Syssin Combat Questions

Macian

This topic seems to come up fairly regularly, but I couldn't find any that answered all of my questions, so, here we go...

I'm looking for general thoughts and specific info on Syssin combat.

Unfortunately the character is Wise, and I don't see a gem of reincarnation coming soon. I saw, years ago, Seir being successful with a neutral balance statpack. How viable is that these days? Used to be that neutral balance rapier knight at 2.25 seconds balance was slowly able to get ahead. Wondering if 2.66 second dstab with sleights might be in the same boat.

Are there any things that wise can benefit from. I have a Snake class character on Imperian (somewhere) and +eq there allowed double suggestions per dstab. It looks like this doesn't fit here, though, because suggesting while off balance is 2 seconds.

Sleights: Abrasion and Dissipation seem really short. At times, I'll use it on myself, and be able to eat herbs or apply before my system responds to the affliction (e.g. dstab w/paralysis;sleight, system responds to me being paralysed, and sends command, sleight wears off before command goes through). My latency isn't that bad. Is the length of the knock affected by Hypnosis skill (not trans yet) or anything else?

My only thought on this one is to delay when I apply the sleight by enough time that latency doesn't cause issues.

Void: Used to be powerful. Sounds like it was made a bit weaker?

Sleep: Hypersomnia and sleep locks seemed to be a big thing for Syssin back in the day. Sleep followed by snipe+delphinium, for instance, or bind. Metawake appears to wake me up in about 1-2 seconds, which is faster than I recover balance. Is there any use to a heavy sleeplock route these days?

Camus limb damage: Exodus used to set up kills with this (or maybe it was just my crap limb curing). These days, it seems low (11.3% to one limb at 2.0 seconds neutral balance, plus slowed down by Silieris, and parry). Is there something I'm missing here, or has the skill just slowly become antiquated? Pondering the possibilities of using it alongside sleights.

Anything else I should know?

Kaeus

Honestly, it will be extremely rough to get ahead of endgame curing at 2.66 seconds dstas. Sleights are really short balance knocks, but you should certainly still use them. Void is still powerful, as it is the only way to keep your affliction rate even remotely viable between hypnosis chains, however it no longer fires while hypnosis is ticking.

I've not seen limb damage pushed by a Syssin in ages, and from what I recall the damage is so low it'd be laughable against any sort of pre-restore. As far as sleeplock goes, I don't see many people using metawake to begin with, however you would be able to possibly get away with it before people learn what your tactic is and simply start putting up the defense. If you do manage to sleep someone, bind is definitely a nice addition.

Macian

Thanks @kaeus, I expected that that might be the case in terms of getting ahead of curing at neutral balance. I picked it up more as a support class and/or with an eye for the future than a primary 1v1 class. It would definitely be nice to do as much as I can with it, though.

Macian

For Void, I assume the methodology is sleight void, then sleight dissipate until void runs out, then void again?

Toz

That's what I'd do. Unless hypnosis is firing, then don't waste time re-applying void until it ends. Might be tricky to code in, kind of, but you don't want to waste precious herb knocks when void won't do anything anyway.

Irruel

What are the desired stats on a decent whip?
Strength I assume affects garrote, does it affect any other Syssin abilities?
Does intelligence affect anything?

Toz

AFAIK whip speed doesn't impact flaying, so for pvp it doesn't matter too much. I'd lean towards a slightly harder-hitting whip for bashing, myself.

Missari

I vaguely recall something about flay speed being unaffected by +bal, but I'm so far removed from Syssi that I would test that to be sure. Str has no affect on any other skills besides garrote and int affects nothing. Dex however, affects bow and camus damage.

Exodus

Obligatory post in a Syssin thread.