Combat Logs

Amranu

They need to increase the numbers of afflictions for petrify to be in line with Tzantza at the very least. The fact that it is one less affliction while they have faster affliction output on their basic attacks and also having passive afflictions that contribute to it should make it pretty clear to absolutely everyone that the kill is far too powerful in it's current state.

Dochitha

You would almost always have imp, epi, diz on you, it's not hard to stick these. Then it's the raven proc that lets them enrage/petrify. You would go from 3 to 5 affs and petrified out of sudden cos of a random raven proc. The proc needs to be looked at, and made predictable, rather than so random.

Archaeon

making it predictable would be pretty easy to code for and make it more efficient. increasing the number would make it almost impossible to do as the 'momentum' route, because of the speed of the spear attacks coupled with not being able to give paralysis without curare.

i used to think i knew the solution before going sent, but not that i am sent i think about it and i can't find anything that really works well, you know? maybe give sent a spear attack that gives para, so you can envenom something

Mizik

That log is hilarious.

Saonji

They need to increase the numbers of afflictions for petrify to be in line with Tzantza at the very least.

Petrify already is in-line with Tzantza. Tzantza is 6, Petrify is also 6.

Passive stupidity should be changed to something else, it's not a petrify aff but a) stupidity is ridiculous and b) it overloads their already high goldenseal stack.

Curing paranoia can slow them down a bunch since Raven is the slowest passive, forces them to try and axe recklessness or gaze confusion for petrify instead. Wouldn't have helped you in this exact instance though since he got a lucky paranoia tick right as he petrified.

Archaeon

it's not six , technically, since one of the reqs is a def, i guess.

Saonji

It's six in the sense that you're required to keep the person unblind, which is another herb-based thing.

Sentinel can unblind/petrify, but Shaman can also jinx aff tzantza.

Mechanically they are the same requirements.

Atalkez

I don't agree with that, because you've never going to be blind in practice. They strip that on the first attack and at no point does it make sense to put it back up unless they/you are out of the room. The requirement is 5 afflictions, which is 1 less than an instant tzantza.

Regardless though, I don't think slapping +1 on the kill changes anything. The passives need to be adjusted, and so does the shield strip. No class gets 2x afflictions on shield break, and Sentinel shouldn't either.

Dochitha

The passive Raven is a lot of difference. If paranoia was given on active attack, and not on a passive proc, we can then relate it more with Shaman's tza. Now it's simply not the case.

Shecks

Adding 1 aff would just add another 1.5-2s seconds to Petrify, without really giving you the option of doing anything during that time.

I'm thinking the only reliable counter on classes that don't have something like Dedication, deagonheal, Accelerate, etc is to just use negation if you're 2 affs away and just run.

Illusions do help tho as doing this so quickly requires food tracking (either using a system or just doing it yourself, either way), and some false cures/actives/shield would really help here.

Archaeon

They didn't though

Khalyon

Would anyone hapen to have any logs fighting either as, or against a pariah. Thanks in advance.

Archaeon

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/O0KPqIfq

here's a direct feed of me getting shit on.

Proficy

Ok so here is concern. How are other players/characters in Achaea even supposed to stand a chance or why would they even attempt if I can not being as offensively maxed out like I am. Not to many players that have level 3 weapons and can get to 21 str. So when things do not finish, and there is not really any other option to finish in this class... Why would anyone even try???

Me doing a disembowl on a Psion, which is technically on the lower end of tanky classes, with a broken torso and plenty of pre-damage before execution....

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/Yno-ZV12

Caelan

He did manage a sip in there so Im assuming he had a minimum of around 6600hp.

Im a newb now so is disembowel supposed to do that much dmg?

edit: or is broken torso supposed to work like sensitivity? If so then yeah that is ridiculous.

