Heartseed redux

Shecks

I was gone when heartseed was implemented... and I'm still struggling to understand how to counter it properly.

As far as I can tell, if I ever apply restoration to a broken limb, and I'm not parrying torso, I am essentially dead?

If anyone's got a good summary of how to stop repeatedly dying to this, I'd appreciate the advice.

Cathy

Parry torso

Diagnose a lot

Keep a count of their hits on you

Shield on break

Evade out

Illusion restoration applications

Kill the Sylvan

Shecks

Scenario:

Sylvan breaks a single leg and then trips me.  Now I'm prone and have a broken leg, so I cannot move, shield, or parry.

At this point, my options are to

1) apply restoration to heal the leg -> guaranteed death

2) don't heal broken legs while fighting sylvans

This is a pretty screwed up mechanic for only requiring a single leg break.  Illusions might help mess up their counters, but A) They probably won't, everyone and their sister has lifevision now, and C) what's the answer for people who don't have illusions?

Cathy

Illusions

Illusion yourself standing, or shielding, or whatever. You don't have to be standing for them to think you are. Also, that situation wont be an issue if you keep an eye on your torso damage. You can afford to apply to leg then apply to torso to cure heartseed providing you don't already have internal trauma.

Also, I'm pretty sure thornrend isn't a flat 4 to break. At the extreme of health levels it can take 5 afaik

Shecks

Daeir said:

Vinewreathe stops parry

Diagnose a lot

Thornrend takes 4 hits to break

Pretty much all you need to know.

Didn't know about vinewrathe (I've never heard of it, actually) - good to know.

So, I'm dueling a sylvan and he rends my leg 3 times.  What, run home and wait for limb to reset, then come back?  If the leg breaks, I basically die, unless I'm missing something.

Kafziel

1) Never let your torso get pre-broken
2) Shield after heartseed if your torso is prepped
3) Heartseed EQ is over 4 seconds with quick-witted and diadem. Restoration is 4 seconds. Touch tree/shrugging after restoration and you should always be standing before they can get the last torso rend after heartseed

minor note: if you can delay their first leg break after vinewreathe by even a couple of seconds it will wear off before the torso rend for break, meaning if you stick parry on torso and tree/shrug instead of mending for legs you won't die.
But most importantly NEVER let your torso get pre-broken.

edit:

Shecks said:

Scenario:

Sylvan breaks a single leg and then trips me.  Now I'm prone and have a broken leg, so I cannot move, shield, or parry.

At this point, my options are to

1) apply restoration to heal the leg -> guaranteed death

2) don't heal broken legs while fighting sylvans

This is a pretty screwed up mechanic for only requiring a single leg break.  Illusions might help mess up their counters, but A) They probably won't, everyone and their sister has lifevision now, and C) what's the answer for people who don't have illusions?

if you apply immediately after break they will be off EQ for ~2.4 seconds and can't heartseed immediately. They should be heartseeding on the second leg application, in which case all of my above advice applies.

Jhui

heartseed is 11 sec.

Apply torso cure is 4 sec.

Apply heartseed cure is 4 sec.

Apply leg cure is 4 sec.

That's 12 seconds.

However, the sylvan can't apply all of these breaks/affs at once.  The supposed 11 seconds is applied after the first heartseed is introduced.

For instance if you apply restoration to head manually, a sylan heartseeds immediately, then breaks torso on next eq.  You are dead.

Fill in the rest of the blanks and you have sylvan combat figured out defensively.

Sylvans can do some nifty stuff to accomplish this, but it requires quite a bit of skill and is in no way guaranteed.

Shecks

Thanks @Jhui - that's pretty much what I was looking for.

I'll implement your ideas too, @Cathy.

One other thing I noticed that was screwing me was that I had crippled limbs over mangled limbs in salve priority, which is asking to get punished by epteth/epseth thornrends when fighting sylvans.

Cathy

Oh, make sure you have torso damage > other limbs when fighting sylvans too.

Kafziel

Shecks said:

Thanks @Jhui - that's pretty much what I was looking for.

I'll implement your ideas too, @Cathy.

One other thing I noticed that was screwing me was that I had crippled limbs over mangled limbs in salve priority, which is asking to get punished by epteth/epseth thornrends when fighting sylvans.

If you cure mangled leg over crippled leg you're going to get heartseeded by an intelligent sylvan.

