I'm a non-artie monk, probably one of the only ones who are not troll/horkval. I haven't played Achaea in over a RL year. I've browsed the forums past few days, and now I'm just going to throw out a whole ton of different comments and questions based on what I can see about recent changes in Achaea. Hopefully people can add comments and suggestions here, as many people IG refuse to share their information. :|

Shaman (and Jester) - they took out obliterate, which is great, cause that was always overpowered. Of course the obvious question I need to ask now, is aside from 'slow' and possibly 'blackout' - is vodun/puppetry a useless skill now? Is Throttle op? Or just another name for kai-choke?

Shaman - Tzanta - this is sort of like whispering madness, but insta-kill if 5 mental afflictions? Isn't this somewhat moot if the enemy has FOCUSING ?

Strength - Less effect on damage per hit in combat now? Wasn't totally sure if accurate.

Runelore - Runeblades - what exactly does this do?

Bard - They took out doublejab & triplejab... Doesn't look like they added anything. songbird looks neat... Is it an ent? Someone said something it somehow procs random voicecraft attacks when you use your own voicecraft attacks?
What's up with tunesmithing, btw? It looks like a way to add an extra attack to your hit - either extra dmg, limb dmg, knockdown, or stun at trans level.

Sylvan - Heartseed. New voyria-like ability? Haven't seen it or heard of it yet.
Viridian - you can secrete your own toxins? Or envenom your thorns? Again, not much exp.


Eagerly awaiting your flames,
Azj

Runeblades- 1 irl month of weapon runes + 1 rune for extra effect (chance of freeze, chance for damage, extra limb damage or chance to mask venoms).

Tunesmithing lets you stun/knock down/extra damage/some other stuff with each jab. Songbird as far as I know procs on your voicecraft.

Heartseed is an instakill that is cured by restoration, no reason to worry about it really. Can secrete loki on thorns.

Vodun/Puppetry aren't useless now, just not quite as good as they used to be.

Damage from for example tekura used to scale very well with damage. Grook used to do crappy damage, troll did good damage, trolls with artefacts did insane damage. They added dminishing returns to the damage, which in practise resulted in grook doing a little more damage than before, normal troll doing a little less than before, and troll with artefacts doing only a tiny bit more than normal trolls. Any STR you gain after 15 will have smaller and smaller effects. This is case for most attacks/classes, also the ones based on INT.

Not instant, it's insanely fast though. And no, I killed a couple of decent fighters with focus. Granted, I'm nowhere near top level and I don't fight people that are, but I've seen it done enough that I gather it's difficult, but not impossible. Sorta like vivi.

IIRC from when I was shaman, it's 2 seconds. The setup is a bit more difficult than some others, but Tzantza kills were probably the most satisfying kills I've ever gotten.

Also, sylvans can envenom thorns if they have envenom in weaponry or can coat them with loki regardless of weaponry.

Bard has been changed now so that you can jab with a rapier, and follow it up with extra damage, limb break, making someone prone or a slight stun (some people think this stun lasts hours long). The jab can also be followed up with an illusion or one of the various afflictions which is a seperate balance to balance and eq.

Basic lowdown. We also get various terribly overpowered harmonics where we are invulnerable to everything and anything, and we oneshot dragons.

I endorse the spreading of this message.

True. Heartseed is worse than voyria and harder to set up.

Am I doing it right?

Yes.

You guys need the help.

Wow quick, (hopefully) accurate results to my questions. I'm actually considering a class change after all this time, though I'm torn between which to choose. I was thinking between Shaman or Serpent, though I'm not sure which. Wasn't planning on buying any artifacts, though I'll have enough lessons to tri-trans the class skills. Although the most obvious answer is "whichever class you think would be more fun," can anyone offer useful insights?

Between shaman and serpent, serpent is definitely more fun, in my opinion. I'm a shaman right now, but only because I felt like trying something different. I've been a serpent at least a dozen times.

For PvP, they're both good classes that require a lot of skill (or fashion whoring as a shaman, but that's less fun), it's really up to you. Serpents are better for ranged combat.

Both are great for bashing. Shamans do a lot of damage very quickly, and can sketch their own bashing runes, which last for 12 hours on themselves. They're a bit lacking in defense though. Serpents have warping/dashing, so that you can travel anywhere quickly and easily, and they have decent offense and defense against denizens.

Shamans bash faster, serpents have more utility abilities.

Heartsteed should not have any messages. You getting torso hits, spam check diag every so often. Can make fighting Sylvans entertaining.

Heh.

If you have never been a serpent: go serpent. It's an established fact that serpents have more fun and, having played both Shaman and Serpent fairly recently (after all recent Shaman changes), my own experience supports this view. However, if you really want to get involved in PvP and want to learn to deal with the somewhat weird afflicting style required by Shaman swiftcurse/blight, you might want to go Shaman. Also, as mentioned, Shaman bashing is spectacular: no tankiness aside from runes, but a raja shaman swiftcursing is stupidly fast (important note: swiftcurse cuts the balance time on swiftcurse, it took me a long time to realise this). But Serpent is a good PvP class as well, is probably a little bit easier to learn, and has an unbelievable amount of nifty abilities in subterfuge. I don't feel like artefacts are absolutely necessary for either class, though they do help as both classes are somewhat squishy (Serpents can run away more easily, but Shamans get runes and can hinder like mad with curses). Know however that once you have tasted subterfuge, it is extremely difficult to ever go back.

Shamans have ranged attacks too, they're not nearly as good, but runes give you some ability to attack people at range.

That's the truth.

Belus has been through Apostate, Serpent, and Monk but is finally Serpent for good. Monk was lots of fun and I still really enjoy the idea of a rajamala monk. Between dash warp and wings I can travel between any two places on the main continent in ~20 seconds.

