack is of course apropos - I have no idea if they do or don't. My guess is that DALU + HYH-MALE would result in a lot of debuffing, but I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes for MALE. Similarly, I wager RAGE would stack with BENE and RW, but again, I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes for RAGE.

Surething. When would you like to do so?

Just a thought - but we could use a damage calculator w/o HYH-MALE, w/o DALU, HYH-MALE + DALU and w/o HYH-MALE + DALU + RAGE. Seems the easiest way to do so.