Class Viability pt. 2

Alela

I'm closing this thread. No more posts allowed.

Saidenn

Bulrok said:

We have had this discussion before. As it has been pointed out, not everyone knows how to code beyond plugging in a system and hitting start. I think Shadow suffers more in that we do not focus our efforts to help each other but have our systems divided and kept to exclusive groups. It is the prerogative of the system makers to do that and I am not saying they should change how they offer access, but it does mean that the more publicly available stuff (Sunder and Darkside) has abysmal or non-existent shadow support.

As for support, it is underutilized, but just as the discussion before you miss the point of why people participate in the first: milestones. And you do not get milestones if you do not at least hit someone. This leads to most attempting to kill to make sure they didn't just "waste" their time. Winning is great, but winning without the milestones can feel like an empty victory. 

And then I will echo @Elene. Come participate. Offer coding pointers or advice for our newer players. Help them improve or even learn how to code. Help improve what is more publicly available. Or, don't. And keep calling us all a bunch of collected idiots who all know less than you. 

Well, like I've already said, I've coded this stuff into Rime, and it's a nightmare to get even them to use it. Also, I don't know if you had a character before Saidenn and just never saw it, but for most of my Aetolian life that's what I've done. I've taught, I've helped, I've even written code for people, I've shared previous systems, I've talked shop, brainstormed ideas for other peoples offense, it's just sort of what I did for the better part of my Aetolia career. I'm very much over it when most of it goes ignored, especially when it's ignored because someone 'feels' that facts aren't facts. Milestones/participation - No. What? No. Milestones are relatively new. Lessers have existed for a long time. People fought then, they fight now. Milestones did not change that by any metric I have seen. Do not use that to retroactively justify peoples performance. Me participating again: No. You're actually one of the big reasons I don't care to, after your flat out refusal to do anything more than make an alias, even if the code was written for you. I sort of just gave up after that. @Seurimas Ok. Edit: I didn't see the idiots part until after I had posted. - I wasn't trying to be hostile with any of this. I know I'm not great at that, but probably best you don't help me be any more aggressive than I am naturally.

The reason I didn't want the code written for me is because I do not like the idea or someone else dictating the direction of my system beyond the targeting. While we could benefit from more Indorani support in certain comps (and I have run support fully as Indo since that conversation), I disagreed with the idea of support bots revolved around one particular person, which is what automation would require - one person being directing said support bots unless they controlled the support themselves, which is what I currently do. But, if you want to blame me for choosing not to participate, I will take that blame. 

I am glad to hear you have done things in the past. That is not happening now, beyond Rime. If you are and I don't see it, great! I will accept my point as moot. However, aggressive naturally or not, I am not going to change the way I respond to you. nor should anyone else. Kind of makes it feel you are blaming us for your hostility, which is not cool.

That said, support can be a great option. In certain instances it can change the tide of the battle. In many instances in the face of blackout+pulv parties+ overwhelm, it doesn't feel like it will, especially if your support target is dead due to damage or crushed chest before you get bal back from your one support ability. But, yes - in particular instances support would make a difference, especially Indo support with the strength of fool and priestess. Ethereal could lower damage input, but dodge is a moot point when proned in blackout to come back to 5+ affs to go back into blackout. 

I would point less to "Shadow loses because we don't use all our awesome support" and more to our routes and/or classes not leaning into synergy. When synergy is used right we can insta people quickly. Unravel is extremely fast, pulverize is amazingly quick, annihilate can be done sometimes, deform is great to nuke a high con. Revenant routes built around bleed or hinder are great additions due to impale. From what I see right now we often have many just hitting an attack button and hoping for the best, not really knowing if the affs are helping or not to set up a quick kill. In contrast, I see quick spinecut setups or leg focus with wardens and luminaries. Of course, this is what I "feel" and while there may be some facts, I am prepared to be told I am wrong. 😛

Rijetta said:

Darkside still gets updated.

