Heartseed redux

Cathy

Either way, inline dstab venoms were a boon to my offensive style!

Xith

I'm glad for that change, it gives serpents incentive to stay in retardation and fight instead of run and shoot. I mean realistically should pre-hypno a mage and just wait for them to "make the mistake". Disrupt/stupidity/amnesia/epilepsy/pacifism/clumsiness/masochism/confusion/..... kinda take your pick.

Shecks

So few people seem to understand how hypnosis works within the realm of serpent combat.  We can't just "save it up" to use in pinch situations, because without hypnosis, we don't have impatience, and therefore, have no offensive capability whatsoever.  The best thing we can possibly do without actively using hypnosis (ie. not letting suggestions just sit there until retardation drops) is leave, considering that every moment we're engaged in combat with a prep class that we're not actively venom-locking them, we're wasting.

Not to mention the fact that 98% of magi these days won't drop retard until their target has two broken legs and prone.  With your suggestion, all this would do would (again) neutralize combat, as it would certainly not lead to an upper hand for the serpent, unless they go with the ubiquitous tumble/snipe method which you seem to prefer avoiding.  Even with what you suggest though, it's a concentrate/brazier away from death for the serpent.

I still see no reason why I'd ever risk going against retardation with vibes up vs. just leaving and sniping.  Vibes alone can kill you (via sleep), even if you're stuck there paralyzed/prone/whatever.

This same thing came up with monk combat.  Someone suggested using a hypno chain and just saving it for the double leg break.

A) Hypnosis alone doesn't do very much, at all.  Forcing wormholes is decent, but still pretty insignificant, big-picture.

Same as above.  If we're not actively using hypnosis to lock them while they prep limbs (and spam shield/rebounding), then there's 0% chance of success.

Shecks

Also, related to heartseed:

Who's the expert to talk to about heartseed setups & curing?  Twil / @Lothiac?

Jovolo

Anyone with a good understanding of combat mechanics really. Doesn't have to be someone that just plays it. And they will tell you the same thing I have.

Eld

TBF, Twil's heartseed is pretty much unstoppable, simply because by the time he gets you prepped, you'll be too enraged by the constant reflecting to pay attention to curing.

Xer

Twil mode - activated

Shecks

Eld said:

TBF, Twil's heartseed is pretty much unstoppable, simply because by the time he gets you prepped, you'll be too enraged by the constant reflecting to pay attention to curing.

 I'd bitch about reflections if they weren't currently one of the best counters against such strategies.  They had incredible foresight to limit the wand to once per hour.

Bishan

Eld said:

TBF, Twil's heartseed is pretty much unstoppable, simply because by the time he gets you prepped, you'll be too enraged by the constant reflecting to pay attention to curing.

Valid strat, adopting asap

Xith

It's a good strategy for anybody in any game. Play so defensively that they over extend themselves offensively. Then turn it around like bam. It's weird how much people like to ridicule good defense as things like "shield whoring" and "running".

"Turtling" on the other hand has negative consequences because you have no progress. But if you balance it out and simply make it look like you're turtling, you can outmaneuver people. Requires timing and patience though. Oh, and the Force.

Shecks

I have two modes of combat... normal, and lame.  Lame is reserved for two general categories of people:  People who team me and my friends, and slow preppers.  

Caladbolg

Eld said:

TBF, Twil's heartseed is pretty much unstoppable, simply because by the time he gets you prepped, you'll be too enraged by the constant reflecting to pay attention to curing.

Pommel pommel voidfist raze/para my brother in rage.

Caladbolg

Xith said:

It's a good strategy for anybody in any game. Play so defensively that they over extend themselves offensively. Then turn it around like bam. It's weird how much people like to ridicule good defense as things like "shield whoring" and "running".

"Turtling" on the other hand has negative consequences because you have no progress. But if you balance it out and simply make it look like you're turtling, you can outmaneuver people. Requires timing and patience though. Oh, and the Force.

