Limb Class Fighting - A Discussion

Saybre

Since it's been brought up multiple times, let us all have a go at it, keep it civil.

The Pros of Limb Classes/Fighting
- No venoms to juggle!
- Zealot/Monk/Lycan do not have to worry about Rebounding.
- Can cause a lot of bleed and can hinder well.
- Kinda badass to beat someone's body parts to a pulp.

The Cons of Limb Classes/Fighting
- Insanely difficult to track properly without a ton of work.
- Parry is the easiest defence to absolutely kill momentum.
- 2 of the 6 'limbs' only have 2 levels of break (Head/Torso)
- Getting ahead of salve balance to maintain breaks vs getting ahead of herb balance is MUCH harder. (Especially with parry being involved.)
- While tracking afflictions given/cured is 1s and 0s easy, Limb damage is highly variable.
- Artifacts are near necessity for Limb classes to get ahead (Weapon Runes/Knuckles/Claws) vs. Venom/standard affliction. *Yet strength does not affect the actual limb damage, only the raw damage*
- Literally set up for 'damage kill' which the game is slowly moving away from and nerfing damage all around.
- If a weapon limb class (Templar/Carnifex/Luminary etc), have to deal with rebounding AND parry.

Hopefully this will get some visibility, as a lot of us LOVE limb fighting and greatly prefer it, but it is incredibly hard to get others into because of the complexity involved, yet it has far more cons to it than standard affliction tracking. This is a detriment to the combat player base, because the fewer people -using- it, the less likely the administration will see the flaws, and the only instances of nerfing to scaling have been done effectively due to artifacts.

I personally only make headway with Maces on Templar because I have 2 Level 2 Empowerment runes, and level 3 strength. Without the runes, the maces are too slow to make headway AND deal damage, otherwise you sacrifice one over the other. In Lycan it's almost primarily luck and timing, I have not directly fought in Zealot/Monk for about 8 years beyond bashing, so I can't account too much for how troublesome it is for them, but I hear it enough it has stalled me on scripting my offenses for those classes.

Discuss!

Valingar

Quick thought in regard to limb damage classes. Unless I'm full of fails and my european latency betrays me again, restoration balance is currently bugged to be roughly 7.5% faster than intended when applied to limbs (4.0s instead of 4.3s). I've taken it up with a few people, we'll see what the response is. But if that bug is fixed, it should allow a little bit more breathing room for limb damage classes. Teradrim especially look to be in a very strong shape after this round.

Toz

Also str has no noticeable impact on limb damage for any class I've played as. I dunno where people are getting that stuff from, but it doesn't impact monk, Teradrim, Carnifex, Lycan, or Templar damage that I ever saw.

Aaaalso

9:29.341 to 9:33.670 vs 9:37.112 to 9:41.140

First number set is just apply restoration, 2nd is apply restoration to left arm (which cured some limb damage). Might just be your internet.

Ezalor

It's not str that makes the attacks scale, it's your target's maxhp. For Lycans and Weaponry attacks.

Valingar

Toz said:

Also str has no noticeable impact on limb damage for any class I've played as. I dunno where people are getting that stuff from, but it doesn't impact monk, Teradrim, Carnifex, Lycan, or Templar damage that I ever saw.

Aaaalso

9:29.341 to 9:33.670 vs 9:37.112 to 9:41.140

First number set is just apply restoration, 2nd is apply restoration to left arm (which cured some limb damage). Might just be your internet.

Unless I'm missing something, your numbers prove my point. When restoration is applied to a limb (as opposed to untargeted), it takes 4.0 seconds according to your numbers. 4.3 is only untargeted restoration.

Toz

Lycan and base weaponry attacks, yes. Though class attacks I have access to don't seem to scale - I guess I never noticed that flat weapon hits do it too since nobody really uses those. Just one more thing that makes limb classes a little absurd to even try to fight as - though I will admit, in the spirit of fairness, lycans don't need 100% accurate limb tracking like some other classes (monk/Teradrim especially).