I am willing to take a look at it! I know most grab Sunder due to its easily found links to current versions and easily found server. Again, though, that points to a bit of a state in Shadow, not saying it is inherently good or bad. Spirit has one system used ny a majority of the base. Shadow is spread across four different in unknown quantities. 

Bulrok

That's actually not what your reasoning was when we spoke! You said it wasn't fun, so you didn't want to do it. Also, this is all incredibly unfair. I did help! I did try! People weren't very receptive, even when I was incredibly nice about it. Now I'm being told I never helped! I never tried!

Again, feelings vs. facts. I've used this stuff, it works! You haven't, but you're convinced it won't matter! Who's right?! Doesn't matter, I guess. We're disagreeing about opinions and facts today, and you're implying I'm a terrible person. Ok, cool! Last post, I promise. You guys aren't idiots, I'm wrong entirely. Good luck figuring out your synergies!

Alela

AHEM.

THIS THREAD IS CLOSED.

Bulrok

I lied, couldn't resist.

I am glad to hear you have done things in the past. That is not happening now, beyond Rime. If you are and I don't see it, great! I will accept my point as moot. However, aggressive naturally or not, I am not going to change the way I respond to you. nor should anyone else. Kind of makes it feel you are blaming us for your hostility, which is not cool.

You're making this sound like it's been a long time since I've helped? I've been back since the first, roughly. I dropped web entirely due to various reasons, so admittedly for the last 2 weeks no, I have not helped at all. This is also part of the whole 'I'm not participating thing.' I didn't quit helping years ago or anything like that. It's been since January, February?. And no, not at all. I am not blaming you for my hostility, because I was originally posting with none. When you are hostile, it's going to get hostility back, which is why I assume you're so openly ok with being hostile towards me in the first place. I tried to extend an olive branch with my edit, but you don't want it?

I would point less to "Shadow loses because we don't use all our awesome support" and more to our routes and/or classes not leaning into synergy

I actually never said that, nor implied it! Go back and check again? I said I didn't feel like I could accurately gauge Shadow's placing because they have skills that could help that are being ignored. It's one thing to imply I'm being hostile because maybe you have interpreted it that way, but it starts to look entirely like you're painting a specific picture on purpose when you start twisting my words on top of that.

Of course, this is what I "feel" and while there may be some facts, I am prepared to be told I am wrong.

I know you think you're being clever here, but really, you're not. You're not being clever, and you're not prepared to be told you're wrong. You're twisting this entire scenario to make you right, and to make me be the bad guy. You've been told you were wrong, and while I haven't saved every log ever of every time I've used fool or priestess to save someones life and turn a fight around, it has happened. I guess I can see why you don't want to accept it?


I won't say I'm done this time, because I'll inevitably post again. Hopefully it will be to add to a discussion, not to unsay things I didn't say or defend myself as a person, because that is even more frustrating than telling baby vampires (and not so baby vampires) to not use claw in group fights for the last 5 years. (It's fine now, we have Revenant. Bleeding is good!)

Elene

Alela said:

AHEM. THIS THREAD IS CLOSED.

You're not my mom! You can't dictate what I do.

BUT I AM YOUR MOM, and you sit in that corner sewing white flags until someone decides they want one.

Saidenn

Bulrok said:

I lied, couldn't resist.

I am glad to hear you have done things in the past. That is not happening now, beyond Rime. If you are and I don't see it, great! I will accept my point as moot. However, aggressive naturally or not, I am not going to change the way I respond to you. nor should anyone else. Kind of makes it feel you are blaming us for your hostility, which is not cool.

You're making this sound like it's been a long time since I've helped? I've been back since the first, roughly. I dropped web entirely due to various reasons, so admittedly for the last 2 weeks no, I have not helped at all. This is also part of the whole 'I'm not participating thing.' I didn't quit helping years ago or anything like that. It's been since January, February?. And no, not at all. I am not blaming you for my hostility, because I was originally posting with none. When you are hostile, it's going to get hostility back, which is why I assume you're so openly ok with being hostile towards me in the first place. I tried to extend an olive branch with my edit, but you don't want it?

