Best Of
Re: Curing Bible
First and foremost: highly recommend making use of CURINGSETS and the PRIOAFF command within SS curing. I am a firm believer
that the majority of the clientside systems that are in use today are not nearly as required for affliction management as they used to be.
SS curing has become more robust and user friendly over the years, and I want people to become more able to readily get involved
in affliction combat without being told they need these huge tables of afflictions and swaps and conditions. You absolutely
can do that, and there is some merit to it - but it's not a requirement to get into combat. Between curingsets, curing inserts,
prioaff I definitely believe it's entirely possible to succeed with just a few aliases and knowing when to use them.
Jhui did a great write up of curingsets here: https://forums.achaea.com/discussion/5092/curingsets-use-them-to-help-achaea-not-lag
Airlord: No changes. Cure the pipe afflictions first, and when you're behind just focus on leaving the room. The only swap you need is Tension if they force you to fly.
Alchemist: No changes. Very rarely will a priority swap help you, but the case can be made for two being asthma and impatience - these will be a theme. Potentially lethargy,
but if you're fighting an alchemist that's having to use lethargy you don't need this guide anymore.
Apostate: No changes. If you get asthma and manaleech, you need to be defensive and cure asthma as best you can. If you see yourself getting multiple kelp afflictions, even sooner. Asthma asthma asthma.
Bard: No changes. Just run away and force them to prep you. If they do, what do we do? You guessed it! - Asthma (with a small caveat that sometimes it may be impatience)
Blademaster: No changes. Just hypochondria and asthma if they start trying to afflict you. If you're prone with addiction, addiction.
Depthswalker: Paralysis > Timeloop > Shadowmadness > Hypochondria > Instills > anything else -- The only swap you should really need here is hypochondria. If you have paralysis and timeloop you're behind and need to be making moves to get away or shield etc.
Druid: No changes. Not affliction heavy, entirely salve based. CURING INSERT RESTORATION TO x 1 will cover pretty much everything you need.
Earth Lord: See Druid.
Fire Lord: Health damage, barely uses afflictions. No priorities needed, just cure paralysis and beat them before they beat you or run away.
Infernal:
DwC: Paralysis > Asthma > Nausea -- you shouldn't really need to swap anything ever unless you want to try to fish nausea to increase parry chances. Impatience #1 immediately if infestation hits you with it.
SnB: See above, the only caveat being once again asthma if you're in danger of being focuslocked with smash high, same for impatience as above.
DwB: Salves, CURING INSERT MENDING/RESTORATION as needed
2h: Health pressure, no real prios needed other than choose if you need to cure lethargy instead of asthma or something. Stock prios will be mostly fine.
Jester: No changes. Impatience/Asthma and if out of room diagnose to catch confusion.
Magi: Salves once again. Curing insert is your friend.
Monk:
Tekura - No real forks. They rely on rng impatience for scythe or you not running for bruised rib bbt kills.
Shikudo - While prone you need to watch slickness to avoid the lock threat, otherwise crusedthroat is a mending apply for dispatch.
Occultist: No real changes. Paralysis required in all cases, addiction being their other primary that you need to watch for. Whispering madness is not the problem as it used to be. If you have addiction and WM you need to be trying to run.
Paladin: None really. Asthma if necessary or nausea again, otherwise paralysis. If they are going for a Damnation, absolutely asthma.
Priest: Paralysis > Guilt > Spiritburn > Tenderskin > Anything else. Shield if things are looking bad and focus the other afflictions. Use the new curing FOCUSWITHGUILT (not 100% the name off hand) command. Turn it on when you get stupidity or anorexia.
Psion: Paralysis > Unweavings > Impatience. The worst of the offenders, as you need to be ready to dodge haemophilia, unweaving body, unweaving mind, unweaving spirit, and impatience. Entirely dependent on the state you're in.
Runewarden: None.
Sentinel: Paralysis > Impatience > Haemophilia in that order will get you pretty far. Hinder them more than they hinder you.
Serpent: Paralysis > Hypochondria > Impatience with the caveat that darkshade is a kill threat and needs to be handled on it's own, as well as Scytherus.
Shaman: Paralysis > Impatience > Asthma. Confusion if out of room.
Sylvan: Paralysis > Impatience > Sensitivity
Waterlord: No changes. Lethargy/Weariness are your main two affs you need to handle, static prios no swaps really required.
