AB RUNELORE ENTOMB

Aerek

22 strength, if you're referring to Antonius' chart, only deals 100% of an opponents health on a 4400 max health test subject. You won't kill a Dragon with 8000 health from full with level 1 torso damage, even if you do have 22 Strength. I think that's the biggest factor in Runewardens' gripes: that there are some opponents that you just won't kill with a disembowel, even if you do everything right. As long as they diagnose often enough, some opponents with 6000+ health can just tank a level 1 Disembowel (and the appropriate pre- and post- damage) and keep fighting, even if you have 17 or 18 strength. That leaves a Runewarden feeling pretty powerless, especially when it takes 16+ hits to prep the limbs of those people and try again.

I think Jhui's idea is interesting and could be a good addition, but making it easier or more likely for a Runewarden to actually achieve a disembowel doesn't necessarily address the lethality issues that Kenway and other Runewardens are referring to. Since they don't have the alternative kills that Infernals and Paladins have (I'll assume that Damnation is a viable alternative for the sake of discussion.), I feel some small buff to the actual effectiveness of a Runewarden's Disembowel is a reasonable request.

Caladbolg

Aerek said:

22 strength, if you're referring to Antonius' chart, only deals 100% of an opponents health on a 4400 max health test subject. You won't kill a Dragon with 8000 health from full with level 1 torso damage, even if you do have 22 Strength. I think that's the biggest factor in Runewardens' gripes: that there are some opponents that you just won't kill with a disembowel, even if you do everything right. As long as they diagnose often enough, some opponents with 6000+ health can just tank a level 1 Disembowel (and the appropriate pre- and post- damage) and keep fighting, even if you have 17 or 18 strength. That leaves a Runewarden feeling pretty powerless, especially when it takes 16+ hits to prep the limbs of those people and try again.

I think Jhui's idea is interesting and could be a good addition, but making it easier or more likely for a Runewarden to actually achieve a disembowel doesn't necessarily address the lethality issues that Kenway and other Runewardens are referring to. Since they don't have the alternative kills that Infernals and Paladins have (I'll assume that Damnation is a viable alternative for the sake of discussion.), I feel some small buff to the actual effectiveness of a Runewarden's Disembowel is a reasonable request.

Tested on 7k life 20 strength still does 94%ish hp which is pretty much the same on everyone else.

On a monk of course if that matters with no runes/mir/scales/whatever else is a %  damage reduction.

Edit: Actually now that I think about it I might have had Jera. so 21 strength.

Antonius

My target had 4400 health but that's irrelevant, I only included that so the raw numbers made sense. Disembowel is strictly health dependent, then modified down by resist all defences like algiz, mir, scales, etc. If they don't have any of those they're going to die.

Buffing disembowel isn't the way to go though. You need something new, otherwise next classlead round you'll also be wanting your one shot disembowel to be unavoidable by tumbling when you realise it's easily avoidable right now.

Aerek

I knew that the base disembowel damages were something like 30%, 60%, and 80% of an opponent's max health before strength bonuses/penalties, but you're saying that both the base damage and the STR bonuses are strictly percentage increases? So with 18 STR and lvl1 torso damage, I should hit a 8000-health Dragon for 6800, your 4400-health test subject for 3750, and a 2000-health newbie for 1700? (All 85% of max health) I trust your word over mine, but that sounds very strange to me, and I'll have to find a few low-health midbies and dragons to test that on, because it feels like I do far more than that to the former, and far less to the latter.

Yes, Disembowels are easily avoided by tumbling, but everything in Achaea is easily avoided if you know exactly how to escape it and never make a mistake; I thought that was the design philosophy of Achaean combat. My concern is that there are some folks that Runewardens won't kill with a level 1 disembowel, even if they don't tumble, which kinda sucks for Runewardens, since they lack non-damage avenues of killing.

Anedhel

Disembowel doesn't need a fix, it's in a good place (yes, the only things that affect DSB's damage are scales/algiz/favourshields, afaik). I like Jhui's idea, specially if you can smudge that rune off yourself -and- the runelorist can also smudge it off the target, just in case you need to, for your break order.

Edit: Alternatively, it can be a one-shot thing- a quick sketch time (1.5s?) which lets the next DSL hit the limb you sketch it on, non-smudgable. This'll make the set-up a little slower (cutting into the DSL pressure) and will possibly avoid the sketch/smudge cycle that will inevitably ensue once people figure out they need to smudge the pithakhan ASAP.

Antonius

It's entirely possible I'm wrong, but all of the testing I've done suggests disembowel is purely percentage-based and doesn't have any static components to its damage. If I can get an artied dragon to sit around for a while and let me disembowel them repeatedly I'll see if the numbers are inconsistent with what I posted previously.