I would point less to "Shadow loses because we don't use all our awesome support" and more to our routes and/or classes not leaning into synergy

I actually never said that, nor implied it! Go back and check again? I said I didn't feel like I could accurately gauge Shadow's placing because they have skills that could help that are being ignored. It's one thing to imply I'm being hostile because maybe you have interpreted it that way, but it starts to look entirely like you're painting a specific picture on purpose when you start twisting my words on top of that.

Of course, this is what I "feel" and while there may be some facts, I am prepared to be told I am wrong.

I know you think you're being clever here, but really, you're not. You're not being clever, and you're not prepared to be told you're wrong. You're twisting this entire scenario to make you right, and to make me be the bad guy. You've been told you were wrong, and while I haven't saved every log ever of every time I've used fool or priestess to save someones life and turn a fight around, it has happened. I guess I can see why you don't want to accept it?


I won't say I'm done this time, because I'll inevitably post again. Hopefully it will be to add to a discussion, not to unsay things I didn't say or defend myself as a person, because that is even more frustrating than telling baby vampires (and not so baby vampires) to not use claw in group fights for the last 5 years. (It's fine now, we have Revenant. Bleeding is good!)

At this point, I agree to disagree with you. I will apologize for any misinterpretations of hostility and accept any attempts to remedy it.

Hope to see you participating again sometime soon.

Seurimas

Saidenn said:

I lied, couldn't resist.

I am glad to hear you have done things in the past. That is not happening now, beyond Rime. If you are and I don't see it, great! I will accept my point as moot. However, aggressive naturally or not, I am not going to change the way I respond to you. nor should anyone else. Kind of makes it feel you are blaming us for your hostility, which is not cool.

You're making this sound like it's been a long time since I've helped? I've been back since the first, roughly. I dropped web entirely due to various reasons, so admittedly for the last 2 weeks no, I have not helped at all. This is also part of the whole 'I'm not participating thing.' I didn't quit helping years ago or anything like that. It's been since January, February?. And no, not at all. I am not blaming you for my hostility, because I was originally posting with none. When you are hostile, it's going to get hostility back, which is why I assume you're so openly ok with being hostile towards me in the first place. I tried to extend an olive branch with my edit, but you don't want it?

I would point less to "Shadow loses because we don't use all our awesome support" and more to our routes and/or classes not leaning into synergy

I actually never said that, nor implied it! Go back and check again? I said I didn't feel like I could accurately gauge Shadow's placing because they have skills that could help that are being ignored. It's one thing to imply I'm being hostile because maybe you have interpreted it that way, but it starts to look entirely like you're painting a specific picture on purpose when you start twisting my words on top of that.

Of course, this is what I "feel" and while there may be some facts, I am prepared to be told I am wrong.

I know you think you're being clever here, but really, you're not. You're not being clever, and you're not prepared to be told you're wrong. You're twisting this entire scenario to make you right, and to make me be the bad guy. You've been told you were wrong, and while I haven't saved every log ever of every time I've used fool or priestess to save someones life and turn a fight around, it has happened. I guess I can see why you don't want to accept it? I won't say I'm done this time, because I'll inevitably post again. Hopefully it will be to add to a discussion, not to unsay things I didn't say or defend myself as a person, because that is even more frustrating than telling baby vampires (and not so baby vampires) to not use claw in group fights for the last 5 years. (It's fine now, we have Revenant. Bleeding is good!)

At this point, I agree to disagree with you. I will apologize for any misinterpretations of hostility and accept any attempts to remedy it. Hope to see you participating again sometime soon.

Or don't participate! Enjoy your fun game! Play is, by definition, voluntary. No one should expect to force an activity, a system, or a strategy on you if they can't justify its inclusion in your precious free time.

I also lied and couldn't resist.

Illikaal

All I will say is that in one particular teamfight that happened not that long ago, @Elene was unlockable for an absurdly long time due to @Saidnenn fooling her. I don't know what else is going on, but there were at least 5 people there pushing full affs. I definitely would not knock the use of support abilities.