>_> No progress? Should try doing it as a prep class works amazingly.

Jovolo

How does turtling gain you no progress as a prep class

Shecks

If you think turtling isn't an amazing offensive strategy, go fight @Proficy, @Iakimen, or pretty much any monk or sylvan.

Xith

Well preppers have that unique and terrifying advantage. But if you require any momentum then yeah shielding will slow you down a little

Shecks

Shield is one thing, but shield spam is stupid.  You shouldn't be able to use it repeatedly, on loop, in tandem with other things that do the same thing, like rebounding and reflections.

Xith

Except that there are two sides of combat: wanting to survive and wanting to kill someone. You should be able to pick whichever.

As a momentum class you have to just wait for another window and try to capitalize in a way that prevents or isn't slowed much by a single shield.

Shecks

Xith said:

Except that there are two sides of combat: wanting to survive and wanting to kill someone. You should be able to pick whichever.

As a momentum class you have to just wait for another window and try to capitalize in a way that prevents or isn't slowed much by a single shield.

Shecks said:

Shield is one thing, but shield spam is stupid.  You shouldn't be able to use it repeatedly, on loop, in tandem with other things that do the same thing, like rebounding and reflections.

Isaiah

@Shecks I love when you refer to yourself in the third person

Xith

Snap confusion, dstab higher prio mental affs. If they shield before curing you have plenty of time to flay and keep stabbing.
Real serpents probably have better ideas, but I used puppet confuse and command shield to sneak fashions the same way.

Shecks

@Xith that's actually an awesome idea... I've never thought of using confusion off of the target's self-initiated eq use, because it's so hard to predict (with the exception if magi)... But for some people, it's insanely easy to predict when they'll shield (omg snap, shield 10x until hypno chain is over).

I'm going to fiddle with this later today.

Hirst

Ivory vs Quisalis fight, right?

 Will Nahundi is here. He wields a
bard's lute in his left hand and an ornate steel rapier in his right. Greenthorn
General Alrena Winterhart, Witch of the Wilds is here, vines undulating about
her form. The Green Dragon Carmell's imposing form looms. Aarashi Shamshir
Anedhel Azon is riding on a ruby hydra. He wields an ornate steel rapier in each
hand. Valourous Sensei Aquilos is here. He wields a steel Theran broadsword in
each hand. Qara is here. Ellodin Longshanks, Magistrar of Battle is here. He
wields a sharpened buckawn's spine in his left hand and a Shield of Absorption
bearing the arms of Ellodin in his right. Aarashi Shamshir Bouff al Zubin is
here. He wields a Shield of Absorption in his right hand. Mithridates is here.
He wields a crystalline elemental shield in his left hand and a roughly-hewn
crystalline staff in his right. Caladbolg Van Helsing is here. Blackthorn
Iakimen Longshanks, Ithmian Reaper is here.

The fuck? Grow a pair and don't bring 500 non-Marks

Eld

The hell does that have to do with heartseed.

Hirst

oh, clicked the wrong thread. Meant to click combat logs.

Mithridates

Hirst's brain melted from being so griefy. 

Shecks

• Jovolo 7:25AM

  Do you concede that heartseed is 100% preventable, or that you at least aren't aware of unpreventablr heartseed setups, btw? Just wondering if you still think that
  
• Shecks 7:16AM

  It is 100% not preventable without changing your curing approach mid combat, and that's assuming that you use the right approach for the setup the sylvan uses.

  
  

  Once they see how your priorities, it can be made 100% unblockable, unless you change your priorities, literally every few seconds.

  
  

  Since there are -maybe- 2-3 people in the game that even have the capability of doing this, not including myself, I am calling it unblockable.
• Jovolo 7:25AM

  You only have to employ a certain type of curing against Sylvan's and maintain that curing throughout your entire fight. It puts you at no overwhelming disadvantage, so why not? It's like saying freeze pound is unavoidable because you need to make yourself def caloric before you apply restoration to broken legs - well no, it just means you have to adapt your curing against specific classes.
  
