Jack In The Box

Kaie

I'm sure some of you are sick of hearing people ask for changes to this class, but if a lot of people are asking for it, then it's probably needed right? The current changes have mostly been pretty good, but I think a few problems are still present due to the nature of the class. Being that Jester is primarily geared around burst hindering the victim right before the starting an instant kill. It's all been about trapping the victim in hindering skills to prevent movement or praying they make a mistake or two... or five in the duration of 12 seconds. 

Jack-in-the-box is Jester's signature kill, but takes 12s during which nothing can be done. It's incredibly long and the majority of the time, tumble will take the victim out of the room before the second message or just after it depending on how quick they start it. Mangling 4 limbs does slow it down, but not really enough to pull it off. It just kind of depends heavily on the other player not reacting properly. The timing becomes an issue when you take note of the fact that mangling limbs and afflicting with aeon are about the only way Jester can try to beat tumble, yet falls short of this goal.  Reducing the time it takes to 8 or 9 seconds would narrow that window down to a more reasonable point and give a better chance to actually trap some one long enough for JITB to finish. In it's current form, there's really no reason anyone who knows what their doing should die to JITB (outside of a killroom which is illegal of course). Even if Jester could true lock an opponent which it cannot, a person could simply tumble away forever leaving a trail of frustration and spent boxes.

Nellaundra

No

Nemutaur

A reduction in the windup time would only be ok if it were interuptable by the usual methods like proning, web, paralysis and so on. Otherwise I think it is strong enough as is.

Santar

Lmao did you just suggest a buff to JitB?

are you serious?

Like, seriously.

You being real with us right now?

Take off your "my class is the weakest class" goggles, man.

Kaie

It's not the weakest. It's just stupidly long. 

Tesha

One of the strengths of jack in the box is most people will try like 6 ways to stop it and none of them will work and they'll still die. 

Kaie

Okay, so since you guys got me doubting my own experience with Jack in the box, I've had a person test it with me and logged it. The only editing done to the log is to keep the person performing it anonymous as requested and pushing svo's JITB echo back to the side since it wasn't when I pasted it. During this curing is paused and all the big afflictions are on me including concussion/aeon. It wasn't a complete slowlock (with slickness, anorexia, asthma) because it's not really needed to demonstrate since i'm not curing. http://pastebin.com/GgAATUxL

Keep in mind that I am paused for this, so if I were actually curing it would be even harder to pull off. You can see that even with those afflictions in what appears to be a decent setup (and costly as far as puppetry goes) that tumble will pull me from the room before it can finish. Also, as far as beating tumble, this is about as good as it gets. He could  have followed me to the room and restarted jitb, only to have me tumble out again as I cure the afflictions.

Bluef

Tesha said:

One of the strengths of jack in the box is most people will try like 6 ways to stop it and none of them will work and they'll still die. 

Hm, that's really lack of experience or knowledge though. Anyone who has fought jester consistently will know you just hit the tumble alias and go go go.

Kaie

Tesha said:

One of the strengths of jack in the box is most people will try like 6 ways to stop it and none of them will work and they'll still die. 

Yeah, that's more user error than anything. People do that once then start tumbling in the future.

One suggestion I came up with is shorten JITB's timer and change it to work similar to Eliminate for Apostate, where it's stoppable by normal means until the second message and then you just have to escape the room. 

Daslin

@Kaie or do what @Bonko does, disappear for a while, make people forget you like JITB, come back and randomly do it to them, and lol while they die because HOLYGODICANTREMEMBERHOWTOSTOPIT!

Cooper

If you can't think of a way to stomp your opponent from tumbling as a Jester you should probably change class.

Kaie

@cooper It's not about being unable to think up ways to stop tumble. I've thought of a great many ways to stop it, only to hit a glass wall with the skills. Most have a random factor giving it a chance to simply fail. Since altering the things that have random factors to them would honestly push Jester to being OP (such as making bombs actually time accurately), the best course of action to alleviate this is to change the way the kill actually works. In the log, the person should have had me dead. I was concussioned, aeoned, mangled completely, and suffering from bouts of epilepsy an itch powder, both throwing balance off. She/He could have killed me with behead. So, if behead becomes viable at that point, what's the problem with JITB being a viable option?

Also, it's not strictly a buff to JITB, but more of a tradeoff that makes it stoppable to a certain point for all classes including those without access to pacify with web/prone/paralysis and in return making it happen quicker. So everyone benefits from it. 

Mishgul

No point in buffing jitb to become a cheap spammable version of death tarot.

