Short COMBAT Questions

Draiman

Your tankiness makes up for it. You can bash places at 75 that other places won't be able to touch until later. Though you're not quite on par with Prae and Teradrim tankiness, you're still up there if you pick the right stat pack for bashing.

Alice

That is true but I'm not quite sure being more tanky necessarily makes up for much else than going through less kidney slices though... It might be a personal matter of preference to be able to kill things without a hard time. Just means it takes twice as long and I might escape.

Moirean

Tankiness means you can kill mobs that are worth more xp, which means you gain more xp more quickly.

Xavin

That's really what it comes down to. For example, you could have a bashing attack alias that frenzies if you are above a certain percentage of health or if mend is on its cooldown and mends instead of frenzy if you are below a certain percentage and mend is not on cooldown.

You also have sanguispect, which is basically metamorphosis vitality with no cooldown, but has to be put up with a ritual each time it goes off.

Ezalor

The problem with Frenzy is that the existence of knuckles means it's insanely bad without and fine with. 1600 credits is a steep price to pay though.

If you want to know how bad it is, 21 strength frenzy is about 1400 damage at 3.5 seconds (3.25 for Bloodborn). When you look at the DPS other classes put out Frenzy is really, really bad.

This is fine for Praenomen because they are just far and above every other class in terms of tankiness but Bloodborn aren't quite as wild in that department, though they still are very good there. Even then you need the protection artifact to really get a top tier audit.

Pumping up Frenzy damage would make it crazy with the knuckles though, so I don't really see a feasible solution as long as that artifact exists and works for bashing.

Oleis

Ezalor said:

The problem with Frenzy is that the existence of knuckles means it's insanely bad without and fine with. 1600 credits is a steep price to pay though.

If you want to know how bad it is, 21 strength frenzy is about 1400 damage at 3.5 seconds (3.25 for Bloodborn). When you look at the DPS other classes put out Frenzy is really, really bad.

This is fine for Praenomen because they are just far and above every other class in terms of tankiness but Bloodborn aren't quite as wild in that department, though they still are very good there. Even then you need the protection artifact to really get a top tier audit.

Pumping up Frenzy damage would make it crazy with the knuckles though, so I don't really see a feasible solution as long as that artifact exists and works for bashing.

If this turns out to be consistently true while we're testing the scaling changes, Frenzy may be one of those abilities that gets a low-end buff.

Ezalor

Oleis said:

Ezalor said:

The problem with Frenzy is that the existence of knuckles means it's insanely bad without and fine with. 1600 credits is a steep price to pay though.

If you want to know how bad it is, 21 strength frenzy is about 1400 damage at 3.5 seconds (3.25 for Bloodborn). When you look at the DPS other classes put out Frenzy is really, really bad.

This is fine for Praenomen because they are just far and above every other class in terms of tankiness but Bloodborn aren't quite as wild in that department, though they still are very good there. Even then you need the protection artifact to really get a top tier audit.

Pumping up Frenzy damage would make it crazy with the knuckles though, so I don't really see a feasible solution as long as that artifact exists and works for bashing.

If this turns out to be consistently true while we're testing the scaling changes, Frenzy may be one of those abilities that gets a low-end buff.

@Oleis it actually seems to have gotten worse. Not sure what's up here.

You use Corpus Frenzy on a Mhun guard.

With a low hiss, you launch yourself at a Mhun guard, battering him in a frenzied flurry of strikes.

Damage done: 1244, blunt.

Balance Used: 3.25 seconds

That's with 21 strength.

With red orb and 21 strength:

You use Corpus Frenzy on a Mhun guard.

With a low hiss, you launch yourself at a Mhun guard, battering him in a frenzied flurry of strikes.

Damage done: 1304, blunt.

Balance Used: 3.25 seconds

So yeah, probably the worst bashing skill in the game. 

With 18 strength:

You use Corpus Frenzy on a Mhun warrior.

With a low hiss, you launch yourself at a Mhun warrior, battering him in a frenzied flurry of strikes.

Damage done: 1117, blunt.

Balance Used: 3.25 seconds

Praenomen get the same damage but even slower (3.5 seconds) but also have insane tankiness with Affinity.

