OK I'll make a comeback with a shaman and show u all how nasty a certain shammy combo is. shammys are about knowing what to land and wearing down your enemy. I can beat a halfer blm as a shammy. its hard and drawn out but doable. welcome back me.
I knew it.
BTW, regarding the post in general. It's not just Shamans. Look at the casters vs melee numbers in the class numbers thread. Tell me where the bias is, and then ask why. If melee are harder to succeed with do to how reliant they are with consumables, then why are they out numbering the mages by like 5 to 1. To further extend on that comment, in the last few years at LEAST, I have had to run more consumables on my mages to stay competitive than I have ever had to run on my melee. Food for thought.
BTW' date=' regarding the post in general. It's not just Shamans. Look at the casters vs melee numbers in the class numbers thread. Tell me where the bias is, and then ask why. If melee are harder to succeed with do to how reliant they are with consumables, then why are they out numbering the mages by like 5 to 1. To further extend on that comment, in the last few years at LEAST, I have had to run more consumables on my mages to stay competitive than I have ever had to run on my melee. Food for thought.[/quote']
I always figured this was because caster/communers all require some form of gimmick to fight. While melee's are more direct. A melee can win a fight without ever typing in a command aside from murder, a caster/communer, could never do this.
In almost every single game since the start of time, melee have held more numbers. Your point is valid from a human nature point of view, as it's been proven time and again. However, I have never played a game where the ratio has been this lopsided, and that can be attributed to only one thing, if we establish a few knowns.
We know the player base here is well founded, and down to core players who can generally pk well enough against each other. There fore the more noobs play melee because of easy ranking isn't really a valid point.
The general knowledge of the player base is certainly much more concentrated than it ever has been. There fore we can assume that players are picking more melee because of that knowledge.
A large portion of the remaining players sit and think up power combos to run the show for a few hundred hours before deleting. There fore we can assume that power scale is certainly leaning in favor of melee.
I have examined other muds of similar style to ours, like AR, and although there certainly seems to always be a favoring toward melee characters in each game, we are in our own league when it comes to a ratio as great as ours.
melee(warrior, ranger, zerk, blademaster, monk) -5 classes @ 265 characters
hybrid(dark knight, paladin, druid, bard) - 4 classes @ 58 characters
caster/communer(cleric, invoker, battlemage, necromancer, healer, shaman) - 6 classes @ 116 characters
rogue(thief/ninja) - 2 classeas @ 49 characters
By this we can see some very obvious tendencies. Numbers don't lie, that's why we love these games. On a per class basis, melee averages 53 characters per class, while mages average 19.33. That's a 2.741:1 ratio of melee to caster. Which means we can accept the fact that FL is a melee favored game, or we can make some changes to keep things flowing, some of which I believe are on their way. However, nerfing casters spell level was not the right way to go. Balances should be made based on what players play more, not so much on theory. There are a couple reasons for this. First, you can sit here and bash your head against the wall in an argument with someone about the melee vs caster end game and who has it easier, and there will be valid points on each side and chances are you will rarely if ever win some one over in the argument. It's very easy for me to say things like, "anyone with a brain knows how much stronger the melee end game is", but I have heard top pk'ers tell me casters are stronger end game, are easier to survive with, and have less need on consumables(this last point is certainly not true). I counter this with, if being easier to survive is such a huge advantage than why are the numbers so lopsided? Which brings me to the second reason why we should balance changes on numbers. It's not relevant to us, to be honest, which side is stronger than the next. We are not a massive online game with large stakes. We are a very small mud looking to emerge once again, and to do that we need to base changes on creating CHANGE.
I'm such a poor poster, and my points I feel are so babbly. Go back to the blademaster introduction, and the major class change that took place after. Warriors got better paths, zerks got paths, rogues were around the same time, rangers paths, all of them resulted in massive buffs for the classes. Mages have received nothing in return, only massive nerfs on spell level caps, and equipment changes. With reduced playerbase it's hard to level them, and if you die without friends, well.....good luck re equiping. What takes a melee 15 minutes to start going and moving towards good equipment isn't viable on a mage. There are so so so so so so many reasons why melee dominate this game, and why there are so much more melee. From ranking, to cabal warfare, to end game content, to reequipping, to end game power,and yes, they even have a CONSUMABLE ADVANTAGE NOW. Generally a melee needs sanc/detect invis, and MAYBE flight/enlarge depending on the situation. A caster NEEDS armor, shield, flight, stone skin, protection, CURABLES(not cure blind, but CURE HEALTH), some need sanctuary, and even more. The list can go on and varies depending on the class being used. I've had countless fights at 50 over the years, and there was a time I could take my naked cleric, summon a shield, and try to get lucky on an unsanced melee. Now, fully prepped, I need to be decked with 500 ac in hopes to not take CAPS damage without a vuln.
