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Damnation
Hi, relatively need to the paladin class, and I was wondering if there's any advice to pull off a sure-fire damnation kill, or if someone's priorities has to be really off to actually get the kill. It's probably still out of my skill range as I'm still learning the fundamentals to knight combat, but trying to pull off damnation seems incredibly difficult. Any tips or advice from people who have pulled it off, or seen it done?
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There are some strategies, but none are anywhere close to being "sure-fire". It's considered the hardest prep insta kill in the game to pull off.
Any viable strategy will require you to stick asthma for 4 seconds (so you'll have to stack kelp-cured afflictions) so you can break head and hellsight in time.
It's about RNG - % chances to cure or fail to cure something in this context. Stick up to 3 kelp afflictions (sensitivity, asthma, clumsiness) and then break head with gecko/slike for a kind of pseudo-lock. 50% chance to cure the anorexia as head breaks give stupidity. If they don't, it means they can't focus for 2.5 seconds, which means they can't eat for equally as long due to anorexia (slike). The asthma (kalmia) means no smoking to cure slickness (gecko). You might want to break both arms beforehand to prevent tree, but often people use tree frivolously because of server side curing now so tree is much less of an issue with damnation against most people.
If the focus does cure anorexia, it means they're stuck with stupidity while trying to cure asthma of which they have a 33% chance to cure. This means they would potentially have to eat kelp three times to cure the asthma giving you enough time to Damn them. Hellsight is pretty much spot on two seconds with a diadem, around 2.2 without one and goes through shield, as does Damnation.
I wouldn't say it's the hardest prep insta-kill either, it's just that it relies on % chances. So like, 33% of the time it will work 100% of the time, but 66% of the time it works 0% of the time. Whereas (often used as a comparison) if you cure properly against vivisect it works 0% of the time 100% of the time apart from lag spikes at bad times and so on.
There are other, more creative ways to go around it but the above should hopefully serve as an idea of how to reach the end goal of damnation!
Jovolo has it right. It's a super easy-mode kill to set up for. Really trivial prep. There's almost no counter for it at all. But it requires super fast rapiers/a diadem and only works about 33% of the time.
There's also a lot of 'hidden' bonuses that merely having the option to use damnation opens up, even if you don't kill them with damnation. Overall, I'd say damnation is in a good place.
What would you say is the minimum speed for rapiers to pull it off?
227 should be fine and simple enough to get after hunting/questing gold for a few days, the faster the better of course. They can't apply to head straight away if they have gecko, and need to eat either bloodroot to cure the slickness to then apply to head, or eat kelp (33% chance to cure asthma) potentially three times to cure asthma, and then smoke valerian to cure slickness, and then apply to head.
This typically means you don't need a dsl speed that is 4 seconds minus your hellsight equilibrium to fit a dsl and a hellsight within 4 seconds, or "restoration salve balance", as they won't be able to attempt to cure the slickness until they regain herb balance to eat bloodroot or kelp after you dsl and break head.
I would say this though: don't let your speed or lack of it discourage you from trying. If you have 215's, or 223's, just go for it and test things out. You may as well get a feel for going for damnation/disembowel and learn about every ability you possess regardless of the speed of your weapons, and the sooner you get involved in combat the sooner you can learn how to react defensively to all classes. Build your speed up as you build your gold reserves up over time.
You'd want 231-235 speeds to be optimal, but you can pull it off well enough it with 227s, which aren't terribly difficult to find or afford. You can probably manage with slower, but the slower you are, the longer it takes to stack those kelp afflictions, and it gets impractical after a point.
Is the head the only limb that I should focus on prepping for this or would it be more ideal to prep a leg, arm and head before attempting?
You can prep other limbs to throw your target off salve balance as well (at which point the last DSL might be asthma/anorexia, letting hellsight give slickness), though I believe Jovolo's point is that you can get Damnation off without prepping anything but head. This makes it quick to re-prep if that attempt fails.
If there's a 33% chance of success, but prepping takes 1/3 the time of other preps, it's worth pursuing.