The issue with straight buffing disembowel (through Runelore, Infernals definitely do not need to be able to one-shot with it) is that it doesn't help you against the people who can already avoid disembowel, regardless of whether or not they can tank the damage of it. If your only options for killing are straight doubleslashes + runes or disembowel, you're totally out of luck if neither of those are actually viable against an opponent.

Kenway

The issue here isn't disembowel. It's that there is no fallback from it. With sufficient skill or maxhealth dsb is simple to avoid or ignore and that's fine. Anything is avoidable with enough knowledge of how it works and what to do when. 

The thing that really makes a change necessary is the maxhealth thing.

Limbs : breakpoints scale with maxhealth making higher level/artied opponents harder targets [works fairly and as intended]

DSB : works off a percentage of maxhealth based off of strength highest attainable strength without artefacts is 19 (strength spec'd troll with runes/fury) which translates according to Antonius' table to about 89% health [works fairly and as intended]

Sips : sips work off percentage of maxhealth, increased by arties/concoction bonus/human [works fairly and as intended]

DSL : scales slightly with health I believe but not on a level with sips making bigger targets harder targets I think against my average target I hit for something like 800 damage. [works fairly and as intended]

Each of these works just as it's meant to and in a way that is fair and scales combat difficulty with the level of the combatants. But when you put them together there's a problem. In this case that the average sip can and often does outdo the average dsl, easily closing the ~20% gap left after an average DSB. Even the addition of runes often does not close this gap.

I personally think that's fine, they've earned that health pool one way or another and having to fall back on a different strategy is part of the fun of combat. So give us a fallback. An instakill that we can pull off with some reliability but ideally somewhat greater effort or skill than a DSB. No one is asking for a spoon feeding or an easy way out, just a way to compete when the functionality and execution of the skill are no longer able to match up with the skill or resources of the target.

This is one of those things that at this point I've been thinking about for far too long and I'm certain my posts are becoming inarticulate. With this, I retire from this thread and I'm going to get started on a classlead for an. I would love for all of you to read it over and express concerns/ideas/edits via IG message before I submit it.

Aerek

Antonius said:

The issue with straight buffing disembowel (through Runelore, Infernals definitely do not need to be able to one-shot with it) is that it doesn't help you against the people who can already avoid disembowel, regardless of whether or not they can tank the damage of it. If your only options for killing are straight doubleslashes + runes or disembowel, you're totally out of luck if neither of those are actually viable against an opponent.

I agree with everything you're saying, but I don't get where you're going with it. Yes, tumbling at a specific moment will always save you from a disembowel, but that's fine, because every kill setup should have a way out of it. Either you're saying that there should be no way to escape a disembowel, or you're saying that because people can to escape it, it's not viable and we all need some other setup that they can't escape. I don't agree with either of those statements, because I feel that if you cure and counter your opponent perfectly every time, you should never die. Of the classes I'm familiar with, only Infernals really have a double-threat setup that is almost guaranteed to kill you in one of two ways. Is that what you're aiming for, more classes that are essentially inescapable if they execute a proper setup?

@Kenway Not that I'm trying to discourage you, but I think your goals are a little paradoxical. You talk like disembowels are easy to pull off, but you should know better than most that disemboweling can be very difficult if your opponent knows how to avoid parry bypasses, so it will be likewise difficult to make something that requires "more skill" than disemboweling that isn't completely unreasonable to execute. Even if you do accomplish that, if the new method is "more reliable" than disembowel, then you're kinda just invalidating disembowel. No one's going to use a long, difficult disembowel setup if there's another long, difficult setup that is more reliable than disemboweling. But I'll wait and see what you come up with.

Antonius

@Aerek You need another avoidable setup is essentially what I'm saying. Something that is, ideally, more involved defensively than tumbling though. So that when disembowel isn't going to work at all you have something else to try.

Atalkez

I like the rune idea, but you can just make a trigger to smudge the rune instantly when it gets sketched. Sure, you're sacrificing offense but defensively you're better off. Leave this as is, if you dry-sketch. What I mean is this:

Maybe make It so that if you sketch it with at least 1 other broken limb when you finish, it is un-smudgeable when done. Basically, if I mangle your arm I can then sketch the rune and solidify it. The point is I have to break that arm, which requires another limb prep. Have the rune fade after 30-60s.

The premise is that if you focus on the binding, and can bypass parry, eventually you can get the kill. With this setup, most classes will have out-prepped, out-damaged, out-afflicted the runewarden during the process. Most classes that have an insta-kill, usually kill runewardens before they can get through their prep.

This way the prep takes a lot longer, has some pre-requirements, but is instant death if you allow it to happen.