As I said, we can have this argument over and over and over, but the numbers don't lie. It's way too lopsided.
One way to check would be to list as many powerful melee chars as possible then compare to a list of communers and casters.
I disagree. It isn't number of characters, but number of PLAYERS who have had one strong class type compared with how that player does with the other class type.
Otherwise, same class iterations from a strong player will largely bias the results.
you also have to consider races, their popularity, and what classes those races can play effectively.
Melee tend to have more dps oriented AND survival oriented traits that offer obvious benefits.
an example is giants and two handed weapons. What "caster" race has anything as power boosting as that for casters. I do not believe there is an option.
Illithids do 
Giants also have pretty big vulns.
Ogres, on the other hand...
I think most of the reason melees are so prevalent in FL is the equipment sets available sort of lead you that way. For C/C's, your equipment selection is almost the same no matter what you are playing (if you look at two lvl 50 casters, their armor will likely be very similar) - an exception for clerics who may have more +Hit/dam gear. For melee, the options are vast and more strategic than a C/C...and I think people like that.
Some pretty neat new caster & communer armor has been recently added to the game, some more is going to come in soon. If eq does not vary enough, people need to explore more 
Anume rocks, need more light eq for monk n blms .... Silk leggings are too heavy?? More so than double plated WHAAA
I for one like the new equipment I've been finding. :naughty:
I can certainly empathize with the original complaint regarding shamans - with my recent shaman it felt like any encounter against a caballed enemy was a tedious engagement where I'd finally land a couple of mals, only to have them disengage and appear a dozen tics or so later in perfect condition. That "or so" is not a minor statement regarding a shaman - in a dozen tics, most classes, after forcing a foe to retreat, are capable of taking a standard. Doing so as a shaman is FAR more difficult - doable, certainly, but it will likely exhaust all your mana reserves and leave you completely unable to fight off a retrieval attempt if it happens quickly.
The annoying part, in my opinion, is that in many ways it isn't that shamans have been weakened in any way - it's just that nearly everyone is used to how to fight one, and certain mechanics, like cabal healers being outside the cabal combined with newer, more powerful equipment has inadvertently tipped scales in certain places, and shamans are one of them.
There's also the flip side - that certain shaman combos remain quite potent. Higher up Adjudicator, Pandy or Temporum shamans are incredibly brutal combatants to face, even if you aren't certain to die in the process of fighting them as a lesser combo. The issue in my opinion is that a class's potency shouldn't rely on it's synergy with cabal skills, and I think that currently a shaman's potency IS too reliant on synergy with cabal skills.
With my last shaman, when I expressed frustration with how things were going, I consistently was told by various people "wait until you get Trusted" - which is exactly the wrong way that things should be balanced, in my opinion. I should not be waiting until I reach a certain cabal skill for my class to be a potent adversary at level 50.
Now, I cannot discount the possibility that I simply am bad at playing shamans - in fact, I am positive that they do not suit my playstyle, and that to make another would be an exercise in frustration. But I have also played a number of different classes to 50, and I have to say, shamans presented a unique frustration to me. They are incredibly reliant on their opponent making a mistake, or failing a save, moreso than any other caster I have played - and I've pinned them all. An invoker's spells will do damage despite a save - a battlemage's blades don't stop despite slow being saved - a necro's minions don't fail to bash despite blind being saved - and ignoring the other combat bonuses clerics get, path and ray both do damage despite being saved against, and minister is often as brutal in an attrition battle as any shaman spell if you ask me even if it's always saved against. I experienced a similar frustration playing monks, and being reliant upon luck and chakera hits for victories - I am not a fan of classes where chance is the major determinant of output. But, this is a personal preference, so I can't hate if others disagree.
EDIT: Rambling post without a point - sorry, drunk right now. Overall, I like the idea of weakening cabal healers a bit - maybe something as simple as upping the lag on using them would be sufficient.