Xith

Kaie said:

It's not the weakest. It's just stupidly long. 

It's also unstoppable, like Death. We don't need behead, which is 10 seconds and hinderable. If anything, petition for it to complete through peace, prevent forceable actions, and extend to 14 seconds.

The only way I've ever thought of a jitb change was to make it its own object, so you wind it and it keeps going.

5s balance, 20 seconds for it to finish itself, and you can do what you want. Obviously even worse, since jesters can root people in place if they manage to get their stuff lined up.

On the other hand, interesting way to give jesters an actual strategy rework where the hindering becomes the kill. No other class has anything like that. What if after 20 seconds of keeping your opponent in the room, via bomb, hangedman, brazier, etc. your <trap> slayed the target?

It's more like a 'test your endurance' thing. Not saying its a complete idea or even applicable to jitb, but maybe I'm onto something.

On the same note, I'd like to see traps. Something you time and it runs on its own, on completion hits the target with blackout + stun + confusion + dizziness or some combination of razzle dazzle with no clear cut purpose.

On that note, I've heard that lethargy is like confusion but for a balance delay? Could we put that in puppetry/vodun given the amount of writhing opponents do? Hidden like reckless. Ginseng aff, so it won't help tzantza, and it'll help stick vardrax when used with mickey. Good for riftlocking.

Xith

You have a few types of jesters:

A) people who have never played the class, only against it, but still think they understand it

class changing combat pros who try it for a few weeks, and like a true combatant, abuse the sh*t out of anything that is broken so that it gets nerfed

C) people of an average combat/coding mind who struggle with the more delicate aspects like how to manage your bombs, props, cards, puppets

D) career jesters who work out every possible kill method with some assistance from opponents and the few fellow jester fighters, and ultimately find the flaws and hardships in each of those methods

Conclusions:

- Everyone except type (A) can conclude that it is a very high difficulty class, perhaps the most complex to manage.

- Type (D) concludes that the reward and power does not necessarily fit the difficulty anymore

- The handful of career combatants, jester or not, will eventually know all the tricks that are possible, so type (D) knows that the only surefire way to kill anybody is a slowlock, and you have to count on surviving long enough to prepare that

- It might need an approach rework the way occultists and bards had recently. Give them an actual direction or goal in combat. OR don't, because the variety of strategies is part of their difficulty AND potency. 

If it's going to remain random, then the mechanical focus needs to be on currently inert skills (listed below), to give another handful of possible tactics to the class, enhancing both appeal and effectiveness.

Skills that got good changes (mechanically):

PRANKS

- Hocuspocus (hidden cast)

- Peels (don't hit caster)

- Bop (randomness)

- Back/Handspring (shorter balance)

- Bombs (jester raid relevance)

- Mickey (now consumes herb balance)

- Itchpowder (more frequent)

PUPPETRY

- Cripple (prones)

- Wielding features (by name)

- Slow/speed strip (1 consumed, faster balance)

- imbibe (10 to use)

- concussion (20 consumed)

TAROT

- Empress utility

Inert skills that need help (mechanically):

PRANKS

- Smokebomb (no inventory effect, weak in-room effect) (try lethargy and bigger hunger attacks)

- Butterflybomb (no in-room effect, when dropped) (try dizziness or transfix)

- Balloonhandoff (mass and levitation prevent any value) (add a punishing skill to people with mass up)

- Firecracker (enchance either combat or performance value)

- Suicidemice (not transworthy) (add more control, more than 2 trained at once)

- Timers (fine in themselves, but timed and given bombs are defeated by reflexes or require a swift hangedman after)

PUPPETRY

- Tickle (no use when they're off balance or otherwise) (effect offbalanced opponents too)

- Burn (inert affliction) 

- Throttle (high cost, breathing blocks) (make smokebomb prevent breathing?)

- Status (limited) (show enemy defenses to check pre-stripped speed etc.)

- Strip (no reliability/purpose) (increase cost and potency/targetability, extra cost for hidden strip)

- Break (balance or cost too high)

- Travel (high balance/cost) (have to mangle a leg before traveling to ensure they stay put, reduce cost or balance)

- Summon (balance may be correct but cost is probably high)

- Listen (puppets don't last long enough for infiltration anymore) (allow hearing tells or add Watch counterpart)

- Inventory (can't steal anymore) (should be costless)

- Leech (enemy puppets decay too fast, allies don't want to share experience) (make useful)

TAROT

- Sun (useless)

- Emperor (no enemy use) (force 1 follow even off balance (minus Grounding))

- Chariot (buggy, no pun intended) (allow 'mount' instead of 'board'?)

