Honestly, I think there's a lot of wasted effort going into toxin locking. Every offense that pushes a toxin lock is really a wall of maidenhair or kelp affs that are rinse repeated ad nauseum until enough time has passed that you were able to +1 your way into a soft lock. I'm actually against any offense that 'locks' as a reliable kill method because the moment the target is 'locked' the fight is over (if they don't have fitness. 90% of people won't use fitness). Let's be honest, there isn't a single toxin-lock profession that isn't a wall of spam-kelp or spam-metrazol. They're boring and not as awesome as people think they are.
-Wytchen and Diabolist: If you have to toxinlock to kill someone, you're likely doing something wrong. Wytchen can milk the damage train to a pretty reasonable kill sans lock. Lock actually runs contrary to infirmities. You need 3 and done, move on to the next triplet. That being said, infirmities is bad/punishing mechanic for the diab and should have stayed on the equally bad class in Aetolia. (As a wytchen, if you're not using cadmus you're wrong. Belial and Hecate are trash and more trash and have always been trash and will always be trash until we recognize that cadmus is what you balance the class around).
I'm more of a fan of being able to track afflictions and be able to cash in on them. Sabo, Sabre-knight, lock-wytch, diabolist are really just me hiding behind a wall of kelp and maidenhair. From what I've seen and read, water mage is a lot like this. It's a more complex play style than 'little red button' but it's also more rewarding. If anything, we need to keep the little red button around, but we need to make it less reliable. You shouldn't be able to roll into combat and new combo your way to the top of the damage or affliction charts.
#Nerftemplar2015.
Cirisosis was bugged for quite some time (see: forever) where even if you met the kill conditions for ciri it wouldn't fire. So you could have 1843 physical afflictions and still not die. Surprise Surprise, we started applying stacking % modifiers (vae-sant, level 3 dart sheath, racial) and suddenly we're afflicting too fast and some of them are masked. OH YEAH!
**Edit
At this point, I think we need to delete level 2 fast balance and reduce the number of deviations from the norm, thus reducing variability and eliminating the outlier cases which we end up balancing around because you can't ignore them.
@Ahkan yes which is why I think enlighten and tarot summoner is great. It doesn't rely on a bottleneck and attrition as much, and a lot more of awareness around kill windows.
Honestly locking isn't fun - I use it generally because my Wytch can take about 3 dsls before expiring. For deathknight, I would prefer to use vivisect but ohman am I bad at counting limbs
Also, I have asked Garryn to consider moving it to 0.93 and 0.86 for +1 and +2 but he's said it's going to need a major rethink and isn't likely to happen.
$0.02 - I have pretty much always played knight or something that does previously described wall of text affs. I'm now kinda for the first time playing a damage profession, and while this one isn't precisely a good example, even reclaim 'tricks' are laughably simplistic, I can kind of appreciate the fact that the other ~96% of the playerbase doesn't want to code a decent aff tracker. I don't really think it's as much fun as I always felt, because it always felt good to break someone's healing or in modern days sabreslut spamming my way past gbot, but I guess my point here is that I'm learning other playstyles can be fun and rewarding too, and fast statpack to that end I feel is always going to be 'what we balance around', and I feel that slows down our overall progress. This is why from Iniar's post above about unwillingness to modify those level two balances, and @Garryn's repeated iterating his intense dislike of deleting ****, I worry about ever getting anything to change with it from the admin that we don't have to keep half assedly bandaiding around or classleading around or beta'ing around.
On statpack speed modifiers - I'm not opposed to reducing their effect, or getting rid of the Fast one. I have decided not to do that in the previous round for two reasons - one, the existing bonuses haven't been a major issue so far, and two, the adjustment would likely require a bunch of other changes, and we already had a very high amount of those scheduled. We can do that next round if there's interest, but as is always the case with bigger changes, the tradeoff is that other adjustments may need to wait.
Here's my concern (and anyone can chime it with how wrong I am): I have no issues trying and maybe putting away most people in most classes with most methods. I am very perturbed by the fact however that against (for me) the two big outliers, Templar Septus and Druid Eldreth, its really go hard on the lock/denial or go home. And in my situation, which is to say, any mediocre combatant with mediocre tracking, -any- statpack but Fast really does it even begin to cut it against the two outliers. Truthfully, I would probably still lose, but I'd hate to think that I would end up in a fight where I actually -cannot- win. This is my big issue, firstly with how vastly superior Fast is to Athletic and Clever, secondly, how any additional affliction cure makes any semblance of being able to slow or direct the fight away from the outliers favour is simply a farce. I don't want to solve this by fixing the classes, because we know the new hotness will just roll around - rather, closing the gap across the board means outlier combat will become truly combatable in the first instance, almost independent of a choice made to supplement team damage or lead team afflictions etc etc. OK, fire away!