Toz

And since I somehow posted this in the wrong thread:

Weapon damage impacts how much limb damage you do, as well. Also restoration seems to cure somewhat clumsily, leaving a bit random-seeming limb damage on, but I could be wrong - but, let me break down my thoughts simply.

Argument 1: Limb damage classes should not be able to track with 100% accuracy

- Why? Aff classes have complete and total control (discernment, venoms give a line when they apply, etc.), why make limb classes the ones who are unable to automate well/reliably? Why take away information from them? It feels like a pointless punishment to just decide 'you don't get to know with certainty the status of your opponent, buuuut if you were an aff class you would'.

Argument 2: You can already codedly track things just fine with 100% accuracy

- Why not make it easier? You could track venoms delivered without the line, but having it makes things so much easier. You could system-build without having all the GMCP stuff, but that was given too - the aim seems to be to make combat easier to get into, and right now there's an artificial block for limb classes having to deal with the difficulty in coding an offense (go get 100000 lines for all the limb attacks etc. then run checks to see if they dodged/parried). In short, it's a whole lot of code just to be anywhere near as effective as an aff-class from an automated perspective (not arguing lethality, just to have code of the same caliber as someone playing an aff class). Plus, parrying is THE anti-automation skill, in that it cannot be predicted. Curing is linear - people will cure x, y, z. Always. But you can actually throw someone's offense off just by having a parry scheme (which has more flexibility) that they've not pre-planned for. So, simplifying the codework they have to do just to track limb damage would be beyond merciful since they already have to figure out how to handle parry.

Moirean

I thought there was something about strength factoring into certain attacks (fairly sure it used to matter for old-Sent maul and slam at the least?), but I could be absolutely wrong. I haven't touched limb stuff really at all since I started playing again.

Valingar

A thought in regards to the strength thing (hey, I love limb classes, don't judge). High strength and being able to do high health damage does impact the performance of limb classes, though it doesn't affect their limb damage directly. This is because restoration salve scales to your current health. When you are above 70% health or so (numbers not perfectly accurate), you will heal the full 33% limb damage on a restoration application. If you are down to say, 40% of your max health, you will heal only about 20% limb damage from a restoration salve.

Moirean

I never knew that. That...makes tracking even harder (especially against someone like a vampire or luminary).

Irruel

[05:44:53.237] You take out a salve of restoration and quickly rub it on your torso. [05:44:57.238] You may apply another salve to yourself.

Val seems correct with the resto salve thing. I did roughly half a dozen repeats and it'd need to be a few dozen to be properly accurate (damn latency) but it was consistently about the same as that.

Ezalor

Probably a relic of the past. As far as I know Weaponry and Lycan attacks are the only ones that are still on a variable system, although I haven't tested every attack.

I actually never knew that either @Valingar. I guess there may be an intended balance somewhere in doing that in order to make str and damage artis attractive to limb classes beyond pure damage.

Irruel

It was a new feature of limb damage classes just a few years ago. It is well post-lycan, and it is a major reason why I tell people that strength is important for lycans. Not important enough for someone to choose powerful/herculean over dexterous with the old endgame statpacks, but certainly important enough for people to choose a strength pack over a defensive one with the new system.

The idea was to make it easier to keep multiple limbs broken, without making it easier to get them broken in the first place.

It does make it harder to track limb damage, and that might be a real pain for monks/knights. It's less important for lycans though, as lycans get confirmations of limb damage when they use mangle, destroy and gut.

I can certainly see the arguments against this variability, with the nature of combat now requiring better tracking of target state, but I do like the intention behind resto salve being this way and if it is changed it could have negative effects as well as positive ones.

Daskalos

Luminaries don't have to deal with rebounding with their limb attacks. Or clumsiness. Or dodging\diverting. 

Ishin

Honestly my biggest issue as a lycanthrope, back with old Dex statpack, wasn't groin or spleen rips, it was getting the throat rip because parry head and leave it there would just shut it down. I'd have to bodypunch/skullwhack spam or spinalcrack/skullwhack or something similar to that. I'd eventually get it on most people, but good grief was it ever a pain in the booty.

I've always wished that limb damage was a little more transparent, and I thought that getting the messages for the various resto breaks was really neat, it certainly helped me with my lycan tracking a buttload.

