Alchemist combat.

Tahquil

You can't die from lack of mana itself, but it sure makes surviving substantially harder. Lack of mana means lack of any mental ways of healing (restore/clot/focus?) as well as the reapplying of defences. To be honest all you need is a priest to walk in the room and decide to 'help' and it doesn't matter if they are keeping on top of their health to stop aurification.

Vayne

Daeir said:

What I am hearing thus far is that people seem upset that a class heavily based on momentum is extremely strong when given the opportunity to utilize that momentum properly. From what I know of Alchemist combat (admittedly little, bear with me), this will take upwards of 40s-1min to achieve without any interruptions. That is a fairly long prep time and with a consistent way to evade torso blocking, many classes will be able to stall an Alchemist in their tracks with little problem at all.

I don't really see the issue. It's a good thing that their end offense is so strong and difficult to counter.

And there are plenty of ways to get out of the room, an alchemist have to get more creative to keep them in.

Jovolo

Daeir said:

What I am hearing thus far is that people seem upset that a class heavily based on momentum is extremely strong when given the opportunity to utilize that momentum properly. From what I know of Alchemist combat (admittedly little, bear with me), this will take upwards of 40s-1min to achieve without any interruptions. That is a fairly long prep time and with a consistent way to evade torso blocking, many classes will be able to stall an Alchemist in their tracks with little problem at all.

I don't really see the issue. It's a good thing that their end offense is so strong and difficult to counter.

Consistent way of avoiding alchemist block for all classes?

Vayne

Not all classes are equally mobile but there are a variety of ways to get out of the room that virtually covers every class, some being more situational or  effective in any given event.

Tumble is a slow yet available to anyone who invest the lessons in survival in addition to the following other skills off the top of my head which are available to various class/races:
Leap
Evade
Flying(Any race with wings/person with flying mount./artefact)
Universe Tarot
Earrings
Wings
Warping
Portals
Ether Channel
Pierce the Veil
Digging
Swinging

Aduan

Well the creativeness is a little hampered by the slow recovery speeds on wrack and educing. Which means reacting to someone beginning to tumble is tricky (and impossible if they time well). The net result is, you can easily run from an alchemist, but at the same time you have to, otherwise fluid builds up. 

Jovolo

Humourism is on its own balance and you don't need to educe when they start a tumble? You can just wait to brazier;temper or follow;temper. Tumble isn't a good solution. 

What's the ability available to all (or the majority of) classes that escapes homunculus block(torso)? @Daeir

@Vayne: 

A lot of those are just abilities to leave a room in various ways that don't bypass homunculus block or are very specific to a couple of classes. I wouldn't exactly cite earrings as one either, unless you simply mean escaping a gank - who fights someone that evades room hindering abilities in a duel by using earrings?

Alchemist's main weakness mechanically is the disparity between their initial startup and full momentum offences. It's just boring! Truewrack in conjuction with the passive tempered humours effects are really awesome, and it's a shame that the speed of it is completely and so largely tied in with fluid level of the opponent. Sanguine is a pain in the ass, but I'm not convinced it's a huge problem because of my lack of experience with it. I just noticed that even pre-clotting and hindering the alchemist, my bleeding got up to 2,000 within a couple of minutes. There are momentum classes that require a longer time than the supposed "ridiculous" length it takes to build up Alchemist momentum, and fighting with that in mind is horrible.

Trevize

By the by, note Vitrification and Phlogistication take effect when you use bal/eq - I've fought quite a few that just make things worse on themselves at a bad spot by triggering them a lot.

Kafziel

Jovolo said:

What I am hearing thus far is that people seem upset that a class heavily based on momentum is extremely strong when given the opportunity to utilize that momentum properly. From what I know of Alchemist combat (admittedly little, bear with me), this will take upwards of 40s-1min to achieve without any interruptions. That is a fairly long prep time and with a consistent way to evade torso blocking, many classes will be able to stall an Alchemist in their tracks with little problem at all.

I don't really see the issue. It's a good thing that their end offense is so strong and difficult to counter.

Consistent way of avoiding alchemist block for all classes?

kill homunculus

Vayne

Kafziel said:

Jovolo said:

What I am hearing thus far is that people seem upset that a class heavily based on momentum is extremely strong when given the opportunity to utilize that momentum properly. From what I know of Alchemist combat (admittedly little, bear with me), this will take upwards of 40s-1min to achieve without any interruptions. That is a fairly long prep time and with a consistent way to evade torso blocking, many classes will be able to stall an Alchemist in their tracks with little problem at all.

I don't really see the issue. It's a good thing that their end offense is so strong and difficult to counter.

Consistent way of avoiding alchemist block for all classes?

kill homunculus

Have you tried to do that? Lil guys are beasts.

Trevize

Kafziel said:

Jovolo said:

What I am hearing thus far is that people seem upset that a class heavily based on momentum is extremely strong when given the opportunity to utilize that momentum properly. From what I know of Alchemist combat (admittedly little, bear with me), this will take upwards of 40s-1min to achieve without any interruptions. That is a fairly long prep time and with a consistent way to evade torso blocking, many classes will be able to stall an Alchemist in their tracks with little problem at all.

I don't really see the issue. It's a good thing that their end offense is so strong and difficult to counter.

Consistent way of avoiding alchemist block for all classes?

kill homunculus

Kill alchemist.

Kafziel

Vayne said:Have you tried to do that? Lil guys are beasts.

I have

Valdus

STOP MAKING ME WANT AN ALCHEMIST.


