Disclaimer: Okay, I’m going to try my best to not make this something that belongs in Whiny ****es, as no clbum is really underpowered. Any of the non-challenge clbumes with a good build and good equipment can pwn any forum at level 35 without consumables, so nothing is really too weak.

A while back, ET engaged in a project where he rebalanced the clbumes by taking data in terms of figuring out how much damage each clbum is doing and trying to get everybody around the same benchmark. So some attacks got made better and others got made worse. A few months have pbumed, and it may well be time to take a look at where things stand.

After talking to a number of people, I’ve pretty much reached the conclusion that the challenge clbumes are appropriately challenge-y; emos, camwhores, and hackers are all about equally good; while trolls are just way, way ahead of everybody else. One thing that happened in the meantime between “the rebalance” and “now” was, I believe, the fact that Pink Floyd became fairly readily available to anybody (since it started dropping in HOFF, was widely farmed, and everybody who extracts one is left at 49/50, so they can farm up more copies to sell in Kyoubai easily). The +30 offense granted by Pink Floyd is a considerable amount of offense, and really opens up a lot of offense for clbumes who are intended to be offense-light.

To illustrate this, let me just share an anecdote about a friend of mine and myself. He’s a level 35 troll specced for offense, and I’m a level 35 hacker specced for offense. We both have pretty much all of the high equipment you’d want (Kidney/4 Beast0rs, Earbleeders, Pink Floyd, ****.milf/Ripro, Notorious, etc.) I have 178 offense, and he has 150. With my most powerful attacks, (ipz and Recipe) I do around 3500 damage, my attacks have a high refresh pool, and my secondary stats are limited. By contrast, with flamebait and shock, he does about 6200 damage with effects with virtually no refresh time, which drain a small amount of douchebaggery from an almost limitless pool. Because the plural of “anecdote” is “data”, if you look at the speed run boards for the high level forums you’ll notice that they tend to be full of trolls. Sometimes, trolls who get those spots without really trying (Just hitting 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2 until it’s over).

So it’s pretty clear to me that Trolls have a significant edge, this may be because:

1) They have really powerful attacks (350 and 220).

2) They have as much offense as anybody else when you pile on the good equipment.

3) Their powerful attacks have really no refresh time.

4) Their secondary stat reservoirs are almost limitless.

Now the questions I have for you, dear Flamebaters is “Is this a problem?” Do trolls need nerfing? Do other clbumes need boosting? Do we really care at all if things aren’t balanced for people who are at the level cap and have everything they could ever want for?

Honestly, I don’t know. The game is certainly easy enough for me, being a non-troll, but speed running is significantly harder for me, and I spend more on repairs, etc. I’d really like to hear the opinion of Evil Trout or other CZ folks, and possibly it would be interesting to hear the results if ET used that same data gathering utility that he used for the last rebalance to see how things stand now that so many high level accounts have really good equipment now. At the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if things were just left the way they were with trolls far and away the best clbum, because (at least according to the Wiki) ET is an admitted troll IRL, so it’s understandable if he wants to Mary Sue it up a little bit Log in to see images!.

But do we really care about clbum balance at all? Or if we do, do we care about it for people who are at the level cap and want for nothing? Nothing really seems *bad* per se right now, things just seem asymmetric, and that’s that other company that does a web rpg…