You don't balance an average around outliers - that's why they are called outliers. And it's what leads to terrible classleads. There is always going to be a 999-1 Oggnoch Puffinsmasher in the Gladiator Pits.
e: I should clarify I am referring to Iniar's definition of outlier, which is tied to actual people, and not Ahkan's use which is talking about skill outliers as a result of fast balance (which makes sense).
“We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant."
Not if the spread is much tighter, and that's my point, take it or leave it. I kind of don't want to talk about this anymore, tired of trying to point out something that people who play the spectrum of pure affliction, pure damage, hybrids would probably grasp intuitively.
Uber balance recovery in Achaea eventually did get the axe. We had a fair few people over there who could take that raw outlier speed and capitalize on its full capability with their class skills, so it became clear how powerful it was in the hands of players who really know what they're doing (even against other competent combatants, people like me just got destroyed, obviously). We also had a fair few people with the credibility to say "you can't have such a big gap in speeds in this game and have it be balanced". There was even a term for it "min/max", where certain class/stat combos, with an artie or two to reduce penalties was pretty much *the* way to play the game.
Now you can choose Nimble as a "Trait" that gives you what I guess is "level 1" balance recovery (probably much like our Athletic statpack), and no one seems to mind that (and it hasn't hurt artie sales either, I don't think). I have this assumption that the admin in each game chat about things like this from tiime to time but maybe not. There's a long list of things Imperian has that I wish Achaea had, but it sounds like in this case, Imperian may have a problem that Achaea already fixed several years ago. They've put a lot of work into making all classes viable, and eliminating extreme outlier class/stat synergies. That said, speedknight is still *the* way to play knight, from what I can tell, for example, but at least other competent combatants seem to do fine against them, and to be fair, there was a dark time where most people seemed to agree that a couple of the knight classes could *only* kill through "wall of dsl venoms". In any case, there's even a current thread where someone returning asked which class he should be, and the consensus seems to be "well, it's about time, but they're all actually pretty good"!
So I don't like bringing up issues without some sort of tentative solution, but I'd like to think over solutions before offering them for discussion. Here are my thoughts on Aeon (borrowing some concepts from people):
General Steps
=============
Divide Summoner Aeon and Wytch Aeon.
Tentatively remove the speed defence, until we work out if it still remains necessary.
For Wytch Aeon:
===============
On delivery of the Aeon affliction, the last flare cooldown is shortened by 33%.
If the affliction is still present at t=4, the cooldown is shortened by 50%.
For Summoner Aeon:
==================
At 2 seconds after delivery of the Aeon affliction, the next unleash cooldown is shortened by 20%.
If the affliction is still present at t=4, the cooldown is shortened by 50%.
Rationale:
For a damage summoner, this involves a tarot throw which slows down the output, with a potential for an effective +10 dps on the next golgotha unleash. It looks potentially like quite a poor trade off, and not something I would use intuitively as a damage summoner.
For a tarot summoner, this would involve dropping 1 affliction to trade for a 4 - 10 second quicker cast on two fixed afflictions, or 2 random afflictions delivered against rebounding.
Happy to hear alternatives.
E: Also, alternatively, looking for a friendly afflictor to kelp-stack for me so I can actually gainfully use Aeon.
Maybe taking some (or all) of the reserve system idea for active health/mana skills?
I like this concept. Thinking D&D wizards, a skill like Priestess/Vigour/Hands would require prior preparation pre-combat, a short channeled activity that allows for five casts of the skill at normal tarot EQ cost. Without a charge, the EQ cost is inflated to 1.5 x normal cast time. That said, now that Priestess is 15%, I'm disinclined to move forward with this, not without other active heals looked at.
I'm a few days, weeks, months, and years late to the party, but here are my thoughts on recent discussions.
Ciri/twin shot/saber knight combo: People are getting antsy at the ease of which it can be pulled off using this combo, well that's a team combat issue and we shouldn't mega nerf a profession because of how well they work in tandem with another profession. Sure you can make adjustments to the team aspect all you want, but singling out one skill as a fix all to a much larger issue is never a smart move and generally leaves one class being left in the dark ages until the next batch of class leads or two.