Eryl

You’ve left a lot of information out. What spec and class were you here? If you were in 2h, you’ll need to go for a double DSB (yes, with a broken torso on at least the first one) to get around resist all in this specific instance (just like fighting a runewarden with Algiz). You had predamage, yes, but he sipped and probably got a health regen tic too. Since he was left on 3% max, I’d bet money he wasnt quite at max hp after the sip (and potential hp regen tic) when you dsb’d. This log snippet looks pretty standard for Knight versus psion, really.

If you were in runie, a single hugulaz, othala, or thurisaz rune can do that last 3% for you. If you were in infernal, you probably have other options but I’m not too familiar with new infernal.

As a dwc/sns runie with level 3 weapons and 21 strength, I have this same problem with some specific cases. Making sure I have post damage coming up via a lunge or rune is how I’ve been dealing with it. My alternative is a soft lock before the execution attempt, but that’s not viable for 2h.

Proficy

Dual cutting, Runewarden, Runeblades.

Just saying there is not a more ideal setup for execution, except for like you said a softlock... which is not viable against psion honestly unless there prios are just beyond wrong.

You can not say the sip saved him because with balance timing there is always and WILL always be a sip inbetween the leg break and disembowl and impale does very very little damage like 3-5%.

The followup was battleaxe dsl, which does more damage than a lunge...... more follow up informaiton in this log.... I even had to verify that the torso was broken because i was just disappointed that this didnt seal the kill

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/dsBzNJBz

Shecks

I think Proficy's original point here is pretty valid though. I can't see someone playing Runewarden without a ton of high level arties having any chance of ever killing someone with full arties, without the defending player basically doing CURING OFF and/or just letting you get a L2 torso break for some reason.

Runie specifically badly needs an instakill though, and Mak has indicated that he's open to it if someone can come up with a good enough idea that isn't overwhelmingly strong noting that RW already has a ton of advantages over Infernal/Paladin as is (just not an instakill), so maybe if you can come up with something it could get implimented.

Personal opinion time: Knights just suck in general now. They've sold wayyyyyy too many tanking/HP arties to the point where good old fashioned damage can't really be a part of combat anymore. Anything strong enough to kill Andraste with damage is going to just obliterate a midbie or newbie. Anything that is even half-way fair vs a newbie isn't going to kill Andraste (or me, or Amranu, or you Proficy, etc).

At the same time, I know for a fact you get a ton of braindead kills by doing nothing but lunge/engage on people who have absolutely no means of escaping that alive short of getting Delivered or earring, and RW has a pretty ridiculous amount of utility compared to other classes including knights, so it's hard to really sympathize TOO much about there being a handful of people in the game that you can't kill if they're on Class A while you're on Class B.

There is one trick that may help though, as silly as this sounds. Wand of illusion. I've had success with getting people to swap their parry strat as well as prios by f--king up their class timers by pretending to be something I'm not. I haven't done this specifically on RW but I'm sure you can work it out. This could make it easier to stick sensi and ofc you have a lot of cheese tricks like messing up writhes, etc. Bit gimmicky but a kill's a kill.

Kog

Psion has a 20% resistall while Algiz is 10%, meaning I can oneshot anyone with Algiz because of my str- but I'd need like 24 str to do it to a Psion at the least. Definitely an outlier that should be looked at IMO- I dunno why the finisher for Runewarden (requires a runeblade to scale that much with torso damage) is subject to resistall, since the original unblockable designation was done to bypass this exact situation.

Eryl

You are basically playing something that counters your execution. Every class has something that counters it. It means you have to work harder to beat that particular class, and in this case, it means timing delayed damage to hit after you dsb, softlocking going into the dsb, having more predamage than that, or something equally as different and extra.

Artefacts don't beat counters. That's where skill comes into play. You have the experience and know-how to beat that. Not everything can just be smash smash smash win!

Edit: Missed @Shecks

You're just wrong there. Runewarden is fine as is, though it would be neat for it to have an insta. It takes creativity and reacting to what your enemy is doing. I fight Farrah's shikudo as DWC runewarden and do just fine, and she even pre-applies like a boss. As mentioned earlier, anyone who survives a dsb just needs a little timed oomf at the end. Atalkez taught me a couple tricks that have worked really well, but I basically already shared them.

