Passive Defenses/Skills

Nyboe

A lot of passive defenses and skills that require no balance and are "put on and forget it" and have no effective counter, should be changed. Some of these passive defenses don't even have balance or equilibrium cost which makes just makes it more silly.  I feel these passive/defense skills ruin combat a little and make it less dynamic and more static.

Below I listed some examples of these passive/defensive skills which really don't have an effective counter and I provided some possible solutions them.

1. Trans avoidance - This can't even be stripped in combat as its not a defense and its basically pay credits, trans avoidance and forget about it and laugh as physical classes miss often. A possible solution would be to just delete avoidance all together and refund the credits or make avoidance a mini skill and reducing the effectiveness of avoidance proportional to how many lessons it takes to get trans as a miniskill. Or possibly introduce a skill that can effectively counter avoidance.

2. Shrugging - This is a "put on and forget" defense which requires no skill to use in combat as you just put it on and have your system def it up if it gets stripped.
There is really no easy fix for this. Maybe put a negative drawback on shrugging, like every time shrugging shrugs off a venom there is a very small chance the body loses its equilibrium.

3. Aura of Rebounding - Also another annoying put and forget defense which people have systems to auto toggle it on all the time if they want too. A possible solution for this would be to have rebounding dissipate on movement to another room. Shield dissipates on movement and it has a long 4 second balance, why does aura of of rebounding at least not dissipate?

Edit: There are many more passive "put on and forget it" skills, but most are not noticeable, already have effective counters against them, or are necessary to balance the class that I did not mention them.

Nemutaur

1) Trans avoidance not only increases dodge chance but also reduces physical damage taken. This is a huge buff in pve and pvp and justifies it being a proper full 1736 lesson skill and not a miniskill. If you get rid of avoidance then all physical classes will just stomp (well more than now) and that's unjustified since you can learn resistances in all others.

2) Shrugging is only annoying if it really hinders the double delph or a parry bypass attempt. Not sure how serp vs serp mirror matches are but I've heard it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

3) Rebounding is not a damn passive, if they're hiding behind it just raze. Most people (including myself honestly) spam attacks so fast that the aura just dissapears as soon as it comes up. If you give rebounding balance it would come in the form of smoking balance...which some say is needed but I love it as it is right now.

Nyboe

Yeah smoking balance for aura of rebounding would be a very fair solution or at least it should dissipate when one moves out of the room.

Nim

I agree, get rid of lesson dump skills that only provide passive benefits rather than any new options.

And when I say "get rid of," I actually mean replace their current functionality with something more innovative and interesting.

I personally think that in a pay-for-perks environment like Achaea, skills (and artefacts) that provide purely numerical benefit are absolutely abhorrent. Keep that stuff in traits, where there's at least an element of choice that doesn't eventually lead to "ALL OF THEM!"

ETA: Shrugging probably is evil, but rebounding is not inherently a passive-and-forget-about-it thing - it's just the simplest way of using it if you happen to not rely on precision limb breaking. If you're a limb-breaking class fighting a serpent, suddenly rebounding becomes a whole lot more complicated!

Sylvance

I can't believe rebounding is causing you that much trouble, honestly... Just stick a huge rainbow echo on it... And don't hit them whilst its up. Or... Yeah, raze and knees them, then kill them. And aren't you a Blademaster? What problem is shrugging causing you please?

Nyboe

I never said Shrugging was causing me problems. I never said rebounding caused me problems.

These passive skills/defenses make combat less interesting as they require no real strategy or planning out.

Jovolo

If you are fighting as a limb breaking class, rebounding is a lot more than "put rebounding on keepup and forget about it" if you ever want to be successful at midbie level or higher. Shrugging is a pain for a set few classes and could probably use some adjusting, but it's definitely more than that for the most part, and if anything it's somewhat fun to deal with, though some people would see it as tedious. 

I don't even get the avoidance part... 

Antonius

Nothing wrong with rebounding in its current form. It's pretty much required to keep knights from being absolutely ridiculous.

Trey

I have a twinned warning system for rebounding. Not only does it do -this-...

***** REBOUNDING IS UP *****

***** REBOUNDING IS UP *****

***** REBOUNDING IS UP *****

..but it also plays a very audible *DING* that cues me in in case I get tunnel vision on my limb counter's display.

Antonius

I recently set up a series of colour coded echoes for rebounding. A green echo when rebounding goes down, an orange warning echo about a second before rebounding will come up, then a red echo when their rebounding comes up, in addition to an echo when my target smokes a pipe. I also have my custom prompt set up so the colour of my target's name changes: green if they don't have rebounding or shield, red if they have at least one (as well as an r and/or s to indicate which they have).

I found the orange warning to be the most useful since the problem I had most was judging whether or not I could fit another doubleslash in.

Jonathin

Old thread. My input unnecessary.