Level 2 racial balance: I'm not horribly opposed to nuking it, though I'm much more in favor of keeping it. This goes along the same lines of my previous point. Nuking something because a few people who have dedicated time, energy, plus ludicrous amounts of money on this game to get their players above the norm of the rest of the player base is never a good idea either. There is a reason they are the way they are and in most cases it's because they've put in way more money than you to get those things.
Now I understand people don't like getting beat down by a credit card, but imperian has it's own class of citizens just like the real world. Sure it sucks when other people can fly off to wherever on their own private jet when you can't, but that doesn't mean you get to petition the government to outlaw private jets because you don't have one.
well that's a team combat issue and we shouldn't mega nerf a profession because of how well they work in tandem with another profession.
It's amazing how fluid this position is based on the location of the offending 'team mechanic imbalance.' When it was defiler bellow, it was the end all be all of team imbalance that had to be addressed now. I WANT CAKE NOW. When it was something like say, bloodfreeze, you were disinclined to address a mechanic that was exploitable in a team setting. I think it's worth mentioning that cirisosis is a strictly AM shenanigan.
My problem with ciri isn't so much the mechanic it feeds off of, but the readily available nature of the afflictions that count for its setup. Limb damage, every toxin. That pretty much opens it up to be activated by anything living and breathing in dsl-limb damage, otherwise known as Anti-magick. Many of the conditional instakills in the game are hard to stick/track afflictions, limited list, or bear with it some class-based status effect (See: whispering madness and enlightenment). Cirisosis has none of those balancing acts in play.
Level 2 racial balance:
I'm not horribly opposed to nuking it, though I'm much more in favor of keeping it. This goes along the same lines of my previous point. Nuking something because a few people who have dedicated time, energy, plus ludicrous amounts of money on this game to get their players above the norm of the rest of the player base is never a good idea either. There is a reason they are the way they are and in most cases it's because they've put in way more money than you to get those things.
Now I understand people don't like getting beat down by a credit card, but imperian has it's own class of citizens just like the real world. Sure it sucks when other people can fly off to wherever on their own private jet when you can't, but that doesn't mean you get to petition the government to outlaw private jets because you don't have one.
Just my thoughts.
I object.
# Name Location
62953 a Collar of Gazali being held by Iniar
64774 a Diadem of the Quickening being held by Iniar
160296 a eupnoeic ring being held by Iniar
74235 a fist-shaped earring being held by Iniar
84595 the Foreboding Stone being held by Iniar
254202 a Gem of Transmutation being held by Iniar
21350 a Girdle of the Titans being held by Iniar
6944 a glittering ring of vitality being held by Iniar
167774 a Golden Lyre of Shallah being held by Iniar
332404 an Ivory Brooch being held by Iniar
63436 a nacreous Scepter of Protecti being held by Iniar
18152 an orb of suppression being held by Iniar
92003 a pair of Bracelets of Epiphan being held by Iniar
168859 a pair of Ogre's Gauntlets being held by Iniar
68386 a poisonbane ring being held by Iniar
93908 a ring of Epiphany's Gift being held by Iniar
218544 a ring of Magick's Bane being held by Iniar
Numbness, Epilepsy, Anorexia, Recklessness, Stupidity, and Sensitivity are all toxin-delivered brainmelt afflictions, and it's ludicrously easy for a decent Hunter/RG combination to push into lethal brainmelt range effortlessly. As for Enlighten, anybody who can stick asthma for a few seconds can trivially open up a window for an all-but-unavoidable enlighten with a very minimal amount of prep on the part of the Summoner(5s to build up taint). Neither of those scenarios are hard to do and I'd feel comfortable in arguing that they're both easier to set up than cirisosis.
There is no such thing as a 1v1-feasible affliction-based kill method that won't become exponentially easier when multiple parties contribute to it. You will end up with something nobody can feasibly use(Annihilate) or something that is easily achieved in a team(Brainmelt/Enlighten/Cirisosis). Deal with it or break it completely, those are the only real choices.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Ahkan, I helped nerf outrider a bit after their release, so yeah I fought against a quick fix as pretty much any would, but that wasn't to say I thought the skill was just fine as is, even more so after you and I talked with one another about it.