- Lovers (jester can't capitalize, eat bellwort > fling balance)

- Tower (limited to outdoors) (add "lesser rubble" to indoor exits, less hindering?)

- Wheel (hahaha ha...)

- Justice (jester can't capitalize, eat bellwort > fling balance)

- Lust (mostly fine) (make it a 3-line affliction and make 'reject' consume balance whether actually lusted or not)

- Devil (add Star to bonus cards now that it's limited range)

- Devil (Give jesters a Tarot boosting skill, we taught occies the skill, why should they have all the fun with it?)

- Supercharge (amnesia/retardation) (let all newbies supercharge, but make this skill like Swiftcurse, instantly activating all inventory cards and causing withdrawn cards to come out glowing for 20+ seconds, makes 3-step tarot into 2-step tarot, better for retardation)

Aepas

Freezepound should be an instakill

Xith

Aepas said:

Freezepound should be an instakill

Kaie

@xith Slowlocks aren't surefire by any means for jester though. There are still people that don't know what to do in that situation, but yeah it can be escaped. Anyways, this was about JITB. I highly doubt if everyone is this against shortening it, even if it meant being able to stop it before the second message, that they will agree to letting you continue hindering while JITB runs it's course no matter how long it's increased.

I do agree that there are different types of people who play Jester though. It's always seemed kind of amusing that most people who say that jester is fine as is, don't play jester or desire to. I mean, if it's so beast.. why doesn't everyone just play it? Kind of how monk isn't close to op, but everyone and their brother plays or knows a person who plays monk.. or blademaster. People gravitate towards the classes that are easier and more abusable and most people I know who switch to Jester in search of that greener grass quit pretty quick.

@Carmain I wouldn't quite call it a spammable version of death. It's Already spammable and if it were stoppable spamming it would be even less effective than it currently is. The sad thing is this is a really cool kill, but like I said earlier, why bother with it when I use a more generic kill quicker.

Katzchen

Isn't there some way to dodge/avoid pretty much anything 1v1 in achaea combat, whether it's during the prep, or the execution?

Arditi

Kaie said:

The sad thing is this is a really cool kill, but like I said earlier, why bother with it when I use a more generic kill quicker.

Why?

Because you got style and you're willing to trade killing them for looking like a badass.

Oh wait, you don't, because you want to trade in the style on an already perfectly good instakill so that you can make it even better.

You're trying to sell away your badassness and that ranks you as less badass than my grandmother, but slightly above the guy she gummed to death. (it took hours)

Xith

Katzchen said:

Isn't there some way to dodge/avoid pretty much anything 1v1 in achaea combat, whether it's during the prep, or the execution?

On a temporary basis, but it's not usually meant to be eternal. Good jesters can be pretty good at it between priestess, somersault, balloon, shield. Certainly a survivable class.

But on the other hand you have monks, who you can only dodge so long before both legs are out and you're bbt'd twice.

Evasion always requires presence of mind either way. You've got classes that rely on their own skill in outpacing the natural curing speed/order, classes that rely on executing combos and prep in the right order, and classes that rely on the opponent being unknowledgeable or making mistakes.

Jester is the latter two, with an extra doses of luck and randomness thrown in. I do like the luck factor because you're gambling half the time and it's a little bit like using a Black deck in Magic. You make risks/sacrifices to gain the advantage.

@Kaie With the Fitness fix and the passive curing fix, slowlocks are in much better shape now. People can cure out maybe 1 time out of 20, but if you hit with kalmia/gecko fast enough, and then put them to sleep a couple times (all of which you can now always do, with those requiring 10 fashions after the slow), you have more than the 8-12 seconds you need to put them down. It's not a true lock but then neither is a true lock if you have dheal or passive curing.

So slowlocks are pretty formidable and a little easier to get now that you only need about 53, versus the 67 you used to need for the same arrangement. But specialised curing approaches against jesters can still stop them, and sometimes fights are quicker, so every trick in the bag is important, which is why the handful of unusable skills are most disappointing.

Kaie

@ Katzchen Yeah, there is a way out of most kills, and that's good. My point was really that most kills don't take 12 seconds. Dead is dead, no matter how you go about it, so why this one is so much longer than the alternatives is what I don't get. 

@Xith, that's true.. you can put people to sleep after concussion now, but metawake will probably pull you out of it quick enough to just tumble away. The fitness fix is pretty good, but again, but I think you're missing my point. My point was it's really long and while I can prep some one fine, it's when I cease holding them down to wind the box that it becomes possible to start tumble, start curing, rinse and repeat. 