Saybre

Daskalos said:

Luminaries don't have to deal with rebounding with their limb attacks. Or clumsiness. Or dodging\diverting. 

Ah my bad, as I don't have Lumy. Well..you buggers got it awesome then!!

Anyway, yes, regarding strength for limb damage (I thought I made it clear in my post), that STR doesn't affect LIMB damage, but it affects the RAW damage, i.e. I do 2% limb damage and 400 health lost with 10 strength, but with 15 strength I do 2% limb damage and 580 health lost.

I also never knew about the resto scale to health, sounds familiar-ish, but didn't know that. Interesting..makes things trickier to be sure, but kinda helpful.

Irruel

Ishin said:

Honestly my biggest issue as a lycanthrope, back with old Dex statpack, wasn't groin or spleen rips, it was getting the throat rip because parry head and leave it there would just shut it down. I'd have to bodypunch/skullwhack spam or spinalcrack/skullwhack or something similar to that. I'd eventually get it on most people, but good grief was it ever a pain in the booty.

I've always wished that limb damage was a little more transparent, and I thought that getting the messages for the various resto breaks was really neat, it certainly helped me with my lycan tracking a buttload.

I loved when people parried head only. No need to worry about them parrying legs/arms, and what more could you want? I suppose devour existing makes people want to use it but all you really need is a spleenrip for the bleeding kill, or to screw their limbs up and behead.

Daskalos

Saybre said:

Daskalos said:

Luminaries don't have to deal with rebounding with their limb attacks. Or clumsiness. Or dodging\diverting. 

Ah my bad, as I don't have Lumy. Well..you buggers got it awesome then!!

Anyway, yes, regarding strength for limb damage (I thought I made it clear in my post), that STR doesn't affect LIMB damage, but it affects the RAW damage, i.e. I do 2% limb damage and 400 health lost with 10 strength, but with 15 strength I do 2% limb damage and 580 health lost.

I also never knew about the resto scale to health, sounds familiar-ish, but didn't know that. Interesting..makes things trickier to be sure, but kinda helpful.

It's not awesome, it's OP . I didn't realize how OP it was until after reports had long since been closed because I'm not a limb person usually... will try to fix it next round. Being able to give a salve affliction + limb damage + have a skill that makes salve applications randomly fail is... nuts.

Moirean

That's why I kept saying no to upgrades elsewhere, like for overwhelm (which you can set up via limbs). The limb route is very potent, and I said as much in comments.

Ezalor

Luminary shield attacks seem buggy in general. Even the affliction ones cannot be dodged and cannot miss due to clumsiness/blurry vision but can be diverted. Not sure what's going on there.

It was fine before because rebounding stopped Luminaries so hard but with an actually good rebounding strip coming up that bug/feature might need to be looked at. Would help make the limb route less overwhelming too.

Xavin

@Moirean Keep in mind that rank and file players cannot view comments on reports.

Toz

I, uh. Definitely have been saying Luminary limb offense is way stronger than people thought for a long time. But nobody believed me.

Ishin

@Irruel You have a good point, but I never really saw the point of behead/brainsmashing people as a Lycanthrope. Yeah, it's there...but really, I like using what my class has, which is devour for Lycanthropes. I really liked trying to devour people, I considered it very very challenging and if I did get the devour off, it just seemed like it made me look that much better as a lycanthrope PvPer.

Sure, I could've brainsmashed my way to victory a few times. Or beheaded. But to me it just like...it wasn't the same, you know? I liked garrotelocking people and voyria-ing them to death as a Syssin too, it was just one of those things. Like using vivisect to win as a speed-knight Infernal on Resiak.

Daskalos

@Moirean - 

Before the new statpacks, the idea was balance people use limb attacks, eq use afflictions. New statpacks made it possible to change between the two simultaneously. I've filed a bug on the rebounding part, which may be enough to slow it down, as well as the others. We'll see. I, personally, hate limb based offenses. I hate trying to figure out how much to hit with, et cet. I did ok as a monk, but I definately prefer aff classes.