Iniar so the phrase "they are just better at this game than me" means nothing to you? I mean if you have equivalent artis and investment and you still without the slightest chance at winning as you seem to describe, what else can it be?
Sorry Iniar, that was rude of me, but you pointing out your investment(read artis) doesn't validate your point anymore than it squashes mine.
And yet, in practice, you don't see any doom brainmelt spam, doom enlighten spam, etc. However, you do see cirisosis spam by someone known for not tracking toxins.
I'm not going to pretend that I agree with the use of it in droves in the way you all describe. As that will just lead more Dias and Dias wannabe like nerfs to predator. See standing ccuts along with others for reference. But this continual knock on predator is getting old quick. In the past umpteen years the only classlead where we didn't really get some form of big nerf was when they released beast mastery. And it isn't even like we are that dominant of a class to begin with.
So you get killed by a cheap gimmick instead some sort of actual game play or strategy when fighting a predator. What do you all expect? You've pretty much amputated our leg just to fix a stubbed toe every damn classlead cycle.
I enlightened ALL THE TIME when I was Demonic and Iluv/Iroth/I were stealing each other's setups; we could enlighten in the space of a lovage smoke and we did so frequently. Aulani and Caelya were brainmelting all the time when we were Magick. You are not seeing those kills used now because Demonic doesn't fight and Magick's so clumsy that they had to order special velcro clownshoes.
Also, as far as Cirisosis goes? Shou isn't tracking; Shou is pushing the cirisosis button when somebody who IS tracking tells him to do it, much like how there are several priests/diabolists who just spam sap until somebody calls for an absolve/cath over the ring.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
-bloodfreeze was nerfed because it was a bad mechanic
-defiler ate 2 nerfs (one live nerf) because it was a bad mechanic
-standing ccut to the tune of 300 damage was a bad mechanic
-spam bear skills were bad mechanics
Bad mechanics get adjusted to become tolerable/good mechanics. Except mirroring, we leave that in because reasons. #dontdeleteever
Khizan is deliberately leaving out the differentiation between "this can be coordinated" and "this is actually coordinated." No one uses effectively brainmelt teams. Even the god of beta (elrith) can't track that well to ensure a 100% lethal brainmelt. Sure, they can theory craft up the doom scenario, but when push comes to shove the wheels fall off that bus and a rapid chain reaction of failure ensues. Enlighten is the same way. Can we lock you up with 5 mentals and asthma? Sure! We could also have killed you four rounds earlier with straight damage under strychnine. The biggest difference between enlightenment, brainmelt, etc is that there is a penalty for failure. Brainmelt does non-lethal damage and cures an afflictions, taking a step back. Enlightenment wastes and eq, sticking no toxins, doing no damage, and allows you to cure whispering madness. What does cirosisis do when it fails? Nothing. It persists. I've said it before in this thread and I"m going to say it again. The only thing you have to do is pretty much waltz your way through toxicology. 1 2 cirisosis, 1 2 cirisosis, 1 2 cirisosis.
The best way to go after cirisosis is to really reduce the range of affictions or add some sort of status modifier that only a predator can tack on and stick.
To repeat the point, bad mechanics need to be fixed. Cirisosis is a bad mechanic.
**On a completely different note, predator is spread far too thing to be really functional. You have all these neat little end-game tricks. Quarter, crescentcut, lartosis, cirisosis. Your early and mid-game set up skills are trashy because your end-game is so WHAT!?!? This is the problem with your classleads. It was never your end game that was bad. Now you're top heavy with no real way to get from the first floor to the fourteenth floor without a team. That's bad design.
Khizan is deliberately leaving out the differentiation between "this can be coordinated" and "this is actually coordinated." No one uses effectively brainmelt teams. Even the god of beta (elrith) can't track that well to ensure a 100% lethal brainmelt. Sure, they can theory craft up the doom scenario, but when push comes to shove the wheels fall off that bus and a rapid chain reaction of failure ensues
Aulani and Caelya managed to shove that wheel-less bus over half the world without a ton of difficulty, somehow. Lethal 100% of the time? No, but I've seen Shou miss a ton of cirisosis kills and a Brainmelt that's not an abject failure is still an excellent bit of burst damage. There's two reasons why you don't see it being used now. The first is that damage is easier and more effective and Druid/Mage is packing a crapload of damage. And the second is that Magick's coordination is abysmal and they have trouble with battle plans like "everybody just deal damage to the target".
