I'm at a Loss

Galadriel

For years as another character, I've tried and tried and tried to build combat systems. I've built affliction trackers, and attack scripts based on afflictions. Tried hundreds if not thousands of different combinations, working and re-working around constant balance changes. But the lack of people patient enough to help with the enormous amount of information involved in luminary combat is virtually non-existant. I've asked and asked and asked until I was as blue as a smurf mentally in my mind. And through years of trial and error I still haven't found a useful combat route as a Luminary. With the addition of somewhere around 10 nerfs both during and since the liasion rounds, I really feel just like giving up Luminary altogether and cutting my losses with another class. I've seen the EQ crown thread, and I just don't feel like the crown is gonna help against people who can kill you in 30 seconds flat, like Vyxsis who all she has to do is time the chimera stun with aeon hit to strip speed then hit aeon again and all of a sudden you're dead in another 20 seconds because she's managed to put 15+ afflictions on you while your system spams things to do, but all you see is You move sluggishly. Can I get some kind of explanation at least to the latest nerf to Luminary? If not can the Admin/Gods at least give me some kind of insight to how they want Luminary to be played?

Stine

If you aren't using the crown as Luminary all of your combos are going to be slower than optimal. Crown is necessary.

Eliadon

First aid handles aeon curing somewhat poorly, there are things you can do to mitigate it, and it definitely isn't every 10 seconds.

Galadriel

Right I forgot 'poor people shouldn't be able to pk'. Can I get an explanation as to why so many nerfs were necessary? In 3 months we've gotten 10 or so nerfs.. it seems like every time I find one way to kill someone its nerfed and is no longer viable. It also seems like this is their go-to class to nerf things. Oh no, Luminaries have found a way to kill and be good... LET THE NERFING COMMENCE!

Stine

Hey man, I'm right there with you. #DeleteCrown20162018. For sure. Unfortunately, until then, crown is a necessity for like half the classes in the game.

I agree that Luminaries get quite a bit of nerfs, but some of them aren't really as bad as they look on the surface.

Unfortunately, until you provide logs (hello ada-young or similar), it's going to be very hard to address your concerns specifically.

Toz

I perma-mangled @Vyxsis using Lum limb route with a tower shield before the crush buff. It was ridiculously good, because my system was garbage- granted she wasn't hitting back, but the level of hurt it put out was nuts.

Lum needs a Chosen One to show up and figure it out. @Daskalos your people need you?

Oonagh

As a humble frogs opinion,

I just have fun, I play two classes which supposedly (Need Crown - *Deletecrown2018*) - which mind you they would be probably alot better if I had one.

But its about just getting involved, having fun and not letting the things get to you, perfecting what we do have before picking at the things we do not. I am so excited when I am taught new things or have people like @Jory @Stine @Eliadon and others...sorry just naming a few, even you @Galadriel have given me really good pointers. I definitely dont want anyone to ever feel incapable, but theres also other ways to do things especially with a versatile class like Luminary.

Im happy to be a test dummy and help out anytime, I like to learn

Vyxsis

Toz said:

I perma-mangled @Vyxsis using Lum limb route with a tower shield before the crush buff. It was ridiculously good, because my system was garbage- granted she wasn't hitting back, but the level of hurt it put out was nuts.

Lum needs a Chosen One to show up and figure it out. @Daskalos your people need you?

alright, alright, i'll log into my lumi alt, jeez. but y'all gotta buy her a crown, lessons to trans the necessary stuff, and get me to 100. if you do that, i'll show you the way to the promised land of Luminary-induced Tears.

Vyxsis

ok, got the jokes out of my system here.

i haven't really fought you 1v1 enough to have much of a sense of how you're trying to go about fighting as a luminary - and i mean, i haven't really been able to see the deep down details of your offense logic. the one big thing i can say - and i hate to say it, but it's just true - is that you're not gonna have a good time playing luminary in 1v1 combat situations without the eq crown. i experienced this as a luminary until i bought one. the class went from being kinda eh to an all-out monster. a few things have changed since then, but the core conceits of luminary combat are intact, so i'm still pretty convinced it's got that monster potential -- it's still one of the few classes that can true lock without another player's assistance!! that's so wild!!!

i can't really speak to whether or not people are being helpful enough, since i'm no longer playing a spirit character. i do know that, regardless of how we might feel about each other now, there were two players who spent literal hours helping me learn about combat in general, build my offense, and fine tune everything. one of them is def still actively playing the same character, and i'm sure they'd love to help you kick my butt. like, literally, they'd love it.