Irruel

Seems weird to me that scythe isn't the intended primary damage attack for BB. It is the class's 'hook' after all.

Alexina

Irruel said:

Seems weird to me that scythe isn't the intended primary damage attack for BB. It is the class's 'hook' after all.

Well, they'd have to put Hematurgy as the primary attack, which means novice Bloodborn would either suck completely at PK (no mentis) or they would miss out on all the basic utility in corpus (entomb, all the defences, etc). Moving scythe skills from hematurgy to Bloodborn corpus might be a solution, but that would sort of water down the last skillset. Apart from that, frenzy does suck a lot. Even with knuckles providing an artifact boost, it is still lower than the equivalent bashing attacks of a lot of other classes in terms of DPS. Particularly revamped classes seem to have higher damage or faster attacks (which means more crits), although Sciomancers provide a pretty strange outlier when fully artifacted up -- staffcast deals tons and tons of damage.

Xavin

Sciomancer and Ascendril can deal a truckload of damage with their staffcast when they're fully arti'd, sure. But most classes outpace them in pure dps with comperative artifacts. Shaman and Luminary, for example, out-dps fully arti'd mages when you compare primality lightning, illumination lightning and staffcast.

Irruel

@alexina @oleis
That does make sense.
I hope the devs understand that this is a bit of a class flaw then. It is easy to forget this as an established player; when thinking about an alt or multiclass, I already know what the abilities are like, the pvp mechanics etc - and I'm already thinking of the class as though I am tri-trans (or at least 2.5 trans).

Yet a new player, reading through the class/guild descriptions, will see the bloodborn and think, "Scythe, cool, I can be Death".

Then they join and don't get to swing a scythe immediately?

That's like old school infernals bashing with decay because chivalry back then sucked so hard before being accurate enough. "But I joined a hardcore knight class and you're telling me to wield a shield and go touching people with my hands?"

Quick solution:
Make BB corpus a separate skill to Praenomen corpus. Split some of the scythe abilities from hematurgy and put them into the new BB-corpus in place of frenzy.

Moirean

Irruel said:

That's like old school infernals current Carnifex bashing with decay soul barrage because chivalry savagery back then right now sucked s so hard before being accurate damaging enough. "But I joined a hardcore knight class and you're telling me to wield a shield and go touching people with my hands?"

Fixed that for you. 

Toz

It's not even touching them with your hands. You're like...reaching into your grab-bag o' souls and lobbing a handful at them.

Irruel

Right. I didn't realise that was the case

In my opinion, every class should be looked at in this way:

What is the most defining aspect of the class?
Sentinel: twin-bladed weapon, pets and traps
Knight classes: big bloody weapons and armour
Monks: martial arts
BB: Scythes (like Death)
etc

It should be an absolutely priority, in my opinion, to make sure that the true-newbs get to play that from the very beginning - i.e. that it is the primary skill. Otherwise, how can they not be disappointed after trialling the game for an hour?

"Lol, I tried playing this game last night, and the knights in it don't even use weapons!"

Ezalor

Hematurgy is very different though. You don't get most of the skills when you learn the skillset, you have to figure out and decipher the rituals which is unique and a scholarly mystical vibe, but can also be a pain in the ass cause sometimes the clues are just wrong.

For example for Stillmind it mentions that you have to crush two organs that deal with mental afflictions, however one of them is lung (bloodroot) which has nothing at all to do with mental. It is rather daunting for new players and I generally just send them an OOC list of how to do all the rituals while RPing giving them clues and stuff for them to figure out.

I would actually say these rituals are the defining part of BB not the scythe as I think that is what draws most players to the class. Bloodborn novices are identical to Praenomen novices except weaker (no access to scalemail), which I don't think is bad as the novice classes satisfy the vampire role.

Irruel

But as a true-newb, reading a blurb about each class, all you get from hematurgy is blood-magic/rituals. Sure, that's obviously an integral and defining part of the class, in the same way that illumination defines the daru - but just as it is impossible to consider daru without thinking  "martial artist", it is also impossible to consider BB without thinking about what weapon they wield. Particularly when it is a scythe and immediately conjures up images from RL pop-myth-culture.

Oleis

Bump. For reference, this is the appropriate thread for Combat questions.