If you switched the teams around and had Magick playing AM classes and AM playing Magick classes, you'd be crying about brainmelt right now and cirisosis wouldn't be a problem.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
-bloodfreeze was nerfed because it was a bad mechanic
-defiler ate 2 nerfs (one live nerf) because it was a bad mechanic
-standing ccut to the tune of 300 damage was a bad mechanic
-spam bear skills were bad mechanics
I never said those things weren't bad Ahkan. I'm saying everyone flew off the handle and over reacted to a lvl3 runed out sitara to the point where anything but an arti sitara is crap and still is. Im all for fixing a bad mechanic, just not at the cost of reducing a class useless without artifacts. Again, you don't have to amputate a leg to fix a stubbed toe.
Now with that being said, I don't know all the fixes mentioned for ciri because you know, it takes effort and stuff to read over a couple pages worth of this thread. If there is one worthy I'd probably back it. But right now all this sounds like what I assume people who died from a feint kiting predator (which I'm still baffled by, just leave when you see them kiting there is plenty of time for you to do so) sounded like. And yeah, I'm bringing that up, because of your reference to our low end first and second floor that has no elevator to the fifteenth floor.
You see the problem with the class, why not approach the bigger problem instead of trying to fix something that is only an issue in a coordinated team fight and that in doing so only increases the buy in for that class?
2.[yes/no]The systemic disease in Imperian is the binary nature of afflictions.
3.[yes/no]The potency of this disease is dictated by the ability of certain afflictions to incapacitate.
4.[yes/no] The experience of this disease is dictated by the active duration of these afflictions, which is influenced by
5. [yes/no] The speed of delivery, and
6. [yes/no] The speed of cure.
7. [yes/no] Certain classes have the ability to push the experience of this potency (incapacitation) to the extreme: Current Templar, Hunter, Assassin. These are Alpha Classes.
8. [yes/no] Alpha Classes, can, in the proper hands, render the playing experience of other classes into a survival game.
9. [yes/no] A pure survival game is no fun.
10.[yes/no] Therefore, Alpha Classes are best combated with similarly built Alpha Classes.
11.[yes/no] No access to an Alpha Class renders the try-to-survive experience more potent.
12.[yes/no] No access to an ability to increase your own speed of delivery (5) renders the try-to-survive experience more potent, regardless of access to an Alpha Class.
13.[yes/no] Problems (11) and (12) are generally the provinces of (1).
14.[yes/no] Alpha Classes, in the general, achieve their potency by a combination of affecting (5) and (6).
15.[yes/no] One way that can be used to handle Alpha Classes is to reduce their potency individually, via Classleads.
16.[yes/no] In the general, Classleads have failed to reduce the cyclical potency of Alpha Classes.
17.[yes/no] Alternative systemic methods exist to reduce the potency of Alpha Classes, and enhance the capability of Beta Classes. Potential systemic methods, rather than individual abilities and professions, include:
18.[yes/no] Targeting (5), and
19.[yes/no] Targeting (6), and
20.[yes/no] Targeting (3).
21.[yes/no] One example of a systematic change to (3) is the change of ciguatoxin to a delayed effect (and at one stage an ICD). This has reduced the potency of Alpha Classes (and Affliction Classes in general).
22.[yes/no] One potential method to address (5), outside of targeting specific skills and professions (which is unreliable as seen by (16)) is to reduce the spread of (5).
23.[ ] The benefits of reducing spread of (5) are hypothetically:
24.[yes/no] improve the experiences of (1), via
25.[yes/no] reducing the time spent in (8), via
26.[yes/no] relatively increasing (5) for (1) people (as demonstrated by (14)). This directly combats problem (12) for (1)'s instead of requiring them to purchase a 100 credit or 1000 credit artifact to specifically attempt to increase (5).
27.[yes/no] Improving the experience of (1) via reducing (8) will improve customer retention, and
28.[yes/no] Customer retention leads to repeat sales.
29.[yes/no] Any future classleads will have more difficulty reproducing Alpha Classes, by nature of a smaller spread/closer upper bound (or higher lower bound, whichever way).
30.[yes/no] More exciting fights, in the general, for both (1)'s and, non-(1)'s in Alpha Classes.
31.[yes/no] Note: (22) does not mean deleting +2 balance. It simply means the reduction of the spread of (5), leading to the chained arguments of (23-26).