The danger with breaking other limbs is that you'd need to do it while stacking the afflictions you need, and for most people, even those relatively new to combat, a limb break (generally accompanied by a big warning if they aren't using -just- server-side curing) prompts an "I'm going to leave the room or shield right now" response. I suspect you'll have better luck if you don't give your opponent additional reasons to stall your offense before you get to the point you're actually ready to kill.
Also, nobody seems to have touched on additional active or passive curing abilities at all. Fitness will drastically reduce your ability to pull off damnation because it gives them ready access to a guaranteed asthma cure - it can be blocked by the weariness affliction, but that's curable by focusing or eating kelp so you're unlikely to stick that prior to the head break. Shrugging (available to Serpents) basically acts like a second tree tattoo that doesn't have as many restrictions on use (it's usable paralysed and with both arms broken, I believe, unlike tree) which will make it both harder to stack afflictions in the first place and give them more options to break out of any lock you do manage to get them in.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
What do you suggest then? If I'm fighting a knight or serpent it sounds like my goal shouldn't be the hellsight/damnation combo or if I do that my % for success goes down more.
Aye, that's correct, there's other ways things can be cured which makes this difficult against certain targets. Nothing's perfect I'm afraid.
Also, fitness is one of the reasons going for just the head is good: better chance of the target being off balance when you get the break and delaying fitness (even then, you'd probably rely on some falcon luck to deny it completely before you can perform damnation).
@Noak: As Itkovian said, you can wait until they attack to break the head, which will shorten the amount of time they have to use fitness. That works better against classes with attacks that have longer balances than your own doubleslash; against another knight or serpent that probably won't be the case.
If they're on balance you could hope that stupidity makes them touch shield (or they do it themselves because the head break scared them), which will throw them off equilibrium and possibly prevent them from fitnessing and smoking in time.
Another option is to (attempt to) drain their mana to the point where they can't focus at all. Generally you'd do that by combining a focusable affliction - something like vernalius (weariness) or aconite (stupidity) - with delphinium to strip insomnia. Using both insomnia and focus is, I believe, 350 mana; insomnia doesn't require or use any kind of balance so they'll generally do that on every doubleslash, focus has a 2.5 second balance so they'll be focusing a bit more slowly than you're giving the affliction back. You'll also have the passive mana drain from rite of demons to assist with that. Once they stop using focusing (either because they have no mana, they've dropped below some threshold set up in their curing system, or they've disabled it entirely because you've annoyed them so much) you'll likely have an easier time stacking afflictions - including weariness to prevent fitness - and you also won't have to worry about them potentially focusing out of the lock when you do break the head.
Other options generally involve abandoning damnation and trying for a straight damage kill or disembowel.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Aye, Paladins do drain mana pretty well.
Of course, they could just parry head, but then that opens up other options...
Bit of a derail, but damnation is to RNG for my liking, why don't any knights go for riftlocks? That vardrax change was nice, but I've yet to see anyone take advantage of it.
Now you've piqued my curiousity.. what was changed with vardrax?
Clearly my "Sh*t that changed while you were gone" newsletter was inadequate.
From looking at it, I don't think Paladins are innately fast enough to really make good use of it, hence my Condemn classlead which was meant to extend restoration salve balance to six seconds. It was rejected because there will soon be an overhaul of weaponry and the Knight classes with the tradeskill split (Forging) and it may have tipped the scales too far with those in consideration.
With good priorities and use of tree it isn't hard to avoid a rift-lock against a Paladin and trivial even, if you have fitness. It's far, far more potent as a Runewarden or Infernal.
@Dalran: Major reasons that I personally discounted it:
If they can apply restoration to a single arm then they're likely going to get out of the lock, they just need to use restore once the application goes through (this may or may not leave them open to cleave [unless they're a Knight], if you're very quick about it - I can't remember the timings). That means you'd need two breaks prior to it, which in reality means you need to prep both legs and both arms (and also head if you wanted to try Damnation off of it as a Paladin). It's possible that I'm misremembering how restoration works with regard to slickness (which would change a fair amount), but I'm pretty sure if you've already applied it before slickness it will still cure.
