Firebomb / Suicide Tactics

Toz

Nalor said:

this rage was pointless the last page ago
...
leave rage, for rage

Daskalos

Of note, we've tried that firebomb tactic probably 6 times. Its worked probably twice, and the reason is latency. If our tankier people trigger before our less tanky people, a lot of times we end up killing our own people before their firebombs go off. They're indiscriminate. The other day, a prism was interrupted and we blew ourselves up. The counter is there -- don't be in the room when we prism. If we walk in and start them, 9 times out of 10 it's going to fail, especially if you do the prone all in room attack. But, as Serrice said, we were heavily outnumbered. You got -some- experience (and so did we!). If you start removing our AoE options, we'll just quit coming to fights and you'll have none. We've only used them when you guys have gone lolnumbers on us because 'you can't tell someone they can't participate'.

And to those saying 'we don't have firebomb'.... well, we don't have ranged anywhere close to what is available for the shadow side. Doppies, Sand strip!, et cetera.

Xavin

Not to throw a damper on anyone's party, but life side has new ranged in the form of cataclysm! (not that that's exclusive, shadow has it too)

Nalor

Xavin said:

Not to throw a damper on anyone's party, but life side has new ranged in the form of cataclysm! (not that that's exclusive, shadow has it too)

And how many of lifer side place mage? :P @Xavin who go to lessers

And having the class is not the same as having the class and going to lessers in the class

Aishia

I can think of at least 3 offhand.

Daskalos

Moirean said:

Not really to throw fuel onto the...err...fire...But two changes have had a very inflammatory effect on the skill: 1. Fireblock blocks firebomb now, so the Lumies tank the first hit. That's a huge difference. 2. The change to lessers and xp means there is now no real downside to suicide bombing with it.

The second point is really what the issue is, not the skill itself. I absolutely understand why they did it, it's just silly that mechanics are encouraging something like this, ESPECIALLY since people are getting triple xp from killing THEIR OWN TEAMMATES. That's where the real issue is.

Fireblock does not block firebomb damage. I still receive it. What fireblock procs on and stops is being -set ablaze-. And unlike singularities and holocausts, they can't be set and left. We literally become suicide bombers.

A few other misconceptions through this thread:
Firebomb can be started out of room and has a delayed timer. It used to go off instantly, but was changed to be timed. I've used it 1 on 1 to finish someone off before combined with an overwhelm, so it does have uses.

Not everyone gets experience. If you noticed in the fights last night, several times we nuked our own people before any of you died, because Indorani have insane tankiness.

If you rebirth a Luminary, the firebomb stops as it's a hard reset on the Luminary. Any damage you take at that point is from rebirth itself.

Again, if you see a prism... just leave and re-enter the room and break the prism. You don't even have to snipe with curare. Guess what! We'll probably blow ourselves up at that point. And with the amount of pure damage you guys put out, if we're trying to walk into your room and -then- firebomb... it's going to go badly for us 10 times out of 10. We've tried that, and to date, it hasn't worked once.

I'm sorry that your 3 to 1 odds didn't win you a fight last night because we used a tactic, but for -us- it felt damned nice finally winning one or two against such insane odds that you guys -consistently- threw at us. And as for the kids that you claimed were xp farming -- they weren't. I've got a ton of kids in the Luminaries who are learning to PK. They're bashing their butts off to endgame so that they -can- start PK'ing. One of them, Solarian, beat one of yours, Lim, the other day and got a high off of it. They're hooked into PK, and have been contributing in all manner of ways, not -just- the Firebomb runs we did last night.

Are you upset because you lost resources? You certainly didn't lose experience. I don't get it.

Oleis

This is going south. I'm not going to go on my usual forum rant about how you people couldn't discuss the weather without getting into a pissing match about how cumulus is better than cumulonimbus because cirrus's mom is a slut or whatever. I think I just get that Charlie Brown teacher voice going on.

We're looking at the problem. We'll tweak the situation. Some of you will hate it, some of you will feel triumphant, and 90% of the game will find something else to mash furiously on a macro. In the meantime, let's please find something else to talk about.