As an Assassin, Demonic's Alpha affliction class, I have no trouble going toe-to-toe with other Alpha classes. The problem is, as articulated above, not everyone can afford to play this Alpha game. I don't have any trouble admitting I will lose to Septus or Kryss on most days (but not all), but it's more than ego when I say it is hard (read: unfun) to realise that your $200 class is really not going to cut it (read: < 2% success rate) against Alpha Templar, Hunter and Assassin. Classleads have spectacularly failed, creating the monstrosity that is today's Templar. Therefore, I am aiming for something more systemic and will, to a degree, future-proof against inordinate upgrades.
To the arguments of Cirisosis v Brainmelt v Enlighten:
As a player who uses Cirisosis, Damage-Enlighten and Tarot-Enlighten (no experience with BM), I will say that I prefer tracking reqs for Cirisosis and I have, still am and will continue to use Cirisosis until it gets nerfed. It is highly amusing that when Septus, Azefel and Djen took on Magick, Djen got 9 kills (possibly out of 18) when he spent 80% of combat time behind a prismatic barrier.
Here we go, take from it what you will:
2014/08/22 13:05:59 - Eldreth has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:06:54 - Cassius has been slain by Chani.
2014/08/22 13:12:17 - Eldreth has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:12:55 - Kryss has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:13:18 - Kryss has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:13:54 - Cassius has been slain by Septus.
2014/08/22 13:14:36 - Cassius has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:22:00 - Djen has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:22:58 - Chani has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:25:37 - Eldreth has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:26:25 - Eldreth has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:26:29 - Djen has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:27:48 - Kryss has been slain by Azefel.
2014/08/22 13:28:21 - Cassius has been slain by Azefel.
2014/08/22 13:33:40 - Djen has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:36:13 - Septus has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:36:25 - Djen has been slain by Cassius.
2014/08/22 13:36:35 - Cassius has been slain by Azefel.
2014/08/22 13:37:09 - Septus has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:37:18 - Cassius has been slain by Azefel.
2014/08/22 13:37:22 - Azefel has been slain by Eldreth.
2014/08/22 13:43:14 - Djen has been slain by Eldreth.
2014/08/22 13:44:03 - Azefel has been slain by Eldreth.
2014/08/22 13:47:07 - Eldreth has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:47:22 - Djen has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:47:36 - Chani has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:47:45 - Eldreth has been slain by Azefel.
2014/08/22 13:48:12 - Septus has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:48:49 - Azefel has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:53:53 - Djen has been slain by Kryss.
2014/08/22 13:54:17 - Chani has been slain by Eldreth.
2014/08/22 13:54:18 - Eldreth has been slain by Azefel.
2014/08/22 13:54:56 - Kryss has been slain by Djen.
2014/08/22 13:55:12 - Cassius has been slain by Azefel.
And that is why Cirisosis is far better and more brainless. It kills you passively while you're being overloaded with afflictions, the Predator need only fire and forget.
You look at Brainmelt, the hunter needs to be on the ball in using it or they've just possibly made their target's life easier. Now sure, a Hunter can defend and try to snipe with Brainmelt, but this would have a far lower success rate and is dependent on enough basilisk given afflictions being thrown about, which is far more unlikely to happen then your run of the mill DSL afflictions being rained down.
Again, Enlighten requires more input from the Summoner then just pretending to be a bigger turtle then Gamera before just using one skill and going straight back to your lyre minuet.
Predator should have to do a little more then afflict with one toxin and then call it a day.
@Iniar: I won't go through your whole post because it's long and convoluted, not to say I didn't read it all, because I did. And you make some valid points, is there a problem with alpha classes? Sure. Is every class suppose to be equally successfull against all classes? Maybe, but in the current game there are classes that are better suited against other classes which is how it has always been. It just looks like those gaps between those classes now are larger because everyone has been playing for forever(read knows how to play and script for the game) and everyone has GBot to handle their curing needs.
Now, if the consensus is to make each an every class equally viable against all possible opponents then by all means let's revamp the whole lot of them and go from there.
I really wasn't trying to offend in my previous post to you, so again sorry for that.
@Kryss - Brainmelt is equally brainless and easy because you can tell a bad Hunter when to use brainmelt off of your own, likely superior tracker. To assume that cirisosis and brainmelt are on different difficult levels in that regard is false advertising at best and blatantly, purposefully disingenuous at best.