regarding my own capabilities as an indorani, it seems like perhaps you've acquired a gut feeling that isn't really born out by evidence (i.e. logs). i can tell you with certainty that nowhere have i written in timing aeon throws to go along with chimera balance. by the time i get you with aeon, you probably have between 3 and 6 other afflictions and/or a full 3-aff wheel spinning. sticking aeon is def not so simple as magically stunning with chimera. a thing that was drilled into me, which i'm still kinda bad about because #lazy, is that i need to read logs. like, absolutely scour them. find 2 or 3 things you can fix or improve in every log, regardless of whether it's a win or a loss, and you should be well on your way to getting good.

also, as a general note that applies to loads of people (including me, at times): it's not super helpful or constructive to place the blame for losses entirely on a single ability that you or others have dubbed 'op'. i've had my fair share of feeling like something's insurmountable, but generally? it's really not. it may take a while for a solution, a way to handle it, to click in my brain, but that's on me. plus, looking at it as a challenge to figure out - rather than something unfair and outside your control - is a much more powerful place to approach combat from. at least, it is for me when i manage it. XD

so, uh, yeah. hang in there duderino. you've got all the tools. maybe see if you can get someone to sit down and help you analyze a log or two so you can get an idea of what you're looking for?

Stine

I did some testing tonight in Sect, even though I am definitely not a 1v1 player anymore, just to see how it went:

@Eliadon
(won) - I think the soulfire/hellsight wasn't in mind and the affs came out of nowhere. Almost got reset on Tsunami spam, but passive damage from vomiting/migraine/ablaze killed him.

@Mjoll
(lost) - Had her soft/hard locked but not true, she tumbled out and I didn't reset my tracking for affs. My fault entirely and a good escape by her.
(won) - Got a decent round of locking after fitness mixed with Mjoll not immediately smoking to cure slickness, which let me re-apply locking affs much easier. Edit: Tracking may've been off and she cured something other than asthma, which would explain why she didn't smoke. Either way.

@Ipz
(Lost) - Wasn't wearing armor to try and get more dodge %, apparently Ipz hurts. Also didn't have a working parry and kept parrying right arm the entire fight. Turns out that's a bad idea.
(Won) - Fixed my parry, wore armor, shielded on kai cripple. Not super clean but got the job done.

I like the soulfire buff as a different way to pressure. I don't think Luminary is anywhere near as bad as the original post is making it out to be, but I can empathize that the playstyle for Luminary is not nearly as cut-and-dry as something like one of the DSL classes. You have set-up time in calling rites if you're moving, using evoke shadow/evoke sear, plus your ability to take advantage of people using lock-breakers isn't super great, from experience.

I used to spend a lot of time doing 1v1 as Luminary but it just isn't that fun, personally. It's very steady in giving affs and applying some form of pressure, but trying to take advantage of it is such a pain, especially with the ability to miss on some shield attacks after one of the classleads a few rounds ago.

One thing you may notice @Galadriel is that none of the reasons I lost fights were Luminary class related issues. Agreeing with @Vyxsis that there is definitely potential in Luminary (as shown above), but you are going to have to stick with it and take the time to learn the class upside down. It's not like Templar/Retribution where you just spam the same thing every round, you know?

Eliadon

Turns out reading changelogs is important. <_<

Offense was also still busted, but that's my fault!

Daskalos

Wow. I didn't even know about Soulfire, but honestly, I got 90% of my kills by putting on a kelp soft lock with asthma and re-applying until I could stick hellsight, then waited for the sileris sloughs off message. That would let me know that they had slickness, then quickly hit 'em with anorexia and paralysis. The soft lock has the asthma stuck. Make sure you're using shine/shadow. It appears all of the stuff I used to do is more or less there, with some new and additional affs available in chasten now. Once you vlock, it's a quick shield smash and you've got them truelocked.

You could fight multiple people at one time this way. I would often pick the weakest/worst curer in the group, hit them with the truelock relatively fast (also consider I cured really well and am pretty tanky), then move to the next body, wouldn't even go for the kill. Hellsight would handle that eventually.

Toz

Holy unicorns it worked. Uhh. Uh. @Desian ?