Thank you. You're pretty.

Moirean

Personal stuff aside, I don't think many of us are actually mad. I know I myself am not actually upset about anything. If I were still a lifer, I'd probably be trying the tactic out myself a few times. I've debated trying bringing back vengeance bombs because why not. Lulz and stuff.

Firebomb isn't the issue, imo. The lesser system is a decent, solid core of combat mechanics, but there are outlying issues and because of these we see similar stuff crop up every now and then. I'm going to put my thoughts on that into a new thread, though, so as not to clog up rage thread.

Furtum

Speaking as a new guy to Aetolian pk, I found it all fantastic. Kamikaze isn't a new small unit warfare tactic. Vbombs elsewhere look about as fun to coordinate in that kind of lag as those did, there is an appropriate element of cost/reward, and didn't we still win? Who cares if you die? That's kind of the point, is to show up and die and have fun. Also killing stuff, preferably with a little stabbing, some light chokery.

Toz

Oleis said:

Thank you. You're pretty.

^^

Amberlea

@Serrice it's great that you all had fun, and good for you. I, personally, was frustrated by it. I tried to leave the room after we prism'd in and before it all blew up but was unable to and died the second time. I questioned whether it was worth it for me, or the group as a whole, to show up at all if I was just going to insta splat to my own team's attacks. That feeling is a negative one for me, and it caused me to have a negative experience, hence the short rant. I came back for a third time and we had a regular fight and I had a good amount of fun in that one, enough to counter the negative feelings of the first two deaths, so overall everything was fine. I think if we are going to suicide bomb in the future we could maybe send non-bombers in as a second wave after the initial burst to try to limit the amount of unnecessary lolteamkills because all it made me do was question coming in the first place.

Zsadist

Honestly, this kamikaze group frustrated me to no end every time it was thrown out. Yes, from a tactic perspective it was great (look how much damage the Japanese did to Pearl Harbor using the same tactic). However, from an enjoyment perspective from both sides, thank you @Amberlea, it was quite annoying. Especially when the exits were walled out and I got bombarded by Dask/Rashar/Valingar firebomb combo, which Dask/Valingar both managed to do 5000 dmg in about 1 second (thats with a 32% audit against fire). There just is no running from that, regardless of how tanky you are. I don't care so much for the 'no xp loss' stuff, but I do not think you should be able to move while performing firebomb.

To me, firebomb should work like Deliverance or something. However, all this is just from a new look on one of many AoE skills from either side as this is the first time I've been steamrolled by an AoE skill. Maybe I'm abit bias as I'm on shadow side, but I don't know of any other AoE skill that does as much damage as firebomb does. If I am wrong, I will more than be willing to say I am wrong, but it just seems like an overall OP skill.

End all, great skill, just too much versatility for it being so strong.

Daskalos

Do note, Indorani can generally tank a much higher amount. It's also really easy to prevent, as I detailed above. Walling the exits is the fault of your team.

Moirean

Why? Their fire resistance is 5%. That's on the low end of class defs.

Daskalos

To quote you...

Moirean

discussion by Moirean · May 8 · The Midnight Age › Harpy's Head Tavern

You do realize we stopped tapping so we could xp farm you guys a bit? 70% fire audit means we can AoE once and rake in the xp you funnel at us by suiciding.

Moirean

I was Carnifex. I've been Carnifex at essentially every lesser for the past...like 2-3 months. The lesser at festering wastes was the first time I tried out new Indo stuff.

Daskalos

Ah, my mistake then. Won't putrefaction still help, tho? Indo are generally regarded as one of the tankiest in the game.

Moirean

Putrefaction is only cutting damage. I can hit almost the same numbers as Indo for fire, but that's not class specific stuff. Arti shield + statpack + energy shell + favor = 40% Indo's tankiness comes partially from their cutting resistance, partially from their (admittedly resource-costly) self heal and partially from the hinders they have available (which should be somewhat smaller with the changes), but that won't help against high chunks of damage. Indo are more about surviving multiple rounds of hits.

