lamentation for a queen

[Foodstamp]

quantum_mechani said:

She is drastically cheaper.

The over the top round of nerfs happened long after Norfleet had disappeared.

But the discussions that led to her being toned down were during the Norfleet thing.

To summarize for the people who were not around. Norfleet cheated using 3rd party hacks to increase his gem income to astronomical levels.

Before people confirmed he was cheating, there were many different theories as to why he was good in multiplayer. These included him using Ashen Empire, the Vampire Queen and Castling.

The Vampire Queen was toned down shortly after he was nailed for cheating. It may or may not have played a role in it being toned down, but atleast, I think the attention that was drawn to the vampire queen was through his constant 'successful' use of it as a pretender.

[archaeolept]

no, the unbalanced nature of the VQ had nothing to do with Norfleet. He was just an obsessive power gamer, so, of course, always took the most unbalanced pretender choice.

The VQ was extremely commonly used in DomII, due to the ease at making her extremely strong vs. indies. She was properly nerfed by the end of DomII, and there was no need for a further, drastic nerf. She's now pointless.

Other "theories" as to why he was so powerful in MP were put forward by idiots with no experience of playing him.

[Foodstamp]

Chill out. I was only stating one of the reasons that attention was brought to the Vampire Queen because someone asked why it was related to Norfleet.

For you to call people who play this game idiots shows your lack of character rather than their lack of intelligence. Without exception the community for this game series has been helpful, intelligent and show great maturity on these forums when compared to other gaming communities.

Even though I never posted in the Dom 2 forums, I did follow along, and I think the theories were put out there to give him the benefit of a doubt, rather than pointing the finger without hard evidence.

Spend a little time building up your self confidence instead of judging other people. If you do the former, you won't need to do the latter to feel good about yourself by comparison.

[Endoperez]

Norfleet always managed to fire up people's feelings. I suggest we just drop that line of discussion. We can all agree that some nerfing was needed, more nerfing happened, and Vampire Queen is too expensive for what she is ATM.

[sector24]

There are actually a lot of less than ideal pretenders. When you think about it in that context the VQ is not at all uncommon in the grand scheme. The only difference is that she was good at one point and is no longer so.

[WraithLord]

Some examples will be nice, but IMO VQ is not really less than ideal, its out right useless. I think for probably all of the pretenders its possible to find a scenario in which they would be useful, or cost effective. Currently, for the VQ I can't seem to find any use at all. If there is one that I'm missing then I'd truly like to know about it.

[Omnirizon]

WraithLord said:
Some examples will be nice, but IMO VQ is not really less than ideal, its out right useless. I think for probably all of the pretenders its possible to find a scenario in which they would be useful, or cost effective. Currently, for the VQ I can't seem to find any use at all. If there is one that I'm missing then I'd truly like to know about it.

she makes a pretty good scout

[sector24]

There are a lot of large high HP pretenders that don't have the kind of stats or abilities that you'd want for early expansion, nor high starting paths for a bless. Just a few examples:

Lord of War
Father of Serpents
Jade Emperor
Lord of Plenty
Lady of Fortune
Celestial General
Mother of Monsters
Lord of Rebirth
etc.

I do agree with you that the VQ is currently a far worse choice than any of these. I didn't mean to argue against your point, just provide a different perspective. If you think of the VQ as the Celestial General's smaller sneakier sister, then she just becomes another pretender that you never really use but the AI seems to choose all the time.

[vfb]

That "King of War" guy with 10 encumberance or whatever is pretty crappy.

I thought I'd have to take the VQ in a game where I'm handicapped, by the other players choosing my nation and pretender chassis. Here are two ideas that sort-of work:

1) Combat VQ. Death-5 gives fear, Awe-2 for defense, and immortality in case it doesn't work. Could fly-sneak onto an enemy capitol for Dom kill, but risky with Stealth 0, 'cause her immortality won't save her if she's found.

Awake
Death 5 Blood 3
Dominion 10
Turmoil 3 Sloth 3 Cold 1 Fortune 3 Drain 2


2) Blood Hunt. Imprison and take good scales, non-blood nation, and use her to start getting you into blood sometime.

Imprisoned
Death 1 Blood 2
Dominion 6
Order 3 Productivity 2 Growth 2 Fortune 3 Drain 2

[quantum_mechani]

Foodstamp said:

But the discussions that led to her being toned down were during the Norfleet thing.

The first round, yes. However that round of discussion and nerfing happened during the dom2 patches, and general consensus was that she was still viable then. It was only much later in the stretch between dom2 and dom3 that she became a truly poor choice, losing ethereal and gaining still more cost.