Two-hander Discussion

Addama

You have to remember that most people are still curing suboptimally, and that whenever Vadi gets around to updating SVO, it's going to have an ideal (or very close to ideal) prio set for Two Hander.

Just because you kill somebody despite the whole "if fractures > 3 cure 2" thing doesn't mean you will always be able to do that. 

You can also pull yourself out of Fracture Hell just sitting there and Restoring.  Kind of nuts that it takes like a full minute to stack 7 skull fractures and 12 seconds to cure them all without even applying health.

Kendrick

It's been switching between them, at a rate that leaves people confused. When I used it a few days ago, it was one frac per application, and I thought people were crazy when they said 'it's 2 per apply.' Then today, I used it and health was curing 2 at once. Boggling.

Krux

Kenway said:

Antonius said:

Those mechanics have been in place since before the last round of two handed updates (the huge reduction in battlefury focus balance and the change to battlefury perceive). I'm confused/curious about when exactly it felt like it was in a good place, and why this would have nerfed it.

If those were in then something was bugged 'cause in my testing there was a period where people were curing for two no matter what and there was a period where people were curing for one no matter what. I never ran across a 3+ difference. That could be personal error but I tested on multiple people.

^ I experienced this. I never saw the 3+ = 2. Earlier in the week it was 1, then it was 2, then it was 1 again. When I was testing on Nemutaur got him to 7 just this morning and he was only curing 1 at a time + tree. Then after I saw Addama's post I went and tested and got 3+ = 2. Why you hate two-hander so much I don't wanna go dual blunt!

Kinilan

Getting rid of the 2 stack curs on 3+ would pretty much fix the problem of the massive backslide that happens with any sort of counter-offence being thrown at you. and nothing sucks quite so bad as seeing 7 torn tendons, leaving on devastate and seeing that leg apply right before you hit.

At the very least bump the double cures to 4+ or 5+ and raise the cap to 8 with no bonus to passives or increased aff rate at 8.

Kendrick

With the application of health curing two at a time, it's almost impossible for me to get fractures stacked on anyone who hard parries head.

Addama

Kendrick said:

With the application of health curing two at a time, it's almost impossible for me to get fractures stacked on anyone who hard parries head.

It certainly takes a lot longer - I have to wail on Torso (prefarar) for awhile, which decreases sip amount while increasing damage applied, as soon as I see them sip twice in a row I'll knock on legs a couple times to get Lethargy rolling, arms a couple times for Clumsiness, basically make their existence as miserable as possible, and then they run and I have to start all over again.

Yeah it fucking blows.

Kenway

It's 100% doable. It's just not in a place where anyone would really want to do it.

Kinilan

Kenway said:

It's 100% doable. It's just not in a place where anyone would really want to do it. If they stand there and let you do it without fighting back at all.

FTFY

Addama

Kinilan said:

Kenway said:

It's 100% doable. It's just not in a place where anyone would really want to do it. If they stand there and let you do it without fighting back at all or spamming Restore.

FTFY

FTFY

Mizik

It'd be good if it had a way to punish runners. I hate to suggest it, but if anyone should have lunge, it's 2H.

Arador

Just for the damn evaders. Gods yes.

Kenway

Not a bad idea especially since the long balance times on hew/pulverize will keep it from being a chase skill and just punish.

Krux

So, I vivisected Xinna w/ 6/4 arms/legs when she was just standing there. Then we had a real fight and (No I didn't expect to win) but with hindering I was barely keeping up fractures at all vs serverside. Shits rough, only thing you can really do is wail, hope like hell tree hits an affliction and not a fracture (which it doesn't seem to do all that often regardlless of how many affs you have ticking) and hope they aren't paralyzing you. I think I got to like 5 fractures. She wasn't even parrying head or using rebounding... So I feel pretty useless.

I mean momentum by definition is something that's supposed to increase with time... with health healing 2 at +3... it's the exact opposite.

And I have to say on anyone with more than 5.5k health/trans avoidance/decent defense (lets not even talk about SoA...) trying to force them to sip over cure fractures is an exercise in futility. It will work on low-midbies probably if they don't finish their prep before they run out of health. Maybe it would work on like squishy classes like Serpent but... then there's evade.