Blujixapug

actually nvm, this is probably outdated.

Shecks

Kafziel said:

Shecks said:

One other thing I noticed that was screwing me was that I had crippled limbs over mangled limbs in salve priority, which is asking to get punished by epteth/epseth thornrends when fighting sylvans.

If you cure mangled leg over crippled leg you're going to get heartseeded by an intelligent sylvan.

Why?

Kafziel

Shecks said:

Why?

Post should've read crippled limb not leg but anyway:
They break both legs with epteth, heartseed on your second restoration. After you get salve balance back you have 0.4 seconds to cure 2 legs and an arm so you can stand and shield before the torso rend that breaks torso and means heartseed will kill you

Shecks

Well, I look forward to building a priority list from scratch, just for sylvans T_T

Santar

Just don't do anything but apply restoration to torso on every balance vs. Sylvans.

If they break your legs, tumble to your city.

Easy.

Rangor

Santar said:

Just don't do anything but apply restoration to torso on every balance vs. Sylvans.

If they break your legs, tumble to your city.

Easy.

Heartseed does damage if you cure it with broken limbs.

Xith

Well I'm magi now, but I didn't used to have to worry about heartseed, cause I was a jester and died to f*cking bees.

Wysteria

People make heartseed sound easy.

Cooper

That's because it is pretty easy right now.

Shecks

I actually blame SVO for heartseed sucking so much.

I love SVO, but the stock priorities couldn't be made worse for surviving heartseed.

It's easy to set it up so that it does it right, but if you don't bother, then you're screwed.

Even better is if you use stock triggers and leave anti-illusion on, and it just completely ignores it.

Santar

Pretty sure I could make a single trans sylvan and kill anyone in the game in less than 60 seconds 100% of the time. Nobody playing the class properly so nobody knows how OP it is.

Shecks

Frankly I'm amazed you haven't yet.

We rely on you to get classes nerfed, Santar.  You're the wave of change.

Please go slow-prep monk first though, k?

Kuy

Shecks said:

I actually blame SVO for heartseed sucking so much.

I love SVO, but the stock priorities couldn't be made worse for surviving heartseed.

It's easy to set it up so that it does it right, but if you don't bother, then you're screwed.

Even better is if you use stock triggers and leave anti-illusion on, and it just completely ignores it.

There is never, ever, ever an excuse to blame a system for user error.  Period.  Nada.

Knowing that the priorities are bad is icing on that cake.

(Also, I know this post is not you saying you do use them.  However, the point remains the same.)

Wysteria

I used to land heartseeds back when I was using Nexus...svo and such make it harder so I literally just pause my system and go manual on everything. Still, need more practice to get it right. Lothiac is doing pretty well with it, as is Kalexei and Twil.

Kafziel

I have never seen legitimate heartseed strategy from Twil or Kalexei. They seem to go with the 'break shit and heartseed randomly' school of sylvan combat

Xith

Kafziel said:

I have never seen legitimate heartseed strategy from Twil or Kalexei. They seem to go with the 'break shit and heartseed randomly' school of sylvan combat

Twil used to kill me with bees.

One time he did a 'naked' heartseed though and I responded with 'naked' Death tarot. I won and still applied in time. Whew, good times.

Zeon

I find this entire thread incredibly disrespectful.

Xith

I just realized Zeon's avatar is Hamtaro.

Arador

Actually I can not see how SVO can do it much better. Only way is to delay on the second limb application and fake it since at the moment heartseed is planted you only have one broken limb and the moment you apply to it it is game over 90% of the time. Only other way is to run if the second limb is not leg.

Xith

If recent class changes are any indication, the likely fix is to slow the default timer on heartseed but make it complete faster the more limb/body damage the person has.

I don't know. Is the consensus that heartseed is overpowered and simply not seen that often cause Sylvans snuggle more than struggle? Personally don't know that I've died to a 1v1 heartseed, but I diagnose like a madman and may not have fought the right sylvans.

Shecks

@Xith

I wouldn't call it overpowered, I think its just that so few high tier fighters play sylvan that very few people bother to really set up the necessary curing and/or learn counter strategy.  I just came back from dormancy, but its on my list.

edit:  I'm basing this solely on the numbers Jhui posted a few days back, and the basic setups I've read about.  I really don't have that much experience with it yet.