I've also noticed in Orrery that if I play support, it makes a marked difference on how long someone stays alive by tagging them with thorncoats, effusions, and barriers.

Keroc

I secretly dream of the day that people start using support skills in team fights as a common occurrence

Czcienn

What do you mean? I support my team by cutting everyone's hp in half with calamity.

Elene

Illidan said:

All I will say is that in one particular teamfight that happened not that long ago, @Elene was unlockable for an absurdly long time due to @Saidnenn fooling her. I don't know what else is going on, but there were at least 5 people there pushing full affs. I definitely would not knock the use of support abilities. I've also noticed in Orrery that if I play support, it makes a marked difference on how long someone stays alive by tagging them with thorncoats, effusions, and barriers.

Fool does play a real part when paired with the toolkit of a Carnifex (yay fitness and soul purge!) Unfortunately, I did die to damage in the end, so support-wise, it's largely a catch-22 of knowing what to use during the contention i.e healing someone with health for them to die to affs, or curing someone for them to die to dmg. Either way, I'm not knocking the use of support tools in team fights, so long as everyone participating in the brawl gets milestones and finds it fun (and therefore wants to improve). 

Edit: I do want to append that we have a lot of people with strong opinions in Shadow, and we're more divided than we are united, really. We're going to get a lot of selfish mentalities which is probably what first needs to be addressed.

Drystin

Elene said:

Edit: I do want to append that we have a lot of people with strong opinions in Shadow, and we're more divided than we are united, really. We're going to get a lot of selfish mentalities which is probably what first needs to be addressed.

Aetolia as a whole suffers from people just being dicks to not only the opposing tether, but their own. It's really hard to work with people that are like that. The solution is as simple as it's ever been though... just be nice and do your best to work with each other. Take a page out of @Didi's book. That has to happen first before any successful cooperation exists. We can be mean to each other and steal each other's lunch money IC, but OOC it's not worth the time and energy. 

Tetchta

Personally I'm sympathetic to the frustrations brought about by someone who's been doing something like PK for years dealing with people who don't know what they're talking about telling them they're wrong without having done their homework. It's frustrating, and as much as we could all stand to be better paragons of patience, just as many of us should try and recognize where our lane is and when we should be staying in it. Not everyone is required to have an opinion on every topic.

Tetchta

Keroc said:

I secretly dream of the day that people start using support skills in team fights as a common occurrence

Double posting because I'm not a coward and this is a separate idea, but if you wanna see more people play support roles, it'd go a long way if people playing support were similarly incentivized to do so as people who don't. In a game like Overwatch, you get rewards for playing support equal to DPS, but in Aetolia you get greatly diminished rewards. Your exp is way lower (regardless of whether you playing that support role was pivotal to someone else getting a kill or not), you get no fancy deathsight message (an unfixable problem, but something to keep note of), and you get zero bodies/essence to offer. The incentive to land a killshot is so much higher than to actually push a W for your team, and I think that overwhelms a lot of pepole's sense of teamwork. We all love winning, but most of us love gamified rewards even more. If you team takes an L but you got 2-10% exp, you still had a good day.

Keroc

Tetchta said:

Keroc said:

I secretly dream of the day that people start using support skills in team fights as a common occurrence

Double posting because I'm not a coward and this is a separate idea, but if you wanna see more people play support roles, it'd go a long way if people playing support were similarly incentivized to do so as people who don't. In a game like Overwatch, you get rewards for playing support equal to DPS, but in Aetolia you get greatly diminished rewards. Your exp is way lower (regardless of whether you playing that support role was pivotal to someone else getting a kill or not), you get no fancy deathsight message (an unfixable problem, but something to keep note of), and you get zero bodies/essence to offer. The incentive to land a killshot is so much higher than to actually push a W for your team, and I think that overwhelms a lot of pepole's sense of teamwork. We all love winning, but most of us love gamified rewards even more. If you team takes an L but you got 2-10% exp, you still had a good day.

I've added in assistive ability tracking to our hostile logs per the recent changelog. We're now one step closer to my dream. The mantra of 'Damage is king' will die yet

Czcienn

Keroc said:

The mantra of 'Damage is king' will die yet  

Challenge accepted.