Both are dumb. Ahkan is right, Predators are spread too thin and I told Garryn I thought that.
Brainmelt and cirisosis fail where Bloodfreeze succeeds: while Bloodfreeze can be worked towards by everybody in minute amounts, Outriders must provide most of the bleeding to make a bloodfreeze good unless you want to sacrifice your team DPS to spam slit, bloodletter, etc. The success here I am indicating is that Bloodfreeze still requires some manner of gating by class component, whereas a bad Hunter can just mash buttons until they are told to hit the brainmelt button from collateral afflictions or a bad Predator is told to cirisosis.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Caelya/Aulani. Sure! Back when loshre blocked all mental cures hunters killed 100% of the time. That's why it was loshre received a classleaded nerf, after which brainmelt became significantly less fatal. Let's aim for an example within the past 2 classlead cycles?
As for AM and Magick switching, I don't have to worry about it, so we're good. Septus had his glory days as a runeguard, exploiting what we all knew was possible. He couldn't stand the place and went back to AM. I've said for a year or two now that Magick is the most technically solid circle in the game due in large part to the fact that it is 100% modern metagame due to weird class redesign scheduling. Luckily, it's incredibly under utilized and is a fountain of untapped, unrealized potential. If anyone got their stuff together outside of level 3 druid, you could wreck people with a few tricks.
You're also misrepresenting the problem comparing brainmelt and ciri.
Brainmelt failure: low damage, -1 affliction (also, I'm curing so just make it a legit -3)
Cirisosis failure:+ masked affliction, nothing else. All the requisite setup remains. Just keep hitting, it'll fire eventually.
I mean, -1, +1. That's enough for me. Then you compare the available list of afflictions (see: standard locking fare + limb damage. Why don't we call this toxin list anti-magick goodie bag) vs random mental list of questionable afflictions. (Why is annihilate useless and brainmelt is not? The distinction here is sort of ambiguous since they're quite similar in most respects)
Are we seriously considering anorexia a stickable affliction?
Doth my eyes deceive me or is an above post indicating that Bloodfreeze is in some way comprable to Brainmelt? Or even more vexing, that Bloodfreeze takes some kind of skill or co-ordination? Tracking afflictions in a group (especially with the Magick circle in general) to obtain successful Brainmelts is not an exercise in button mashing. Holding down Longslash while you can see exactly how much your opponent is bleeding for thanks to icewyrm IS however.
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At this point, I think we need to delete level 2 fast balance and reduce the number of deviations from the norm, thus reducing variability and eliminating the outlier cases which we end up balancing around because you can't ignore them.
Honestly locking isn't fun - I use it generally because my Wytch can take about 3 dsls before expiring. For deathknight, I would prefer to use vivisect but ohman am I bad at counting limbs
Also, I have asked Garryn to consider moving it to 0.93 and 0.86 for +1 and +2 but he's said it's going to need a major rethink and isn't likely to happen.
e: I should clarify I am referring to Iniar's definition of outlier, which is tied to actual people, and not Ahkan's use which is talking about skill outliers as a result of fast balance (which makes sense).
Ciri/twin shot/saber knight combo:
People are getting antsy at the ease of which it can be pulled off using this combo, well that's a team combat issue and we shouldn't mega nerf a profession because of how well they work in tandem with another profession. Sure you can make adjustments to the team aspect all you want, but singling out one skill as a fix all to a much larger issue is never a smart move and generally leaves one class being left in the dark ages until the next batch of class leads or two.
Level 2 racial balance:
I'm not horribly opposed to nuking it, though I'm much more in favor of keeping it. This goes along the same lines of my previous point. Nuking something because a few people who have dedicated time, energy, plus ludicrous amounts of money on this game to get their players above the norm of the rest of the player base is never a good idea either. There is a reason they are the way they are and in most cases it's because they've put in way more money than you to get those things.
Now I understand people don't like getting beat down by a credit card, but imperian has it's own class of citizens just like the real world. Sure it sucks when other people can fly off to wherever on their own private jet when you can't, but that doesn't mean you get to petition the government to outlaw private jets because you don't have one.
Just my thoughts.
It's amazing how fluid this position is based on the location of the offending 'team mechanic imbalance.' When it was defiler bellow, it was the end all be all of team imbalance that had to be addressed now. I WANT CAKE NOW. When it was something like say, bloodfreeze, you were disinclined to address a mechanic that was exploitable in a team setting. I think it's worth mentioning that cirisosis is a strictly AM shenanigan.