Toz

Also to be helpful for a change- I think classes that don't get touched get buffed to up the number of people interested and using it. so those buffs accumulate - if it was viable SOMEONE would use it right? And then eventually people dust it off and oh crap that synergy or interaction with the meta or that buff made it too good, so let's scale it back. So yeah Lum got nerfed but it also got a few buffs piled on it BEFORE those nerfs, and the buffs wwer more drastic than these nerfs.

Daskalos

One other thing (and realize none of this is via testing as it's been a long time) - but the type of shield affected speed. Find a shield that was as close to your chasten speed and use that. If chasten is way faster than your shield attack, use a buckler for quickest aps. It's easy enough with shield stance to wear a shield and switch to a buckler if you decide you want to overwhelm.

Also, if you want some cheap stuff, put a check on all your attacks that if prone and over X afflictions, auto-overwhelm with a tower. Hellsight will make 'em swandive and go prone for you sometimes. You can also use a buckler overwhelm to hide an aff or two, though most people will just diag upon completion of blackout, I know I used to.

Galadriel

@Daskalos shield type still affects speed and so does the attack you use, punch being different than slam no matter what shield you use, it seems to have a base value and is modified by the type of shield you use. That part of luminary combat is unchanged, tower is still best for affliction route even though smash and crush have both been nerfed... crush 'can' work its just really REALLY hard to pull off... Smash is now unusable. Buckler is still the best for affliction route.

As for everyone else, this entire post was really just me being depressed and I let it get to me. Granted the constant nerfs were the cause of the depression, I was angry about this last set of nerfs for two days straight, but i did let it get to me so... even though I feel most people would feel the same in my position, I'm still sorry i took my frustrations out here. Still not happy with the constant nerfs, and I am still thinking about giving up the class, as I feel its no longer viable as a 1v1 combat class, not when templar can spam the same attack with the same base speed over and over again with different outcomes due to venoms, and when deform gets to subtract 2 per every affliction above a threshold and will auto kill you, after sticking aeon which becomes remarkably easy to stack afflictions when someone has aeon.... I feel luminary lacks what the current other classes have. Currently I get more kills with 36% fabled shapeshifting and ferality with nil vocalization than I can with my luminary class thats nearly bi-trans with illumination only lacking lightform.

That being said smash deserved no nerf as it was pretty balanced as it was. At a base speed of 3.75 (3.5 for enhanced balance) someone with no balance enhancement could gain .25 (.5 with enhanced balance) seconds on salve balance. It did 25% damage which means it took 2 on the same limb before it broke a limb. It didn't hit more than one limb which means things like pre-restore, parry and regenerate would affect it more than one that hit multiple limbs. Not only could it be parried, which is a big risk using something that slow on a possible no salve balance gain if you came up on the wrong end of someones parry system, but it also had other regular limiters too, such as if you had one broken arm.. whether it be your mace arm or not you couldn't use it, prone of any kind, etc. Now it is straight up unusable. @Stine said so himself in a web the other day. And considering luminary is one of the only (not the only)
classes who can't parry while prone... as templar dual wield, shifter needs no weapon to parry, etc, that makes Luminary class as a whole behind other classes, and smash was already risky to use... now it gets nerfed? I really fail to see that logic.

@Toz its easy for you to say that when your class isn't constantly the one getting nerfed. And I just straight up disagree with everything you said here. Luminary, not only had very few people with the class, but the ones who did were just barely figuring it out. Even after my extended absence I was still fiddling with all the new stuff and seeing what was viable and what wasn't. Sure I had a basic knowledge of the class, or perhaps even a better grasp than most, but how can i really learn a class if every time i turn around I have to change something because it's gotten another nerf? Also the luminary has recieved 2 buffs in the last 3 months. One was soulfire\soulburn and one was to overwhelm. The overwhelm one with the recent nerf to smash was essentially just revoked, because even though they made you only have 5 extra afflictions to boost damage instead of six, they dropped that damage to 8% down from 10... so it essentially nullified the buff... so 9 nerfs and 1 buff in 3 months with 1 small buff to bleeding using a buckler if overwhelming since january... How is that in the slightest bit balanced? How is that not a significant amount of nerfs? Last I checked 9 was far more than 1..

Alright this is long enough... and I'm just gonna get upset and ramble on more so...

Stine

I probably shouldn't reply to this, but I'm going to anyways.

Not sure what I said about smash? I don't really use the limb attacks very much because I've been too lazy to code proper limb damage tracking. I don't know whether it deserved a nerf or not, maybe @keroc could speak to what necessitated such a shift.