Anklet of Dashing - 500 credits;
Vibrating stick - 800 credits;
Eagle's wings - 800 credits.

Having abilities like evade, phase and snipe - Priceless.

Give it a month, they'll be for sale too. Gogo pauldrons of shrugging!

lulz, my (and Tagg's, I guess ) forum legacy. I miss Daes.

Well I wasn't planning on buying artifacts, though it sort of seems like a SoA is important for anyone to not die. I did have 3 more questions I'm hoping ppl can help with -
1. What are the strengths of Vodun now? Aside maybe aeon?
2. Is mhun curses as fast as mhun rapier dsls? (I assume yes with swiftcurse, but what about without?)
3. How powerful is the Daguz (?) rune - the one that heals afflictions. Does anyone know the proc time?

I am already trans weaponry, so I realize that having a rapier/shield combo will be neccessary for most fights to include gecko (slickness) and maybe monkshood (ugliness?).

Dagaz is pretty useless.

From my testing a while back:


Curses are under 2 seconds without swiftcurse, for a mhun. Roughly 1.75 seconds for a raja. Swiftcurse cuts the balance loss in half.

Also, swiftcure speeds up itself, and resets the timer, so if you swiftcurse again right before it fades, you will have less pause when you need to swiftcurse.

I'm not very good at combat, so I only really know the technical details of vodun. It's extremely powerful though, once you have a full doll. And once you have a decent doll, you won't need a weapon for venoms. Imbibe is faster, and can be done from a distance.

And goes through shield/rebounding.

Heh. Yeah I guess I should have added that a big advantage of curses is that it goes through shields (not prismatic shield, I assume) & aura of rebounding, which might be a reason for DSL being as powerful as it seems to be, especially for ppl with arti weapons. :|

Also, I think it does, but I don't recall - does curse bleed get more powerful with more curses skillz?

Skill level affects damage against denizens, I'm not sure if it helps against adventurers though. Same for intelligence.

I don't think bleed gets better against adventurers since it does completely different things against denizens and adventurers (simple damage against denizens, bleeding against adventurers). I've never seen anyone actually use it though given how easy it is to clot.

Swiftcursing curses are obscenely fast and, as both Trevize and I pointed out, it affects itself, so there's really no reason whatsoever why you should ever be cursing without swiftcurse. An interesting corollary to the speed is that hit and run bashing as a shaman is extremely effective. Since your attacks come less than a second apart, you can run essentially whenever you want to. As mentioned, rapier is pretty pointless and unneccesary, though having something just to behead with is really ideal as it's MUCH easier to manage than Tzantza. If you've got the credits, a SoA is a great choice given the squishiness of the class and the squishiness of mhun/raja.

The willpower drain is phenomenal. Hunting without it prolongs how long you can hunt, should you have no way to get willpower back, though it will lengthen the time it takes to get experience.

I already had trans philosophy from sylvan when I went shaman, so I'm probably biased. Also, make friends with people with groves (grove rain is nice). Also also, the drain is phenomenal, but the bashing speed is phenomenal too.

Agreed. I used shrine willpower combined with meditating, didn't take long to get will back up. When one of Trevize's family wasn't around (most are forestals). Was just saying what I've heard.

Since meditation got a huge boost, the willpower drain isn't nearly as much of a problem.

I read that as gogo, like the gogo dancers, and thought there was a new type of pauldrons of shrugging, not gogo as in inspector gadget. It was a pretty funny image while it lasted.

Wow we get off topic pretty quickly. I do appreciate the influx of information though. While I'm on my mission to update my Achaea knowledge, I thought I'd focus real quick on Bards -

1. Harmonics - does your enemy need to be not-deaf for them to work?
1b. Does the Hallelujiah (sp) heal afflictions? Heal health/mana? "Carries audience to Joy" means...?
1c. What exactly does soulful voice do? Harmonics work through shields?
2. Auralbless - does this take equil? balance? Seems like every attack would be you using auralbless followed by a voicecraft; you'd never have a chance to use any rapier attacks or venoms because you'd be using this to constantly be removing deafness.
3. How is a bard for bashing? Seems like your only PvM attack is jabbing with a rapier, which would be pretty sad, no?

At least they don't have triple jab... That'd be scary.

Accentato works on denizens as well. So a Bard is basically a knight but with full rapier damage (not 75%) and another magic based damage.

Auralbless can be done with your jab/voicecraft

This is incorrect. IIRC, the only harmonics that require undeafness are minuet and contradanse. However, being undeaf increases the effects of several harmonics.

hmm. Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing it out!

Wow thanks for the quick replies!

I know I'm sort of jumping all over the map, but I wanted to look at a few other random things -

Tarot - Is the old-fashioned "devil, aeon" combo still viable? I don't recall who, but I do recall hearing a strat for jesters was to simply spam devil/aeon and hope for a double aeon. (Also, same sort of idea for the hangedman/devil/aeon combo as well)
Puppetry/Vodun - Without Obliterate, is fashioning even worth doing in combat? What are the "good" abilities now? The fights I had just involved fashioning up to oblit. :|
Serpent - I had thought it differently but recall reading somewhere that you could stab then illusion, or illusion then dstab. True? Pretty powerful if so... Thought it was only with biting.

Sorry to keep asking questions. <Insert proverb> Feels like I've missed out on a ton of changes.

Devil -> double aeon is useless unless a) your target is afflicted with (at least) asthma or b) can't cure aeon.

Serpents can doublestand and then illusion, but they cannot illusion and then doublestab while off of eq balance. They can illusion and then bite however.