Daskalos

How do you guys deal with retard vibe? The affliction rate of the passive vibes outpace what you can cure when you combine shadeling in (frozen + 2 leg breaks, as an example). Trying to fight Xiuhcoatl earlier, he literally just shielded repeatedly until he got the plague\shadeling combo he wanted, and at that point curing was immediately too far behind. He didn't kill me because I just tumbled out of the room, but I dunno. Retard is just the most broken skill ever as it literally ruins every other class. No  one, except mages, likes fighting in retard. This was fixed years ago by making retardation vibe kill other vibes at a fairly quick rate, but when retard\aeon  was changed this got reversed. I don't think it's working, but maybe I'm doing something wrong? I'm preloading my offense based off of balance\eq taken (executing on balance recovering  - 2 seconds so that the commands go through as I get balance back) but as an affliction class that's about impossible - if he shields, for instance, I hit it. Reflections are fast and if he gets behind, he casts those and negates half of every attack. All the while plague \ shadeling \ dissonance are wrecking me passively at full speed.

I just don't get how to fight an offense that is completely passive and requires nothing from the user other than 'survive until they're too screwed up to recover'.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32023038/retard.txt

Suggestions?

Moirean

CLASS SWITCH INDORANI.

Irruel

@daskalos

I've never been good at it. My strategy hasn't changed since the first day the magi were added to Achaea - get out of it, and throw shit at them until they die, run away, or drag me back in there and kill me.

It doesn't work as well at all now that retardation/aeon isn't as strong as it used to be - and it's the only thing I miss about having fast handaxes with long stuns. As a shaman also, discharge is nice but won't kill even in retardation.

I suspect I might have been able to hurt Xiuh more if I'd been smarter with my attacks though. I haven't done anything for retardation yet, aside from strategise a bit in my head. I really ought to make a few aliases and go find Xiuh somewhere to find out if they'll work.

Angwe

With Xiuh, duck out and throw axes at him. If they don't have it down pat, retardation can quickly turn against a magi (using 'Magi' as a catch-all term for the two classes we all know I'm talking about). The problem is, when they DO have it down pat (like Xiuh does) getting stuck in retard with them is a guaranteed loss, point blank.

Teani

Putting in my two cents. At the moment it seems to me that fighting in retardation vibe is the only way for a mage to get anywhere in a fight before being smashed down in a damage kill. I realize that I am not a top-tier fighter, just learning things to help me along a bit better, so I'm sure some will tell me there are other ways.

I'm not all familiar with Sciomancer skills compared to Ascendril, but for me, my route to a kill is through brands or holocausts. Seeing as I've heard plenty of people claim someone is a one-hit-wonder for using holos all the time to win a fight, brands seems to be the good option. Also, mis-timing a holo-string is bound to kill me as well as my opponent (and I've yet to actually manage not to suicide whenever using them <.<).

Brand require me to work unhindered for a span of seconds. If I have my vibes (without retard) my opponent is not likely to fall behind enough for me to do that. In general I just keep curing someone's blindness over and over when trying to transfix them, because they heal up too quickly. I can add frostspikes to help afflictions along a little, unless I have to protect myself from overloads of damage, but that's only rarely enough to make a difference.

So, I can choose to stand in my vibes and fight to a stalemate without retardation, if I'm able to stand their damage (or shield against the damage when needed). Or I get beaten down to pulp by someone's massive damage attacks. Or I attempt brands, fail them, and fall behind in curing because I couldn't prevent them from stopping my brands all the time.

I'm still working on finding a different strategy than this, but at the moment, fighting in retardation is basically a mage's way of getting any chance of a victory in a 1vs1 fight. And it's not even a given victory for all of us. If you have a suggestion on how to make headway and -not- use retard, please make a suggestion. I'd really like to learn. Honestly.

Macian

Irruel said:

@daskalos

I've never been good at it. My strategy hasn't changed since the first day the magi were added to Achaea - get out of it, and throw shit at them until they die, run away, or drag me back in there and kill me.

It doesn't work as well at all now that retardation/aeon isn't as strong as it used to be - and it's the only thing I miss about having fast handaxes with long stuns. As a shaman also, discharge is nice but won't kill even in retardation.