I think the change to making shield attacks (minus slam) able to miss was the worst nerf the class received since I started, and even then I still have points of success with the class, see my previous post. For reference, this nerf was over a year ago. All the rest of the nerfs have been very..minimal? At least nothing jumps to mind right away.

I agree that if you want an easy time of doing 1v1, Luminary is not the class for you. Templar(retri)/Ascendril or Carnifex(affs not limbs)/Indorani would be my go-to for having a straightforward class with clear goals in how they kill people. Just my personal opinion on it based on my experience, though - your experience may differ!

Toz

Haha I have been pushing for the Carnifex crush nerf for RL years- read, the thing that just gutted limbfex. I've played the gimpest class in the game as my main class for years (Carnifex). Now it's solid, prob top tier. I think Lum is solid and it absolutely was busted for limb, and smash remains amazingly good for groups. It doesn't take two to break, it elevates any limb with more than 7% limb damage to a resto break. Pre-restore my leg, smash my arm and now I can't attack for 4.7s if I am a Templar.

Daskalos

Yea, making shield attacks miss seems weird to me, just simply because the affliction route already suffered from a good turtler being able to slow it down. I've always considered the class more of a magical afflicting one than a physical one (see: smite damage is magic type).

That being said, limb route was broken as hell when I played, which is why I never used it. It was straight #winmode. Can you still shatter/insta-smash? As someone who doesn't play much anymore, I can't really say if the class is broken or not. I know for a LONG time everyone thought the class was broken and I would usually explain to them (to my own detriment) how to defeat each and every attack route I took and they'd go 'oh, that's not so bad now'.

It didn't seem like there was really anyone doing that when I played a week or so ago, and I have no idea what liaisons they are, but I'll say this: @Keroc knows what he's doing. He and I go way back and he generally has a good feel for balance, and he's one of the -best- combatants I've ever fought against going back to his mortal days. We tested out some buffs on a test server one time and he -still- kicked my ass despite it being many, many years removed from him playing as a mortal.

If the class is truly gimped, work through liaisons, work with Keroc (however that works now).

Except lightning. My lightning was never overpowered and I'll never forgive @Keroc for nerfing it.

Galadriel

@Stine you told Eliadon don't bother using Smash the day the nerf went live.
@Toz last time I checked in order to go from 0-7% where it supposedly elevates straight to level 2 you had to use an attack... so that attack... plus smash = 2 attacks. I haven't ever heard of anything like that before... all I can tell you is smash is 25% and break from limb damage is 33%... so if it did give you that 1 extra percent... well that is about 1% better than i thought it originally did... and what i claimed vs what you claimed because 25+7 = 32...
@Daskalos the limb damage route I feel is truly gimped. As all crush damage has been in essence been downgraded one shield size per shield, no balance times changed of course and is still missable and parriable. Of course smash can only be used every other attack now so...

Elanfor

I love the idea of lumi limb route but think it suffers from not having a clear end goal. The idea seems to be to overwhelm, but I don't think that is a very interesting or feasible end goal since it effectively becomes a damage kill that just requires a lot of work beforehand whereas most (if not all?) other limb routes actually have an instakill that you are looking to work towards. I also wouldn't mind seeing a nerf to the limb damage if there was also real afflict pressure that could stop people from turtling so easily. The chasten at the end of each smash doesn't really do much in that regard.

It also feels very unfair how easy it is to completely cripple the offence just by making sure one arm is broken. In my experience this puts lumi's limb route at a direct disadvantage against classes that require multiple limbs to completely shut down.

Given how few people are actually using lumi limb route in 1v1s, I can definitely appreciate the concern about the surprise nerfs. It's hard not to think that this is targeted at one or two people who haven't made a name for themselves actually doing well with that route.