Tetchta

Keroc said:

I've added in assistive ability tracking to our hostile logs per the recent changelog. We're now one step closer to my dream. The mantra of 'Damage is king' will die yet

Now if we can get people in Prae to actually use mesmerize in group fights.

Mjoll

Now that claw is actually useful (because of Revenant) they're all finally going to start using frenzy ;-;

Nisavi

I'm sad that I missed doing this survey, but I entered my choices in anyway. I'm flattered that people think Sciomancer is S-tier though. I don't think it compares to Luminary, Zealot, Teradrim, or Monk personally. Frankly, the fact that Zealot is in B-tier makes me question the results or have people already forgotten that Azami pretty much wrecked everyone in a Duel a year ago and there have barely been any changes to the class since? There is absolutely no reason that Zealot shouldn't be S-tier, the class can dunk on any effective parrying or pre-resto and will lock you down salve wise very quickly. The problem is that no one is using it at a high level. Teradrim should also be S-tier for similar reasons, despite the Barrage and Greenink nerf. I think the results are largely skewed based on overall Sect presence and I'm very confident that Borminchia would still absolutely destroy most regardless of the changes. I'm not saying that Sciomancer isn't powerful right now, but that's largely because I'm not going against those who counter it pretty strongly aside from Luminaries hitting me with Peace constantly, but if I was dealing with more good people limb classes, I'd have a much, MUCH harder time getting momentum. Against physical affliction classes, I'm going to eat them because that is where Scio's primary strength is. I shut them down, probably oppressively so, but changing that would need to necessitate changes in quite a few ways that would require more than just one round to fix. It'd require likely changing the Ruin affs, which in turn affects Voidgaze and Voidtrapped; as well as adjusting Shaderot accrual. There's also the fact that the class is inordinately complex and difficult to code for, not to mention the fact that it is absolutely fragile without artifacts and struggles to actually achieve either of its kill conditions despite an enemy being overwhelmed with afflictions. Spamming shield sets back my offense considerably and I'm left there twiddling my thumbs after losing all of my momentum if I'm burning prices for instant Hew. There's a ton of consideration that has to go into changes with them, otherwise the class is going to go unused.

The results, once again, suggest to me that class tier perceptions are based on Sect activity for 1v1 and how prevalent they are in groups. There is absolutely no justification for Zealot being B-Tier at all. It's probably Spirit's strongest duelist class by a mile. There's just no one using it at a high level since Azami left.

Edit: Also, the fact that people think Monk is B-Tier for 1v1 when it's literally impossible to code anything to deal with Kai Strike is... something else too, and only kind of reinforces the whole perception thing I talked about earlier. I also don't think Ascendril is C-Tier. It should be ?-Tier because literally no one outside of Jeromy uses it, but Jeromy's offense is entirely manual and has put a significant amount of pressure on me. I'm fairly certain that it's very powerful and the little classpick testing I did with it showed that you can reasonably keep someone prone for a very, very long time between swift leg breaks, frozen, ice_encased, and hypothermia. I've made it no secret to folks in Shadow that the two classes I wish I had available to me right now were Zealot and Ascendril. Also, before anyone accuses me of bias, I still rated Scio as amazing in 1v1, but if I could do Amazing with an Asterix or if there was an S- Tier, I'd give it that. Also, agree with @Illidan that Shaman is A-Tier, not B. It was S when Equivalence was the way it was. It's solidly A now. Can compete at the upper tiers, will struggle to stick Stormtouched on anyone remotely competent. Still can though with enough time. Ice Fetish is still viable.

Czcienn

Maybe different people just have different opinions.

Sryaen

Czcibor said:

Maybe different people just have different opinions.

In all fairness, I think that some classes on both sides could be dived into a bit further to really reach their potential.

Hell, I'd had Templar for like 6 months when I realized that Redemption wasn't a Templar version of Revive, but it was actually an aura/blessing that restored hp/mp/wp/end on a target being killed.