Xavin

Keep in mind that just this round, a new vibration was released that increases the user's allies' elemental resistance in a chosen type. There's also the potential to use an elemental resistance shield.

Tina

Indo have average damage resist. Only thing above average about them is cutting resist. Blunt is average, and the rest is below average. The advantage they have is self healing, but they have to skip attacking to do it. It's all active, not passive. And soulcage. They can get pretty tanky, but only with artifacts and buffs available to every other class as well. Prae, Luminary, Teradrim, Shaman, a bunch of classes have a higher audit than Indo with just class skills. Though even if they did have a crazy high fire resist, I don't think one class being able to tank them has much to do with this topic.

Yes there are ways to stop it and prevent the tactic. The exact same things you are mentioning are also the same things to stop meteors and stars and lust, and all the other shadow skills that regularly get asked to be nerfed. These same prevention tactics are always claimed not to count cause they aren't reliable, or take away from your own offense too much. You can't say they are good enough for us, but not good enough for you. Either they work both ways, or neither way. Whole thing seems like a recurring cycle that will continue whenever an ability is found that one side thinks is unfair. The tactic is cheap and annoying, but it can work, and is sometimes the best option. It will be used while viable like every other cheap option gets used. Hunger, vivisect off cripple, etc. Till something gets changed so it can't be.

Combat isn't fair, it never will be. Skills will never be even, sides will never be even, the skills of fighters on sides will never be even. It's not usually unbalanced one way or the other, it just shifts with time. You can either let pvp frustrate you to the extremes, or just accept things and go with the flow most of the time.

Daskalos

Uh. Lust is a bitch but hardly in need of change. My only gripe about it was that they changed the message and didn't post about it. The key difference in firebomb and meteor arrows is that you guys can throw up a ton of meteors\star at ranged... and not so much the other. But, tat's not here nor there. I haven't complained about those in a while. I will maintain that Shadow has far, far superior ranged combat, and I don't think anyone can really counter that.

Saybre

TL;DR
Suicide tactics were used long before the XP change, as the people doing them (then AND now) are all Endgame and the death loss isn't that big of a deal anyway, and 'farming XP' isn't really the reason the majority of the people who go to Lessers do it for anyway.

Either way, pretty sure @Oleis said to cool it, so lets go have an argument over the darkies getting paisley drapes for their houses, while the lighters only get mauve.

Azton

Xavin said:

Keep in mind that just this round, a new vibration was released that increases the user's allies' elemental resistance in a chosen type. There's also the potential to use an elemental resistance shield.

Thats only 100 less damage to allies.. tested it on different people and only 200 less to myself.. which isnt that great really.. and 100 more damage to enemies... @Xavin

Also most of us dont do 'suicide' runs like the Undead mages, We co-ordinate firebombs/Holos.. as I've yet to drop them in group (in mid fight) without being told to do so before hand and I only drop a certain amount.. unless we are majorly outnumbered.. ((just reread that, I meant unless I keep getting targetted first since we are 9out of 10 times always outnumbered.))

But I'd swap you firebombs/holos for a dopple anyday of the week!


@Daskalos‌ Didn't you know.. Lifers got a new range skill....

Aishia

Not to throw a wrench in this thread, but the whole issue behind it was already being worked on before this thread even really got rolling! Trust in the process! Or HATE it, I can't control your emotions. Expect some mechanical changes in the future to throw a bit more spice and Joie de vivre(mort!?) into kamikaze missions.

Oleis

We're talking like the next few hours. We'll see how those modifications go over the course of days and readjust as needed. No amount of really persistent bickering is going to create change.

Azton

@Oleis this is best topic to ask in, Is cata going to be changed so if we on our own (just 1 mage) we can use it in unstable enviroments? Since it has LOS? Earlier it wouldn't let us create one in unstable even tho we had one before hand...

Oleis

As of an hour ago, yes.

Edit: I was super unclear, I'm sorry. I meant that that change was on the list as of an hour ago. It has not been uploaded and is not live.