It should be pretty easy to avoid by simply keeping out a fair amount of ginseng (which isn't affected by addiction) and prioritising addiction over asthma if you have both arms broken (IMPORTANT EDIT: and are off salve balance).
There's the added complication that bloodroot can be used to cure slickness, so you need to get them to eat both that and kelp before ginseng.
Any knight using ~227 speed rapiers (I use Soulpiercers, so 228) won't be able to fit the requisite number of doubleslashes in between rebounding to break both legs, both arms, then secure the lock.
It has the same issues as Damnation, and other potential locks, with regard to fitness and other active and passive healing abilities.
All of that said, I did consider using vardrax for a Damnation set up (it's essentially a half rift lock), but it's entirely dependent on them prioritising asthma over addiction even with two arms broken. Essentially break a leg with double delphinium, break an arm with curare/kalmia, break the second arm with vardrax/kalmia (they eat kelp, have none left), break head with kalmia/something else, then hellsight. With a sub 2 second doubleslash they simply wouldn't be able to outrift kelp to cure asthma prior to the damnation. Of course, now I've posted this I imagine everybody (who hadn't done it already) is going to make sure they switch addiction above asthma with two arms broken.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
I'm not as knowledgeable on paladins as I'd like, just meant more in general knights. Guess what I said would be assumed I was talking about paladins, being in a sub forum about paladins!
The most mechanically-guaranteed method I've found for rift-locking takes 6 DSLs at 1.9 seconds or faster, breaking 4 limbs so that you can seal it before they've applied restoration/reconstructive to either arm. (Or they can Restore out of the lock once the resto/recon resolves)
The first obstacle is that 235+ rapiers are a pain to come by. (For my casual self, at least) The second obstacle is that 6 DSLs is longer than rebounding, which really complicates things. (Though Paladins have a huge advantage here, because with the recent Hellsight change, they can seal a riftlock with Hellsight/Arc kalmia through rebounding) But the major issue is that a knight will never riftlock anyone with Fitness. (Weariness is mental and we don't have access to impatience)
So while a rift-lock leading into Damnation would score you massive props, it's just a long, complicated setup with a lot of ways it can fail, and it's both easier and faster to play the numbers games described above.
And, of course, it entails the target staying still after so many limbs have been prepped. And they've gotta know that something nasty is coming with that many limbs.
That said, as Antonius said Paladins are fairly good at draining mana, so Focus can potentially be eliminated as a factor (or minimized), making impatience more likely to stick. But of course that's even more prep work, and I would agree the number's game seems the better approach.
Of course, with the Knight changes coming up, all this may become academic, and whole new techniques may open up. Exciting time to be a Knight, I tell you.
So where is the best area to try and find high speed rapiers for sale?
Market Channel. If you want 235+ rapiers, the most active forgers might have a few stored somewhere.
Riftlock leading into damnation was like the only way I killed people as a Paladin. I had over 50 damnation out of arena 1v1 kills.
Also, rift/pipe locks are fairly viable now, but you do need good weapons (and boo to weapon runes being nerfed for Infernal/Paladins - these allowed people who didn't want to spend 200cr per weapon to still compete at that level).
Damnation through riftlocking against Vadi 2.0 was really easy, since most people relied too much on reflexes and wouldn't have pre-outrifted/manually eat kelp.
[ SnB PvP Guide | Link ]
Damnation is extremely hard to pull off.
It's not -just- the herb stack and such it's the PASSIVE HEALING and the fitness and the herb stack your having to deal with. Also rebounding.
Not to mention if they know what you're doing they can just switch to parrying head.. it'll allow you to setup for a disembowel easier however.
Riftlocking is a neat idea but fitness is where your damnation problems come with to start with. and the fitness classes are going to be the classes you fight against the most.
And for the record dsling at 1.8ish makes it about 3x easier (maybe more) because it eliminates an extra eat (or focus can't remember now)