Vyxsis

to be completely honest, i don't really see why every class needs a limb route. i also don't see why a class whose bread and butter is decidedly not its limb route should be expected to successfully take on - with that non-bread-and-butter limb route - a class pursuing its main route. my understanding is that luminary's limb attacks are mainly provided to give a certain amount of flexibility when in groups. there just isn't enough in the kit otherwise to make pursuing a limb route worthwhile.

luminary has, essentially, three ways to kill someone: overwhelm, absolve, and judgement. overwhelm is extremely doable, and a general consensus on how to achieve it exists. absolve has always been doable, as well, if a little bit tricky or cheesy (seriously, try sneaking in a naked chasten for hidden recklessness), but now there's also soulfire to help, which i consider a significant buff even if no one has really found a way to use it effectively afaik. judgement is the same general idea as other classes' channeled insta-kills, and therefore it's unlikely to be of much use in 1v1 fights - by design.

people who are saying it's unfair that luminary is shut down by one broken arm or because (most) shield attacks can be dodged are, i think, missing some major things. one is that one broken arm keeps many classes from attacking. the oft-mentioned templar is a prime example - sure, they just dsk all day, but break an arm to hear them weep. also consider that luminary has some very, very strong passives for offense, defense, and control. the healing rite alone is like... pretty incredible. even if a luminary isn't pushing the attack for a bit because of a broken arm, they get a good deal of help. walk out and cure that break! there's a solid chance piety will stop your opponent from chasing quickly enough to do anything about it.

now lemme tell you, i was just starting to get decent at combat when shield attacks were made dodgeable, and as one of the two people playing it seriously at the time, i took it really hard. when the change first went in, though, all shield attacks could be dodged, and in addition, they were all subject to clumsiness. jeez i was bitter about that, and it still informs a lot of my kneejerk panic response to people wanting to nerf classes i play. it was an overcorrection that was eventually reigned in, but various factors led me not to stick around long enough to enjoy it being walked back twice.

here's the thing, though: that nerf was needed quite badly. consider what luminary has going on. across two rounds, luminary typically uses five afflicting abilities or equivalent. two of those (angel battle and chasten) aren't at all subject to missing of any kind or rebounding. shield attacks can rebound, but you have numerous options for dealing with that. turtling isn't really all that effective, either, since you have several abilities that can be used through shield, give two or more affs (including berserking, thx heatwave), and pair with angel battle. none of this considers passive afflictions from shine/shadow or the fact that it's now nearly impossible to run from a luminary at a relatively low threshold of affs. oh, have i mentioned that nothing whatsoever in the luminary kit can be cured passively by purity enchantment? the only time purity enchantment might help your opponent is if you threw a dagger/jabbed for slickness via gecko instead of relying on hellsight - most of the time, though, people aren't that lucky, at least not in time to capitalize on their luck.

so let's recap that:
1) a minimum 3 out of 5 afflicting attacks every two rounds cannot miss at all or hit rebounding
2) magical shield can be bypassed with attacks that actively hinder both offense and defense (e.g. heatwave for berserking)
3) passive afflicting that can't be dodged
4) it's nearly impossible to run from a luminary thanks to piety and various affs (e.g. berserking, loneliness, vertigo)
5) nothing in kit is subject to passive curing from purity enchantment

you know what all this meant when no shield attacks could be dodged? yeah, uh, death was basically inevitable. except for maybe archivist at the time (i.e. pre-faintness, shape, and unravel nerfs), all classes were essentially running against a clock while disadvantaged by hindering afflictions and the luminary's passive curing rite. being able to dodge (most) shield attacks was the first thing to bring luminary down to a relatively fair, balanced level in a long time.

luminary has not been unfairly nerfed. in the time since i moved to BL, it hasn't even received as many nerfs as several other classes i can think of off the top of my head, and i'm 100% positive it's still hella viable. the only thing you should give up on is the lumi 1v1 limb route.

also, you've gotta stop judging a class's effectiveness based on whether or not all its abilities outrun cure balances. afflicting rate relative to cure rate isn't completely irrelevant, but it's not as relevant for some classes as it is for others. you have to look at what afflictions you can give, how it all fits together. templar attacks fast because the class has relatively shallow kill conditions. it needs the speed to make up for the limitations of being a (more or less) venom-only afflicting class. luminary, on the other hand? luminary has all sorts of hinder available, and dang it can true lock!!! have y'all not noticed luminary can true lock???? if you've got slickness via hellsight, you could literally lock your opponent and then bake a cake before bothering to kill them if you wanted. there's only two classes in the game for which that's really even possible, and luminary is one of them!!! omg that's so nuts.

i guess to conclude this too-long post... i'm trying to be encouraging by pointing out the things lumi has going for it. i loved luminary, and i often find myself wishing i could play it without having to upend my entire RP - which is to say, i am decidedly not a lumi hater. i'm trying to be nice and understanding, really. however, i gotta be real with you dude... your inability, as an individual, to have success with a class does not, in itself, show the class isn't viable. i've fought luminaries recently - @Stine for instance - who gave me some seriously close calls, and i see luminary beating people. remember, you yourself have said that you feel like you don't understand how the class is supposed to work. that being the case, don't compare yourself to me or anyone else who feels fairly comfortable with their class. you're not at that point, and that's ok! you could get there! but right now, the way you're approaching the issue isn't helping you. it'd be like if i decided indo is garbage because i don't beat fezzix. indo is, obviously, quite viable - the difference between myself and fezz is the level of skill as a pker and the refinement of our code. so like... don't throw in the towel. whether with this class or another, you can get good.

for real tho, luminary is good as h*ck.

