Affliction Hindering and the Death of Momentum Classes

Naruj

Have you ever sat back and wondered why no one in the game is quite tanky enough anymore? Why only a select number of classes are viable without artifacts? Why you either need burst damage, a non-toxin class with spammable lethargy/clumsiness, or 10k credits in defensive artifacts to compete? Well pull up a chair, because I'm about to explain and then give a solution to fix it.

In the tug of war that is combat, each side should be pushing for their own window of greatest potential while trying to dodge the same window from their opponent. What you have instead is two people jousting in semi-trucks and the one with the biggest engine gets to stay on the road. We've de-emphasized control and over-emphasized tanking, making combat balance very polar. The only surviving exception are the afflictions that increase balance and equilibrium time, because they still work. Unfortunately, access to these afflictions are limited and need to remain so due to the team fight implications.

But all is not lost! The problems of hindering and momentum control can be solved without removing the ability of people to fight back! Attached is my 'King for the day' proposal for adding dynamic decision making back to combat.

1. Ciguatoxin needs to be made hindering again. I like the direction of Numbness, but it went too far. I would reduce the delay to upgrade from Numbness to Paralysis from 6s to 3 seconds (which by itself puts an ICD on paralysis in team fights), and make sure I've fixed all the edge cases that let someone re-afflict with Numbness while Paralysis is active.
2. Now that I have a toxin that can be used to control momentum, I would need to make it easier to cure. This is critical to prevent the 'you don't get to attack me' stack that caused Ciguatoxin to be nerfed initially.

• Delete Metrazol as an affliction. It only exists to get in the way of curing Ciguatoxin, and we don't want that to happen anymore.
• Move Slickness to Nightshade, leaving only Numbness and Sensitivity as stackable Maidenhair cures. Given that Sensitivity has its own internal spam blocker, anyone will be able to prioritize mobility at the expense of healing other afflictions because there is no stack.
• Move Nausea to Kelp alongside Clumsiness, and move Hemotoxin to Galingale. With the lack of any other toxins on Galingale, and the nerfs to Peace and Rage, you'd make Hemo a guaranteed cure on demand at the expense of curing something else. Both Nightshade and Kelp stacks keep the same number of afflictions.

Unshackle Transfix from the 'everything is cured at once' writhe system. With Wardancer dead and gone, there is less potential for a quick and comboable writhe stack, but some writhe synergy is beneficial for team fights to reduce DPS. I would place writhes in three catagories: Hindering (ropes, entangles), mental (transfix), and physical (bladeimpale, boltimpale, daeggerimpale).

The point of all of this is that, in good combat systems, you sometimes need to be able to stall without leaving the room. We have gotten to the point with Imperian that no one can do this anymore, so the winner of combat is decided by whoever has the largest DPS number. Hard locks are still possible, but they come all at once and don't slow your opponent down along the way. There is a way to do this better.

Aodan

I like this very very much, but I have a slight concern about nausea moving to kelp when it comes to outrider, nausea being the gate for dryblood, and the main spear effect used. maybe my concern is baseless, and this could actually open up new avenues for outrider, but as of right now, it seems like it might mess with their nightshade stack. But, then again, I may be missing something completely here as I still consider myself newb/mid tier. Other than that, I think this is a fantastic idea.

Naruj

Aodan said:

I like this very very much, but I have a slight concern about nausea moving to kelp when it comes to outrider, nausea being the gate for dryblood, and the main spear effect used. maybe my concern is baseless, and this could actually open up new avenues for outrider, but as of right now, it seems like it might mess with their nightshade stack. But, then again, I may be missing something completely here as I still consider myself newb/mid tier. Other than that, I think this is a fantastic idea.

I thought about that, and there could be some slight tweaking needed once it starts being tested - but honestly I am not too worried. With Hemotoxin moving off-cure and Dryblood not having the same cure as Nausea anymore, you'd be able to pick and choose your priority when dealing with their stack.

The Outrider would just be trading one set of affliction synergies for another - possibly by leveraging the spammable nausea into something like clumsiness/asthma, and leaving dryblood itself as an off-cure pressure valve.

Aodan

Naruj said:

Aodan said:

I like this very very much, but I have a slight concern about nausea moving to kelp when it comes to outrider, nausea being the gate for dryblood, and the main spear effect used. maybe my concern is baseless, and this could actually open up new avenues for outrider, but as of right now, it seems like it might mess with their nightshade stack. But, then again, I may be missing something completely here as I still consider myself newb/mid tier. Other than that, I think this is a fantastic idea.