:<<<<<<<<<<






But please continue. This thread is fascinating.

Dji

Jovolo said:

Humourism is on its own balance and you don't need to educe when they start a tumble? You can just wait to brazier;temper or follow;temper. Tumble isn't a good solution. 

What's the ability available to all (or the majority of) classes that escapes homunculus block(torso)? @Daeir

The humourism balance requires eq/balance. So you can't do anything that takes those before using it. I'm also not really convinced there should be a -consistent- way to escape Torso. If there was, what would be the point of it as a blocking ability? It needs to at least have a chance to do it's job.

Jovolo

I'm not saying there is or should be, juat that I'm not aware of one and so far haven't been told otherwise despite claims to the contrary.

@Daeir

Jovolo

The alchemist can follow tumble (and tumble throws you off balance for 5 seconds) and mountjump is functionally leap with a mount i.e. it gets blocked. Not exactly good ways of evading it.

time to play my Alchemist alt I guess.

Valdus

Jovolo said:

The alchemist can follow tumble (and tumble throws you off balance for 5 seconds) and mountjump is functionally leap with a mount i.e. it gets blocked. Not exactly good ways of evading it.

time to play my Alchemist alt I guess.

I'm barely active, and I have zero Achaean combat experience, but from what I've seen on the forums, it sounds like Alchemists really are having trouble killing people before they're killed themselves, or that people are able to get away with ease.

Do you really have such trouble? If so, perhaps it's crazy RNG, or Alchemists don't have it as bad as it would seem.

Seftin

May just be there are 0 alchemist combatants

Anedhel

I don't know much about alchemists, but homunculi blocking movement IS a huge pain in the ass. No exaggeration there, that stuff's crazy

Dji

Honestly, the thing that really gets me about Alchemist combat so far is that their abilities are -magical-. I wanna be injecting people with venom and throwing acidic concoctions at them. Not giving them a case of water retention by staring at them.

Being a mad scientist is so much cooler than being a periodic table magician imo.

Anedhel

Agreed. Class tutor should be Kortoxian, and they should kill people by giving them gleam withdrawal symptoms.

Dji

Anedhel said:

Agreed. Class tutor should be Kortoxian, and they should kill people by giving them gleam withdrawal symptoms.

I shall make the purest, blue gleam.

Anedhel

There's still no 'I love you so much right now' button, what the hell

Aduan

The Homunculus block ability starts at 25% or so and is increased by increasing fluid levels, reaching about 75% at its peak. The best moment to run from an alchemist is when they temper a Humour and the fluid levels are low.

Tempering is on its own balance, but requires equilibrium/balance. Tempering can be followed by anything. However if followed by an educe, the duce can be followed by wracking and in between you can order the homunculus to shriek (nothing but shriek or corrupt, but corrupt lasts 30 seconds anyway).

So when you look at it directly, the speed is based on the skill with the longest recovery, which is generally a tie between educing and wracking which are both at approximately 3.5 seconds. 

Dji

Having had a few more spars and done a bit more experimentation with the class, I think my main gripe is the way the alchemists build up offence works. 

We have to keep people in the room with us and we have to keep using temper, because without fluid we're absolutely awful and have almost no abilities. However we're not massively tanky and don't have that much hinderance (one affliction roughly ever 3.5 seconds until you can truewrack). This means that in order to survive, it's actually desirable for us to run and come back, like a Shaman or Jester might. However unlike a Shaman or Jester, once we've run our entire offence starts getting screwed and we can quickly end up back at square one.

Ending up back at square one isn't an issue for most classes because their offence doesn't require 1 minute 30 seconds ish to build up to an acceptable level. For an alchemist you're always at a disadvantage at the start of a fight, and an increasing advantage past the 1 minute 30 seconds mark.

It just feels wrong the whole way through, I'll be completely back footed, struggling to survive and then suddenly my opponent will drop dead for seemingly no reason (they bled out). Or I'll just die because they completely overwhelm me before I can build anything up.

It just feels like it needs tweaking to give a more consistent level through the fight, and more things for an alchemist to do in a fight beyond waiting for fluid and bleeding to build up.

Hasar

Just bribe @mizik to go alchemist and figure it from there imo

Xith

They need a little bit of chasing ability. Something to prevent/cancel flight and possibly something to ignore walls, like etherwalk.

Or order the homunc to walk past the wall and then perform some switcheroo that exchanges places with the homunculus by some flavour.

Just a couple thoughts.

Maybe even greatly reduce the completion of Displace if the target is without a cloak defense.

Mizik

Xith said:

>Maybe even greatly reduce the completion of Displace if the target is without a cloak defense.

Yeah, they can call it something zany like 'brazier' to differentiate.

Anedhel

Xith said:

They need a little bit of chasing ability. Something to prevent/cancel flight and possibly something to ignore walls, like etherwalk.

Or order the homunc to walk past the wall and then perform some switcheroo that exchanges places with the homunculus by some flavour.

Just a couple thoughts.

Maybe even greatly reduce the completion of Displace if the target is without a cloak defense.

Homunculus is probably one of the best movement prevention thingies, from what I've seen. What's wrong with mountjump, too?

Aduan

Mountjump leaves the homunculus behind.

Xith

Mizik said:

>Maybe even greatly reduce the completion of Displace if the target is without a cloak defense.

Yeah, they can call it something zany like 'brazier' to differentiate. 

Har har. But I meant because you start it after they start their tumble and it completes while you have balance back. Superior?