Best Of

So, here's how it works. I'm explaining this because (said with love), this needs to die. This is awful :). I'd keep this close to the vest but it's literally useless so may as well throw it out there. At the end I'm going to suggest an improvement to this, as this is way too much info for a classlead.

A table exists for each player, which is effectively a list of boolean flags representing venoms that you are due for a relapse of. If you're hit with a venom (*with some exceptions) while you have scytherus, this is set to true. This table looks, exactly / almost exactly, like this (specifically in this order):

shecks.relapse_flags ={
   oleander = false,
   digitalis = false,
   curare = false,
   vernalius = false,
   voyria = false,
   kalmia = false,
   colocasia = false,
   eurypteria = false,
   delphinium= false,
   larkspur= false,
   oculus= false,
   aconite = false,
   gecko = false,
   xentio = false,
   euphorbia = false,
   vardrax = false,
   darkshade = false,
   epseth = false,
   epteth = false,
   monkshood = false,
   prefarar = false,
   notechis = false,
}

When you're hit with a venom, a timer is created on your player (or in the case of doublestab/DSL etc, two timers are created), with integer value 1-10 seconds (specifically integers, not that it matters).

Once each timer elapses, provided you still have scytherus, a function is executed which loops through the above table and relapses the first venom in the above list that is set to true that it encounters, while setting it to false. If no venom is set to true at the end of the list, then it relapses you with nechamandra instead.

(ex: if you hit someone with aconite, vardrax, notechis, then curare, they will relapse curare, aconite, vardrax, notechis, at times that have essentially nothing to do with the timing of the original affliction landing. If you kept afflicting with venoms high in the list, you might never see vardrax and notechis relapse at all)

As everyone likely already knows, players also have a flag to indicate if scytherus has been "triggered" by camus, after which set to true, all relapses will relapse as Camus (except that those that don't, of course - see below). This flag gets set back to false whenever scytherus gets healed.

This logic is extremely wonky for so many reasons. First of all, there's no rhyme or reason to it at all, it's completely arbitary. Even the order of the venoms is completely arbitrary.

Secondly, there are tons of weird things that come out of this, like the fact that you can permanently keep things low in the list from ever relapsing by constantly re-afflicting with things high on the list. There is no reason to ever do this, it's just a thing that exists.

Additionally, the timing of the relapses themselves makes the Scytherus venom basically useless as relapses don't give a 3rd person line (with exception of paralysis which has its own 3p line from paralysis itself).

To make matters worse, there are a lot of bugs with this system:

• Prefarar doesn't relapse if it strips deafness (but does if it gives sensitivity)
• Sumac ignores the the camus trigger flag (relapses as sumac no matter what)
• Selarnia doesn't relapse at all (including as camus)
• Scytherus itself doesn't relapse at all
• On several rare occassions, a venom relapsed twice - like this: https://ada-young.com/pastebin/GhmY22JE
• Loki can fail to relapse if it lands on a venom that's listed as broken above.

Conclusion:

Due to the RNG timing of the relapses combined with what is effectively a completely unpredictable relapse system (described above), not only do you not know when they're relapsing, but you also don't know what they're relapsing. To an experienced fighter, this is worse than doing nothing because your opponent may be (or may not be) curing afflictions you don't even know they have, making it impossible for you to keep track of what they're curing, what affs have relapsed, what affs haven't, etc. They might only have scytherus but be due for a darkshade relapse, and if they eat ginseng, you don't know if they cured scytherus or darkshade, in which case, you don't even know if a darkshade relapse is going to happen at all. (there is a special irony here because serpent pets were changed from giving Loki because it made it too hard to track opponents curing, and now that they give scytherus instead, they still do).

essentially, I always thought that nobody used scytherus because they don't know how it works. Now, we know how it works, and nobody will use it because of how it works. Beyond that, we had our serpent pets that used to be useful recoded to give Prone and Scytherus which are both effectively useless (if not harmful in the case of scytherus) prior to a full lock. We also had Scytherus itself reworked to give Nechamdra, which is also effectively useless prior to a full lock.

The serpent loyal change, the scytherus change, and the addition of nechamandra have all effectively made the class worse. The change to disrupt (making it temporary) made the class worse, which artificially created a need for Nechamandra (canceling out the change to disrupt since you just made it permanent via shivering anyways).

I've had people tank upwards of 15 consecutive camus relapses (with silver fangs) without dying, without sipping health/moss while locked, and yet @Makarios has stated that he thinks camus/relapse kills shouldn't really be a thing that exists. This is strange to me as it's literally the only legitimate use case for Scytherus at all, and also it's the only reason silver fang artefacts exist (to make your relapses do 15% more damage to help counter both Antidoes and Venom damage reduction).

Scytherus could be a really unique, useful part of the kit. In fact it's really the only venom in the entire Venom skillset that's unique to serpent, so it stands to reason that it kinda should be actually useful. If Scytherus was changed to be useful, it would also solve the issue of the serpent loyal being virtually useless. Also worth noting that damage kills with scytherus/camus are basically the only way to kill Psions who know how to cure.

What I would suggest, at a bare minimum, would not be a buff, but a "fix" to scytherus to basically work the way that everyone more or less expects it to work. Have it relapse venoms that you give a few seconds after you give them. Simple. None of that above nonsense. Critically, also add a 3rd person line to relapse so it is not a net negative to the serpent by adding massive amounts of confusion/uncertainty to the fight. I'm like 70% sure this used to exist anyways - and if so, please bring it back.

on next classleads, I'll suggest some more specific alternatives to how both scytherus or pet could work, with this post as a reference.

(disclaimer, all jabs are purely for fun, nothing meant here but positive criticism noting we all know scytherus code is olllllld stuff that probably hasn't been touched at the lowest levels since the release of Serpent)