Irruel

@ishin
I agree, though I went for bleeding kills rather than devour. Devour is a relatively new ability and when added was posed as a way to finish off the super-artifacted tanks that just wouldn't die to bleed-out no matter how messed up they already were. It wasn't posed as the staple lycan finisher, but now (this liaison round) reports were out there trying to make the setup for devour easier.

I'm not saying they don't have a point. Every class should have a kill route that is unaffected by the target's tankiness, and devour is ridiculous - but I don't think devour needed to be it. They could have repurposed one of the flavour abilities from lycanthropy to be a different kind of finisher.

Looking at the way the reports went, and the (in my opinion, hopefully I am wrong) poorly thought out nature of the claw attack that prones in 3 seconds (while still interrupting the chain of BITES that are needed to set up a jawlock), devour will be just as difficult to pull off as ever. I suspect that next liaison round will be similar, with similar concerns and hopefully better suggestions.

Ishin

Um...maybe I'm a bit of a tard, but which claw attack prones in 3 seconds?? o.o

Saybre

If you read the multitude of reports suggested there were numerous suggestions to make it easier and less of a pain. The admin decided to only go with the delayed prone claw attack option. I hardly have any control over that, and again -everyone- who had Lycan had the ability to submit. In fact, they even chose to do it in a way I didn't really want, but that's outside my control.

Xiuhcoatl

Wall of text time. 

@Irruel you are absolutely correct. 3 second prone is going to do absolutely nothing, because it's just a weaker method of a double hamstring. As a claw attack that is. If they made it a free balance option, it'd still be useless outside of a very very specific window that would be so small that it's essentially useless, for explanation it'd be a ping race to stand which they should win(they just have to spam stand starting 2.75 seconds after they are hit by it. To automate it, you would start at 2.75 and send stand every .05 seconds. This way you send stand 5 times, a reasonable number and beat them to it, as the attacker can't spam jawlock.) The implementation of it is going to be completely useless as I've said before and will continue to say. As that is the worth of the skill. So useless in fact, I believe corporal punishment is in order for whoever went yeah this is GREAT, read slapping silly.

@Devour wasn't viable back when it came out, and that's still true today. The best method is and always will be(without significantly more lycan based nerfs) brainsmash and behead. That route is why lycans are pretty nice. It's fast. It's fun. It's dom-brainsmash. 

@Saybre If I was to liaison anything outside of the given reports this round for lycans, it would be a version of vivisect for lycans that would require multiple resto breaks. To help with this, I would propose a new mending affliction added to the torso and for spinal rip to be usable with this affliction in addition to paralysis. Then a secondary resto affliction on top of this, similar to mangle and destroy but spinal rip+buffer restoration affliction. A similar situation should be placed on the head of the target. With a mending claw attack to the head and then a rip associated with that. I would suggest that the head (and maybe the  torso) mangle/destroy should not do limb damage. Nobody wants to get a head break and get knocked out for 4 seconds back to back until dead. 

The claw attacks and resto breaks based on that would be pretty much a copy/paste of Illidan's report. The only difference would be the end goal would be a vivisect clone. And my implementation would be a bit cleaner, coherent. However, I'm not coherent at all, so eh. While his was just to add extra pressure and that jazz. 

The only other thing I could possibly see adding to them was to capitalize on an opponent who has multiple restoration breaks. IE, if the target has a destroyed/mangled limb or two, the next mangle you do will destroy a limb. That way the class has a method of capitalizing on the momentum instead of going into the current infinite loops that is prone to happen. Similar to a venomknight gets a lock, he then hits you with other afflictions to secure the lock. Then more afflictions on top of that to screw you over even if you get out of the lock. In the current lycan combat, this capitalization isn't there. 

@Daru I still believe you guys should be fire ninjas and all your hits should set the target on fire/unique fire afflictions on the limbs you hit. The fire gets hotter and hotter until poof the guy explodes. Because, if we're to be honest, daru limb combat is really bad. Kaido helps out a little bit, but it's still pretty eh. 

That being said, I really need to put in blank tracking. That thing screws up my parrying. 

Xiuhcoatl

End of Wall.