Toz

Overwhelm damage scales with affs, and broken/mangled limbs count as affs. I think the limb route is definitely viable, it's just slow to kill- probably a lot like shifter would play out where you just prone them and then beat the pants off of them for awhile until you can chain 3 tower overwhelms or something. Luminaries also get a way to make restoration fail that lasts like 15s? It's hard to test out because I can't get flame in the arena, but oh man it seems good.

Even if limb route isn't viable 1v1 (which I kinda doubt, but can't playtest it really), it's stupid good in groups.

Galadriel

@Toz the salve failing thing is a 33% chance to succeed, its not 100%, so its pure luck if it stops anything, and it costs a whole round to put up, by the time you regain balance to do anything 2.5 out of that 15s is already gone, so you have a total of 12.5 seconds if your lag is non-existent... without eq enhance your fastest attack is going to be 2.75 seconds, so thats roughly 4 attacks you can keep it up without having to reapply and again its only a chance... so yea it 'can' be good but it also 'can' be bad, which i might add by the way has a better chance of being bad than at being good.

@Vyxsis the whole point about this post was about the lumy limb route being nerfed to the point where its unusable not its affliction route, which you kind of agreed with me on that point at least so thanks for proving my point? Also, stop looking at a classes effectiveness vs beating curing balance? Are you serious? How are you supposed to kill anyone if you can't stack afflictions on them either to the point where they cure so much that they drain their mana to the point of absolve or overwhelm them with afflictions? If you can't beat cure balance you can't really do either of those at least not before your opponent is going to hinder you so much that they kill you first. Also another point I made... Templars kill route is crazy fast... Luminary kill route is laughably slow comparitively.... If you took the most skilled luminary and pitted him against Jory's system while that luminary went affliction route and that templar went 'any' route in its skillset... The templar would win with sheer speed and hinder affs every single last time. Also heatwave is 3.4 seconds... what good is it going to do to throw out heatwave? Like ever? at 1.8 seconds for pill time it would take 3.6 to cure it with pills alone, not including tree, focus, endgame cure, class curing (aka soul purge for carnifex or illumination cleansing), etc... Its laughably slow... If you can't beat out curing with an aff stacking route... all they will do is cure out of it as soon as its put on them... which is... bad for an aff afflicting route.. cause it won't work..

Toz

Challenge accepted.

Vyxsis

Galadriel said:

@Vyxsis the whole point about this post was about the lumy limb route being nerfed to the point where its unusable not its affliction route, which you kind of agreed with me on that point at least so thanks for proving my point? Also, stop looking at a classes effectiveness vs beating curing balance? Are you serious? How are you supposed to kill anyone if you can't stack afflictions on them either to the point where they cure so much that they drain their mana to the point of absolve or overwhelm them with afflictions? If you can't beat cure balance you can't really do either of those at least not before your opponent is going to hinder you so much that they kill you first. Also another point I made... Templars kill route is crazy fast... Luminary kill route is laughably slow comparitively.... If you took the most skilled luminary and pitted him against Jory's system while that luminary went affliction route and that templar went 'any' route in its skillset... The templar would win with sheer speed and hinder affs every single last time. Also heatwave is 3.4 seconds... what good is it going to do to throw out heatwave? Like ever? at 1.8 seconds for pill time it would take 3.6 to cure it with pills alone, not including tree, focus, endgame cure, class curing (aka soul purge for carnifex or illumination cleansing), etc... Its laughably slow... If you can't beat out curing with an aff stacking route... all they will do is cure out of it as soon as its put on them... which is... bad for an aff afflicting route.. cause it won't work..

you're right, i don't disagree that the limb route is, at the very least, sub-optimal compared to what else is available to luminary. i was attempting to give you some sense that maybe affliction route is both the better option and quite powerful.