I think it is less of a problem with Shaman potency and more of a problem concerning which playstyles are more easily rewarded. hit/dam and saves scale pretty well. Abundantly, even. While Shamans do have spells to help them bypass saves, it forces them to whittle their opponent even longer than normal. All the while, it is a huge risk for them to go up against all that hit/dam, which scales fantastically, and arguably much better than its counterbalance, -AC. Now, there are a plethora of items which increase saves and hit/dam... and virtually none that help casters land their maledictives. This wasn't as big of a problem, I'd imagine, when shaman tactics widely varied and people hadn't adapted to fighting them. Now, though, nobody sticks around long enough for you to chain any key mals together, barring making mistakes.
Why not add an item for mal level? Mental has the Ethereal Radiance, Aff has Sphere of Annihilation. Mal is left behind.
Different classes have different abilities? Why should a shaman be able to take down a cabal guard as easily as say a warrior? So then they get all that strength and the ability to to kill something hours after ending combat? Now that seems waaay op to me. Hell, those cabal healers don't even cure blind lol. That, and the massive lag associated with any kind of healing outside a cabal gives shamans plenty of umph. They can cast 2-3 mals in the time it takes to heal one at the healer.
I suck at pk, for the record, so maybe it's just me, but shaman's are brutal, and one of the ugliest classes to fight no matter what class you are, except maybe ninja. If you're a melee you fight fight fight, and then when you're done you can't regen and then wait to die. If you're a communer bam, blasphemy, and then you wait to die.
Not really. A lot of fighting shamans is knowing when to flee. Don't sit around saying "I can handle X, Y, and Z mals and still come out on top". You could be sitting on a bash lag and get slammed with a a dysentery first cast. Well **** (hehe) now you can't flee effectively. Oh! And there's that other mal you were waiting for... insult to injury.
Caster and silenced? gtfo. they have lag from casting it, you can't cast anything so you're definitely not in the same boat.
Communer and blasphemed? gtfo. They have lag from casting it, and you can't pray for help anymore. Got nothing else to do but run away.
Communers have, generally, even less to worry about from a Shaman. They can cure some of the staple mals on their own.
Anyone and Mass Hysteria'd? GTFO. Don't try to honeybadger that, you will more than likely end up hiking it back to an empty corpse.
Giant race? Yeah, you can handle a poison. Not the end of the world. Hell, sometimes it can be pretty handy to be poisoned. You can even handle the weaken. Best be booking it if the shaman lands deteriorate or phantom grasp...
Insomnia? GTFO and hide. as far away as your legs can take you. Ain't nobody got time to have that Shaman land free mals while you're vegging like Terry Schiavo.
Hex? Stick around. On it's own, it isn't much. Still in the safe zone.
Blindness? If you're a c/c not much to worry about. Shaman's aren't beasts at melee, and the slight increase in damage taken isn't going to set you too far back. Zerker's are generally just fine if the Shaman is silly enough to blind them. Blind-fighting helps warriors, rangers, blademasters and monks out a bit. Even without the aforementioned perks, if you know your way around the lands and can determine what direction you fled by testing routes... 100% okay to put up with blind right off the bat.
faerie fire/fog? Who cares about those? Unless your entire PK potential is dependent on staying hidden (or just a thief in general), it isn't the end of the world. And hey... once it lands, you're stuck with it for a while anyway. Nothing to run away from.
Plague's a wrecker. If you get it, run and don't come back til it's cured and you've completely recovered. There is nothing pleasant about that spell.
VISITATION!!! Do not underestimate the damage of this spell. If you have it on you, and you're not near full, it might be best to flee and rest up. Most shamans won't cast it until right before the mal they want you to run away with. If you get hit with it, do not stick around. The next mal is one of those nasty ones.
On my other point... there's even an item (correct me if it has been removed), that specifically targets a shaman spell to reduce its affect. By half. One of those three nasty ones, too.
As has often been the case when classes receive nerfs (in this case, the addition of outside cabal healers), shamans were not given anything to make them more potent. In a fight vs. a decked melee, you might go through your HP bar 2-3 times before you get a lethal combination of mals to stick...and they go find a healer while you have to spend that time healing yourself, resetting spells, etc. Still fun though, not gonna lie 
Why not add an item for mal level? Mental has the Ethereal Radiance, Aff has Sphere of Annihilation. Mal is left behind.
There are actually two items that increase malediction spell level.
Hell, those cabal healers don't even cure blind lol.
They do.