About Lunge, With how long our balance time is, wouldn't they just wait until we attack, then evade out?
What if it was like a battlerage based lunge that kills your rage for like 5 seconds?

Dunno, just an idea.

Dji

Krux said:
And I have to say on anyone with more than 5.5k health/trans avoidance/decent defense (lets not even talk about SoA...) trying to force them to sip over cure fractures is an exercise in futility. It will work on low-midbies probably if they don't finish their prep before they run out of health. Maybe it would work on like squishy classes like Serpent but... then there's evade.

This. The % based damage on 2h attacks is awful, it barely scales up. Someone with about 4000 health will struggle with the damage and have to make tough decisions about healing their health or fractures. However someone about about 5.5k can easily out pace your damage with their healing and has sips to spare when it comes to healing fractures.

More of the 2h damage being based on a % of the targets max health, and not curing 2 fractures at once above 3 would probably make this more viable.

Aegoth

Not sure I'm sold on your reasoning for wanting to get rid of the 2 cures at +3 fracs. I say this because every knight I've sparred thus far has had -very- heavy health pressure on me, even as 2h. I'm a rather artied out mage too. While this change makes sense for very tanky classes like other knights, priests and monks, it would screw over the other (many) classes that just can't tank the damage along with having to deal with fractures.

Krux

Bored and just eyeballing math here but I think it should look something like this.

Precision Balance 3.5-3.8 + 2 Fractures
Sip Balance = 4 Seconds
Tree Balance = 15 Seconds
Every 3 Sips = A chance of -4 Fractures if above 3 its a chance

So lets see here...
0s - +2 Fractures
0s - 1- Fracture
3.5 - +2 Fractures
4s - 1 fracture
7s - +2 Fractures
8s - -2 Fractures
9.5s - +2 Fractures
50/50 - -2 Fractures from Touch Tree here.
If tree hits fracture you just spent 10 seconds to get 2 fractures...
If tree didn't hit fractures then continuing...
12s - -2 Fractures (You're at 2 fractures!)
12.5s - You're back to four fractures.

Here's where you start to pick up momentum... Sort of. You've got four fractures up and tree is down so you can finally hit something else without losing all your fractures. Lets say we've been wailing on torso thus far, and now we'll go with some leg wailing so that we can slow down those run attempts.
15s - +2 Fractures (Legs)
16s - -2 Fractures (torso)

Hrm... Would it be better to switch speed focus whenever they have 2 fractures? You'd be saving yourself like 1 full second that way and it would come out the same. So like at 7s You'd switch speed instead, then at 8 they'd only minus one fracture. And the way serverside cures... you could theoretically then just keep torso at three while using every other hit on a limb with precision but tree tattoo and restore would completely destroy that method... Ah well too tired to think this through.

And I mean that's with the target standing still... if you want to make it similar to a real fight, I'd have to add like 1.9s at 0s and 8s for rebounding. Let's be a masochist and add in some curare spam at 5s (We'll assume they hit you with four venoms/afflictions and your tree tattoo is already on cool down.) So that's another 1-ish seconds to come off paralysis.

Anyone got ideas/suggestions?

Arador

The damage scaling is certainly an issue. SoA is arguably broken in some cases for this spec (Well all, but let's be generous) since some of the tankiest classes in the game can also wield them like Dragon, other Knights, Magi, Apostate

That and rebounding has the potential to really ruin your day on this spec if you do not have a brilliant latency or you do not track it very, very carefully.

Kinilan

And let's not forget passive curing.

Krux

Nevermind about my idea of switching to speed... Apparently Health Applies Cured 2 Fractures starting from 3 fractures so its pointless. You get three Fracs -> they go 1 Frac. Start all over again.

Antonius

Rebounding seems like it's rarely going to be something you need to remove against an opponent that's fighting back, though. Unless they're attacking just as slowly there are huge gaps in between your attacks in which they can/will drop it themselves.

Mostly going to be an issue against people who sit behind it and restore to drop stacks, but you have tools to handle that. Are they sufficient right now? Perhaps not. But they will be by the time we're done I'm sure.

Kinilan

Krux said:

Nevermind about my idea of switching to speed... Apparently Health Applies Cured 2 Fractures starting from 3 fractures so its pointless. You get three Fracs -> they go 1 Frac. Start all over again.