Overall prio swaps: Asthma, Impatience, UnweavingBody/Mind/Spirit, Haemophilia, Lethargy in select scenarios, Darkshade, Scytherus, Hypochondria, Confusion in select scenarios, Guilt/Spiritburn/Tenderskin, Tension, Slickness, Addiction
CURING PRIOAFF X
CURING QUEUE INSERT RESTORATION(MENDING)
Every single one of these situations are independent, and the overall methodology of affliction management is not nearly as daunting as it used to be. Each class is different, but once you know what to watch for within that class schematic, you can easily get by with 2-3 aliases and just knowing when to use them. You do not at all need a full system anymore. You need a default curingset, and an alias to clone/change your curingset to basic prios that will work against the specific class you're fighting. Once that's done, you're pretty much ready to go. As a tip, if you use EQ or Balance on anything that is longer than or equal to 2.5-3 seconds, you should drop paralysis down so you can cure something else. If you shield, you should not cure paralysis. Also, if you're prone and have a broken limb, most of the time you should be curing something other than paralysis until you can stand or tree. Otherwise you're gaining nothing.
Atalkez
Re: Bashing DPS Overhaul
I wrote what I think is an accurate simile of the game's crit function and ran a bunch of simulations with various factors (base crit chance, bonus crit chance from range 0% to 8%) with various combinations of auspicious paragon (20% chance to upgrade) and crit gambling paragon, as well as Maya. Expected matched extremely accurately in every single test case (also measured 0% to 8%). All testing was done as dragon, needless to say.
I still have a few things I really want to fine tune (namely the crit gambling constants), and it's noted that the game code/logic may be written in a different way than as described below, but the results come out pretty much perfectly so seems negligible to me if this is the case.
Auspicious: If you get a crit, you have a 20% chance to skip a crit level
Gambling: If you get a crit, you have a 20% chance to critical fail (no crit), a 60% chance to skip a crit level, and a 20% chance that it will just give you a regular crit.
These "skip a crit level" effects combine so if both succeed, you skip straight to Obliterating Critical instantly.
After these effects are rolled (which happen as soon as it's determined that you've rolled a critical hit), and these "skips" are applied, you continue rolling as usual with your normal crit chance stat for further increases to crit level. Obviously if you have gambling, PRC is enabled. Real-world test data suggests that Auspicious can raise you to PRC despite saying that it cannot, however data points at this level are sparse so margin of error is wide.
Maya: Technically reduces your overall crit rate, if you count the followup hit - which cannot critically hit (but gets overkill damage added to it). For the purposes of data analysis, I don't count these hits at all towards crit tracking, as they cannot crit and are basically special attacks in this context.
The previously described logic for how basic crit escalation works is absolutely confirmed. You just keep rolling your crit chance until it fails, then that's what your result is. Nothing new here, but we can definitely put any doubts to rest there.
Point of Interest: I can't promise this simulation is 100% perfect, but it's notable that at high crit chance (50%+) you actually get a higher average damage multiplier by just using Auspicious Paragon without crit gambling. You don't get PRCs at all, but on average, you'll hit a lot harder by just not gambling. Yet to be determined (mathematically at least) how that really plays out in real DPS / overall bashing speed. "average damage multiplier" is not a great metric really because it doesn't account for overkill at all. Once Maya is counted in, your overkill wasted dps drops dramatically, which would significantly increase real DPS when using crit gambling. I'm quite sure "real DPS" metrics will show this when looking at gambling, clear as day.
I think the math kinda speaks for itself, but here are some sample scenarios for people to get a feel for how these effects work out, in practice:
Shecks
Re: Bashing DPS Overhaul
Most of these formulas have been public for some time, yes. Most of the numbers I've given are from scripts I've had since I was a player, actually, with minor tweaks to account for plane-razing when that was requested (since I never had nor bothered with that crit level in them). I'll throw out a few more numbers relevant to the discussion, since I also had scripts to work out dps differences across different levels of critical chance, and different attack speeds, and hopefully clarify some things and either verify or dispel a lot of assumptions being made here, without breaking down exactly how every crit bonus works and some of the more behind the scenes mechanics.