at this point, though, i frankly don't know what to say to you. i'm not sure if i'm being unclear or if you're not really reading what i've written, but your response reads as though you're engaging someone else entirely. i've been speaking to you as someone who learned to pk and code, and had a decent level of success, as a luminary. i'm not talking out my rear - vyxsis was the last arch-prelate of the illuminai (soz kasimir, not counting you) and became known as at least a little scary to fight during that period. i've been trying to pass the benefit of this experience on to you. i've directly told you some things i had success with, and i've attempted to get you to think in somewhat different terms about combat more generally. i'm pretty much done, though, because the attitude conveyed through your written tone is belligerent, hostile, and kinda disrespectful.

i hope maybe in a while you'll figure things out and feel better about pk. for now... good luck.
bug out.

Galadriel

@Vyxsis your not wrong, i do have some hostility towards you. But what do you expect when you attack unarmed people fishing and then say well I can kill anyone once with no reprocussions so its within the rules... its crappy, you were the one who made my attitude towards you what it is and now you want to whine about it when I hate you. I'm not quite sure if that is the real reason or if you're trying to distract from the fact you have no answers for my arguments. Besides, as I've stated before, the purpose of this post was to actively address all the recent nerfs, the limb route being nerfed to the point of it no longer being viable was the most recent, but not the only ones. Its more because every time someone uses something that even has the most remote possiblity of winning and being competitive with the luminary class its nerfed. So I wanted to know why they kept doing this and what I could use without fear of it being nerfed in a week or two. These would obviously have to be competitive and viable. Is the affliction route viable? Maybe with balance enhancement and a crown. Without it not a chance. Even with it, it is just barely competitive. I still feel that other classes have a much less convoluted, more straightforward, and easier to pull off way of killing people which is just straight up unfair. Do all classes need a limb route? No... but if you're going to force a class to have limb damaging attacks, on top of have crown and balance enhancement... at least make it viable. If they don't want us to have a limb route, then delete it altogether, and make our aff route stronger. If they like us having limb routes then make it viable.... the way it is now it is not

Daskalos

..dude, Galadriel, chill. Separate character and person. I'm sure you've never been fishing on a bridge and had another player show up and attempt to murder you.

Vyxsis

Galadriel said:

@Vyxsis your not wrong, i do have some hostility towards you. But what do you expect when you attack unarmed people fishing and then say well I can kill anyone once with no reprocussions so its within the rules... its crappy, you were the one who made my attitude towards you what it is and now you want to whine about it when I hate you. I'm not quite sure if that is the real reason or if you're trying to distract from the fact you have no answers for my arguments. Besides, as I've stated before, the purpose of this post was to actively address all the recent nerfs, the limb route being nerfed to the point of it no longer being viable was the most recent, but not the only ones. Its more because every time someone uses something that even has the most remote possiblity of winning and being competitive with the luminary class its nerfed. So I wanted to know why they kept doing this and what I could use without fear of it being nerfed in a week or two. These would obviously have to be competitive and viable. Is the affliction route viable? Maybe with balance enhancement and a crown. Without it not a chance. Even with it, it is just barely competitive. I still feel that other classes have a much less convoluted, more straightforward, and easier to pull off way of killing people which is just straight up unfair. Do all classes need a limb route? No... but if you're going to force a class to have limb damaging attacks, on top of have crown and balance enhancement... at least make it viable. If they don't want us to have a limb route, then delete it altogether, and make our aff route stronger. If they like us having limb routes then make it viable.... the way it is now it is not

sigh. for the sake of clarity: you were afk fishing in a lesser zone, and i attacked you while you had aura. i said as much when you finally got back and started yelling at me in tells - i only mentioned the one death rule as a kind of "well, even if so" because you claimed you didn't have aura. i don't much care if you dislike me, especially if it's because of a single death in a text game. i do think you ought to communicate with a certain amount of respect, and i've been trying to maintain an upbeat, friendly, and encouraging vibe here.

really, though. i'm not whining, and i've answered your arguments while also trying to help you with advice. but you know, fine, whatever. gg. quod erat demonstrandum i'm a twat, i guess.

Vyxsis

Daskalos said:

..dude, Galadriel, chill. Separate character and person. I'm sure you've never been fishing on a bridge and had another player show up and attempt to murder you.

one time, daskalos tried to murder me irl, but i won because irl i'm the artiwhale

Daskalos

My artifacts IRL are the more concussive kind.