  Can you explain how you would need to.change your priorities literally every few seconds against a Sylvan to avoid death? 
  
  There is only one method of curing needed to prevent heartseed regardless of what approach the Sylvan uses - just to reiterate, that is delaying a restoration application if the sylvan is on bal/eq and then manually applying if they do something like cast hailstorm or thornrend you, etcetera. You could even just wait until vinewreathe drops (it only lasts for twenty seconds, so not long) and then apply to legs:touch mending and then stand and touch shield! 
  
  It is this kind of intelligent combat that makes Achaea fighting so interesting; I would have thought you would agrre considering your stance against "lame" and easy Monk kills
• 
  

Shecks

• Shecks 7:36AM

  If that countered all setups, I'd agree, but I'm pretty confident that it doesn't.  However, like I've repeatedly stated, this isn't my area of expertise. I have heard it explained (twice, actually) by other people, who understand how heartseed works a lot better than myself.

  
  

  As for me (and the other 95% of Achaea using SVO), we'll just have to continue dying to heartseed every time we see it. I'm currently working on a setup to use it's "ignore" function to delay restoration, but it's far from simple, and I doubt that there are more than 5 people who play the game who are capable of such intricate system manipulation.  Something so, so easy to set up, should not be so incredibly complex to counter.  That was, and is, my argument with heartseed.  
• Jovolo 7:41AM

  Okay, I understand your perspective, but the fact that you use Svo and that Svo is poor vs Heartseed isn't a good argument against it. This is only my opinion, of course, so take it with a pinch of salt.
  
  
• Shecks 8:04AM

  Using SVO is a crutch, and I'm not really trying to say that heartseed is OP because SVO can't cure it.

  
  

  What I'm saying is that almost nobody's system can cure it.  I see heartseed just like enfeeble/axk, using the following simple equation:

  
  

                                             difficulty to prevent

  How OP something is   =  ------------------------------------------

                                                difficulty to use

  
  

  Monk is OP because leg breaks are insanely easy to set up, as they are not actually preventable at all.  Similar to rend setups, its just a matter of time, and shield-whoring/reflecting, until the setup is prepared, thus making it essentially as easy as something can possibly be, from my point of view.

  
  

  On a scale of 100, I'd put "Not dying to heartseed curing" at a 90-95.  I'd put not dying to double leg breaks at 95-98 (since the only ways to not die to without crippling serpent offense it are illusions, that might get beat by lifevision, anti-illusion, or common sense - and in some cases, pre-applying restoration.

  
  

  I'd put the difficulty of monk wins off double leg break at about 10/100, and heartseed only slightly higher, because while it takes more hits to set up, this doesn't matter thanks to slow prepping techniques, and you have illusions, ents, vineswreathe, viridian, etc. helping you, which monks don't.

  
  

  So that puts monk slow prep strategy at about 9.5 on my OP-o-meter, and Sylvan heartseed about an easy 9.  In my opinion, anything above a 3 to 5 is OP, and needs rebalanced.  I think the fact that 90% of the game dies to heartseed every time speaks for me, but the logic doesn't do to bad either.
• Shecks 8:08AM

  So what it comes down to is that neither monk or sylvan offense is actually OP, as the "prep time" is what makes it balanced.  The thing that makes both classes OP is that limb damage takes 5 minutes to cure, which means you can turtle for 5 minutes, whimsically throwing out rends/combos, and still come out winning, even though you were on the defensive for 97% of the duel.

  
  

  If limb damage / shield was fixed so that slow prepping wasn't so insanely easy and impossible to overcome (for most classes), the difficulty rating of dying to heartseed would drop dramatically, bringing it into the "not OP" range.

Mithridates

WTF IS THIS

Jacen

I'm not normally a Shecks hater, but that shit was annoying. Stop.