And this is only solidified by the fact that Spirit side seems to be having as much of a blast using mirrorCarni as Shadow side is using mirrorTemp.

Nisavi

Sryaen said:

Czcibor said:

Maybe different people just have different opinions.

In all fairness, I think that some classes on both sides could be dived into a bit further to really reach their potential.

I think this summarizes my point more succinctly.

My point was that everyone can be really dismissive or assumptive on what is good and bad based on limited perspective. It wasn't that long ago that I had a variety of people telling me that Sciomancer was bad when I first started playing Nisavi. I initially thought Templar was bad too until Mjoll, Bulrok, Rijetta, Ehtias, and others started doing testing down to a stat point difference to figure out optimal strategies and offenses and then discovered a variety of things that demonstrated, in fact, that Templar/Revenant are still pretty solid. I'm limited in terms of time and how much I can invest in other classes, but I'll just say that I always thought Sciomancer was good on paper and then that got confirmed when I started doing similar things as Mjoll and the others are doing now, just with Sciomancer instead, in order to "black box" and figure out the nitty gritty for certain things like the fact that Gravity is on a constant timer, how often it procs, how often Shaderot procs, does the Shaderot proc timer reset when Panacea is eaten, what's a rough estimate for the Shaderot Spirit damage to ramp up to the average sip amount, can I make a timer in my offense to automatically change to my damage route when that threshold is hit, what are the optimal strategies with dealing with Gloom, and the list goes on. I think many people scratch the surface for classes, but there are few people on both sides that really go the distance in trying to push a class to its absolute limit. Most are content with their group PK.

Church

Every class is strong on paper or in a training room vacuum, this is 2021. The kits are designed to work within themselves. The trouble we run into and the source of outliers comes from real use and the state of the meta: in the case of Sciomancer, the class' delivery of clumsiness with such consistency is crippling to any physical class (which a large percentage of classes, and a larger percentage of classes frequently used, are...) in a way noone else can match. The other casters being Ascendril, Shaman, and Archivist... none of these deliver such a reliable hinder that affects so many other classes while still pushing towards their kill. It's an outlier.

On the flip side, Zealot is strong on paper but frequently flops to the same type of opponents Sciomancer will handily defeat because they do not handle physical affliction classes well. Their class cure targets only mentals, zenith is the least frequently firing passive cure in the game, and swagger will really only get you so far. There have been a number of changes to Zealot and Zealot-adjacent interactions since it topped the Duel and while it is a decent class for the right matchups, I don't think you're going to see a lot of them succeeding in the current climate - largely for the same reasons that Sciomancer manages to prevail.

Ehtias

Kinda surprised no one mentioned when the team stuff was brought up that spirit has more classes that can enable each other instas and are better off having different classes versus shadows which either have unique affs that are a gateway or require something that is not obtainable by a different class. Pulv is fast yeah, it's fast if you have multiple carnifex because of the gate on it. Just think it's interesting is all.

Drystin

Ehtias said:

Pulv is fast yeah, it's fast if you have multiple carnifex because of the gate on it.

It's faster than I ever knew it could be. You should see what their wardens are doing with it right now. There is zero reason we can't be doing the same thing if we had a couple of fex running lessers frequently. 

During the hours I'm around spirit is winning with mostly wardens and our team is using classes that don't compliment each other well with no carnifex in sight. So the issue isn't that spirit has any advantage. They're literally just beating us with one of our own classes.

The lack of participation on shadow where group pk is concerned, combined with the quick willingness to give up is also a contributing factor.

Maybe I'm completely wrong though and everything is butterfly kisses and unicorn farts in the evening? I dunno, just my two cents.

Xavin

An trend I've noticed is that Shadow doesn't seem to be capitalizing on the things they can do as a team in the group environment and instead seems to go straight for damage. There have been -plenty- of times where I know I've been vulnerable to an instakill but instead the shadow team decides to damage me down.

