Shattered Kingdoms

A quote from the warlock build help in the newbie forums prompted me to make this post. The quote was

Baldric wrote:
"btw, warlocks who aren't making liberal use of the zap command in pvp are newbs. "

From some of the logs I've seen and people using the zap command, it's basically a bit overpowered in my opinion. Heres my reasoning for this. Take the cone of cold wand, the one with overpowered charges. Now, that has damage equal to a GM warlock's cone of cold (since it's overpowered) and it can be fired off in rapid succession. That's about 2 zaps per what? one or one and a half combat round? You can literally spam that monstrosity and tear up a group faster than the actual spell itself can be cast. Same with any overpowered wand really.

In my opinion, this should be fixed. Why are people so reliant on scrolls and wands instead of their own spell set? I understand that there should be powerful artifacts and such but not to the point that people rarely even use their own spells. Perhaps increase the lag time on zap? Make it so you can only zap once per every combat round or so or every 1.5 rounds. Closer to the lag time of brandish. Or what about making art non applicable to artifacts like wands and scrolls? That way they're set at a certain level and can't be influenced by art. An OP wand with 9 art just becomes more OP in my opinion.

Discuss.

I deleted my sorc, right?

Yeah, wands are so insanely overpowered, it was pretty much the only thing I used in PK.

Charm person.

Op'd wand of acid blast/cone of cold/color spray.

Scrolls of triple FoD/Harm.

My complete list of PK tools.

This is ironic. The same guy who asked for a warlock buff not long ago now wants to wimp them completely.

Why are wands overpowered, but not staves? (this is a question, not an argument).

Scrolls aren't because they go poof after you use them, but wands and staves can be recharged, right?

The more you recharge something, is there a better chance of it turning into chain lightning?

Defensive staves are overpowered. (Mirror image staff/sanc staves) But, in general the lag time on the brandish command makes staves completely useless in PvP, unless we're talking the like top of the line ones (Magma/FoD/Sleep staves). Wands can actually be zapped 2 times in a round. And considering Cone of cold takes 2 ROUNDS to cast, a cone of cold wand with 16 charges is mind blowing.

As for the second, no. I used to use the Mirror Image stave every half hour or so and recharge it.

I thought the frequency of the significantly overpowered items was reduce in the last couple years, especially with the "nerf the lewt" campaign some players took on. While there should only be 1 or 2 of "rare" items in the game that would be considered legendary in IC terms, with GM level characteristics, most everything else should be master level and below in their overall power. The only exception I would suggest would be "blank" items without predefined spells that a GM class can scribe/brew to GM level quality. OOC the Grandmaster rank is obviously something that people reach all the time, but IC it's considered a revered state and limited to what would be considered the "elite" of the world of Pyrathia. There's no reason why a true grandmaster shouldn't be able to imbue a bit of their power in a worldly object, but again, the frequency of those items should be somewhat limited, though not nearly to the degree of the "legendary" items.

what is that i don't even

grep, I will feast upon your soul

You mean the paragon delf sorc that you played for 1500 hours over the course of a year and a half? The one that was by far your most successful character from both a pvp and an rp perspective, and would have lived a few more rl years had you not deleted?

Yeah, you deleted her. You were angwy.