My problem with ciri isn't so much the mechanic it feeds off of, but the readily available nature of the afflictions that count for its setup. Limb damage, every toxin. That pretty much opens it up to be activated by anything living and breathing in dsl-limb damage, otherwise known as Anti-magick. Many of the conditional instakills in the game are hard to stick/track afflictions, limited list, or bear with it some class-based status effect (See: whispering madness and enlightenment). Cirisosis has none of those balancing acts in play.
Numbness, Epilepsy, Anorexia, Recklessness, Stupidity, and Sensitivity are all toxin-delivered brainmelt afflictions, and it's ludicrously easy for a decent Hunter/RG combination to push into lethal brainmelt range effortlessly. As for Enlighten, anybody who can stick asthma for a few seconds can trivially open up a window for an all-but-unavoidable enlighten with a very minimal amount of prep on the part of the Summoner(5s to build up taint). Neither of those scenarios are hard to do and I'd feel comfortable in arguing that they're both easier to set up than cirisosis.
There is no such thing as a 1v1-feasible affliction-based kill method that won't become exponentially easier when multiple parties contribute to it. You will end up with something nobody can feasibly use(Annihilate) or something that is easily achieved in a team(Brainmelt/Enlighten/Cirisosis). Deal with it or break it completely, those are the only real choices.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Iniar so the phrase "they are just better at this game than me" means nothing to you? I mean if you have equivalent artis and investment and you still without the slightest chance at winning as you seem to describe, what else can it be?
Sorry Iniar, that was rude of me, but you pointing out your investment(read artis) doesn't validate your point anymore than it squashes mine.
So you get killed by a cheap gimmick instead some sort of actual game play or strategy when fighting a predator. What do you all expect? You've pretty much amputated our leg just to fix a stubbed toe every damn classlead cycle.
I enlightened ALL THE TIME when I was Demonic and Iluv/Iroth/I were stealing each other's setups; we could enlighten in the space of a lovage smoke and we did so frequently. Aulani and Caelya were brainmelting all the time when we were Magick. You are not seeing those kills used now because Demonic doesn't fight and Magick's so clumsy that they had to order special velcro clownshoes.
Also, as far as Cirisosis goes? Shou isn't tracking; Shou is pushing the cirisosis button when somebody who IS tracking tells him to do it, much like how there are several priests/diabolists who just spam sap until somebody calls for an absolve/cath over the ring.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
The best way to go after cirisosis is to really reduce the range of affictions or add some sort of status modifier that only a predator can tack on and stick.
To repeat the point, bad mechanics need to be fixed. Cirisosis is a bad mechanic.
Aulani and Caelya managed to shove that wheel-less bus over half the world without a ton of difficulty, somehow. Lethal 100% of the time? No, but I've seen Shou miss a ton of cirisosis kills and a Brainmelt that's not an abject failure is still an excellent bit of burst damage. There's two reasons why you don't see it being used now. The first is that damage is easier and more effective and Druid/Mage is packing a crapload of damage. And the second is that Magick's coordination is abysmal and they have trouble with battle plans like "everybody just deal damage to the target".
If you switched the teams around and had Magick playing AM classes and AM playing Magick classes, you'd be crying about brainmelt right now and cirisosis wouldn't be a problem.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
You look at Brainmelt, the hunter needs to be on the ball in using it or they've just possibly made their target's life easier. Now sure, a Hunter can defend and try to snipe with Brainmelt, but this would have a far lower success rate and is dependent on enough basilisk given afflictions being thrown about, which is far more unlikely to happen then your run of the mill DSL afflictions being rained down.
Again, Enlighten requires more input from the Summoner then just pretending to be a bigger turtle then Gamera before just using one skill and going straight back to your lyre minuet.
Predator should have to do a little more then afflict with one toxin and then call it a day.
Now, if the consensus is to make each an every class equally viable against all possible opponents then by all means let's revamp the whole lot of them and go from there.
I really wasn't trying to offend in my previous post to you, so again sorry for that.
Caelya/Aulani. Sure! Back when loshre blocked all mental cures hunters killed 100% of the time. That's why it was loshre received a classleaded nerf, after which brainmelt became significantly less fatal. Let's aim for an example within the past 2 classlead cycles?
Are we seriously considering anorexia a stickable affliction?