Saidenn

Our finishers are spread out and those classes who can capitalize on insta-finishers (Indorani, Archivist, Carnifex) have been a bit lacking in our group comp of late. We get 0-2 showing up depending, and some do not currently have anything set up to take advantage of finisher windows.

I need to stop procrastinating and contribute some stuff to Sunder to help with those who are using it as I know due to lack of contributions there is quite a bit missing for those who do use Sunder on Shadow when they want to use their classes.

Alela

Drystin said:

Ehtias said:

Pulv is fast yeah, it's fast if you have multiple carnifex because of the gate on it.

It's faster than I ever knew it could be. You should see what their wardens are doing with it right now. There is zero reason we can't be doing the same thing if we had a couple of fex running lessers frequently. 

During the hours I'm around spirit is winning with mostly wardens and our team is using classes that don't compliment each other well with no carnifex in sight. So the issue isn't that spirit has any advantage. They're literally just beating us with one of our own classes.

The lack of participation on shadow where group pk is concerned, combined with the quick willingness to give up is also a contributing factor.

Maybe I'm completely wrong though and everything is butterfly kisses and unicorn farts in the evening? I dunno, just my two cents.


EDITED TO MAKE IT CLEAR MY POST STARTS HERE. NESTED BLOCKQUOTES NEVER SEEM TO WORK RIGHT ???

My limited experience with Wardens has been mostly people doing damage/Czcibor killing half his team (and trying to kill a stack of decongestant pills???) with Sidewind, but I'll happily acknowledge that Pulverize can be pulled off very, very quickly with a group of Carnifex.

Several problems we have on Shadow, apart from attitudes or w/e, include:

1. Most people who would be playing Carnifex are tinkering around with Revenant right now.
   
2. Our limb options, aside from Carnifex, are Teradrim and Monk, and neither of them are as well-represented as Zealot is on Spirit. So when we have had Carnifex in the past, it has almost always seemed more pragmatic to stick to either a locking or damage strategy. Our other classes, while not completely incapable of contributing to a limb strategy, are generally not as well-equipped to do so as even, e.g., Luminary, and getting a target fallen doesn't help anyone other than Carnifex to get their kill conditions the way it does, again e.g., Luminary and Sentinel.
   
3. Sadly, neither Indorani nor Archivist instakills are especially viable in groups. The former's insta (Vivisect) is gated by a delayed-onset affliction, and the latter's is gated by a slow ability that only makes the instakill available to the user. In both cases, there's a lot of precious time wasted - far too much in a large group. Our OTHER instakill options are Teradrim's Hammer, which requires bruising (a condition that was completely unavailable to our other classes prior to Revenant), and Praenomen's Annihilate. Annihilate is a mana-based finisher, though, which makes it somewhat unwieldy for reasons I hope I don't have to explain.
   
4. I recognize Spirit isn't monolithic in its use of Sunder, but on the whole, Shadow's players are much more spread out across systems than Spirit players are. This makes it harder for group leaders to know what people will generally have prepared, as well as how to help less-experienced people use their system.
   

None of these things are Spirit's fault, of course, and I don't think most of them really have anything to do with class viability in either group or 1v1 pk. Mainly my observations, do with them what you will.

Rijetta

Drystin said:

Ehtias said:

Pulv is fast yeah, it's fast if you have multiple carnifex because of the gate on it.

It's faster than I ever knew it could be. You should see what their wardens are doing with it right now. There is zero reason we can't be doing the same thing if we had a couple of fex running lessers frequently. 

During the hours I'm around spirit is winning with mostly wardens and our team is using classes that don't compliment each other well with no carnifex in sight. So the issue isn't that spirit has any advantage. They're literally just beating us with one of our own classes.

The lack of participation on shadow where group pk is concerned, combined with the quick willingness to give up is also a contributing factor.

Maybe I'm completely wrong though and everything is butterfly kisses and unicorn farts in the evening? I dunno, just my two cents.

We had a team pulv setup exactly like what they're doing when all the fex actually played. We all knew how it worked and how fast it is. Spirit cried hard about it. Now they are actually playing and we aren't, and it's our turn to get pulved in groups.