@Arditi How is making something better a bad thing? Also, your grandmother did not gum me to death, it's called Fellatio. I'm not selling away any "badassness" or "style." It's not efficient to go the long way about things and it doesn't make you badass at all, I'd go as far as to say it makes you an idiot to pick a longer and less reliable method. The object of the game is to go from point A to point B before the other person. Since i know you have trouble understanding things, Point A target alive, and point B is target dead. 

Nellaundra

@Kaie Get good.  I see JITB a fair amount on deathsight, so go find what the people who use it are doing instead of screaming "BUFFS".

Arditi

Let's put this to a hypothetical:

"Kaie has succumbed to the poisons delivered by Nagaraja Arditi Nithilar, Eye of the Silver Arrow".

That's me sniping you to death. Do you know what that means? It's a day ending in "Y".

"Arditi has brutally executed Kaie by strangling him with a fierce two-tailed whip."

That's me being awesome and probably getting, like, thirty CLTs going "No fucking way did you kill someone in melee".

Xith

Behead is the standard on timed kills though.

Behead = 10 seconds = stopped by paralysis, entangle, prone, etc.

Jitb = 12 seconds = stopped by nothing except peace, leaving the room, or forcing the jester to do an action.

Death = 8 seconds = requires you to rub the card on a person 7 times

Tzantza/Reave = down to really small times like 3 seconds, requires a stack of humours/afflictions to shorten

Voyria = 20 seconds from the first symptom = hidden affliction

Heartseed = 10 seconds, I think = torso affliction

A sylvan started heartseed on me once and I flung death right after it started, and I won. Don't remember if it removed his affliction or I cured it in time but he stayed out of curiosity. Can't blame people.

Honestly I used to drop a concussion for about 5 seconds and then wind jitb. By the time they had the mind to tumble or move, they get a second of stun, and by the time they get out of that, it's too late to escape the little killroom. They either panic too much or don't panic enough and you get lucky. But usually some prep needed.

Sylvance

What this seems to boil down to, when you take all of the bells and whistles out of this argument, is a person wanting a Guaranteed Kill Strategy (TM).

That being the case:

CLASS QUIT

CLASS SELECT BLADEMASTER

QUIT myCity

MSG HIROMA INVITE PLX * **

*Not actual gameplay footage. 

**Some sequences have been shortened.

Blujixapug

JITB is extremely strong because unlike other channelled instakills (Behead/Cleave etc), you can't interrupt the jester. You can't web or sleep them (unless they have 'wake' triggered). You have to leave the room. Jesters have a ton of tools to impede this, including but not limited to: Tower, peels, Mangle, sleep, blackout, aeon, and concussion. Slowlock is really just the beginning in terms of completely bullshit strategies jesters can employ that all but guarantee successful kills.

Sylvance

@Kaie - I actually clicked all 6 reaction buttons on your last post and finally settled on WTF.

Seftin

why are you bothering with slowlocks? Shits old.

To elaborate, I found a way to kill most people with 31 fashions, an illusion, jack in the box and going AFK for 12 seconds.

Xith

Instakills =/= timed kills.

Catharsis is an instant kill. The ones listed are timed and don't require prep except for behead which requires prone or webbed, not sure if anything else works. Reave and tzantza start at higher timers but are greatly reduced by afflictions on the target.

The point is everything is balanced and the only beef is with Jitb being stopped with peace that's afflicted at the 11th second. Half the people I've asked agreed, the other half didn't care, but since most of the peace classes can also force actions, it's kind of overkill. I'd accept a nerf to devotion Force too though.

Kaie

Okay, you guys totally missed the point. Yes, Jester has mad hindering skills, and rightfully so because that's what the class is based on. Again though, I was pointing out that tumble if used intelligently can -always- defeat it and there really isn't a chance to pick up the pieces after they get moved from the room with tumble, thus causing you to restart the whole procedure. Peels, tower, web, etc is irrelevant to this because none of it affects tumble. The only thing that does is mangles which, to be realistic you won't get a person to stick around with 4 mangles if you even get to mangle all four. 

Slowlocks are old news as what's his name stated.

@arditi I get that. You do something difficult and people are wowed.

The idea wasn't to make a guaranteed kill, it was to improve upon things. I wouldn't say Execute is exactly the same, simply because a serpent typically has a person locked for execute, so even if the person tumbles away you can move in and restart it. With Jester, once you move rooms it's over. 

Anyways, this is so yesterday. I've moved on to other things.