First of all, thank you Seir for the wonderful guide you put up a while back. Yes, I have read it.
I've been trying to learn how to fight as a lycan, but I've just been having a really terrible time and need some advice. Against some people I can manage to get a little bit ahead and mangle/destroy some limbs, but what I've found is people with really good systems I just can't do anything to, even if they stand there and let me beat on them to my heart's content.
I've tried clawing around on bodyparts to make them break, but it just isn't working at all. Because of parry I can't focus any one spot too much, and people prerestore really really early. Even if I can get them to fall behind on a certain limb by watching what they care most about, they will end up parrying that one while they cure the others. I mean, maybe this works if you are dextrous stat pack and have plus balance speed, but I'm resilient and I simply can't seem to make any progress like this.
What I normally try to do is claw around on different bodyparts to get them prerestoring. My howls are on paralysis, blurring, inflating, and I spinerip as soon as they hit. Hopefully, if the timing is favorable, they have prerestored an arm or something right when all of that hits, which gives me a little bit of time. I've tried just clawing the crap out of people, as mentioned before, and it just isn't working. Instead, I've started hamstringing both legs and baying inflating when I balance from this. If they've already used their tree tattoo with my howls, and hopefully the endgame aff curing ability is off balance, I can actually have them with a broken leg when I balance sometimes... Awesome, right? Except no, because they will just parry that broken leg, so I can't really capitalize on it. I had hoped that people being prone would stop parrying, but it doesn't
Even if I do manage to mangle a leg, surely they will start to parry it. If I try to hamstring the other leg and rend an arm they can tree, or use the restore ability or whatever, so that doesn't really stick either.
How am I supposed to get around a good parry, if we can at all? Or is there just no hope until I can switch to a +balance statpack (after endgame I guess, because I HAVE to have resilient if there is any hope of hunting)?
I really don't know what to try next. I mean, maybe change blurring out for stupidity in my howls, but that doesn't sound very reliable?
Comments
Rawr
I don't really like spinerip all that much. I've basically just been using it like a guaranteed prerestore to try to tie up their salve balance before I hamstring (rend now). If they've prerestored something else a little before that hits it can put me a few seconds ahead which I need for actually having a limb broken when I finally balance again. I suppose I could just trade this out for clawing a bodypart twice which is likely to get a prerestore, at least out of the people who have been letting me practice on them. If so it can make optimizing my attacks a little easier as I won't have to worry about my timing being perfect. I could also trade out my paralysis howl for something else, because that's not going to end up sticking. Maybe forceful to knock people over for locking the armpit, as they likely won't be prone if I'm doing the arms instead of the legs.
I haven't played with flurry. The syntax doesn't specify targetting a specific limb or anything so I figured it was just supposed to be a damaging attack. I'll have to try it out and see.
Thanks for your insight I feel a little better knowing there's at least something I can aim for to get around parry.
Rawr
If people pre-restore when you have balance, use rend/hamstring and then mangle before they regain salve balance.
Better systems will apply restoration only when you hit them, ensuring that you are off balance for the longest period of time possible. Still, keep an eye out for that - if their system is overdoing the prerestoration, they might be giving you openings.
2. Howls
paralysis+stupidity+anorexia
There are other good combos, but this one more than any other directly helps breaking. How?
Paralysis stops their parry.
Anorexia stops them eating bloodroot to cure the paralysis
Stupidity soaks a focus, stopping anorexia from being focus cured right away
Here's the key point:
Being off salve balance means they cannot cure the anorexia, and by extension, the paralysis.
What you want, is to break (resto break) a limb a couple of seconds before howls hit. Howls tick and you don't have balance, but it doesn't matter because they are off salve balance and will still be paralysed when you regain balance. At this point you can destroy their limb without needing to worry about them parrying you. Or you could spinalrip, which is probably not the best choice, but also not a bad one as it is yet another resto app, along with steady resto damage to the torso, and faster than salve balance so is putting them behind. The downside is that you will lose the chance to destroy their vulnerable limb.
(But, if all this happened after you've screwed up multiple limbs, a spinalrip is an excellent choice).
3. Learn their parry, then exploit it
Everyone parries differently. Some systems auto parry the last limb struck. Some parry random limbs. Some parry semi-randomly, with weighting systems toward certain body parts. Some parry manually or semi-manually. Spend a bit of time at the start of the fight, figuring out what sort of parry you're up against. If the parry follows the limb strikes, or some other similarly predictable pattern, then exploit it. There is always a way.
Many, or maybe even most, people will parry the limb you just mangled, preventing the subsequent destroy. Figure out early on if they do this or not. If they do, then when you break a limb, don't follow it up with a destroy - break then rend/hamstring. They'll be off salve balance long enough for you to mangle one of the others.
Listen to Macian's advice about double parry people, it is good. I won't repeat that stuff. I think he taught it to me back in the day anyway.
Lastly, if they parry around a lot, punish their head. You might force them to change their parry mode to favour the head more, or you might manage to land enough head damage to use Macian's forceful howl+necklock combo. Or even start a staggered skullwhack chain.
4. Don't always claw+claw
Last, and I think most useful, piece of advice.
rend tar left
claw left arm of tar
^ Makes it slower to get a break, and harder to safely pre-restore, depending on their system. Test it out, for some opponents it is worth using.
Using those howls at different points before it never really stuck much, but I think that's because I was clawing all the time and their tree tattoo was always there for it. If I double rend/hamstring more now then there is a fair chance it might stay on for at least a few seconds if they tree to fix one of the breaks.
Thanks everyone for some really good pointers. I'll post how it works out in a little while after I get a chance to play more with all of this.
Rawr
I basically always use claw+hamstring or claw+rend, it's a good compromise between the two, I think. If they prerestore after the mending app, and you use the server-side queue to do a double rend/hamstring, you will get a mangle from it. It depends a bit on whether they have a tree tatt ready to go or not.
Which brings me to another point for @amberlea about howl combos - an advantage to not using paralysis howl at all, is that people usually try to tree away hidden affs, and that means less treeing away mending breaks.
I'd really like to be able to track their limb damage well enough to get the final break with claw left and hamstring right, but with parry systems as they are though, targeting two different limbs isn't what it used to be.
So before, you could get close to a break then change to split-limb targeting until the break happened. The damage tracking didn't need to be perfect. But now, to succeed in a split limb combo on the legs, I need to target arms a round or two first, to make sure all parrying is away from the legs, then go back to legs. And when the leg still doesn't break, back to the arms to refocus parry up top again.
It's just not worth the bother.
Rawr