Speed is only ever worth it for bashing, carve/splinter unless you have an artifact warhammer, in which case you get balance back before fury, and as a followup if your 2-3 DSBs didn't put your target down. But chances are if they survived that a couple slaughters won't help and you've got a deeper issue of not sticking sensi relapse and/or torso damage.

Arador

Oh my issue with rebounding is not that it comes up per se. Carve gives a bit of damage to keep the pressure on. My issue is if you actually hit it, in which case you lose a ton of your momentum. Most might not have this issue if their latency is low, but even tracking it and using triggers to switch attacks, I still find I hit it once every 5 rounds or so because of my 300ms latency. So my only option is to wait for it to come up instead of trying to beat it, and then carve.

Addama

Yeah, the frustrating thing about Carve is that it's not Razeslash; at least with Razeslash, you were doing some damage and a venom if you missed.  You miss Carve and you get nothing but off balance.

I like that the balance is low enough that you can punish people for shielding/rebounding if they're doing it often and you're careful/quick, but being punished for queuing it and then having the enemy drop their shield/rebounding right before you regain balance is bad.

Krux

2h Lunge Idea. (Probably OP dunno.)

Charge (Weaponmastery)                    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Syntax:            BATTLEFURY CHARGE <target>
Details:
When your injured opponent flees from your onslaught, bring the fight to them.

How it would work is if they have X fractures and try to run, you basically get a balance-less charge that eats your battlefury. Make it cost Equilibrium like Lunge, scale damage down or remove damage and just make it stun/prone. Probably make it 6+ fractures so that its not being abused if someone is leaving before the two-hander really has momentum.

What do you guys think? The EQ Cost of like 3.5 seconds would make it so that the two-hander can't immediately go on the offense again, or impale/use for parry-bypass. And it would stop people from just highlighting your attacks and evading as soon as you hit. You could even make it so it does damage if the person who fled didn't get hit by engage.

You don't really want it to be engage for 1k/lunge for 1.2k with two-hander cause the damage pressure would be insane for anyone who can't avoid either. (If you fly, you'd avoid the charge and if you evade you avoid the engage.) 

Shirszae

What I think would be interesting is a lunge that instead of doing damage or stun maybe just proned and did fractures. Something like BATTLEFURY CHARGE HIGH/MID/LOW <target>
The lunge then would proceed to cause 1-2 fractures on head, torso/arms/, or legs. Not enough to be overpowered, but enough to punish people for running while helping the knight at the same time

Then again, I am a total newbie in regards to combat, so I am not sure if that would be viable or good or not.

Addama

So after about twenty minutes of very frustrating and confusing testing, I proved what I hoped would not be true: Precision does about half of the limb damage that Speed or no Battlefury Focus will.

As far as I'm aware it is half, so it's not like, impossible to track limb damage with that in mind, but it does complicate things.

Kendrick

That would explain why it's taking me eight and nine hits to break limbs.

Addama

Sent By: Achaea on 1/09/11:12

Your bug report (detail: BATTLEFURY FOCUS PRECISION causes the following attack to deal approximately half of the limb damage that using no focus or using FOCUS SPEED would. While the AB file says PRECISION does result in a damage reduction, is it supposed to halve the limb damage as well?) - has been removed because it is not a bug (usually meaning that this is the way things are intended to be). Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience or misunderstanding that may be involved. The following notes were included: It is.

So about that Speed vs. Precision debate

Kinilan

Still no debate. Focus speed to a break and you're still not going to build fracs fast enough to stack even with the resto and mending apply. As it stands now battlefurry focus just feels like a reason to make things more complicated.  Carve/Splinter (only if you have a basic hammer) and slaughter are the only things to use speed on. 

If you under/overhand or hew/pulverise with  a speed focus you're just slowing your own progress in terms of stacks. Actual limb damage is meaningless unless you want to pop an arm or something before a leg devastate but even then you'd be giving up stacks because of double cures.

Focus speed is pointless outside of adding an additional step in the forum of focuing precision to 2h attacks.

Jhui

speed will always  have a strategical purpose even if it's not used often.  Seeing someone apply on 5 leg stacks could leave you just enough time to focus speed/pulverise then devastate at the 4, where precision would get you back to 5 stacks but the apply would come before balance back to devastate and get it back to 3.