I thought about that, and there could be some slight tweaking needed once it starts being tested - but honestly I am not too worried. With Hemotoxin moving off-cure and Dryblood not having the same cure as Nausea anymore, you'd be able to pick and choose your priority when dealing with their stack.

The Outrider would just be trading one set of affliction synergies for another - possibly by leveraging the spammable nausea into something like clumsiness/asthma, and leaving dryblood itself as an off-cure pressure valve.

Well on that note, and I know we've discussed it before in the demonic ring, but I feel like Clumsiness should work across the board, balance and equilibrium, weapons or no. its very niche right now, and really adds on to the amount of hinders that can be used, for example, against the knight-types, where as it doesn't effect equilibrium based, or as far as I know, clever/weaponless balance classes. I think what we discussed is that making clumsiness work across the board would even out the amount of hinders there are for both sides.

So as a note on Outriders, if this change were to happen I would be more comfortable with nausea going to kelp. As it stands right now though, I use nausea to stack with lethargy, haemophilia, dryblood, chilltran, all of which work towards a kill with outrider, and the lethargy being the better hinder compared to clumsiness since it affects all balance users, and not just a certain few.

Gjarrus

I dunno that I necessarily agree that it's not possible to hinder, but there are some pretty big disparities in effectiveness of hindering, and I'll discuss the suggestions themselves in a second. I actually meant to throw up a classlead suggestion for clumsiness soon, changing it to the same effect but making it to proc on all non-self targeted actions. (I had this in before refreshing to see Aodan bring up our discussion of it).

1. I worry about what this would do to Shaman and Assassin. I'm also not seeing the cooldown after hitting paralysis, but maybe I forgot how to proc whatever the ICD is? Tested with mine and Summoner numbness. It would make numbness far harder to drop down prios to dodge locks, for certain.

2a. You can achieve the same effect with limited forced prioritization a la Anorexia on epidermal, making paralysis always cure first. Metrazol still has a significant role in hindering as a single herb stopping actions requiring 2 arms or 2 legs.

2b. This would make some alterations to what I'd kill my go-to initial queue that could honestly make it stronger or weaker, I'd have to put it into action to tell better. It'd also open up affing to attempt to cover slickness for some classes, notably bleed knights, Zerks, and outriders. None of them can instill it, so those cases likely will be effective but not as extreme. 

2c. I'd probably just move nausea to maidenhair and hemotoxin to galingale. Levels out the aff distribution more, and hemotoxin cure on demand-ish isn't going to be gamebreaking.

3. Writhes do feel pretty gutted now, but I dunno. Opening up a 3-stack makes walking into a totem/snare or lev hang/wedge or an impale .1s later could be rough. I'd probably rather see something like diminishing returns on writhes. So, you eat that transfix/snare/impale, you get something like transfix time + .5 imaple time + .25 snare time. Some of the stacking issue could be resolved by putting more writhes on effectiveness paradigms like hooked where it stops movement but isn't a total hinder.

Cassius

I kinda like clumsiness to be directed at balance classes and then a separate aff for same affect against eq to be honest (not sure if same herb or different would work better though).  It means that combo classes get a double effect but that can just be a decision point on the offense or maybe half the effect to each if the target has both. Something that may force smarter play on both sides instead of just spam clumsiness on top of every stack. 

With a big change like moving hemo off kelp, there would likely need to be a close look at aps rates for all toxin classes with aff paths. Which then makes you need to evaluate damage rates as well. A big effort for sure but I agree that something like this needs to be looked at. 

Gjarrus

I was debating the virtue of 'mental clumsiness' versus buffing clumsiness a bit ago, and I can't really see a benefit out of making a mental one. You have to decide which herb gets the aff, and there aren't a lot of great options except moar galingale, but that also adds disparity on the effectiveness of kelp stacking. Re decision making - even with two, you just get to where clumsy would be in the queue and: if phys then clumsy elseif mental then not-clumsy elseif combo then weight to queue's herb distribution or double-up. Now, it's just if clumsy vulnerable then clumsy else skip to next. All of the 'skill' here still shows up at where the affer puts it in their queue and where the healer has it in their's, no matter which way you go.

Whereas just buffing clumsiness to impact everyone gets it done with one targeted fix with the only balance concern to worry about being that more people are now susceptible to something that previously only hurt weapon classes.