Atalkez

I don't actually see an issue in this log. Like Eryl said he got a sip and likely a regen tick, and has Psion resist all to help defend the damage. It also looked like after the dsb he wrath'd for an active heal.

Your options here are to do more pre-damage or get a passive damage tick timed with the dsb either meteors or thurisaz/hugalaz. Runewarden would be nice if it had an instantkill but I actually don't think it needs one necessarily. An instant would have to come with a drastic reduction in the damage ability that it has from hugalaz/thurisaz/runeblade and sowulu ground runes.

Proficy

just saying, I think your missing my point.

I have no problem killing when i need too....

The point is, that shouldnt be so easily tankable at peak offensive capabilities..... Unless we are baslining things off of artefacts now. You have to realize there is nothing you can do to get more str or offensive output than what i have aside from Truefavors or Rare minerals. So how are the rest of the populous supposed to even attempt to negotiate that kill route if when pulled off to perfection it still fails from max stats.

Saonji

Considering he rather openly answered how to "negotiate the kill route" I don't think he's missing your point.

Atalkez

Things are being baselines off of artefacts, and they have for forever, so I'm not sure what you mean. Things are balanced around maximum strength or aldar talisman, etc, for the classes that they affect. Knights have never been very good at killing even with a broken torso if your strength is the bare minimum. That's just a flaw of the class and has been around for years, though it is better now than it used to be.

You have shown a niche edge case of lvl 3 set vs lvl 3 set where the class composition is going to come back into play. Resist all is an issue for knights to kill on psion, the same way that it is on another runewarden or a serpent or BM using Mir etc. This isn't anything new or unique, and the way that you get around it is like I said above. You can either throw out some meteors or thurisaz/hugalaz, you can try to kelp stack sensitivity and hope, or you can push a riftlock if you don't think you can get the damage you need. Active heals and resist alls are always going to be an issue for knight classes trying to kill with damage.

Edit: Your level 3 set is not more important than the defenders level 3 set, so thinking just because you have level 3 strength and level 3 weapon means you're going to delete someone with the bare bones setup is not the right approach.

Cooper

You're misunderstanding him.

He's saying if his level 3 arties struggle against Psion with level 3 arties, how is someone without the arties supposed to compete?

Iaxus

Buy arties. Ez.

Proficy

@Cooper

They only see what they want to see.......

Atalkez

@Cooper @Proficy

I understand completely, but that's not unique whatsoever to knight. Blademaster has long been in this same boat where it can kill anyone until you get to a certain level of defense and then it's way more effort than it's ever worth to kill someone and the fundamental paths stop working. Serpent is in this boat, too, as both of you should know.

My point is the extra damage has to come from somewhere, and that's going to be alternative sources. It doesn't matter if you're doing 92% dsb or 82% dsb, you still need to finish the kill with more damage, and I explained where you could get that from.

I personally am of the opinion that a torso dsb should be an instakill period, regardless of your strength or a resist all or any of that. Make tumble the counter, and let's move on to fixing bad interactions outside of that.

Shecks

I'd like to understand more about why class-specific resist-alls need to exist at all. It seems like a cop-out bandaid fix when in the case of Psion, it didn't even need anything in the first place. I don't understand why it is so incredibly strong offensively but then gets to be impervious to both damage and venomlocks. I'm not saying it is bad, I'm just saying I don't understand it.

On serpent I /kinfof/ understand it since the class by design has to survive the period where we stand there doing nothing for 6-12s, but psion has slow prep so doesn't really make sense to be so tanky.

Dochitha

@Atalkez: I personally am of the opinion that a torso dsb should be an instakill period, regardless of your strength or a resist all or any of that. Make tumble the counter, and let's move on to fixing bad interactions outside of that.

I really really love this, but also worry it will remove affliction's interaction going into the kill, which has been interesting strategies at the top.