Using 65% as a maximum realistic critical chance:
Every 1% of crit past 43% is between 4-5% dps increase
Every 1% of crit past 31 is between 3-4%
Every 1% of crit past 20 is between 2-3%
Every 1% of crit below 20 is between 1-2%
To address the discrepancy between faster and shorter attacks, at the high end, there's a few scenarios to address here. The biggest discrepancies are at the high end of crit chance, the lower ends tend to stay pretty competitive. Using the example of 1.4s serpent balance vs 3s gut balance (which covers the far ends of most bashing use cases, showing the most extreme discrepancy outside of a few niche strategies, I believe), you've got three scenarios. These are all calculated using real crit and damage values against UW-level mob health for a 145-hour session, and should all be accurate within a percent or so (assuming the same dps across both attacks). Percentages are truncated for readability.
If you have neither plane-razing crits nor maya figurine, there's a baseline discrepancy:
At 42% critical chance, the faster attack has a 6% faster clear rate. At 65% critical chance, the faster attack has a 14% faster clear rate.
If you have plane-razing crits, but not maya figurine, the discrepancy very clearly increases in favour of the faster attack:
At 42% critical chance, the faster attack has a 11% faster clear rate. At 65% critical chance, the faster attack has a 26% faster clear rate.
However, if you have both plane-razing crits and a maya figurine, the discrepancy all but vanishes:
At 42% critical chance, the faster attack is less than 0.2% faster clear rate. At 65% critical chance, the faster attack is 2% faster clear rate.
So, yes, there's a definite benefit to the faster attack speeds, though that benefit isn't as big as most people make it out to be (at the low end and high end specifically), and also has to be weighed against the increased clear speed that comes from more time spent off balance from killing blows and beefier attack kills, which leads to less damage taken and more time to heal outside of combat (neither of which I've accounted for in these numbers). There's a difference, but it's not quite as absurd a difference as people make it out to be, in most cases.
Phaestus
Re: Bashing DPS Overhaul
Not to be overly arrogant
I would say in light of this disclaimer that I'd hate to see you actually being overly arrogant, but I've been playing this game and the forums a long time so I've seen it before.
The way critical hits work at the top end is misunderstood by pretty much everyone that wasn't a coder or me, because a coder told me how it worked 10-15 years ago and I've kept that knowledge under wraps until this thread. Shecks is very data driven and did figure it out on his own, but no one else has spent the time to do it.
This is a big yikes. Plenty of people have run the numbers over and over again on crits over hundreds of thousands of attacks. What you're claiming as the Colonel's secret herbs and spices that only you know and Shecks managed to stumble across has been pretty common knowledge since the mid-2000s at least. Just because you needed to be spoon fed info by Clementius doesn't mean it's beyond everybody else's comprehension.
You disagreed with that basic info and provided an example that ignores critical hits so we're at an impass. If you had bashed at the top end on any characters you'd understand, but that's hard to show someone.
I disagreed with your wonky logic regarding time wasted after killing a denizen. I told you why, and your answer has been 'excuse me sir but I have more arties than you, you clearly don't understand'.
I don't disagree that faster attacks are better; I stated multiple times that they are. I don't disagree that each % of crit chance is increasingly more valuable; anyone with a calculator or a spreadsheet can figure that out. All this has also been common knowledge since you were still at Hogwarts, where apparently they don't teach reading comprehension.
edit: This is not to mention that you even posted this info yourself back in 2016.
https://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/305752/#Comment_305752
A Divine Challenger
I decided to do a bit of silly roleplay to get the last of my renown for the day, and it turned into something really fun.
@Gaia Thank you for playing along and giving Alyzar a great first interaction with a Divine.
@Alyzar I'm coming for you
The log was too long for a forums post so here is a pastebin.
Vasher
Re: Achaean Raves
Big raves to @Ictinus and the team for patiently replying to each e-mail I send them as I work out the kinks for my pet request. Thank you everyone, I appreciate the quick responses. It certainly made the wait for her all the more worth it.
Aina
Re: OOC Raves
Ha. tons of stuff going on and dealing w a slight case of the 'rona... but life always has small pleasures. Watching our puppy chase butterflies and dragonflies through the yard is pretty damn cute.
Caelan
Re: New Layout and Look
Oh thank god(s)
This looks so much better
Eta: Browsing on iphone makes this look like forums for ants 🐜 so i have to zoom way in (am i on desktop version? halp)
still looks goddamn amazing though feels like rocking 2018 again
Halos
Re: PK Updates: Announce #5364
@Iaxus nobody thinks anyone is owed any RP in the interaction, but the "OooOoo this will make for some amazing RP!!!" crowd came in pretty hot and heavy in the first few pages of this thread.
Thaisen