E: 3s numb->paralysis would have impact on channels not stopped by numbness. Not sure how many or what those all are, but it's something to consider.

Tahm

I don't think such a change to nausea and hemotoxin is necessary, though I do agree with the lack of active hinders currently present within the game. Shortening the numbness timer for paralysis is something I've thought about in the past, but might be too effective with some classes able to inflict affliction overload.

Clumsiness affecting every attack type is long overdue.

The three different writhe types is an interesting idea but prone to team spam of the different types to lock down a single target.

Naruj

Gjarrus said:

I dunno that I necessarily agree that it's not possible to hinder, but there are some pretty big disparities in effectiveness of hindering, and I'll discuss the suggestions themselves in a second. I actually meant to throw up a classlead suggestion for clumsiness soon, changing it to the same effect but making it to proc on all non-self targeted actions. (I had this in before refreshing to see Aodan bring up our discussion of it).

1. I worry about what this would do to Shaman and Assassin. I'm also not seeing the cooldown after hitting paralysis, but maybe I forgot how to proc whatever the ICD is? Tested with mine and Summoner numbness. It would make numbness far harder to drop down prios to dodge locks, for certain.

2a. You can achieve the same effect with limited forced prioritization a la Anorexia on epidermal, making paralysis always cure first. Metrazol still has a significant role in hindering as a single herb stopping actions requiring 2 arms or 2 legs.

2b. This would make some alterations to what I'd kill my go-to initial queue that could honestly make it stronger or weaker, I'd have to put it into action to tell better. It'd also open up affing to attempt to cover slickness for some classes, notably bleed knights, Zerks, and outriders. None of them can instill it, so those cases likely will be effective but not as extreme. 

2c. I'd probably just move nausea to maidenhair and hemotoxin to galingale. Levels out the aff distribution more, and hemotoxin cure on demand-ish isn't going to be gamebreaking.

The goal of this would be to use Paralysis as a static hinder without a long delay, but not hide it behind numerous other afflictions so that it could be removed for a cure balance. Keep Metrazol and moving Nausea into the maidenhair stack make the balance of afflictions worse.

Keep in mind that Slickness can be cured by herbs, pipes, and purge. Unless you're able to first lock out pipes with Asthma, it's no harder to stack against slickness on Nightshade than it is on Maidenhair. I like it better on Nightshade, and it isn't going to get in anything's way there.

Naruj

Tahm said:

I don't think such a change to nausea and hemotoxin is necessary, though I do agree with the lack of active hinders currently present within the game. Shortening the numbness timer for paralysis is something I've thought about in the past, but might be too effective with some classes able to inflict affliction overload.

If you make the hinder portion of Paralysis easier to achieve without also changing the way Maidenhair stacks, you put the game back into the state it was before these changes happened originally. The delay on Paralysis was a good change, it just went too far.

By making Maidenhair a very soft 'stack', with no real afflictions to compete against it, you make Paralysis into a choice. Either the person prioritizes it in order to keep their momentum, or they sacrifice some of that momentum in exchange for efficiently curing other things. Curing paralysis would never really be in doubt, but it's a decision they would have to make. The further ahead you get offensively, the harder that choice gets to make - letting someone start hindering before they get a full lock.

Tahm said:

Clumsiness affecting every attack type is long overdue.

I would be fine with this, assuming access to such afflictions was looked at aggressively during Classleads.

Gjarrus

As I said, forcing maidenhair to always cure paralysis first fixes the stacking issue keeping someone held up for ages (aside from metrazol prone strats). Numbness isn't strong enough on its own effect to need a barren herb landscape. I'm still not sold that a 3s numb->paralysis is necessary, though.

I do know that Slickness has multiple cures Kappa. It still opens up a soft slickness route in the bleed/affer offenses, but I don't think it would necessarily be bad or too much.

Naruj

Gjarrus said:

As I said, forcing maidenhair to always cure paralysis first fixes the stacking issue keeping someone held up for ages (aside from metrazol prone strats). Numbness isn't strong enough on its own effect to need a barren herb landscape. I'm still not sold that a 3s numb->paralysis is necessary, though.

If you do this for Paralysis but not Numbness, you add a disincentive to cure Numbness which could be interesting.

Basically, very few classes have a way to force someone to lose momentum anymore and it makes it very hard to match up against 'heavy' offensive classes using anything but another heavy offensive class or a ton of artifacts. This has been the case since Paralysis was effectively removed and writhes became basically irrelevant.