I suspect I might have been able to hurt Xiuh more if I'd been smarter with my attacks though. I haven't done anything for retardation yet, aside from strategise a bit in my head. I really ought to make a few aliases and go find Xiuh somewhere to find out if they'll work.

Drop an overgrowth in there, and move him around with switch, flow, and pull, or use the ranged attach in Naturalism where it does decent damage and hits with loki, maybe?

Moirean

More productively, the first time Xiuh dropped retard on me, I just shattered him to death. He started using that tactic a lot after that since it really is a bit silly and hard to stop, even if you aren't a mage, and there was an approved report (1332) subsequently put in to nerf shatter/brands in retardation. Was that implemented?

The last time we fought in retard he kept stormhammering my ents, so I spammed justice - the delay meant that his attacks blew him up. That's pretty Indo-specific, though.

More generally, retardation tends to be my cue to slip out and pepper them with a few loki arrows. Granted, that's not as potent with new retard and arrow changes, but I still do it, even if I'm the mage and it's my own retard - it tends to get you a slight bit ahead, so then you can wade back in and hit them directly with a bit more of an advantage. 

One issue that makes retardation a real issue in its current iteration is rebounding, and I think this really could use a liaison report next round to look at it. Old retardation had us using the old rebounding system, where smokes reset the aura coming up - the net result was that keeping a really good uptime on rebounding was REALLY hard, and had to be woven in through windows between attacks and curing (remember, every command had its own delay and entering a new command before the last one went through overwrote a past command). Now, you can just keep spamming rebounding automatically with all your other attacks or even lead your attacks with it with no penalty at all, making the uptime essentially the same as outside of retard...whereas MANAGING that rebounding is SIGNIFICANTLY harder in retard, since you are deciding to raze or hit a second before your attack actually lands, which is an open window for that rebounding to pop up. This is a really rough situation for knights, syssin and sents in particular, and I honestly wouldn't bother sitting in retard in one of those classes because you have essentially no momentum.

Haven

I dunno if you still have Luminary class or not but have you tried the limb route in retardation @Daskalos?

That might be effective since it is a relatively obnoxious and quick route to build off of and it would mean slowing down the magi since a lot of their attacks supposedly require unbroken arms. Plus there is the added bonus of most of our limb attacks bypassing rebounding. I don't know enough about the Magi to verify but it might be something to look into.

Moirean

Also switch spiritwrack to passive!

Haven

Moirean said:

Also switch spiritwrack to passive!

I would never bother with that unless they've fixed/restored spiritwrack. Due to affliction view, passive spiritwrack afflictions are no longer hidden at all.

So while it currently has the advantage of being one less command punching through retardation, the problem with using spiritwrack is its random element in its passive form. The Luminary offense falls apart quickly if afflictions being delivered do not complement each other and or fit the class's stacking structure of distract and weave.

Prior to the implementation of affliction view, you could rely on the hidden element slowing them down by either forcing diagnose/guess work or waiting on symptom messages. So it might've been a tempting strategy in retardation or against aeon then but not now.

Missari

As a speed knight in retard, I load up my rapiers with the retribution affs and lock venoms then hold enter on "dsk target". My system goes squiggly when they're nice and retributable and I hit the button for it. Wraps mages up in a nice little package most times, or I run, heal up and try again until they're wrapped up and tucked under a tree.

Moirean

Haven said:

Also switch spiritwrack to passive!

I would never bother with that unless they've fixed/restored spiritwrack. Due to affliction view, passive spiritwrack afflictions are no longer hidden at all. So while it currently has the advantage of being one less command punching through retardation, the problem with using spiritwrack is its random element in its passive form. The Luminary offense falls apart quickly if afflictions being delivered do not complement each other and or fit the class's stacking structure of distract and weave. Prior to the implementation of affliction view, you could rely on the hidden element slowing them down by either forcing diagnose/guess work or waiting on symptom messages. So it might've been a tempting strategy in retardation or against aeon then but not now.

+--------------------------- CHANGELOG ENTRY #422 ----------------------------+

|  Entered by: Razmael                             Date: 2013/10/31 11:46:35  |

+--------------------------------- CHANGE ------------------------------------+

Spirituality

------------

* [Spiritwrack]: Now properly hidden from affliction_View.

Haven

Oh, nevermind then!